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CHIANG
MAI, Thailand (IPS) - An April report by a Thai newspaper, accusing
one of the country's hilltribe minorities of planning to break away
and form their independent state, came as no surprise to these ethnic
groups.
For Thailand's ethnic minorities, the report by the 'Nakorn Chiang
Rai' newspaper in northern Chiang Rai province was a continuation
of increasingly racist and unfounded attacks by the mainstream media.
Looked down upon by mainstream society for years and stereotyped
as opium cultivators and drug peddlers, forest destroyers, as well
as illiterate and 'uncivilised', the 900,000 ethnic hilltribe people
of Thailand have time and again had to deal with unprovoked racist
attacks and accusations.
The newspaper article helped in further perpetuating these 'myths'
by claiming that the Hmong community, Thailand's second largest
hilltribe community after the Karen, planned to declare autonomy
in the north of the country within 20 years, say academics and social
critics.
Incensed, the Hmong decided to file charges against the paper at
a local police station, and demanded that Chiang Rai Governor Samrerng
Boonyoprakorn look into the matter.
Despite this, few expect that much will come out of the case, and
it will, like so much that is controversial and too difficult to
digest, quietly fade away from media attention.
The growing use by the media of mainstream definitions and views
about minority populations, especially since Thailand's economic
meltdown in mid-97, runs parallel to discriminatory policies by
the state toward hilltribe populations, say critics.
Less than a third of the ethnic hilltribe people in this country
of 70 million people have failed to receive Thai citizenship, despite
having lived in the country for centuries.
They are subject to continuous pressures to move out of their homelands
in the mountains and forests, give up their traditional way of life
and language, and adopt the Thai 'way of life' and religion in this
mainly Buddhist country.
Without citizenship, they have no right to land, to vote, or to
basic social services.
But this was not always the case, says Dr Chayan Vaddanaputti, a
lecturer in political science at the University of Chiang Mai in
this northern Thai city and a specialist in ethnic studies.
''Earlier, they were seen by ordinary people in the lowlands as
'friends' and trading partners in a mutually symbiotic relationship
between the hills and the valleys,'' he explains.
But growing environmental problems after Thailand's national social
and economic development plans took off in the late 60s and early
70s, and an influx of Vietnamese migrants during the Vietnam war,
changed this relationship forever, he adds.
Then, they became the enemies, the 'other', he explains.
''The demonisation and criminalisation of ethnic minorities, and
the perpetuation of the myth that they are non-Thai, has been embedded
since then in Thai textbooks, in Thai history and in the mainstream
media,'' says Chayan.
Indeed, activists who met in Bangkok in July ahead of the World
Conference Against Racism later this month listed Thailand's treatment
of ethnic minorities and hilltribes as one of several examples showing
how ''racism, racial discrimination and intolerance continue to
be practised in various countries in South- east Asia''.
''The story that goes is that the hilltribe people are migrants
and refugees,'' explains Paul Hsein Twa, an ethnic Karen student
and activist who lives in the city of Chiang Mai.
''This is written in the history textbooks. So they don't have the
right to be citizens -- especially because they are seen as being
uncivilised and illiterate, destroying the natural environment because
of shifting cultivation practices, and growing opium,'' he says.
Thailand's forest cover dwindled from more than 60 percent a few
decades ago to less than 27 percent today. Although much of this
is blamed on the highland hilltribes, it is convenient for ignoring
the role of large timber companies and state-funded activities like
road-building in environmental degradation, academics and social
scientists say.
Up until the mid-1960s, opium was also an important cash crop in
the uplands, especially for the Hmong community, a people with a
long, rich history found in southern China, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam
today.
But an aggressive programme of crop substitution by the government
and the destruction of existing poppy fields has since then left
almost no land under opium cultivation.
While it is true that most hilltribe people are 'migrants', many
of them moved across the Salween river from neighbouring Burma into
Thailand, or from southern China more than four centuries ago. Does
this not give them right to citizenship, ask people from minority
backgrounds and academics.
After all, are not the Thais a mixture of various migrant groups
like the Khmer, Laotian, Yunnanese and Mon, they ask.
''Of course this policy (of discrimination against hilltribe communities)
is racist,'' exclaims Pornpen Ksongkaosonkiate of the human rights
NGO Forum-Asia in Bangkok.
''This is the policy of a dominant group toward the minorities.
Although the law may not be literally discriminatory, the practice
is. If you have no identification card you cannot even open a small
shop, or go to school,'' Pornpen explains.
Though Thailand's track record on education, health and other social
indicators is quite good on the whole, the statistics on hilltribe
people give another side to the story.
Not only have close to 60 percent of hilltribe people never attended
school, according to the 1997 government Tribal Health Survey, but
levels of malnutrition are almost twice as high as the average for
the general population.
More than 45 percent of hilltribe people's incomes are seen to be
insufficient to satisfy even basic needs.
With little education and few income earning opportunities, many
hilltribe women have joined Thailand's sex industry. It is estimated
that more than 10 percent of sex workers in Thailand are hilltribe
women -- and that 80 percent of them are HIV positive, said the
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in a 1997 report.
While their form of swidden or slash-and-burn cultivation used to
allow them to be food sufficient, pressures to move out of the forests
by the forestry department and incentives to cultivate cash rather
than subsistence crops have increased the hilltribes' vulnerability
to the forces of the market, and nature.
In August last year, in the northern Thai province of Nan, these
mainstream perceptions about the ethnic hilltribes turned violent
when lowland farmers accused the upland Hmong of destroying the
forests and sensitive watershed areas and causing a severe water
shortage downstream.
Some 3,000 farmers raided and burnt down more than 60 hectares of
fruit orchards belonging to the Hmong, the most economically successful
of all the hilltribe groups.
''There is an immediate need for a mechanism whereby hilltribe people
can appeal against racial discrimination in Thai society,'' explains
Pornpen. ''This issue is still not openly spoken about but its time
that its brought out in to the open so all ethnic minority groups
can have the same rights as Thais.'' (Inter Press Service)
(*The
following is part of a series of IPS features in advance of the
World Conference Against Racism and Discrimination, Aug 31-Sep 7,
Durban, South Africa.)
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