By Julian Mellor
Situated on the banks of the Salween River, the Thai frontier village called Tha Ta Fang had an air of lawlessness about it. Men sitting in the waterside cafe eyed us suspiciously, a couple of rifles rested against the wall behind them. Long tail boats plied the river, all flying the Thai flag, a small defence against overzealous Burmese troops who, patrolling the opposite bank, might mistake them for members of the Karen National Army.
But it was the industry in the village that really gave it its distinctive atmosphere, for the whole place revolved around the semi-illicit trade in Burmese teak.
A track emerged from the dense Burmese jungle opposite, the once majestic trees dumped at its end. Portable sawmills on the river bank were planking the tree trunks, and barges then carried them across the river into Thailand. Massive trucks waited to transport the teak across the mountain tracks and eventually on to lucrative western markets.
While the record of the British Empire and the subsequent U Nu government were hardly deserving of praise, things started getting worse when, in 1962, the new "socialist" government escalated its war of attrition against the separatist hill tribes in the eastern provinces. To the majority of the people in the lowlands, however, this was of little consequence as they struggled to survive under a series of regimes that were turning one of the developing world's most prosperous nations into one of the 10 poorest.
In 1988 the government, facing financial catastrophe, started to implement economic reforms. Subsequent rising food prices brought many people onto the streets in non-violent protest, their numbers swelled by students and Buddhist monks calling for greater democracy.
A peaceful national strike was met by machine-guns and armoured cars, killing hundreds in the streets and even in their homes. When the protests escalated further, the army responded by staging a military coup.
More than 6000 people were killed and 5000 arrested, many of whom are still held. While at the student camp Paw Pa Ta, I spoke to Hla Thaung, who had been an army sergeant at the time of the suppression. He told me they had sent eight trucks and two ambulances filled with bodies to the crematorium twice a night. When the furnaces broke down, they started taking the bodies to the crocodile farms. When the crocodiles could eat no more, they
filled a freighter and scuttled it out at sea.
The State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) has become the most repressive regime in the world. In free elections in 1990, the National League for Democracy won a massive 81% of the vote, but the SLORC imprisoned the victors and placed Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest.
The war against the separatists, joined by the students in 1988, has been escalated, while parents of the students are threatened with "tough action" if they do not force their children to return home. Forty thousand Mon, Karen and Karenni people have been forced to seek asylum in Thailand. On the Bangladesh border, troops are raping and torturing the Rohingya Muslims, burning their houses and stealing their land and cattle. Forced transfers of urban populations had left many Burmese in squalid rural areas without proper services and plagued by malaria. It is hard not to draw comparisons with the murderous regime of Pol Pot.
The military now accounts for 60% of total government spending; arms purchases in the last two years amount to US$1.2 billion. (The health sector gets only 1.6% of spending.) This requires an income, and it is here that the teak forests come in.
In the past the Karen people logged the teak themselves. They used the "Burmese teak selection system", a method which some sources describe as the only sustainable form of logging ever devised.
Thai companies had been trading with the Karen, but this became more difficult when the new SLORC offensive resulted in the army gaining control of significant areas of forest.
To raise foreign currency for arms purchases, SLORC awarded teak logging concessions for the conquered areas to 20 Thai companies, some of which were owned by senior Thai army officers, which were facing ruin from the Thai government's nationwide logging ban, introduced in 1989.
The reputation of the Thai companies had never been good, but in remote border areas where military control was frequently shifting, they proved themselves unequalled in the art of forest destruction.
Thai firms negotiated 4 million acres of teak concessions for three years. In 1990 the UN estimated that 1,235,000 acres of tree cover were disappearing each year in an orgy of clear-
cutting. This compared to a previous annual logging rate of 247,000 acres. At current rates, the entire stock could disappear before 1995.
UN experts claim that the Thais are breaking virtually
every rule of proper logging. A Karen leader, Saw Ba Thin, said "They are cutting indiscriminately because they don't care for the future. One year of their cutting is equal to 10 years of ours, and they don't replant the teak as we did."
The Thais are not the only ones logging in Burma. Convoys of trucks were seen by a Swedish journalist crossing into China. Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Singapore are also thought to be involved. The Thais, however, are the main contributors to the destruction.
Once over the border into Thailand, the teak is sold on the international market, usually ending up as veneer in the furniture industry. The majority of the timber then finds its way to factories in the United States, Japan, Denmark and Italy.
With 80% of the world's remaining teak found in Burma, it is fair to assume that, unless your timber merchant or furniture shop can prove otherwise, you are buying wood with blood in its grain.
SLORC has not limited itself to dealing in teak. Every natural resource in Burma is seen as convertible into armament dollars. Abundant fishing stocks, which had been sustainably farmed by local people, have been sold off to Asian, Australian and European companies.
Burma is renowned for its vast mineral wealth, particularly its jade, rubies and sapphires. In its rush to acquire foreign currency, SLORC has been selling the rights to mine these gems. It is fair to assume that environmental controls will be minimal.
Despite almost universal diplomatic condemnation ofSLORC, a vast array of countries allow their citizens to trade with the regime. China is the main culprit while Japan has developed trade links and extended loan agreements. Shell Oil has been greedily buying up oil rights, and Germany has continued supplying arms from a Rangoon factory. In 1990 Pepsi signed a US$2.5 million joint venture with SLORC for production and distribution of the drink in Burma. The Sheraton Hotel group was looking to develop hotels in Burma.
With the government in control of almost all economic activity, any business trading with Burma is directly financing the oppression and destruction of the Burmese people and environment.
There are a few things individuals can do. First, never buy any product that you suspect may have come from Burma, especially teak. Second, don't travel to the country — your currency will almost certainly fund more armament purchases. Third, stay informed, lobby your MP and write to the Myanmar (the SLORC name for Burma) ambassador asking when the
democratically elected NLD government will be allowed to take power and when the attrition against the ethnic minority groups will stop.