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GUEST COLUMN

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By The Irrawaddy AUGUST, 1998 - VOLUME 6 NO.4


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(Page 4 of 5)

I escaped from Lambi Island by bamboo float to the Andaman Sea. Two days later, I came across a fishing boat. They brought me here,” he continued.

U Naung Mel is a 38 year-old fisherman from Sakhathat village of east Mergui in southern Burma. Last year, he worked on a fishing boat in Mahachai, known as “Little Burma,” in the south of Bangkok. Since the 1988 uprising in Burma, many Burmese have come to Thailand for work on fishing boats, at construction sites, in factories, on rubber plantations, and as housekeepers. There were no jobs in their homeland, and they feared being used as porters or forced laborers by the army.

They came to Thailand by crossing the border illegally, giving up to 10,000 baht to Thai police and brokers to travel from the border to Bangkok and other towns in central Thailand. Now, more than a half million Burmese illegal workers live in Thailand.

However, across the last year, as  the Thai economic slowdown took hold, many Thai workers were dismissed from their work sites. The Thai government decided to send back illegal alien workers to make jobs available for them, warning illegal workers to return to their homes. U Naung Mel was arrested at the Snake Island check point while trying to return to his village.

“Early in the morning on February 1998, nine people were killed and five were arrested when LIB [Light Infantry Battalion] 358 soldiers intercepted a boatload of people trying to flee from the island. On 19 January 1998, six people were also killed. After this, the army ordered boats not to come into this area,” U Naung Mel continued sadly.

The ABSDF report claimed that two western environmental groups gave support for this SPDC project “by technical and financial means.” The report quoted Aung Thin, an SPDC forestry officer, as saying there was “an open channel of communication with the WWF.” The World Wildlife Fund in London and Wildlife Conservation Society in New York have denied any involvement.

The Lambi eco-tourism project has also become involved in the “Amazing Thailand” campaign, suggests an environmentalist from Toward Ecological Recovery and Regional Alliance (TERRA), a Bangkok- based non-profit group. He quoted an article from the Thailand and Indochina Traveler magazine in the October-November 1997 issue of a Bangkok Post publication, which lauded Lambi as “a magical new holiday destination offering wonderful scenery and solitude..... where wild elephants and rhinoceros hide.”

A few weeks ago, Thai and Burmese businessmen met with Brig. Gen. Sit Maung at the headquarters of the Coastal Command in Mergui to discuss tourism transport. An agreement was reached for transport from Ranong to Lambi by luxury boats. Operations are set to begin next month, according to Ranong sources.

The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) has also been criticized by human rights groups for its “human zoo” approach to promoting tour sites featuring Padong hill tribe women, a Burmese minority group, in Chiang Mai in February 1998, as a part of “Amazing Thailand.”

“If they [TAT] want to join with the SPDC’s Lambi eco-tourism project, firstly they should check whether or not there are human rights and environmental abuses going on. If they are careless and hurry to join the venture, they must be prepared to face adverse reactions from human rights and Burmese opposition groups.



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