NEWS - Burma's Dictatorship's Clear

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Subject: NEWS - Burma's Dictatorship's Clear-cutting Destroys Ethnics' Land

and Future
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Burma's Dictatorship's Clear-cutting Destroys Ethnics' Land and Future

Rangoon Post 1-Sept.-1999

   The SLORC leadership has apparently decided that exploiting natural
resources is the best means of developing the country. Current SLORC
practices regarding timber, minerals, fishing rights and oil concessions
indicate sales of these resources are the primary strategy for raising
funds. 

  When the SLORC took control of Burma, the country was estimated to
have had 80 percent of the world's remaining teak forests. During the
last three years, however,the SLORC has sold expansive concessions of
teak and other hardwoods to Thai timber companies for clear-cutting. In
1990, the United Nations estimated that 1,235,000 acres of tree cover
were disappearing every year in Burma due to clear-cutting practices.
The World Watch Institute estimates forest-cutting in Burma at over 2
million acres per year. 

  This massive clear-cutting has resulted recently in flash flooding,
50,000 people homeless and a few dead.  The military SPDC/SLORC cares
only for its future anf finances no matter what the cost in land,
resources and lives to other ethnic groups.  

  This land and resources do not even legally belong to this military
dictatorship to sell.  

Info. Source: Multinational Monitor