Protesting fishermen in Satun ease blockade for tourists
Tourist ferries and large fishing boats are now being allowed to pass through a blockade of a bay in Satun province that serves as the gateway to islands in Tarutao National Park, officials said.
Fishermen protesting the seizure of boats for allegedly fishing in the national park began allowing ferries carrying tourists and large fishing vessels to pass through their blockade late on Wednesday, officials said.
The protesters had sealed access to Pak Bara Bay – in the province’s La-ngu district – and the pier inside it, after a dispute over restrictions on fishing inside the national park escalated.
Protestors used about 100 small fishing boats to completely blockade the bay on Wednesday morning to force the government to listen to their demands. This followed a protest on Tuesday, when about 80 fishermen gathered their boats in the bay but did not blockade it.
Satun deputy governor Chatree Na-Thalang and La-ngu district police spoke to the protesters on Tuesday. Chatree promised to consider their demands but asked them to leave the bay unblocked for fishing and tourist boats using its pier.
On Wednesday, a representative of Satun fishermen, Sombat Phatkhong, said the fishermen decided to escalate their protest because their situation had been ignored by the government for months.
Small fishing boats in Satun use commercial fishing equipment, which is banned inside marine parks or close to shorelines, Sombat said. The issue, he said, was that the marine park in the province had expanded its boundaries to 10 nautical miles of the shorelines of its islands.
It is dangerous for small fishing vessels to venture too far from shore, so the extension of the marine boundaries left fishermen with no place to fish, Sombat explained.
“We blocked the waterway as a symbolic protest to show to the government that we can no longer make a living,” he said, adding that the fishermen had docked their boats for over a month. “When we go out to fish, we get apprehended,” he said.
The owners of about 400 small fishing vessels were affected by the expansion of the marine park’s boundaries, Sombat said.
La-ngu district chief Piraphat Ngerncharoen said on Thursday that all government agencies concerned were trying to negotiate with the fishermen and urged them not to turn a protest into a blockade.
Piraphat said the protesters were told to allow tourist boats and large fishing boats to access the pier.
Protesters agreed to open a passageway for other boats to pass through after talks with officials, he said.
Government spokesman Anucha Burapachaisri said Prayut was worried that the blockade would damage tourism by leaving tourists stranded on islands, causing them to miss their flights home.
