Looking for good news from trouble-plagued Thailand? Here's one item. An important one: Community land reform is becoming a reality.

After years of struggle against death threats from land mafia and jail sentences from the legal system, the landless movement's demands for a more equitable land distribution system through community land title deeds has finally won the ear of the government.

Last week, PM's Office Minister Sathit Wongnongtoey, in his capacity as vice chair of the Land Rights Conflicts Resolution Committee, visited Ban Tabkuea, an old forest community in Trang, to see how its community land ownership works. He later declared Ban Tabkuea as the model in a pilot project to pioneer community land title deeds in other parts of the country.

This system will not only allow the landless to make use of the vast amount of idle land owned by absentee landlords, it will also help resolve land rights conflicts between more than one million farming families and the Forestry Department as well as other state agencies.

Equally important, it will strengthen democracy at the grassroots level, improve local food security, and prevent loss of farm and forest land to land speculators. How?

We should begin with the "why" first.

Thailand's land distribution is not only a disgrace, it underlies structural injustices which are the root cause of the current political turmoil.

While around 500,000 families are landless, 90% of Thais own an average of only one rai. The richest 10%, meanwhile, owns more than 100 rai.

State agencies are also big landlords. The biggest one is the Forestry Department because it defines all lands without title deeds as forests under its jurisdiction.

Many villagers have been living and farming there for generations, but the forest laws outlaw them, criminalise them as illegal encroachers, and subject them to imprisonment. We are talking about five million people across the country.

While their push for community forests ended up being mutilated in Parliament to maintain the power of forest authorities, some 400 communities gritted their teeth and formed a land reform movement. They advocated community land title deeds, community rules for land and forest management, and land bank funds.

Under this system, land allocation is a communal decision, said Prayong Doklamyai, a land reform activist. The recipients cannot sell the land to outsiders, only back to the community which has a fund to buy land back to give to those in need. Since many communities are in forest areas, they also have strict community rules on forest use and conservation.

While the Abhisit administration wants to expand this community land system to build popular support, it is ironic that its pioneers are still in deep trouble.

They are the landless villagers in Ban Paetai, Lamphun. In 1997, they took over the commons which had been illegally sold to land speculators and long left idle. They were consequently hit with a barrage of lawsuits with real imprisonment threats. Other communities, however, have learned from their defiance and have since adopted the Lamphun model to fight for land justice.

Despite the government's positive response to community land reform, it is still too early to celebrate victory.

The forest authorities are quick to point out that the government's approval for community land deeds is "against the law" and fight back through inaction. Meanwhile, other villages in the community land reform network are facing intensifying intimidation from the authorities and land mafia to quit, or disappear. For the landless, there is no turning back. When the land lease contracts with big companies expire, the state land involved must be used for community land reform for the landless, they insist. The land bank funds must be set up to buy back the commons illegally sold to speculators. And progressive land tax must be in place.

Given our land distribution injustice, doing otherwise is not only a moral outrage, it is the cause of endless violence.