What’s striking is the violence. One man murdered by two gunmen. Another shot through the chest by three gunmen. Another “disappeared”. Some 300 policemen sent to arrest two people. Some 200 sent to arrest seven. Another 100 sent to uproot trees, burn crops, and destroy houses. Farmers bailed out and instantly slapped with new charges. One man alone charged on 53 separate counts.

Of course, the people getting shot and arrested are the poor. Of course, something or someone big is behind it. Of course, the issue is about land.

It’s not new. In the 1970s, eighteen farmers were shot for leading a movement for land reform. In a smaller way, such events happen all the time. These incidents in Lamphun began from a deliberate attempt by poor farmers to occupy unused land. The violent repression began from a Cabinet resolution proposed by the prime minister on 23 April. Why does this happen over and over again?

Over the last century, farmers have steadily lost rights over land. Before that, land was abundant. Rights to use land were managed by the local community. One main principle was that rights were only usage rights and lapsed if land was left idle.

Since then, government helped people other than farmers to get land rights. Around 1900, government took the power to manage land rights away from the local communities, so that it could give ownership (not usage) titles to aristocrats who were grabbing valuable land in paddy-growing tracts and urban areas. Government showed little interest in giving ownership titles to the smallholders who occupied around 80 percent of the country. For the next fifty years, this did not matter too much. Land was still abundant. Local communities in effect still managed land rights in the locality.

The next to benefit were government departments. The armed forces were able to block hundreds of thousands of rai for bases, current and future. Other departments were empowered to acquire land for roads, dams, ports, airfields and offices. Sometimes farmers were ejected. In the age of dictatorship, protest was difficult.

Next came business. One of the simplest ways to make money is to convert land from a vague legal status into a proper title. The procedure is administered by the land department. According to a national survey in 2000, the land department is reckoned among the most corrupt. Little people find it difficult to secure a full title. But those with political connections and deep pockets find it easy.

Most villages had areas for common use. These are specially vulnerable because they are never clearly defined and documented. Rights to such land can be manufactured inside the land office. A favourite technique is to buy a small portion adjacent to the common land, and then adjust the boundaries in the paperwork.

Then came the bubble. Land prices soared. Land speculation spread. Poor farmers sold because the prices looked so attractive. The law incentivised property developers and other companies to acquire “land banks” as assets and collateral. When the bubble burst, large areas passed into the ownership of financial institutions.

Government has made some moves to counter these trends. Since 1985, it has had a project, backed by the World Bank, to issue full titles. The Agricultural Land Reform Office (ALRO) was set up to locate or acquire unused land and distribute it to the landless. These schemes work to some extent. But they also provide incentives and short-cuts for land-grabbers. The ALRO had to abandon its SPK4-01 in the mid-1990s after its Phuket office was found distributing valuable plots to associates of the Democrat Party.

Many farmers now get land rights. But there is always a fringe which is losing access to land because of official power or money power.

Why has the land system evolved in this way? In one sense, it’s simply because those with political power are in the best position to take advantage. Almost every recent government has had some scandal about land documentation.

In a broader sense, the current setup makes it easy and cheap to find new land for commercial exploitation and urban use. It’s a disguised subsidy to the urban economy. And it’s the smallholders who pay for the subsidy.

And pay dearly. Recent studies have shown that the landless and land-poor are a major part of those still below the poverty line.

The Thaksin government has declared a war on poverty. The planning board has made poverty eradication a priority. The measures to make land available are not difficult to devise: tax land progressively; subject unused land to penal rates or seizure; overhaul the land department.

But the landless are probably not holding their breath. The prime minister and his chief adviser made millions by converting a piece of temple land into a luxury golf course and property development, dispossessing many small tenants in the process. The deputy speaker of the house was suspected in two major scandals over land documentation in the mid-1990s.

History tells the landless and the land-poor that governments of this sort are unlikely to help them. That is why they practice “people’s land reform”—occupying tracts of land which are unused, and which in some cases have been stolen from farmers by manipulation of documents.

A similar movement began in Brazil in the 1980s. In its early stages, 277 people were killed. But now it is the country’s largest social movement. Hundreds of thousands of families have gained access to land. People wear the movement’s distinctive red shirts and caps with pride.

This is why the reaction in Lamphun and elsewhere in the north has been so violent. Things might spread. But if the Thaksin government is serious about its war on poverty, it should use this occasion to tackle the land problem with brains rather than guns, arson, and jails.