‘The cemetery land used to reach that Bengal almond tree over there,” Diao Thaleluek said, pointing to the tree’s broad, glossy leaves 20 metres from where he was standing. Followed by a swarm of mosquitoes, he took a few steps back, reached down and began to search the ground for a boundary marker.
“They’ve even moved the marker here as evidence [of their title claim],” he said, referring to the owner of an adjacent resort who is trying to take over the cemetery land.
Situated near Klong Dao beach on Koh Lanta in Krabi province, Laem Tung Yung is one of four sea gypsy cemeteries on the island where members of the Urak Lawoi tribe have buried their dead for more than a century.
The graves sit on public land. Although they have no legal rights to the land, generation after generation of Koh Lanta’s sea gypsies have laid their ancestors to rest on the plots. At the Laem Tung Yung plot, the practice came to a standstill two years ago when the neighbouring resort began to encroach on the land.
Mr Diao, a member of the Urak Lawoi tribe, said it happened quickly.
Several trees were cut down, and the boundary markers of both the hotel property and the public land were moved. Then came a fence to partition off part of the graveyard.
According to locals, few sea gypsies were warned that construction work would take place on the disputed parcel of land. Some rushed to dig up their relatives’ remains so they could relocate them.
Before long, a road was built on the site, despite several graves still being located there.
“I’m saddened and worried by the whole situation,” Mr Diao said. “We used to come and go on this land, we’ve put our family members to rest there. Now, hotel employees tell us it’s private property and we can’t go back.”
The investor behind the towering resort — a hotel magnate and influential figure in Krabi province — claims the land is his and that he has legal documents to back him.
Last year, a probe was launched by a Prime Minister’s Office committee, set up to deal with sea gypsy land issues, looking at the businessman’s alleged encroachment of public land. Results are expected next month.
Whether the land titles are real or bogus, the resort owner is one step ahead of the sea gypsies, who have no land documents at all.
RITES AND WRONGS
Land disputes involving sea gypsies are long-standing in the Andaman region.
The rapid, unfettered growth of the tourism industry in the past two decades has worsened their plight.
“Perhaps one day, sea gypsies will become hill-tribe people,” Mr Diao joked.
According to the beliefs of the Urak Lawoi, their dead should be buried next to the sea, so they can “go to sleep” while listening to the sound of the waves.
On Koh Lanta, sea gypsies’ access to graveyards has become increasingly restricted by the private takeover of beachfront land. Now they are met with stern faces at resort gates and barred from entering.
Urak Lawoi funeral processions also do not go down well among businessmen looking to promote the island as a holiday destination.
The sea gypsies now walk along the curved shoreline, taking a detour to reach Laem Tung Yung. The view is nicer, Mr Diao said, but there is a catch. “You can only walk that way when the tide is low.”
This, he explained, has delayed several ceremonies and doesn’t bode well with the auspicious times for funeral rites set by Urak Lawoi spiritual leaders.
On the northern tip of the island, the Bor Nae cemetery has also been closed off. The location, which can only be accessed by boat, used to be public land. While the state declared it a protected forest area, ignoring the century-long presence of Urak Lawoi graves, local businessmen have since claimed it as their own.
Sea gypsies were warned five years ago that the land would be built over. They were prevented from holding new burials on the plot, while several families hastily exhumed their ancestors’ remains.
Even on land with proper titles, the Urak Lawoi fear for their cemeteries.
The Klong Song Pak cemetery sits on a parcel which belonged to a fellow sea gypsy, who donated it to his community. While it is more secure than other sites, the two-rai graveyard has become congested in the past few years. Soon, it will be impossible to find space for new graves, Mr Diao said.
The cemetery could also soon see its access to the beach blocked by a massage parlour which is gradually encroaching on the adjacent public area.
The beach is important too, sea gypsies argue, as it provides sand to cover their plots, which need yearly cleaning and maintenance. If the graveyard is blocked off from beach access, their funeral rites will be affected.
BURYING THE HATCHET
Last September, the PM’s Office committee travelled to inspect Koh Lanta’s Urak Lawoi cemeteries.
Worried: Diao Thaleluek, a Urak Lawoi sea gypsy, is worried about the future.
“Such land disputes arose because the cemeteries have no clear boundaries, enabling investors to intrude on the public land,” the committee’s chairman, Surin Pikultong, said.
A former president of the Community Organisations Development Institute, Gen Surin was appointed in 2014 to head the 35-member panel of experts, academics, state officials and civil society actors. Local sea gypsies have credited him for helping address their grievances.
Each sea gypsy graveyard has its own problems, Gen Surin told Spectrum. But the disputes are most serious at Laem Tung Yung and Bor Nae.
After the September visit, Gen Surin ordered district land officials to inspect and measure both sites to obtain a formal survey of their boundaries.
Land officials were also told to track down title documents relating to the public land and the business owners’ claimed plots. The documents will be examined to determine rightful ownership of the land, he said. The committee is expected to consider both disputed areas at a meeting next month.
If land encroachment is proven, the business owners will need to withdraw their claims over the areas, Gen Surin warned. Public land must be returned to the public.
He said the graves will remain untouched.
“The sea gypsies’ presence long preceded that of investors. There are means to prove their ancestral claims over the land,” Gen Surin added.
He pointed to a similar case in Phuket. In 2014, the Justice Ministry asked the Land Department to revoke the title deeds of businessmen who claimed ownership of 11 rai of coastal land occupied by sea gypsies in Rawai, on the island’s southwest. One of the investors had sought to evict the sea gypsies from the plot. A lower court ruled in the investor’s favour and ordered a family of sea gypsies off the land.
After the Rawai sea gypsy community appealed the verdict, a panel, which included the Department of Special Investigation, the Rights and Liberties Protection Department and the Central Institute of Forensic Science, used archaeological and forensic evidence to prove that sea gypsies had settled there prior to 1995, the year the investor’s Sor Kor 1 land occupation papers were issued.
The panel ordered the DSI to exhume skeletons from the land for DNA testing, which showed the remains matched the families living on the land.
Gen Surin said his immediate priority was to safeguard the Urak Lawoi graveyards on Koh Lanta from further encroachment.
He said once land measurements are examined, district and amphoe officials may request a public land document, known as a Nor Sor Lor title, for the cemeteries. A Nor Sor Lor document can specify that particular groups have rights to use public land based on cultural and heritage links.
“The land remains public, but the Nor Sor Lor gives clear boundaries,” Gen Surin said, adding that Urak Lawoi tribe members could ask for the use of the land as a cemetery to be specified on the document.
‘IT’S EVERYONE’S NIGHTMARE’
Threats to sea gypsies’ burial grounds are not isolated to Koh Lanta. Along the entire Andaman Sea coast, the number of graveyards has decreased by half since the 1990s, when a number of timber and mineral harvesting concessions came to an end.
Many of the concessions were sold to developers. Tourism boomed and resorts quickly lined the coast and islands’ shores.
After the Boxing Day tsunami devastated the region in 2004, various organisations offered their support to sea gypsy communities. Since then, the Moken, Moglen and Urak Lawoi populations have found a greater voice. Each year, they discuss their difficulties at gatherings of various communities.
There are 23 sea gypsy cemeteries — in Ranong, Krabi, Phuket, Phangnga and Satun provinces. Twenty-one are located on public land and have no titles, but the sea gypsy communities claim their long-standing association with the sites entitles them to use the land for burials. The two other cemeteries are also located on public land, but the communities have been issued with Nor Sor Lor documents for use as burial grounds.
The 21 cemeteries without documents are constantly at risk of being taken over, sea gypsies argue. Three decades ago, the construction of a major hotel on a burial ground and the forced removal of graveyards on Koh Phi Phi sparked fear among the communities.
Sacred ground: A sea gypsy grave at Bor Nae on Koh Lanta.
“It’s everyone’s nightmare. We’re scared the same will eventually happen to us on Koh Lanta,” Mr Diao said.
Sea gypsies settled on Koh Phi Phi nearly a century ago. They buried their dead on the island’s northern peninsula, Laem Tong, for just as long, said Pornsuda Pramongkid, an member of the Urak Lawoi tribe on Koh Phi Phi.
In the late 1980s, a major international hotel was constructed on the seafront next to their homes. The hotel was built on top of two sea gypsy cemeteries, covering them entirely.
To this day, the communities say they have no idea what happened to their ancestors’ remains. They believe they are still buried under vacationers’ rooms.
After the hotel was built, the Phi Phi sea gypsies had no choice but to move on and start new graveyards at two nearby sites.
But new investors acquired that land and construction work started on those plots as well. Before they had any time to respond, the sea gypsies were presented with 13 boxes containing the remains of their family members.
“Their bones were all thrown in there together. It’s impossible to determine which body part belongs to whom,” said Ms Pornsuda, whose relatives’ remains were in one of those boxes.
Today, only one sea gypsy cemetery remains in use by the Urak Lawoi on Koh Phi Phi. Sitting on public land, it is overcrowded and adjacent bars and shops are using it as a garbage dump.
The situation worsened when a local investor opened a karaoke bar on the site two years ago. He told the sea gypsies he legally owned the land, yet never showed them any documents.
“We didn’t know what to say. We have no legal claims to this site but it’s really the only place we have left to bury our dead,” Ms Pornsuda said.
Local authorities attempted to negotiate over the land’s usage, but the investor refused to budge. Eventually, he vacated the premises as business was bad.
“It’s our ancestors’ souls that drove him away,” Ms Pornsuda said with a shy laugh.
FROM CRADLE TO GRAVE
Preserving the cemeteries equates to protecting those communities’ cultural identity, said Wittawat Thepsong, an activist for sea gypsies’ rights in the Andaman Sea region.
He said the tribes’ rituals and traditions would eventually be altered or fade away if those burial grounds no longer exist.
“Over half of our graveyards have already been taken away from us,” he said. “Now there are only 23 left for a population of 13,000. What are we to do?”
Mr Wittawat, who married into a Moglen sea gypsy family from Phangnga, hopes to eventually be buried alongside his wife and her family.
In 2010, a cabinet resolution was passed to protect the sea gypsies’ traditional way of life. The resolution gave sea gypsies the legal right to earn a living in national parks and other protected areas. It also gave them claims to the use of public land for cultural and heritage purposes. The resolution was intended to end the problem of sea gypsies being “stateless” and subjected to racial discrimination.
Activists and academics agree that it brought the communities some standing with policymakers.
Narumon Arunotai, an anthropologist from Chulalongkorn University’s Social Research Institute, said sea gypsy cemeteries are not simple graveyards but “cultural spaces” with multiple purposes.
The beachfront near the cemeteries is commonly used by communities as a place to build or repair their boats and fishing gear. It is here, she said, customs and ancestral knowledge are passed on to new generations.
The cemeteries also serve as a gathering place for families. Once a year, sea gypsies come together to clean their ancestors’ graves and decorate them.
The ritual is similar to the Chinese Qingming festival, or “Tomb Sweeping Day”, Ms Narumon said.
“It’s a social and family reunion, where sea gypsies meet each other and exchange information,” she said, adding that community members who live in other provinces will return home to tend to the graves.
Mr Wittawat said that for years sea gypsies had shied away from confrontation and had little access to information and legal channels. Today, he is seeking fair treatment and help from the state. He asked how Buddhists might feel without funeral pyres and how Muslims would bury their dead if no land was available to them.
“We are equally human. We were born the same way, therefore we are asking for equal rights after death.”
To protect the graveyards, he said, Nor Sor Lor documents should be issued for the public land they sit on.
Mr Diao said he is weighed down by worry about the fate of the sea gypsies’ identity.
When he was young, most land was public and communities could come and go as they wished. Privatisation of land and land-grabbing by investors had forced sea gypsies to end their nomadic lifestyle and settle down in confined areas, while fishing restrictions imposed in the Andaman Sea’s conservation areas had hurt their livelihoods.
“More and more, we’re being squeezed into tiny spaces,” Mr Diao said. “I’m afraid that one day, there won’t be any land left for us to live on, or any waters where we are allowed to fish.”
Island home: Toh Ba Liu on Koh Lanta, where sea gypsies settled.
Prime land: A sea gypsy cemetery in Laem Tung Yung, which gets cleaned every year by those who have relatives buried there.
Uncertain future: Pornsuda Pramongkid, a Urak Lawoi from Phi Phi island.
Life on the fringes: Toh Ba Liu on Koh Lanta, where sea gypsies settled after roaming the region for generations.
In dispute: A public land boundary post in Laem Tung Yung, which sea gypsies claimed was moved by a hotel owner.