BDG MADHUPUR FOREST PROJECT STILL DISTURBING GARO

C O N F I D E N T I A L DHAKA 004205 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/22/2015 TAGS: PHUM EAGR SENV BG SUBJECT: BDG MADHUPUR FOREST PROJECT STILL DISTURBING GARO COMMUNITY REF: 04 DHAKA 00074 Classified By: A/Political Counselor David Renz; reason para 1.4(d) ¶1. (C) On August 21, Poloff met with Garo community leaders at the Pirgacha Mission about the BDG National and Eco Park projects' effects on the local Garo community in the Madhupur Forest in northern Bangladesh. Father Eugene Homrich, an American priest and director of the Pirgacha Mission for the last fifty years, described the Garo Community efforts to resist BDG eviction notices from the Madhupur Forest since 1962 and highlighted the recent case of violence and a fatality in January 2004 due to the BDG National and Eco Park projects (reftel). Father Homrich repeatedly faulted the BDG Forestry Officials and an Asian Development Bank financed project for environmental degradation, depleting forest resources for personal gain, rampant corruption, and harassment through numerous false cases filed against the Garo community. ¶2. (C) Homrich stated that while National Parks are supposedly designed to develop tourism and recreation and Eco Parks to preserve eco-systems, both projects in the Madhupur Forest area have only led to environmental degradation and destruction of forestland. According to Homrich, the BDG has claimed to use some of the national park land for "social forestry" projects to give certain plots to disadvantaged and vulnerable social groups. Instead, this land has been given to well-connected elites and has been used to cultivate bananas instead of preserve forestland, he claimed. Homrich further asserted that when building materials for Eco Park and National Park walls have been stolen, the Garo community was wrongly accused of theft. ¶3. (SBU) According to Ajay Mree, Chairman of the Indigenous Development Organization, the Forest Department currently has 6,633 false cases against 3,000 Garo people pending; including a case against the Pirgacha Mission and against Garo people who are not living in the Madhupur Forest area. Maloti, the local women's leader, said like many others who have false cases filed against them, she has been going to court in Tangail 35 km away every other month for the past few years to avoid being arrested in relation to the case. ¶4. (SBU) Eugin Nokrek, Chairman of the Tribal Welfare Association Madhupur Branch, noted that of the 13 BDG Eco Park Projects underway throughout Bangladesh, all are situated in areas where indigenous groups have traditionally lived. On August 18, the Bangladesh Movement to Protect Indigenous People's Rights organized a discussion in Dhaka demanding an end to "encroachment on the lands of indigenous people in the name of eco parks and extensions of the Forest Department" in commemoration of an indigenous leader who was killed as he tried to resist an eviction five years ago. ¶5. (C) COMMENT: This prolonged struggle between the Garo community and the BDG in Madhupur Forest underscores the BDG's careless attitude towards indigenous group land rights throughout the country and the Forestry Department's reputation for mismanagement and corruption. END COMMENT CHAMMAS