Published on May 13, 2005

The National Human Rights Commission yesterday accused the government of ignoring the plight of Rattana Sajjathep, a homeowner who had allegedly been misled by an estate agent into buying a townhouse doomed for demolition.

NHRC chairman Saneh Chamarik said the commission would submit its report on the case to Parliament in what will be only its second such report to lawmakers.

The commission’s first such report concerned the unconstitutional dispersal of protesters demonstrating against the Thai-Malaysian gas pipeline in Songkhla three years ago.

NHRC commissioner Sunee Chaiyarot said that even though the Cabinet had earlier pledged to bring legal closure to Rattana’s plight, no substantive developments had followed in the wronged homeowner’s case. That is why the NHRC has felt it necessary to bring the case before Parliament, Sunee added.

Saneh said that because most of Rattana’s plight had resulted from the negligence and transgressions of government employees, the government was obliged to remedy the injustices against the homeowner – as well as to put legal safeguards in place to prevent similar wrongdoings by officials in future.

Rattana first lodged an appeal with the NHRC two years ago, insisting that a decade before she had been deceived into buying a townhouse in Bueng Kum district’s Chuensuk village doomed for demolition to make way for a U-turn flyover.

She said she had repeatedly petitioned all relevant agencies, but that her pleas had been either ignored or rejected on the ground that her property had been built in an unauthorised zone.

Officials recommended that she sue the developer for recompense.

Atthayuth Butrsripoom

The Nation

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