"Let's celebrate for anti-mining group wins court case to stop lignite mining invest by private company in Thailand on 22 April 2020," 23 April 2020

...Rak Ban Haeng Group, anti-mining community group, in Lampang Province, northern Thailand wins an administrative court case to stop the mining license. This case was filed in October 2015 to Administrative court. There were 386 villagers from Rak Baan Heang Group sued Ministry of Industry, Director of Department Primary Industries and Mines, and other six officials. The villagers asked court to order to withdraw mining license, order that Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) was illegal processing, and Public hearing was fake.

Court ruled that the process of approving mining license was illegal because lack of legal documents for forest permission. Because of the forest permission document was illegal related other case that Rak Baan Heang Group filed case to withdraw forest permission document to same court.

Plaintiffs also argued that information in EIA about the natural resources data was wrong. Also, public hearing that company organized wasn’t complete according to law because company just explain about mining project but didn’t ask to vote whether community want mining or not. But company joined with the authority made fake report to show that community agreed with the project.

The Rak Baan Heang Group uses legal tool for its struggle. It filed 3 cases related the lignite mining by company in its area. First case was asking court to stop mining area survey report to stop the mining license process. Second, 439 villagers found that forest department granted using forest area permission to company, so, villagers file other case to stop forest permission document. Third, later, when ministry of Industry used the forest permission to grant mining license, villagers filed case to stop mining license.