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My own observations over the past 25 years is in agreement that eviction is not a high risk for highland folks, but that the hill folks probably have the same risk as other rural inhabitants when the intersection of local politics and greed conspire to create economic opportunity for specific individuals who are far higher up the food chain.

I remember one case of an Akha village being emptied and the inhabitants being trucked to the Burmese border back in the mid 1980s. The village was inside Chiang Rai province, north of the Kok River. I was living in the nearby Amphoe Thaton, Chiang Mai Province at the time. I apologize I do not remember the name of the settlement, the names of the Akha settlements often being the name of the titular village headman.

What was notable was that the eviction occurred around October, the harvest season. The Akha inhabitants were simply loaded into trucks and taken to the border and ordered to walk into Burma. The evictors, enabled by Chiang Rai’s provincial governor, were not military per se, but members of local village defense forces, in other words Thai villagers, who had been well fortified with lao khao (cheap Thai whiskey) and were the ones who made off with the fruits of the harvest and the few household goods as payments for their efforts, along with the free drinks.

On the other hand, similar Akha villages at that time did not get evicted. I do not know what motivated the governor of Chiang Rai to evict that specific village. And, at about the same period of time, the Thai government established an Akha refugee village at the small Forestry Camp of Huai Sala, along the main road from Thaton to Mae Salong, not far from the well studied Shan village of Mok Cham along the Kok River.

Look around the highway outside of Thaton going towards Mok Cham and you see many citrus orchards where there once were but small farmers who were similarly evicted from their admittedly poorly documented lands. I have no proof, but I believe the brutal murder of my friend, the former Thaton district head, Kamnaan Seng, was connected to these land issues.

Where there are land issues, where there is local politics and greed intersecting, then evictions, the Thai version of eminent domain, seem to occur, but I have not seen this happen systematically.

Bond’s prestige and the magic of development

One does not have to believe in conspiracy theories and vested interests to realise that there is an entire multi-billion dollar industry operating in Laos and elsewhere that relies primarily on the internal logic of a special language it has created in its report documentation and a special procedural performance it has created to carry out its projects that serve to justify its existence.

It is a common observation that the things people say very rarely match with the things that people do. Despite this, people want to believe that there is a connection. In Christopher Priest’s, The Prestige, a successful magic trick has three parts – the pledge, the turn, and the prestige. The pledge is the set up. The turn is the performance of the trick. The prestige is the effect of the trick. There are so many ways to go about these stages, so many methods used to set up and perform the magic trick and these can be squabbled over, changed and mastered. One thing, however is tantamount: the trick, while unbelievable on the face of it, must be believed, even if only for a second. People must believe that one man travelled twenty metres in two seconds (in one door and out another) or that a bird and a cage actually vanished with the bird reappearing behind the magician’s back. And this is the real magic, the real prestige, the real ‘effect’ of the trick – it makes people ‘want’ to believe the impossible. They know it cannot be ‘real’ and, in fact, they also know that they do not want to know the reality of the trick (of the bird being crushed in the cage, or the use of a double) because it would destroy their interest.

A good deal of international development is rather similar. Those involved know deep down inside that what is being promised is impossible, but continue to to squabble over, search for and master the right formula, the right special language, the right performance. If it is attained, then enough people are willing to believe that the impossible has actually happened and enough people are prepared to ignore the reality of suffering and charade that lies behind the prestige. Magic is a science.

Patrons and pushers of development know full well that any sustained empirical analysis of the impact of many of the industry’s activities would show that the language and performances do not match with the material outcomes of these activities. Yet quite a few of them are genuine in their belief that their activities are having a positive impact, even if not the intended one. The history of hydropower projects and the lessons they could provide, and the actually existing current circumstances of the people trying to live alongside Nam Theun Two quite simply do not matter. This is not to argue that there is nothing outside the text or the performance. For one thing, there is a shite load of money to be made outside of the text and the performance and many people stand to lose this money if the prestige fails. But people also stand to lose the hope that the projects that this prestige supports are widely beneficial. Enough people in Laos want to sustain this hope, and are willing to turn a blind eye toward those who have been disenfranchised by the project.

Bond’s speach reads like a fairly superficial thing in itself, with some warm fuzzy bits, which is its intent. The bit about consultation sounds like it was taken out of the introduction to an impact assessment manual (perhaps one written by the World Bank).

Definitely the agricultural situations in the war-torn areas namely the border regions of Karen and Shan States are starkly different from the peaceful Delta and Central or Upper Burma. As I mentioned as my own personal experience in a previous post the Burmese farmers in the Proper Burma know exactly where they stand when it comes to the permanent and transferable tenancy of their own plots of land.

Forced labor and military checkpoints situations are directly related to the outgoing civil war, and for the conflict’s various participants it is almost totally impossible to get rid of as long as the war is going on in that war-torn areas.

I used to work as an Irrigation Engineer for the Ministry of Agriculture and, even though the ministers and various heads of departments are the army or ex-army officers, the ministry is run by the professionals as in any other countries. Agricultural extensions offices are in every townships and Burma has a specialized agricultural university and agricultural research institute.

When it comes to tactical reforms in Burma, Burmese agronomists know better than anyone else. Where I come from some farmers even have crops growing in every season. Paddy in the rainy season, jute in the summer, gluttonous rice in the winter. All thanks to the efforts and supports of these well-learned government agronomists.

My point is the strategic agricultural reform of the redistribution of agricultural land has already been completed since 40 years ago in Burma and the result is the food-self-sufficiency and the ample export of excess produce to neighboring countries.

Once the sanctions are removed Burmese farmers will be able to send the rice and other agricultural produce exports to the west like seemingly democratic Thais and still Communist Vietnamese are doing now.

Burma used to be the biggest exporter of rice and now, even with all the current troubles and a nasty civil war she is just lagging a bit just behind Thailand the current biggest rice exporter on this planet.

I’m not sure if I’m a learned American or just an opinionated one, but here are some comments based on my limited experience working on an agricultural project in a Kachin-majority area of the Shan State (which may not be relevant to the situation in Central Burma).

First, the land tenure situation isn’t as straightforward as you seem to think, Hla Oo. While it is true that practically speaking in day to day affairs the land is in the hands of the farmers, as Stephen has noted in another discussion, the state still technically owns the land. Add to this a clear pattern of confiscation of land without compensation by the military, and you have a situation where the farmers are always looking over their shoulders with uncertainty, which is not conducive to agricultural production. Furthermore, virtually all the villages I worked with had been forcibly relocated, in some instances multiple times, due to the military’s “Four Cuts” campaigns. In one instance villagers had spend an entire day walking to their agricultural fields from the area they had been relocated. Needless to say, this had severe negative impacts on their agricultural production. So the issue isn’t whether land tenure is communalized or privatized, but that land tenure is always uncertain and at the mercy of the military’s agrarian agenda.

I think Stephen also is correct in the basic reforms he thinks are needed for a start, although I would point out that in fairness to the military regime, they are not the only group to demand forced labor from the populace. In the Shan State various ceasefire groups have also adopted the practice.

I would also point out that point out that technical reforms like crop loans and providing resources like fertilizer are far from easy tasks. I can tell you direct personal experience that fertilizer procurement can be a major undertaking. While proposing how exactly these technical reforms should be carried out is far beyond my expertise, they are absolutely critical. Stephen’s #3 would be a good starting point to address this problem, but I doubt we’ll see the regime take such action any time soon.

Finally, I would say that any reforms would have to take in to account potential negative impacts on women. The political and economic upheavals in Burma have had a particularly negative effect on women, who additionally have traditional roles and societal expectations, which may have protected them in the context of traditional societies, but in the current context work against them.

Hla Oo: what sort of further strategic reform [does] Burma still need except for the technical reforms of providing crop loans and other resources like fertilizers?

I think you’ve raised the key issue, Hla Oo. Ideally, agricultural policy would be set by the country’s predominantly small-scale farmers themselves. Actually, the monthly Township Peace and Development Council meetings that the SPDC currently has in place could provide a venue for such local input into agricultural policy, but because of the SPDC’s authoritarian proclivities, agricultural policy has become a top-down process, set at the national level, with no account for local environmental, climatic and other difference, and is furthermore set and enforced by military personnel, not agronomists. For example, Burma’s Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation is Maj-Gen Htay Oo, current head of the USDA. Agricultural policy is thus subservient to military policy and as I’ve quoted before, agricultural analysts Koichi Fujita and Ikuko Okamoto who have done extensive fiend work in Burma, identify the SPDC’s agricultural policy objectives as, “avoidance of social unrest and sustenance of the regime”.

But anyway here are some initial suggestions,

1. Stop forced labour. As forced labour is now so pervasive, at least in rural Karen State, it significantly cuts into time needed for agricultural work leading to reduced or wholly failed paddy harvests.
2. Eliminate roadway military checkpoints and tollbooths. Excessive road tolls have made small-scale agricultural trade in many cases unprofitable.
3. Allow farmers to set their own agricultural agenda. The whole kyet-su castor bean fiasco is just one example of the failures of authoritarian agricultural governance.

Economist Sean Turnell likewise reports that SPDC officials dictate to local farmers “what, how and how much to produce”. Despite the reports that the SPDC eliminated the paddy procurement quota in 2003, many farmers in Burma report that the practice continues. When Burma’s inflation reached 35% last year the IMF, likewise recommended “liberalizing agriculture to give farmers more freedom to grow and sell their crops.” Anyways, these are just some initial thoughts.

To the “I agree with Surayud” brigade: you also agree with much of the elite debate in the 1990s over what became the 1997 Constitution. There the idea was to get “good” and perhaps “great” people into parliament via the party list. Look what happened. The simple point is probably that elite attempts to manipulate electoral outcomes is doomed to failure because elections can be unpredictable – those folks out there, the so-called chao ban, don’t think like the elite and tend to want an outcome that suits them.

Of course, this idea of getting the “best people” also assumes that the good and the great don’t manipulate things to suit themselves when in power (no evidence of that in Thailand, right?).

jonfernquest might want to look at who is organising and benefiting from nasty motorcycle taxi riders (and even the motorcycle police) riding up the sidewalks. I think Crutch regularly comments on such things in his Sunday column in the Bkk Post. That might be a source for more comment on this item.

On “Unfortunately, everyone does this because there is literally no land near forest areas with deeds. All of it is forestry department land”: not quite accurate as it depends very much where you are and what you mean by title. For example, in many areas near national parks, land users have tax certificates which allow use of the land. Not a “deed” or a “title”, but a right to continuous use for something like subsistence. I believe you’ll find that this is what Surayud had/has. His wife commented on this in the press.

The question is whether his house fits the meaning and intent of the use rights granted. I’d have thought that this was unlikely. That plenty of others do this seems true, but what has happened to all those arguments about rule of law and getting someone for even small infractions (such as Samak).

As I said previously, it’s a great idea, especially if dams are included. RID and EGAT can displaced much more people per intervention than RFD and DNP (35 000 people for the Pasak Cholasit Dam alone)

I’m completing a similar review of literature. I define a “case” by the year and area affected (so there are 2 cases for Thung Yai Naresuan). For the period 1986-2008, I’ve got so far 22 cases where relocation/eviction/rapatriation occurred (excluding RID, EGAT, etc. projects) and 9 where plans were drawn but (a) were later abandoned or (b) I couldn’t confirm they were actually implemented.
Total displaced people is at least 27 000 people (assuming 4 pers by hh).

There are two clear leaders among Thailand’s PM. Out of the 22 relocation/eviction cases I am aware of, Prem was the PM in 9 cases ( 41%), Chuan in 8 cases (36%), Thaksin, Banharn and Chatichai each in 1 case (5%). In 4 cases, there was no clear dates and I couldn’t determine under whose PM the decision was taken. These results nicely illustrate the fact that “pressure of conservation” was reduced during the Thaksin era.

The compilation and analysis is not perfect yet. By Oct 10 I’ll have my excel table translated and all sources well listed.

Jon,
What about India? They changed their dealings with the regime, but did the regime change at all? No. Also, the sanctions were never absolute. There were American companies doing business with the regime. I know, I had dinner with them in Rangoon. The US State Department also funded rural development projects in the Shan States. The fact is the generals have had plenty of opportunties to change, they’ve just never taken them. It takes a true believer to argue otherwise. What policies have the generals taken that would allow a middle class to emerge.

To follow up on Stephen’s point, I’ve worked with the rural population in the Lashio/Namtu area, and I’ve seen the exploitation of the SPDC agenda firsthand. If the city dwellers have paid a pound of flesh, the Kachins, Shans, and Palaung have easily doubled that, but strangely enough they all blamed the regime for that. Also, I believe that China’s reform started with the agricultural sector, as did Korea’s and Taiwan’s. What specific policies is the regime engaged in that will help the Burmese agricultural sector?

Definitely we Burmese have suffered far too long. When the Ne Win’s BSPP government was collapsing in 1988 the group of Burmese politicians namely U Nu, Aung Gyi, Tin Oo, and Aung San Su Kyi, yes ASSK too, had a chance to lead Burma out of that quagmire, but they stubbornly refused to form a united civilian government then and finally let the army to grab the power again in the name of The Restoration of Law and Order.

Yes, these so called democratic politicians, willingly or unwillingly no one really knew, initially allowed the existence of SLORC (State Law and Order Restoration Council) government now calling themselves SPDC (State Peace and development Council) government 20 years later.

Like Kyaw Nyein and opposition Socialist Party did in 1962 they let the Burmese people down and delivered the country again into the hands of generals in 1988.

Like Kyaw Nyein and opposition Socialist Party believed in 1962, they believed in the army’s promise of fair election. Yes, the army gave them a fair election. Except, the army didn’t agree with the fair outcome.

“My father built this army” ASSK and former general “I was from this army too” Tin Oo then took a hard line stance against the generals and brought down onto the poor people of Burma the mighty sanctions of the western democracies. Now Burma and her once proud people are on their knees haplessly witnessing their country rapidly becoming another province of China.

Violent and non-violent opposition or the sanctions aren’t the only ways to get Burma back into the democracy’s fold. How about genuine negotiations and serious talks among all the parties concerned including the generals?