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