Observer article: Save the Rhino, Kill the People
3/23/97
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Headline: Observer article: Save the Rhino, Kill the People
Source: Aviva Imhof
Mekong Programs Coordinator
International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way, Berkeley CA 94703, USA
Tel: + 1 510 848 1155 Fax: + 1 510 848 1008
Web: www.irn.org
Date: 3/23/97
Authors: Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark in Burma and David Harrison
THE OBSERVER:BURMA'S JUNTA GOES GREEN
March 23, 1997
Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark in Burma and David Harrison
SAVE THE RHINO, KILL THE PEOPLE
Burma wants a nature reserve. So do conservationists. But first they have
to get rid of the villagers. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark in Burma
and David Harrison report.
We found them deep in the Burmese jungle, east of the Tenasserim river.
About 2,000 of them, hungry, exhausted and fearing for their lives. They
have no money, no change of clothes and they eat what food they find. They
sleep under palm leaves propped teepee-style against the trees. A sickly
child is crying. An old woman sobs endlessly. Saw Lyi, 56, holds out his
hands: 'We do not know what to do. We do not know what will happen to us.'
Saw Lyi knows he will not be going home. He and thousands of the Karen
ethnic group, a gentle, cultured and religious people, have been driven
out of their homes by the Burmese army. He also knows that in a strange
way he is lucky, because he made it to the jungle, starving and homeless
but alive.
Some 2000 people, including Saw's brother, a father of six, have been
murdered in the two months since the army launched its offensive to crush
the Karen, according to human rights groups which base their evidence on
independent research, including hundreds of eyewitness accounts. Tens of
thousands have been forced to work, unpaid and unfed, building roads and
railways, and 30,000 have fled into the jungle or across the border to
Thailand.
Why? Because the Burmese army is clearing the Karen area, razing entire
villages, killing, raping, enslaving, to make way for the biggest nature
reserve of its kind in the world. Dwarfing the Masai Mara and the
Serengeti, it is home to rare flora and fauna, tigers, elephants and the
Sumatran rhinoceros. It will attract millions of tourists. Most
importantly, it will be a sign to the world that Burma, shunned because of
its appalling human rights record, cares about endangered wildlife and the
environment.
All the Rangoon government needed was a few major international
conservation organizations to turn a blind eye to atrocities committed
against an irksome ethnic minority. It got them from the top drawer of
wildlife protection: the New York based Wildlife Conservation Society and
the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. It also claimed to have 'an open
channel of communication' with the Worldwide Fund for Nature
International, whose patron is Prince Philip.
The junta running Burma was thrilled - as we discovered when, after our
dispiriting trek into the jungle, we made for Rangoon to see if a Minister
would talk about the project and the role of those conservation giants.
The two-storey Forestry Ministry squats at the endd of a long tree-lined
road in the Burmese capital. It is part of a complex of Ministries run by
the State law and Order Restoration Council (Slorc) and a stone's throw
from the home of Burma's most famous dissident, Aung San Suu Kyi, who is
under virtual house arrest.
Security is tight, more so since a bomb exploded in Rangoon three months
ago. The Ministry was surrounded by barbed wire and bougainvillaea. A
dozen soldiers, bayonets glinting in the sun, stopped us at the first road
block. We had dressed in khaki and boots to add plausibility to our guise
as environmental researchers from a British University, but we had no
appointment, no letter of introduction.
The soldiers were suspicious but sent us on to the next roadblock to put
our case to the military intelligence officers, sinister figures in pale
blue uniforms and reflector sunglasses. But they seemed to buy our story
and we were ushered into a spartan office where two senior Ministry
figures received us with a mixture of scepticism and delight that
respectable British scientists were interested in their 'big idea'.
One introduced himself as Ye Myint, adviser to the Forestry Minister.
Eager to impress, he boasted of Slorc's plans to establish a 'unique'
million-hectare 'biosphere', the Myinmoletkat Nature Reserve, in the Karen
area, one of the semi-independent regions set up just before Britain
pulled out of Burma in 1948. 'We hope the reserve will win world heritage
status,' he enthused.
The reserve would also encompass a section of a gas pipeline being
constructed by Total and Unocal, the French and American oil companies,
which signed deals with the Burmese to pump gas from the Andaman Sea in
the west to Thailand in the east. Human rights groups say forced labour is
being used on the project.
Ye Myint told us of another 'exciting' project, the Lanbi Island Marine
National Park, off the southern Burmese coast. Coral islands would be
transformed into an 'eco-tourism venture' in the first stage of a grand
plan to open the entire 200 mile Mergui archipelago to mass tourism and
scientific study.
His colleague Aung Din, a senior policy adviser, described how
international environmentalists were lending the Slorc their expertise and
reputations. The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Smithsonian
Institution were helping to run both projects, he said. Other
organizations were also involved. 'We have a very close relationship with
Worldwide Fund International,' said Aung Din.
He showed us a programme from a WWF conference in Rangoon last month.
Delegates at the Asian Elephants Specialist Group's seven-day conference
included WWF representatives and the curator of Chester Zoo. WWF-UK, the
organization's British section, contributed o2,000 towards the cost.
As we left, Dr Alan Rabinowitz, a senior scientist from the WCS, arrived
to meet the same officials. We were told Rabinowitz had established a
management committee for the Lanbi Island project and along with other
scientists from the Smithsonian, was also running training programmes and
conducting wildlife surveys. Rabinowitz was there to update officials and
finalize plans for an expedition to upper Burma last week, part of a
worldwide research and conservation programme which has taken the New York
based WCS to 52 countries.
The WCS and the Smithsonian are the first non-governmental groups to have
worked with the Slorc since the Rangoon massacres of 1988, when 3,000
demonstrators were killed by police and troops during riots which led to
the ousting of President Sein Lwin.
Later that day we talked to other officials, Aung Than, director of
forestry for the Tenasserim Division, spoke of the Ministry's 'open
channel of communication with the WWF'. He said the WWF had discussed the
new nature reserves with the Slorc, encouraged Burma to become a member of
the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species, and made an
'exploratory mission' to Burma.
When we asked if we could visit the new sites to conduct an audit of the
rare and endangered species we were told; 'I'm afraid that will not be
possible at the moment. You must be aware we have problems in this area.
There is a large security operation going on. Mopping up must finish
before anything else can begin.'
Mopping up. That chilling phrase appears frequently in Burma's
state-controlled press. It refers to the forced removal of 'troublesome
elements'. That includes members of the Karen ethnic minority who object
to their homes being torched and their families killed or forced to flee
to the jungle.
This contempt for human life was not evident last September at the launch
ceremony for the Myinmoletkat Nature Reserve, held in Rangoon. Dr Kyaw
Tint, Director-General of Forestry, assured guests that the welfare of
local inhabitants would be paramount. Not only would rare species be
protected but the lives of the rural poor would be improved.
Three months later soldiers of the Tatmadaw, the Slorc's military wing,
arrived at Saw Lyi's paddy fields at his village north of Mergui. The 56
year old grandfather was marched to a makeshift football field with the
other villagers and told to leave within 24 hours or be shot.
Overnight he lost his home and his livelihood. The Slorc needed his land
for the nature reserve.
He told his story, typical of the fate of thousands, at his jungle
hideout, surrounded by his dead brother's children and widow and other
despairing relatives. 'I was tied to a bamboo post with Saw Kri, my son
and hit twice in the face with a rifle butt. The soldiers punched and
kicked him for about 30 minutes until he passed out. Then they killed him
with a bayonet,' he said.
We had been smuggled into the Tenasserim Division area by members of the
Karen National Liberation Army who are resisting the Slorc slaughter. An
isolated Asian frontier-land, cut through with verdant river valleys and
wrapped in dense jungle, the Tenasserim already has wildlife sanctuaries
established by indigenous groups.
The brutal offensive began in February after troops of the newly formed
Coastal Military Command, led by Brigadier General Thura Thihathura Sit
Maung, had massed at both ends of the Division. Human rights monitors, who
have interviewed refugees fleeing from the area and visited the region
themselves say more than 2,000 have been killed, 30,000 have been evicted
from their homes and as many forced to work for the Slorc in the past 18
months.
Other victims told us their stories. Mai Thein Win was taken from his
village near the coastal town of Tavoy and sent to a labour camp where
conscripts were forced to build a railway running north to the town of Ye.
After 17 people died of malaria, three of his friends tried to escape.
They were caught, forced to dig their own graves and then executed. 'The
soldiers buried the dead bodies but left the legs and hands exposed;
nobody tried to escape after that,' he said.
In a village south of the Total pipeline, Mi Aye, 34, a mother of seven,
told how women were raped by soldiers guarding forced labour projects:
'They raped many women, but Mi Thein, one of the girls was raped so many
times she died. She was just 18 years old.'
As well as gathering scores of first-hand accounts, the Observer was shown
order issued by the Tatmadaw to village leaders, commandeering men and
women for work. One stated: 'If you do not come this time you will be
attacked with artillery. If you do not come it will be your fault, and
don't think the army is bullying you.'
Saw Bobo told how the army fired at villagers in the southern zone of the
proposed 'biosphere' as they tried to escape from forced labour. 'I saw at
least 10 people die, women and children among them.' Almost every village
in a 40 mile stretch between the towns of Tavoy and Mergui, the western
perimeter of the biosphere, has been ordered to move one or more times
since September 1996.
One NGO report said: 'Several thousand villagers are being used every day
as forced labour. Children as young as 12, people over 60 and women still
breast-feeding are forced to haul dirt, build embankments, break rocks and
dig ditches.'
Many of the people the Observer saw in the jungle were sick and bore the
scars of recent beatings. Some told how they had been pressed into helping
the army as it attacked Karen villages. Aung Thien, 27, said: 'The
soldiers made me go to the scene of fighting to pick up dead bodies.
My best friend, Thon We, was killed when he refused. They tied him to a
post, knocked his teeth out with a gun butt and shot him.'
Others like Peu May, 32, were used as human shields in attacks on
insurgents.
Stories have also begun to emerge of killings and disappearances on Lanbi
and other islands in the Mergui archipelago. One elder from a village near
Mergui said: 'We received reports of 140 deaths between October and
December. On Lanbi island, we were told that many had died.' Western
diplomats in Rangoon and human rights organisations are investigating the
reports.
A second village leader said the islanders were given a deadline to move.
They refused and were massacred. Also killed were many villagers from
Bobyin, on the mainland.
However, while inquiries into the killings and disappearances continue,
the Burmese government is selling the archipelago as a 're-emerging lost
island paradise'.
The slaughter of the innocents goes on, but the conservation groups are
winning the battle with their conscience.
Josh Ginsberg, science director at the Wildlife Conservation Society in
New York, said: 'We do not sanction forced relocation, torture or
killings. But we have no control over the government.
'We are in Burma because it is one of the highest biodiversity countries
in Asia. We can walk away from it, but that wouldn't do any good for
anybody. We are focused on biodiversity and conservation.'
A spokesman for the Smithsonian Institution said: 'We are there to do
important conservation work. We may disagree with a regime but it is not
our place to challenge it.'
Robin Pellew, director of WWF-UK, said WWF had done an elephant survey in
Burma in 1992, a wildlife srvey last year and planned to do a 'quick and
dirty' tiger survey in the future.
It had discussed the Lanbi nature reserve with Burmese officials, but had
decided not to get involved. The WWF currently had no projects in Burma
and no formal relationship with the Burmese authorities.
'Sometimes we have to deal with repulsive regimes,' he said. 'We have to
weigh up whether the conservation benefit is worth the risk of being seen,
directly or indirectly, to be supporting those regimes.'