Workshop Magazine Conflict Sensitive Journalism, Cebu , Philippines

Conflict Sensitive

Journalism

A DW Akademie Workshop Magazine

D W A k a d e m i e + P e c o j o n w o r k s h o p o n 2 0 - 3 1 M a y 2 0 1 3 , C e b u C i t y, P h i l i p p i n e s

TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S

Under the Lord's shadow

Crime sparks clashes between Displaced communities in unwanted Lashio

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Cambodia’s Black Boeng Kak Lake harvest conflict

Publisher: Deutsche Welle Akademie With financial support from the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)

Lure of the gentle giants

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Gold mine workers in danger

Conflict Sensitive

Journalism

A DW Akademie Workshop Magazine

Editors: Antonia Koop, David Froggier de Ponlevoy D W A k a d e m i e + P e c o j o n w o r k s h o p o n 2 0 - 3 1 M a y 2 0 1 3 , C e b u C i t y, P h i l i p p i n e s

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Collapse of GRP-NDF talks unrest

Samar

Design: Charlie Saceda Reporters: Jes Aznar Thet Oo Maung Aung Khine Maung Cheryl Baldicantos Khy Sovuthy Pamela Chua Nan Tin Htwe Myra Tambior

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Under the Lord’s shado Photostory by Jes Aznar

His face and hair all white from the millions of husks

coming out of the growling mill, seven year old Akmad crawled under the machine to get a morsel of corn. It was harvest season for some who were lucky enough to have land and crops in Maguindanao. Also for Ishmael and his siblings and neighbors, it was time to rush and salvage what they can from waste spewed out by the corn mill. If they gather enough throughout a day, it means that they will have something warm inside their stomachs for dinner.

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Left: Residents scrapping morsels of corn thrown as waste from a mill in Rajah Buayan, Maguindanao. Below: Children inside the stronghold of Datu Tata Uy (left) in Maguindanao.

ow Food is scarce among Maguindaoans with little access to land and the means of production. The province stands as one of the poorest in the country albeit its abundance in natural resources and billions of funds coming from the national government through internal revenue allotment, public works budget, and other funds. With five in every six resident living under less than a dollar a day, families like Akmad’s hopes or look for better economic prospects to survive.

For most of these families living in Maguindanao, poverty is not just the only problem they have to deal with, a condition made even worse by armed conflict, whether between government forces and rebels, or between feuding clans. Centuries of war with colonial powers like Spain and the US, landgrabbing problems, gave birth to secessionist groups like the Moro National Liberation Front and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, further isolating the island from development. Armed confrontations between the government and Moro armed groups have resulted in the

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death of an estimated 120,000 people, mostly civilians, and the displacement of some two million more.

As armed confrontations loom throughout the year, residents declare that it is more important to acquire guns than food. For most of the children in this region, growing up with a gun is quite normal. A local teacher in an elementary school says he had his share of witnessing children from impoverished families come and go. He says there’s always a time in a year were students would just disappear. “They either have gone to join the rebels or joined the paramilitaries serving local politicians or Datus. They don’t find school important for their survival perhaps.”

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A Datu is a revered position in these villages, it is the title given to chiefs and leaders and were limited only to families of royal descent.”Its easy to become a Datu in Maguindanao these days” says an elderly resident. “But now, if you can feed and arm ten families, then you can become a Datu.”

Tata Uy, a Datu who started from being a follower of his uncle, Samir Uy, the town Mayor in Datu Piang town, then later on decided to run for office, defying his uncle’s wishes.

He began forming his own militia, spending $65,000 to buy 45 weapons over the years and recruiting 40 men, including some who worked on his land.

“I provide for my men” says Datu Tata Uy, while displaying the high powered rifles of his 20 or so men resting inside a mosque after a day of campaigning for the upcoming elections. Datu Uy is one of the many clan leaders in the area contending for a seat in the coming election. Challenging the rule of the incumbent mayor and his uncle Samir Uy, he says he needs his men and high-powered weapons for his protection. He says he

Left: Militia of a local warlord rest inside a Mosque after an operation in Maguindanao. Below: Mimicking the reality around them, children from Datu Saudi, Maguindanao plays as warlords and warriors on the street. Bottom: A family displaced by ongoing conflicts between Muslim rebels and government troops in Maguindanao.

+ secured $80.7 million from the national government’s Internal Revenue Allotment. This rose even more to $84.1 million in 2010 according to Mindanews. The Local Government Code of 1991 provides that 40 percent of national internal revenues shall go to local governments. Of this 40 percent, the provinces get 23 percent; cities, 23 percent; municipalities, 34 percent; and barangays, 20 percent.

With this amount of funds allotted and the elections for these local offices held every four years, the competition is tough.

recently sold two of his farm tractors to be able to buy artilleries and ordnances to keep up with his rivals. “Only if I have more funds, I’d buy two more,” he adds.

Local government offices are vast sources of funds. In 2009, Maguindanao

For the 2013 mid-term and local elections in Maguindanao, there are a total number of 400 candidates for the various elective seats in the province as reported by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism. 80 of which, belong to the Ampatuans.

The clan, headed by its patriarch Andal Ampatuan Sr., is the prime suspect behind the killing of the wife of his former associate, Toto Mangudadatu who decided to compete with him for the governor’s post in the then coming elections. More than 50 other people were killed on that same event.

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8 Ampatuan first strong grip to power came in 1986 when he was installed by then Philippine president Cory Aquino to take charge of Maganoy town (now Shariff Aguak) because of party affinity. He then competed for reelection two years later and subsequently won, while also at the same time charged for the murder of his poll rival, Surab Abutasil. He served unopposed for ten years as mayor and eventually won as the province’s governor in 1998.

Ampatuan’s infamy in winning polls unopposed gained him the friendship of then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who at that time was running for re-election for the country’s top post. As the result turned up in 2004, Arroyo received statistically improbable numbers in Maguindanao. In at least two towns in the province, Arroyo won all the votes cast in the election, while the hugely popular movie actor, the late Fernando Poe Jr., got zero votes. Andal Sr. had also promised a 12-0 sweep for Arroyo’s senatorial lineup, and he delivered.

With 334,287 registered voters as of 2010, Maguindanao is the richest in votes in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao.

Election day brings a festive air in Maguindanao, with men and women dressed in their best tribal attire and troop in swarms to polling precincts. Shoulder to shoulder, sweat rubbing against sweat, people try to squeeze through the door of a public school’s classroom housing the automated counting machines and ballot boxes to cast their votes.

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+ Uniformed military men seem not to mind several men in civilian clothes that are armed with protruding pistols in their hips and make themselves visible enough for them to be seen by every voter entering the room--enough to send a strong reminder to each voter which names to shade in their ballots.

A long stretch of an almost empty highway separates a handful of sprawling mansions on one side from the rows of tiny shacks and bunkhouses on the other side.

Women in their ankle-length dark clothes and veil-covered faces endure the mid-day sun carrying anything from chopped wood to sacks of laundry while walking behind males riding carabaos.

Children are running and chasing each other with toy guns, all of them thrilled. Gigantic fences protecting the mansions of the governor, Andal Ampatuan Sr, dwarf their presence. For families like Akmad’s, it’s scene of everyday life in this part of Mindanao.

Top: Residents of Magiundanao place their vote inside a public school.

Bottom, left: The picture of former Philippines president Gloria Arroyo (center), is flanked by pictures of governor and head of the warlord clan Andal Ampatuan Sr (right), his sons, the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao governor Zaldy (left), and Unsay Ampatuan, mayor of a town named after him (bottom). Bottom, right: The Ampatuan Mansion in Shariff Aguak, Maguindanao.

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Crime sparks clashes between communities in Lashio Text and photos by Thet Oo Maung

Forty-eight-year-old Nay Win was chasing after twenty-four-year-old

Aye Aye Win with bottles of fuel. He wanted to light her up. At that time, Aye Aye Win was at her petrol shop near the township’s Maternal and Child Welfare Association office in Lashio, Shan State, on May 28 when Nay Win approached her.

Nay Win is an Indian-Chinese man of Islamic faith while Aye Aye Win is a Chinese-Myanmar woman of Buddhist faith, and so the attack sparked a new escalation of the conflict that has kept Buddhists and Muslims trapped in a cycle of violence for decades. In the following days a mosque, a muslim orphanage center and some shops near the mosque were destroyed. Violence continued the next day when groups of people burned a cinema and a van. One man died and five others were injured.

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However, the police doubts that the attack at the patrol station was related to religion. “The man who started the violent clash in Lashio might have used drugs. He had been treated in a mental hospital in the past,” says police intelligence and security department officer Min Aung.

“During our investigation, we confiscated two stimulant tablets,” said the police officer.

After the attack Aye Aye Wininvolved was taken to Lashio People’s hospital with burn injuries.

Police arrested Nay Win right away.Less than an hour after, a group of nearly 150 people formed in front of the police station

+ demandingthat they hand him over. The police denied their request and transferred the perpetrator to Lashio prison instead.

The mob lashed out on them by burning buildings owned by muslims.

“If there’s a crime, the criminal should be punished in terms of law. Handing the criminal to the mob, destroying the religious building which are not related to the crime is not the behavior that should not be a part of democratic society which we all are trying to build up,” says U Ye Htut, the president office spokesperson.

Some people from the mob were arrested.

“We are charging Nay Win with two criminal sections – for setting fire and also for drugs.

We are also charging three criminal sections for those from the mob who were arrested,” a police officer says.

Government media released a statement saying that the suspect who committed the crime was not involved in any religious and social problems and that his violations were because of the use of drugs. They appealed to the religious committees, social organizations and the public to stop their involvement in the event because it was actually not a religious conflict.

“The muslim minority from Lashio needs security because some are already being threatened of displacement from their homes,” says a muslim doctor who lives there.

A curfew was imposed immediately after the series of violence in Lashio. The police and military were also dispersed for upgraded security.

U Nyan Win, a spokesman for opposition leader Aung San SuuKyi’s National League for Democracy, said the party believed outsiders are trying to increase the tension in Lashio.

“The people, they know that this violence [does] not happen automatically. They know that there’s a third person there,” he said, without elaborating.

President U Thein Sein said that he will effectively punish the guys who are responsible for creating religious conflicts.

However, the incident in Lashio is not an isolated case. It follows a series of conflicts in Yakhine State, Makehtila,western parts of Bago division and Okkan. And also other regions in Myanmar experience frictions between Muslim and Buddhist communities, especially where the government has limited control and law and order are not enforced by the police. To end the violence the government will have to identify and address its underlying causes.

Many houses and religious buildings were destroyed after a riot between Buddhist and Muslim communities in Meikhettilar township, central Myanmar on March 30.

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Displaced and unwanted Increasing numbers of displaced Rohingyas challenges the government to find a sustainable solution.

by Aung Khine Maung

In Rakhine

state, Western Myanmar, Muslim communities who call themselves Rohingyas had been displaced during 2012 and are currently living alongside the roads in makeshift tents.

Now they refused to move to camps for the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) set up by the government. They don’t want to move, they say, because they are limited and have no opportunities to get Humanitarian assistance from international non-government organizations (INGOs) there.

After the conflict between the Rohingyas and the Rakhine people escalated in 2012, Rohingyas IDPs stayed randomly around THAE CHAUNG village. The village is a onehour motorbike ride from Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state where the INGO aid is kept.

The government of Rakhine state tried to resettle the Rohingyas in Ohntawgyi camp near Thae Chaung village where government systematically built shelters before the rainy season.

“If we get there, the government will cut out everything and we will suffer more trouble.”Hla Maung Thein said, one of the IDPs, sitting in a barely standing tent made out of a piece of tarpaulin tied to bamboo sticks. He shares a space of around 5 feet with his whole family. Some of the tents were provided by International NGOs and islamic organisations but most have been built by their inhabitants.

U Win Myaing, the spokesperson of the Rakhine state government said they try to move the

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Rohingya IDPs to Ohntawgyi camp on order of the union government but the Rohingyas refused without reason.

“There are some people behind the curtain who are doing this. They want to get more help (from the INGOs) by living beside the road. That is the reason why they don’t want to move.”U Than Tun, leader of Rakhine community says. Initially in a meeting with government representatives including General Wai Lwin, deputy minister of defense of the union government, Rohingya leaders agreed to the government plan of transferring the IDPs, however, later they rejected the offer and joined the IDPs protests.

UN and other INGOs estimate there are over 100,000 IDPs in Sittwe. Most of them need help before the rainy season comes.

The state government built shelters for 60,000 IDPs in Ohntawgyi camp and tried to move the IDPs from Thae Chaung there. Those in Thae Chaung came from across the state and fled to escape the violence sparked in June 2012 when a Rakhine woman was raped by three men. Since the men were Muslims the crime was seen as an attack of Muslims against the Buddhist community and triggered a wave

+ of mutual attacks and retaliation. Nearly 200 people died, over 100,000 people were displaced and more than a thousand houses were burned during the conflict in 2012.

While in Myanmar Buddhist are the majority and Muslims only represent about 10 percent of the population, in Rakhine Muslims are the majority. The Muslims in the Rakhine state call themselves Rohingyas but the government calls them Bengalies or people from Bangladesh.

The Rohingyas have lived in Rakhine since the time of British colonial rule. For five decades, the two communities, Rohingyas and Rakhine people, lived in Rakhine state separately. The conflict between the two groups had been supressed by the stronger power of the then military government during the dictatorship era.

Rakhine people said that they are worried because the Bengalies population grows larger and larger but they are still not familiar with Myanmar culture, they have no education and no citizenship.

The Rohingyas children don’t go to government schools. ‘’We are poor so our children are go to religious school’’ says spokeperson of the National Development and Peace party formed

by Muslim people, Mohamard Slin.

One of the members of the Rakhine state government who is not to be named said tensions between Rakhine and ‘Bengalis’ began on 1948 after independence and exploded under civilian government.

Another reason why the government wants to

relocate the IDPs systematically is to prevent illegal immigrants from Bangladesh from crossing the border and hiding among the Rohingya IDPs. However, illegal immigrants often can’t speak in Burmese, so they can be easily identified.

The government tries to relocate the Rohingyas in order to come up with a population list to distinguish them from illegal people from across the border.

“It is important to collect Bengalies’ population in Rakhine because we get information who are legal and who are not,” the minister of immigration, U Khin Ye, said.

In the report of Rakhine investigation commission issued on 29 April 2013, they urged the government to deploy more security forces in Rakhine state and along the border.

“Rule of law is important to solve this problem“ U Ko KO Gyi, a member of Investigation commission says.

The investigation commission further reports that the Rakhine conflict is beyond the region and will take more time to solve.

After the conflicts in 2012, Rohingyas called for citizenship but Rakhine people said that they are people from Bangladesh. The government officially announced there are no Rohingya tribe in Myanmar.

Today there are 700,000 IDPs in Rakhine, the second poorest state in Myanmar, who have been displaced by conflicts and disasters.

Internally displaced persons camp in Rakhine State, Myanmar.

Photo courtesy of Foreign and Commonwealth Office/Flickr Creative Commons

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Lure of the Gentle Giants:

the whale sharks of Oslob, Cebu Photostory by Cheryl Baldicantos

Inching its way to shallower waters, the feeder boatman has arrived with a gaping whale shark trailing on its tail. He hand-feeds it with krill, a type of shrimp, which they have bought from different parts of Cebu island. Thus starts another business day in the former sleepy village of Tan-awan in the town of Oslob at the southern edge of Cebu island in the Philippines.

The whale sharks have turned the local economy upside down and brought a very unusual alliance to life. It is an alliance between fishermen and shark. However, as some alliances go, this can also turn out to be a dangerous trap for the fish and the local community.

Two years ago, tourists only got to step on to Oslob town when they were probably lost or when they wanted to see an old church and a cuartel in the town center. Then, one day around August, a boatman tried to impress some foreign tourists by bringing them to the sea off Oslob to see bigger fish instead of the usual diving spot in the neighboring town. This ignited the whale shark’s popularity there through word of mouth.

The whale shark, Rhincodon typus, is a slowmoving, spotted, filter feeding shark. The whale shark holds many records for sheer size in the animal kingdom, most notably being by far the largest living non-mammalian vertebrate, Therein lies its fascination for tourists: Imagine swimming with an adult whale shark the size of a regular yellow school bus under water.

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Despite their monster size, whale sharks are not dangerous for human beings. Though their mouth is about 1.5 meters wide, the opening to the stomach is very small. So, they are not able to swallow a human body. Whale sharks only live on plankton and krill. They have been found to migrate in warm waters all around the world to follow food sources.

The whale sharks, whose migratory path has taken them near south Cebu for decades, were long regarded as “pests� by local fishermen because they suspected the sharks of driving the fish away.

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16 Fishermen feed krill to whale sharks in Oslob, Cebu.

”Fishermen here use krill to draw whale sharks away from their fishing nets. Like a “bait crop” used for elephants in India, or rat infestations throughout Asia. This is not “friendship”, it is survival – for both the fisherman and the whale shark. The tragic truth is that we have overfished our seas, and now, humans and wildlife are in conflict,“ Lory Tan of World Wide Fund says while inside her office.

With the tourists came change.

With the sudden new attraction in the village, the fishermen have discovered a new livelihood, charging as much as 300 pesos per tourist for a ride out to sea on their paddle boats for a close encounter with the gentle giants.

“We earn more acting as tourist guides than catching fish,” says 34-yearold fisherman Jeffrey Cuerda as he prepares to go out to the briefing area to fetch tourists at daybreak. It’s a morning only business. Whale shark watching only runs from 8am to 1pm everyday to ‘avoid stressing the gentle giants’.

Almost the whole town of more than 22,000 people profits. as thirty percent of the monthly income goes to the local government unit while the remaining is divided by the boatmen.

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Due to the booming tourism, the boatmen’s wooden nipa huts have now been replaced with concrete houses. Other than the usual cheap radio component, flat screen TVs are now present in some of the living rooms inside houses in the village.

A few resorts have also sprouted in the area. When formerly one couldn’t even find a place to eat when they went there, now there is a cluster of restaurants beside the sea.

From that ‘discovery’ event in August 2011, the number of tourists steadily grew until it reached its peak in January 2012, during the Chinese New Year when over 3,000 visitors lined up on a Monday.

Concern over reports about Oslob’s budding eco-tourism venture getting out of hand prompted a joint team of the Department of Tourism, Oceancare and the Philippine Commission on Sports Scuba Diving (PCSSD) to start a reef study in the area. The results were gloomy.

Pelagic filter feeders, such as whale sharks and manta rays, serve as natural mechanisms for the management of algal blooms – a relatively rapid increase in the population of phytoplankton algae in an aquatic system. The excessive growth of algae is known to disrupt higher links of the local food web.

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Large volume of dead small shrimps scattered in the area had been observed to have attracted other fish species and whale sharks. A local diver had told World Wide Fund (WWF) Filipino researchers that they had sightings of other fish species, normally found in deep seas, finding its way to the area.

“The implication suggests the shifting of their habitat that may pose a danger to tourists if their presence continues. The increased concentration of krill also increases the presence of small jellyfish that feed on them,” Elson Aca of WWF explains while walking in the coastline.

The rise of tourism in the area threatens to destroy the very habitat the tourists are looking for. Even more, it threatens the whale sharks themselves.

On January 2012, two whale sharks that frequent the village coast were confirmed to be seriously injured, one of them by a spear and the other by the propeller of a motorized boat bringing tourists.

“Feeding the whale sharks like pets can curb their hunting instincts and make them vulnerable to predators,” marine biologist Mario Marababol of Ocean Care said while attending a meeting for this Cebu-based organization.

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Alessandro Ponzo, the director of Italy-based research group Physalus, says that the danger to whale sharks isn’t in Oslob. But it is when the creatures leave Oslob that they get wounded by boat propellers because the whale sharks seem to associate bubbles caused by divers, snorkelers and propeller blades with food.

“We never really feed the whale sharks just to let them stay in our area. It has been established years ago that whale sharks frequent our area because Oslob is abundant with plankton,” Oslob town mayor Ronald Guaren tries to explain while sitting in his office in the town center.

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“We are just feeding them so that they will appear for the tourists to appreciate,” he adds.

Majority of the whale sharks appearing in Oslob have no physical tags. The town mayor has announced on February 2012 that only photos will be taken of the whale sharks that swim in the waters off their town.

Dr. Jo Marie Acebes, a biologist and a doctor of veterinary medicine who worked for the World Wildlife Fund Philippines for four years. says and points out that there are actually other ways to deal with the situation:.

“The local government can imitate what has been done in Donsol island in the province of Sorsogon. The whale sharks there are not being fed but they still come. Locals earn from simply allowing tourists to see and swim alongside the animals,” Acebes says.

To ‘regulate’ the booming whale shark tourism, a new standard and fees was implemented by the local government unit in the whale shark watching activity. The new guidelines prohibit motor boats in the area which has been marked with buoys.

The fees were doubled. Compared to other popular dive sites in the country like Malapascua, Tubbataha Reef and Anilao, the rates in Oslob is more than five fold.

“We are very concerned about the safety of the whale sharks, so we decided to increase the fees so less people would come,” Mayor Guaren explained.

Since then, the number of tourists has gone down but Oslob still stays a tourist attraction.

As part of their whale shark education campaign, tourism officers will now give a briefing for visitors in a designated area before they actually go out to sea.

But Dr. AA Yaptinchay, Director of Marine Wildlife Watch of the Phils., is concerned.

“How can be it educational when the animals

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20 are not behaving naturally?” It gives people the wrong idea about whale sharks,” he says. There have been reports of changes in whale shark behavior outside Oslob town.

The island of Aceh in Indonesia reports that there have been no whale shark sightings in their otherwise whale-shark-bountiful area since late last year and this year.

Amer R. Amor, a diver, reports similar problems from Donsol.

He hs been going back to Donsol for for fourteen years now. But suddenly, it’s difficult to find whale sharks in the area.

“For some unknown reasons, whale shark sightings are considerably very low this year. There are days when no single shark is seen, sometimes in a span of ten days. This has become mostly perplexing to the locals and frustrating to many tourists, some of whom traveled halfway around the world just to experience what Lonely Planet lauds as the ‘quintessential Philippine underwater adventure’,” Amor writes in his blog At least four whale sharks that have made the waters of Donsol, Sorsogon, their home and feeding grounds for years—long enough for locals to give them names—are nowhere to be found.

The strange occurences in Aceh and Donsol could be the could also be caused by climate change or illegal fishing since these are also key factors in the disruption of whale shark migration patterns. However, there are also speculations that they might have gone to Oslob in Cebu, where whale sharks, having been hand-fed, are growing in number.

There is at least one recorded incident when a whale shark from Donsol was found in Oslob.

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Tourists dive to get a closer look at the whale sharks.

Late last year, an order from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in Manila to stop the feeding because it alters the behavior of marine wildlife stemmed from an open letter of a Filipino whale shark researcher complaining about the practice.

Limbet Suzada, president of the Tan-awan Oslob Whaleshark Fishermen Association, wants to point out the positive change: It is after all remarkable, she says, how residents realized how important these marine animals were.

In response to this, the Cebu Provincial Government has agreed to make a monitoring team led by the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, DENR, Oslob town and the cooperation of the Tan-awan Oslob Whaleshark Fishermen Association.

“Most of the fishermen before didn’t see the potential of these whale sharks. The fishermen couldn’t get anything because the whale sharks would compete for food but now the fishermen have learned to protect them,” she says while going out to sea.

Then Cebu Provincial Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia told reporters she can’t stop the feeding based on the observation of “one person”, referring to marine biologist Elson Aca, the researcher.

Until now, giggling tourists can still be found half a kilometer off the village coastline every morning in their ‘whale shark quest’.

“Anything we do, no matter how careful we think we are, as long as it’s not natural, it can potentially disrupt their (whale shark) behavior. The consequences may not be immediately visible to humans but they can occur in months or years,” veterinary Dr. Acebes reminds.

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Camboadia’s Beoung Kak Lake conflict

by Khy Sovuthy

Boeung Kak Lake area used to be a lake.

Many people lived along riverbank. There were small houses, big houses, and some guesthouse surrounding the area. The people living on the riverbank were feeding the fish in the lake and catching them. It was also a favorite spot for tourists who visited the city. Furthermore, Boeung Kak Lake played a role in reducing floods. During Cambodia’s capitol Phnom Penh long rainy seasons, lakes are very important, they serve to drain floods and wastewater. Boeng Kak Lake area was located in the middle of Phnom Penh.

Today, the area is covered by a big field of sand. It looks like a piece of desert. A big desert in the middle of the city. It would take about one hour to walk around it.

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In February 2007 the government granted a 99-year-lease for the the lake area and the area around it. All in all more than 100 hectare of land. The lease went to the investment company Shukaku for around $80m. Shukaku is owned by the wife of Lao Meng Khin, a senator for the Cambodia People’s Party (CPP).

Photo courtesy of Axel Drainville/Flickr Creative Commons

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+ The company wants to build high end condominiums and commercial buildings on the spot. The first step of this development is to cover the whole lake with sand. The local government proclaimed that residents of the area will get a compensation if they move out of the place. In the following two years 3,000 families moved and got the compensation between $5,000 and $8,500. They resettled their homes to the outskirts of Phnom Penh.

Around 600 families were allowed to stay on a space of 12.4 hectares and got official land titles from the Cambodian government.

But some residents did not agree to move.

In July 2010, those 50 remaining families suddenly reported floodwater mixed with wastewater from toilets that reached all the way to their hips. Later, there came the sand.

It was pumped directly into the resident’s

Long Dimanche, the city hall’s spokesman explains that those 50 families are not on legal grounds: “They cannot receive land titles because they lived on lake, so they did not have any real land,” says he. “ The city hall will continue to consider the case, and think about what options we have available.”

Tep Vanny, a 34-year-old activist of the Boeng Kak Lake community, is not satisfied with this statement. She says the government has to give land titles for the 50 families because they lived in that area for a long time already – the same time as all those other Boeng Kak Lake residents, who got land titles or compensation.

Vanny is a thin woman with long black hair.

She does not look very aggressive, but she can be very determined when she is fighting for her rights: “We are Cambodian citizens, so we must get the land titles,” Vanny yelled during a protest in front of the city hall at the beginning of May 2013.

Vanny suspects that some government officials are working together with the company and might even have gotten bribes.

They robbed the people’s land to offer it to Shukaku, she says. “Some government officials cooperated with the company, and they hurt their own citizens,” complains Vanny.

Protests in Cambodia.

houses, forcing the residents to leave, their houses buried in sand. Afterward they had to watch how their homes and other properties were destroyed by the building company’s bulldozers.

Heng Mom, 50 years old, and another representative of the Boeng Kak Lake community supports this idea: “The government is supposed to be the people’s parents. Why does the government not help us?”

Mom and Vanny have both spent more than a month in jail, before an appeal released them. They were among 13 women who were arrested during protests at Boeng Kak in May 2012. On that day, one of the families attempted to rebuild their home that Shukaku’s bulldozers had destroyed in 2010.

Police stopped the rebuild, confiscated the

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24 family’s tools and arrested the 13 women after they started hurling curses at them.

Chuon Sovan, Phnom Penh Municipal police chief declined to comment on the incident, when reporters asked, why the police arrested people who just protested for their right to live. About 10 NGOs in Cambodia also openly asked that question and condemned the use of armed force and violence against peacefully protesting citizens.

Two days afterwards, Phnom Penh Municipal Court charged and sentenced the arrested women to two-and-a-half years in jail. A hunger strike and the persistant protest of more than a hundred people was needed to pressure the appeal court into a verdict. The protests are still going on.

The official sides remain silent: Phay Siphan, spokesman for the Council of Ministers, did not want to comment on the ongoing protests.

Neither wanted Lieutenant General Khieu Sopheak, spokesman of Interior Ministry. The spokesman of the National Police, Lieutenant General Kirth Chantharith, could not be reached for a statement.

Today , the two women Vanny and Mom are free, but there is still not solution to the land-dispute. “Even if we would get those compensation, it would not nearly be enough to live around Phnom Penh”, Mom adds.

“We don’t want to allow the company to occupy our land, so we urge the government to help us”, Mom insists: ”We are very poor residents and we do not have any other land for a living.”

There have been high-ranking officials in the past who openly called for solutions: Kep

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Chuktema, for example, the former city hall governor, promised several times during his ten-years-term, that he will solve the Boeng Kak Lake land dispute. In May, he left the office to campaign for a post as member in the National assembly in the upcoming elections.

The Boeng Kak Lake dispute remains unsolved.

The new city hall governor Pa Socheate Vong, said in his inauguration speech “As the new governor and representative of all city hall, I tell you that all officials have vowed to solve the land dispute problem in Boeng Kak Lake and other land disputes in Phnom Penh.”

Activist Vanny is not convinced.

She reminds that the former city hall governor had promised the same. The 50 families are still waiting for a solution. “I was very happy when I heard the new city hall governor Pa Socheate Vong saying this, but we will have to wait and see whether he can really solve our problems or not,” says Vanny.

Am Sam Ath, technical supervisor for human rights group Licadho supports the activists: They have been protesting for a very long time now, he argues, so the government should come up with some sort of solution. Above all, even if there is no imminent solution, the official forces should not use violence. He cites cases where the military police used electrical buttons to attack the protesting residents, causing serious injuries. “These poor citizens do not have any other place to live,” says Sam Ath. The rights-activist warns that it is not only the police who uses violent means against the protestors. There would also be another, hidden form of violence: ”The Cambodia authority uses the court system to threaten anyone who dares to protest” says he.

+ Photo courtesy of Kent MacElwee/Flickr Creative Commons

Old photograph of Boeng Kak Lake.

Late in 2012, Yorm Bopha, another activist from Boeng Kak community, was arrested and accused of attacking two men. According to Bopha, what actually happened was that some of her family members followed two men who wanted to steal a mirror from her car. She herself was not even involved in the situation.

Nevertheless, the Phnom Penh Municipal court charged her for being accomplice of intentional violence. She was sentenced to

three years in prison. As of now, she is still imprisoned.

For more than a year now, Boeng Kak lake is filled up with sand. The Shukaku company has not given out any construction contracts yet. Nobody knows when the construction will start. The company refuses to give any comment.

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Black Harvest Photostory by Pam Chua

Tension is high in this small, wooden house. The T’bolis, an indigenous tribe, filling the room are watching curiously as their tribal leader talks to NGO representatives.

Most T’bolis are unfamiliar with Filipino, the national language, yet they know what this is all about. It is about their land, their future. Standing on moist, clay ground, they warm their hands with a cup of native coffee in the cool mountain weather.

Unaccustomed to so many new faces, a child eating steamed sweet potatoes hides behind his mother.

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+ 1991, a group of a coffee plantation company representatives came to the town. The T’bolis claim the representatives talked about logging and concrete roads. However, they didn’t speak of forest clearing for the plantation. For over a decade, the T’bolis of the small mountain town Barangay Ned in the province of South Cotabato have been fighting the Dawang Coffee Plantation. But this coffee plantation has the legal permit from the state: the Department of Environment and Natural Resources granted it by virtue of an Industrial Forest Management Agreement called “IFMA 22”. Afterwards, the company security guards forced the T’bolis to flee their homes. A child and an elder had died during the flight. The IFMA 22 permit is valid until 2016.

Five years ago, the T’bolis decided to come back, just to discover that the plantation had been enlarged and is now cutting off some of the access roads that lead from village to the school. The T’bolis feel helpless, says Datu Victor Danyan: “The government who is supposed to be protecting us are the ones giving our land away.” Danyan is a T’boli, a tribal leader, is dressed in tubao, a native head scarf and a Che Guevara shirt. He is also the chairperson of the T’boli-Manubo Sdaf Claimants Organization TAMASCO. The organization wants to

Datu Victor Danyan informs the NGO representatives about the situation.

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fight for the T’boli rights to their own land and ancestral domain.

To achieve this, the TAMASCO has invited representatives of three NGOs to inform them about their problems. His face is red while he speaks.

For 18 years, the T’bolis suffered hunger in a new place without their farms and their livelihood, claims Danyan. Coming home, amid the threats of the coffee company, their life has not become easier. And coffee turned out not to be the only reason, why investors turn their eyes towards the fields and lands of the T’boli.

In 2007, the governor of South Cotabato, Daisy Avance-Fuentes protested when suddenly several mining companies started coal exploration in different areas of the province. The companies did not have any permits from the local government for this, said the governor. The mining company Daguma Agro-Minerals admitted that they had done “surveys”. The goal was to verify the viability of coal deposits.

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+ Two years later, the Department of Energy awarded a coal operation contract to the construction company DMCI. The same company that owns the coffee plantantion Dawang. The area that was converted into a mining area has the size of 3000 football

fields, it covers boundaries of the provinces Sultan Kudarat and South Cotabato. It also overlaps with the ancestral lands of the T’boli.

The Philippine Mining Act of 1995 says that mineral resources are owned by the State and that the government can therefore grant mining contracts to companies. But the law also states that “ancestral lands” are exempted from that rule. Indigenous tribes have the right to use their lands according to their customs and traditions.

The TAMASCO has to prove that the land around their small village are indeed their ancestral land. A process that can take five to ten years, before the courts decide.

The T’boli are not the only people affected by the new rush for coal in Barangay Ned. An hour ride on muddy mountain paths away from the T’boli town Datal Bonlangan lies the town Kibang, a Christian community who migrated there a few decades ago. The town lies within the area that was declared for mining.

The thick forest that surrounds houses in Kibang makes the air cool and refreshing. Seated in the middle of a long dining table, the beautifully aged wood shines under the fluorescent light. “They say that power supply in the province is not enough. But we use solar energy and this is enough for us. We don’t need the coal.” says Yellen Zata. Zata is the head of the anti-mining group HUKOM. Many in Kibang have since sold their property to mining corporations.

In 2010, Governor Daisy Avance-Fuentes declared a ban on open pit mining to protect

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30 the landscape of the province. She vows to continue this ban during her term, which ends in 2016.

President Aquino also signed an order that is supposed to stop new mining. From 2012 on, government agencies are not allowed to issue new mining agreements until new revenue sharing schemes have been designed.

But in October, a revision declared national laws superseding local laws. That means that mining companies in the Philippines who got their permits earlier can continue with their operations. It also threatens the open bit ban of Governor Avance-Fuentes.

About three hour ride north from the two small towns of Datal Bonlangon and Kibang lies the the headquarters of the mining company Sagittarius Mines. The company plans

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+ to open a new mine right on the spot. With $6 billion, it’s the single largest investment in the Philippines, and promises 9,000 jobs during construction, 2,000 during operation and scholarships to children of company employees. This new mine is the reason why the coal from Barangay Ned is so important.

It needs the coal to fuel their operations. In the mine, called the Tampakan project, the Sagittarius Mines company is looking for gold and copper.

The T’bolis and the small Christian community of Barangay Ned could call themselves blessed, with rich soil, making them self sufficient in food. But they also could call themselves cursed. Because it is exactly for those rich resources above and below their soils that companies and investors are threatening their lives and livelihood.

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Gold mine workers in danger

Text and Photos by Nan Tin Htwe “I know it’s dangerous”, said 27-year old Ko Sai Zaw Tun, who came from Yangon to work in the ‘Asia Gabar Myay’ gold mine,near Kalaw in Southern Shan State. “But this is the only way that I can earn around K 3,000 per day (USD 3)” he continued while he sat in front of the clinic that belongs to the mine. Ko Sai Zaw Tun started working as a gold miner at Shwedaw gold mine a year ago. On May 2, he lost his colleagues.

Ko Sai Zaw Tun was amongst the miners who were lucky to have survived when in the night of May 2 the 6,000-arces gold mine site was struck by strong wind and heavy rain which one of the residents described as ‘so scary’.

A day later Shwedaw showed a picture of destruction; the 500-feet-deep Mineshaft was filled with mud – trees had fallen down – houses – shops without roofs – pieces of tarpaulin sheets lying on the ground.

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Eleven bodies were sent to Kalaw Hospital but the residents believed that many more were killed.

Until the evening of May 2, the head of the

+ administrative office in Kalaw stated ‘It was just some houses damage their roof.’While the deputy head said, he received information that the gold mine collapsed but he still needed to confirm these.

The gold mine site islocated 18 miles fromKalaw town, a two hours drive by motor bike and 45 minutes walk through steepmountains as the road is almost unusable for cars in raining season.

Ko Thein Zaw, Information Officer from National League for Democracy in Kalaw said that he and three other party members arrived at the site around 1 pm on May 2.He described they were stopped by security men telling them to go back.

“We were there to ask whether we can help some way like providing food or water. There was nobody there to help. They were very hostile as if they wanted to kill us. We couldn’t go further. I think the company didn’t want us to know what was inside”.

The general manager of the company refused to provide information on the incident. “We can’t say anything. You can write whatever you want. Or you can write that the authorities are working on rehabilitation after this happened:.

U Maung Maung Tar, head of the clinic run by the company described only minor impact of the storm: “We treated 30 people with minor injuries and we sent three people who had been hit by the trees to Kalaw Hospital. But we had no deaths here,” he saidwhile he smiled gently as he spoke.

In contrast U Min Han, who resigned from the company as Chief of Security after the May 2 incident said at least 40 people were killed by the flood and storms. 15 of them were company employees.

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34 “I’ve been here only two months. I’m really scared after this happened”, said a 20-year-old worker as he sat on the reddish-colored ground and ate some boiled rice from a plastic bag as he rested while his colleagues kept pulling out mud as they cleaned the shaft.

“A tree that was as wide as three men holding hands fell down near my hut. I’m lucky to be alive,” said 26-year old shaft worker Ko Soe Thu, originally from Pyaw Bwai in Mandalay Region, as he sat in front of the Asia Kabar Myay clinic, where according to the company workers get treatment for free.

Another mine worker Ko Htaik, 26, came all the way from a village in Ayeyarwady Region’s Wakema township, with the hope of a better income. On May 2’s first hour, he witnessed the death of his neighbour, a 39-year-old woman, who was crushed by a falling tree as she hugged her two-year-old son.

“We didn’t know what was happening. We all just ran,” said Ko Htaik. “When we came back, we saw her husband looking for her. As he shouted, the baby started crying. The baby was alive. It was like the mother saved her child. When the man saw that, he grabbed his child, he cried and just left.”

“That night was really scary. There was lots of lightning, and trees falling down,” said a middle-aged man standing beside Ko Htaik.

U Min Han said he doesn’t want to work anymore at the gold mine site after what happened.

“After the flood, I asked the company for leave. They rejected it. So I resigned instead”.

A member of the Fire Services Department from Taunggyi, who asked not to be named, said his team had only learned of the incident on the morning of May 3. That day, 17 firemen from Kalaw and Taunggyi were dispatched to Shwedaw.

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Miners rest during a day’s work.

After spending almost five hours examining mine shafts, the team managed to exhume only one body.

“It’s too hard to work,” he said, with his rescue tools slung over his shoulder. “The holes are 500 feet deep.”

At the blackout-hit Kalaw Hospital, some of those who escaped the floods with injuries were receiving treatment.

“We could see the mouth of the mine shaft, maybe 15 feet away,” said U Win Maung, his face lit by a candle. “Then a wave of water with mud came in. It’s like it was pushing us back.”

While U Win Maung was rescued from a flooded mineshaft, one of his colleagues did not survive.

+ issued by Earthworks and Oxfam America in 2005.

International Labour Organisation said deaths within the whole mining sector account for 5 percent of all workers deaths on the job, even though the sector employs just under 1 percent of all workers worldwide.

The organisation’s Sectoral Activities Department, which works on addressing social and labour issues in economic sectors including mining, said that a substantial share of mining deaths go ‘unrecorded’.

“The aftermath of a large-scale mining operation is generally a landscape of devastation: thousands of hectares of poisoned, rubble-stream that will likely remain too polluted to support their full complement of life for thousands of years to come”, Earthworks and Oxfam America report said.

In 1995, Omai gold mine in Guyana in South America, one of the largest gold mine in the world, failed its tailing dam releasing 3 billion cubic liters of cyanide-laden into the Omai river, a tributary of Guyana’s largest river. Following the incident, the President of Guyana declared 51 kilometer of river drainage from mine to Atlantic Ocean- home to 23,000 people.

“I didn’t want to do that job. Before I worked as a porter but this company came in so we couldn’t do that work anymore. The pay was too low. So I decided to become a gold miner.

I had no option if I wanted to be able to feed my family,” he said. “Now I don’t want to work In March 2012, Ministry of Mines in Myanmar anymore here. After I’ve recovered, I’m going announced banning the mining along country’s back to Pyu.” four major river – Irrawaddy, Thanlwin, Myanmar has not ratified Convention on Chindwin and Sittoungin order to preserve Safety and Health in Mines developed by ILO the natural environment, China’s Xinhua news in 1995. It requires employers to eliminate agency reported. or minimize safety and health rights in their Mining is a challenge Myanmar shares with mines. It also forces government to oversee many other countries across the world. and report publicly on the implementation of Mariano Fiestas, a circus farmer in the San such measures and to suspend mining when Lorenzo Valley, the site of the proposed violations occur. The convention has been Tambogrande gold mine in Peru, “If humanity ratified by only 20 countries while China, knew the truth about gold mining, and how Russia and Australia are among of those much harm it generates, things would begin to countries which have not. change”.

Gold mining remains one of the world most dangerous professions, killing 15,000 miners every year, states the report ‘Dirty Metals, Mining, Communities and the Environment’

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36 Collapse of GRP-NDF talks unrest Samar

By Myra M. Tambor

The collapse of the peace talks between the

Government of the Philippines and the National Democratic Front could escalate clashes between the warring troops of the government and the Communist Party of the Philippines New People’s Army.

Particularly in the areas occupied by the Communist Party of the Philippines this would mean unrest in people’s lives in the communities and would have a wider impact affecting all sectors of the society.

In Samar island, 8th Infantry Division of the Philippine Army stationed in different commands in the island, reports clashes in far flung barangays. According to their reports, however, these clashes are not likely to affect local residents considering “that this clashes happens in the forested areas of the island”.

But, Reverend Father Cesar Aculan, a priest and the Social Action Director of the Catholic Clergy in the island said, “impact of armed conflict in a certain place, Samar in particular, cannot only be attributed to physical harm during clashes. But it also has an effect on the economic stability, among others. In the province this can have even a greater impact to its constituencies”.

Samar, the third largest island in the country is rich in natural resources, forest products, agricultural and marine resources.

Nevertheless it is listed as one of the poorest provinces in the country. The decades of

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insurgency in the island is attributed by the high poverty threshold in the area, among other factors. In a public consultations made by the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Processes attended by various stakeholders of the province, factors affecting the plight of the province was clearly enumerated by the participants.

They identified that insurgency hinders the development of the province as scarcity of development programs can lead to people supporting the armed struggle.

Norma Uy, a lady farmer and a mother of 4 children said, the daily farming task of their family is hampered when they know that there are “military operations” at the farm land areas. “We are of course afraid to go cultivate our lands for us to earn a living, because the possibility of being caught in a cross fire is possible, the clashes is not remote and bullets doesn’t choose who to hit”. Teary eyed, the lady added “we are tired of war, many were

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Left, a member of the New People’s Army performs an interpretative dance while, above, armed members stand at formation to show force during an annual celebration in the hinterlands, somewhere in the Philippines.

Photo courtesy of Froilan Gallardo/PECOJON

killed and we are still counting, our trauma is just unbearable”. “I grew old with this war, my children are growing up with it now, when will this end?”, she asks.

Peace talks between the government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines collapsed last month when the government issued a statement through the Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda. He said that “it is no longer keen on pursuing formal peace negotiations with the New People’s Army”.

He further said “how does one talk to these people when we don’t speak the same language anymore?

Lacierda also said, Norway, the third-party facilitator in the formal peace talks between the Philippine government and the Communist Party of the Philippines, has already been appraised of the new developments.

The frictions between the Communist Party of the Philippines/New People’s Army/National Democratic Front of the Philippines and the Philippine government have been going on for over four decades now.

Attempt on the peaceful negotiations with the National Democratic Front from the past and present administration of the Philippine government was pursued but to no avail.

Country’s civil society groups pursuing peace currently are scampering for possible peaceful solutions to cushion the impact of the termination of talks.

In an statement dated May 28, 2013 issued by National Democratic Front of the Philippines Chairperson Luis Jalandone said that the Government of the Philippines negotiating panel and the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Processes pretensions to want a peaceful resolution of the armed conflict are contradicted by their recent declarations of terminating the peace talks with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) .”

As of this writing, various clashes between the military and the New People’s Army have been reported by media networks from the ground.

A landmine blast in Cagayan Valley province in Mindanao and another landmine blast in the western part of Samar province. No civilians were reported hurt in both incidents.

Observers from the different non-government organizations in the country expressed concerned on the probability of having more of this kind of atrocities if a peaceful resolution to the conflict will not be addressed the soonest possible time.

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In partnership

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With financial support from the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)