[Editorial] Think twice before doing irreversible damage

2010-10-01 17:17

Cached:  http://www.koreaherald.com/national/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20101001000840

The mighty Mekong River, as the world knows it, may never be the same again if the Lao government has its way. There is a growing fear that up to 40 million people could be affected if the Xayaburi Dam and 12 other mainstream dams on the Mekong are to go ahead as planned.

The Xayaburi Dam would be the first dam to be built on the lower Mekong mainstream. It would displace thousands of people in Laos, disrupt an important fish migration route and cause the extinction of the critically endangered Mekong giant catfish, by destroying one of its last natural spawning habitats. The dam is being proposed by Thai company Ch. Karnchang, and over 95 percent of the power generated would be sold to Egat, the Thai electricity utility.

Environmental organizations around the world and donor countries such as the United States, a major contributor to the Mekong River Commission, have voiced their concern about the possible impact of the dam on the river’s ecosystem and the livelihoods of the people who live on this great waterway that runs through the heart of Southeast Asia.

It has been suggested the dams should not proceed until there is an extensive debate on the MRC’s strategic environmental assessment and the findings have been revealed.

The purpose of the strategic environmental assessment report is to evaluate the cumulative effects of the proposed mainstream dams. It is hoped that the Lao government will conduct the assessment properly, take its findings seriously and not treat the process as a formality. Its findings should be distributed publicly and debated throughout the region by all governments and other stakeholders.

The powerful U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing one day after the MRC announced that it had received official notification from Laos that the country wished to proceed with the first dam, the Xayaburi, on the lower Mekong. The timing of the hearing suggests that Washington is serious about how its aid money is used.

The import of the Mekong River’s fisheries as a source for food security in the region is well known throughout the world, and the thought of its ecosystem being irreparably disturbed is indeed troubling. Such action could have serious ramifications at all levels political, social and economic. What is disturbing is the fact that the Lao government, the project developer Ch. Karnchang and the Mekong River Commission seem determined to push forward with the Xayaburi Dam despite the absence of a serious public debate on the important issues.

In her statement before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Aviva Imhof, campaigns director for International Rivers, said to allow the Xayaburi consultation process to go forward without considering the findings of the strategic environmental assessment would be like “getting a diagnosis of cancer and then ignoring it”.

As a good neighbor, Thailand has a moral obligation to take into consideration the well-being of the people who stand to be affected by the dam’s construction. The same concern should also be taken up by the donor countries.

Thai environmental and community groups representing about 24,000 people in five provinces along the Mekong River have submitted a letter to Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, asking him to cancel the plan to buy electricity from the Xayaburi Dam.

According to the World Wildlife Conservation Fund, the dam, if built, will block the sediment and nutrients that build the Mekong Delta and nourish its immense productivity, which provides more than 50 percent of Vietnam’s staple food crops. Moreover, the dam would alter wildlife habitats downstream in Laos and Cambodia, potentially having a devastating impact on wild fisheries and causing the likely extinction of critically endangered species.

“There must be a rigorous and transparent assessment of the impacts of this dam,” said Marc Goichot, sustainable infrastructure senior advisor for WWF Greater Mekong.

(The Nation)

(Asia News Network)

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Community Threatened by Dam.

2010-09-30

The Don Sahong Dam is one of the projects planned for the lower Mekong River that is most debated by environmentalists because of its expected impact on fisheries.

The hydroelectric project will provide power for export to other countries in the region, as Laos seeks to become the “battery” of Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, the dam will displace the local community in Don Sahong that relies on the river’s rich fisheries.

Related story:
Traveling down the Mekong River

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Laos’ Xayabury dam impact potentially ‘catastrophic’

cached:  http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2010093042406/National-news/laos-xayabury-dam-impact-potentially-catastrophic.html

Thursday, 30 September 2010 22:09 Will Baxter and Cheang Sokha

A hydropower dam proposed for Laos’ northern Xayabury province could have serious negative effects on fisheries, biodiversity and livelihoods downstream in Cambodia, a spokesman for the World Wide Fund for Nature has said.

“Cambodia will be one of the hardest hit countries from the construction of any, including Xayabury, of the proposed 11 lower Mekong mainstream dams,” said Marc Goichot, a senior adviser on sustainable infrastructure at WWF Greater Mekong.

“These impacts are potentially catastrophic, and can include riverbank erosion, impacting the riverside homes of millions of Cambodians.”

Laos notified the Mekong River Commission of its plan for the 1,260-megawatt dam on September 22.

Goichot’s assessment was far bleaker than that of Pich Dun, secretary general of the Cambodian National Mekong Committee, who acknowledged that the dam would “affect fish migration, but not very seriously”.

“According to the study, the dam is being built far from Cambodia, so only some kinds of fish are migrating from here to there, and that is why the effects will not be so huge,” Pich Dun said.

“But if all 11 dams are built, the people on the lower Mekong will face difficulties with the change in the flow of sediments to their crops,” he said.

But Goichot said the dam would “lead to the extinction of the Mekong giant catfish in the wild and probably other fish species”.

Sam Nouv, deputy director for the Fisheries Administration, said he, too, was “concerned” about the dam. “When a dam is built on the upstream, it really impacts the fisheries in Cambodia,” he said. ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY SAM RITH

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Clearing the cluster bombs in Laos

Helping rid the land of unexploded ordnance is one of the United States government’s top priorities in Laos

Peter Haymond

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 30 September 2010 23.00 BST

Article history

Cached:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/sep/30/laos-us-military

An unexploded US Blu 24 bomblet, cleared in this case by a Danish government-funded team, is marked for destruction at Nam Tom village near Phonsavan, Xieng Khuang province, northern Laos. Photograph: EPA/Barbara Walton

As the US chargé d’affaires in Vientiane, Laos, I read with great interest the recent articles by Melody Kemp (“The Casualties of Cluster Bombs Must Not Be Forgotten“) and Brett Dakin (“Laos and the Legacy of Vietnam“). Kemp implies that the United States has done little to assist in clearance of unexploded ordnance (UXO) in Laos – and nothing to aid Lao victims of UXO accidents. On the contrary, one of the US government’s top priorities in Laos has been – and is – the removal of unexploded ordnance. The United States remains Laos’s largest donor for UXO clearance and victim assistance.

To date, the United States has provided Laos with more than $51m in assistance to the Lao people for UXO clearance, support for victims and education. The United States began providing assistance to UXO victims in Laos in 1993, through the Leahy War Victims Fund (managed by the US Agency for International Development). In fact, USAID will provide more than $1.7m to Cope, the organisation mentioned in Kemp’s article, to fund a joint US-Lao comprehensive orthotics programme.

This fiscal year, the US state department will spend more than $5m in Laos on a range of UXO-related activities, including more than $3.5m to fund the mine and UXO clearance operations both of the Lao government’s own UXO clearance agency and of international clearance organisations operating in Laos. Lao national authorities coordinate these operations, which every year destroy many thousands of items of unexploded ordnance, returning land to safe and productive use.

The state department also provides financial assistance to support risk education, mostly aimed at school age children, in programmes developed by the Lao government and international NGOs, and victims’ assistance projects conducted by international NGOs with Lao medical centres. Brett Dakin may not be aware of it, but our department of agriculture has separately contributed over $11m towards UXO clearance since 2007 through programmes that combine supplementary school food provision with UXO clearance near those schools.

As demonstrated by our years of engagement and assistance, the United States is committed to help Laos achieve our shared goal of eliminating the threat posed by UXO to the people of Laos.

Living in war’s shadow

Chomsy Kouanchao showed a picture of herself as a girl while holding one of her granddaughters, Ananda Nhouyvanisvong, 2.

Cached:  http://www.startribune.com/local/104050708.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUsZ

Memories of a “secret war” 30-plus years ago in Laos still haunt refugees living in Minnesota. Their stories will be part of a national exhibit opening this week in Minneapolis.

By ALLIE SHAH, Star Tribune

Last update: September 29, 2010 – 9:44 PM

The little girl in pink napped peacefully in her grandmother’s lap Tuesday as the grandmother described the horrors that drove her from Laos to Minnesota.

The toddler’s eyes remained closed as Chomsy Kouanchao spoke of the bombs that rained on her village. Of having to hide for days in a large ditch to escape the fighting. Of living in a squalid refugee camp in Laos and then crossing the seas and starting a new life in a bewildering land.

“I weep in my mind all the time,” she said.

The trauma was more than three decades ago, but for Kouanchao and thousands of Laotian refugees like her, the scars remain.

Their stories — rarely told — are captured in a drama that is part of a groundbreaking exhibit opening Thursday at Intermedia Arts in south Minneapolis. The play, “Refugee Nation,” and the “Legacies of War” exhibit examine the impact of war on Laotian refugees and their children. Organizers say it’s also part of a larger effort to spotlight a little-known chapter in U.S. history that led to the resettlement of 400,000 Lao and Hmong people in the United States.

“The older generation, we found so many of them feel that no one understands who they are and why they’re here,” said Bryan Thao Worra, a local writer and Lao Assistance Center of Minnesota staff member.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Laos became a battleground in a covert war against communism conducted by the U.S. military. Villages were repeatedly bombed, creating a mass exodus of refugees.

Lao refugees began arriving in Minnesota in the early 1980s. Today, Minnesota has the nation’s third-largest Lao-American population, with 25,000 residents living mostly in Hennepin County, according to the Lao Assistance Center of Minnesota.

Although the war ended long ago, the trauma continues.

Much like World War II soldiers who returned to America and refused to talk about what they had lived through, the older Lao refugees who rebuilt their lives here have kept quiet — even to their families, Worra said.

Their children were small when they fled and many have grown up unaware of all that their parents went through.

That’s created a disconnect between generations, said Malichansouk Kouanchao, a local artist and guest curator of the exhibit.

On display will be some unusual illustrations born of another communication gap.

In the refugee camps, villagers could not explain to the English-speaking camp workers what they had seen. So they drew pictures of planes and bombs and blood.

For decades, those sketches sat untouched in an office in Washington, D.C.

But recently, a chance encounter between the man who had the historic drawings in his office and a Lao-American woman named Channapha Khamvongsa led to their rediscovery. He told her to “do something with them,” said Khamvongsa, who is now the executive director of Legacies of War and is in Minneapolis for the opening.

Malichansouk Kouanchao created two pieces of original artwork that also will be displayed at the exhibit, but her involvement goes deeper.

Her mother is Chomsy Kouanchao.

She and her mother both told their stories to the playwrights who wrote “Refugee Nation.” For the daughter, hearing more of her parents’ life has helped satisfy her hunger to know more about her past.

For the mother, sharing her story with her children helps her continue healing. She suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and loud noises such as doors slamming still unnerve her.

Two artists from California wrote the play, and traveled to Minnesota five years ago to collect oral histories from Lao refugees and their descendants.

The play is a first for the Lao-American community, which is said to be experiencing a cultural renaissance this year.

A children’s book based on Malichansouk Kouanchao’s journey as refugee and written by a local author is due out in November, and earlier this year, the first national Lao American Writers Summit was held in Minnesota.

Getting people to open up about what they had witnessed during the war in Laos was hard, said Worra, who introduced the playwrights to local refugees to interview.

“They said, ‘It brings up too much bad memories. We are not ready to talk about it,'” he said.

Worra also detected resistance from people in the arts community who wondered if there was enough of an audience for such a play.

“No one’s interested in Lao-American stories,” he says he heard many times.

But the story needs to be told, and the war is not over, he said.

Many of the bombs dropped long ago did not explode and have made minefields out of villages.

The locals in Laos call them the “eight-eyed bugs,” Worra said, with eight trip wires extending from each bomb.

“There’s still a lot lurking under the surface,” Worra said. “Even now, as elders are starting to open up and share what they went through, there’s still a lot of pain.”

Allie Shah • 612-673-4488

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Laos: Five Christians detained

Cached:  http://www.inspiremagazine.org.uk/news.aspx?action=view&id=4836

The Church in Laos is calling for urgent prayer for five Lao Christians being held by police in the north of the country.

The five were among 37 young Christians who were detained by police as they planted trees in Meungfeung district on 18 September. Thirty-two of them were later released, including one young woman who has a four-month-old baby, but five remain in custody.

Release International partners are concerned that the group may be ill-treated in jail. Christians arrested in Laos in the past are reported to have suffered harsh interrogation and abuse, even torture.

A partner of Release said: “Please pray for them and for their families, who are very worried. Their group are all praying and fasting too. This is a big challenge for the new Christians involved.”

(Source: Voice of the Martyrs New Zealand)