Yadana Pipeline Protest Case Dismissed
By Sai Silp
August 18, 2006
The case against prominent Thai social activist Sulak Sivaraksa, accused with other protestors six years ago of disrupting the building of a gas pipeline crossing part of Burma, has been dismissed by Thailand’s criminal court.
Sulak was charged with obstructing the pipeline when it was being built in 1998. It now transmits gas from the Yadana field in Burmese offshore waters to Thai power plants, via Mon and Karen areas. The pipeline was being built by state-controlled oil ands gas conglomerate PTT, formerly the Petroleum Authority of Thailand.
Sulak said the outcome was a victory for justice of sorts, but the issues of compensation for villagers in Burma whose land was taken and the misuse of the income from the gas by the Burmese regime remained unanswered.
“The pipeline project has not provided benefit for local people both Thai and Burma,” he told The Irrawaddy on Friday. “It is a shameful project. The Thai government has to pay US$ 400 million per year to the Burmese government and they use this money to abuse and threaten ethnic people in their country.”
The case was dropped because the law under which Sulak was charged related to the former state-owned Petroleum Authority of Thailand which had since been partially privatized as PTT plc.
PTT implied that it might still pursue Sulak. “We have not decided yet whether to move on in the legal process or not. [PTT] executives will discuss the matter after we have got the official report from Office of the Attorney General,” a company legal department spokesman said.
It is widely known that much of the income from Burma’s gas, which now totals about US $1 billion from Thailand alone, goes to buy military equipment and weapons. Activists say this helps the junta harass ethnic groups opposed to the regime.
Sulak Sivaraksa is a high profile social commentator and environmental campaigner. In 2005, was nominated for Nobel Peace Prize for his social work among Thai communities, including the Assembly of the Poor, indigenous peoples and Buddhist groups.
As Bhutan prepares to embrace parliamentary democracy in 2008, it should be cautious about drawing models from western democracy, says a Buddhist scholar from Thailand.
Mr. Ajarn Sulak Sivaraksa, who is a teacher, an activist and a renowned Thai Buddhist scholar, said that he was afraid that Bhutan would use western democracy as a model, a mistake most Asian countries like Bur-ma, Sri Lanka including his own country, Thailand made.
The elections, he emphasised, was one of the very negative sides from the west.
Bhutan should instead adopt the Buddhist model of democracy.
The old “sangha model”, he said, which is the oldest Buddhist democracy upholds positive actions, transforms bad habits, purifies negativity, increases virtuous acts and encourages equality and fraternity for all.
Simplicity, modesty and harmony, he said, were the key elements in the Buddhist concept. He said that the sangha model was used to run Bhutan some 100 years ago and could still be referred to pull out positive aspects so Bhutan could itself become a model for rest of the world.
“With the western democracy you cannot stop corruption,” he said. “That is evident in the British and American elections which are filled with it.”
The advent of western modernisation in Thailand started a century ago before it came to Bhutan, and he said that his country adopted western democracy at the expense of Buddhism.
“That’s where we went wrong as our elites embraced modernisation at the cost of our own tradition and culture,” Mr. Sulak Sivaraksa told Kuensel. “Now our invaluable tradition and culture live only in the form of dance and music and not as a way of life.”
Bhutan, he said, was in a very unique situation in that it remained isolated while all its neighbouring countries went through the evils of western modernisation, which gave the country the advantage to learn about both the positive and negative aspects of modernisation and adopt what was good and relevant.
“The countryีs policy of allowing few selected tourists is a good example of that,” said Mr. Sulak Sivaraksa, adding that while the country focused on learning certain things from the tourists, it in turn taught them a great deal about values, tradition, culture and preservation of nature.
“Tourism destroys every country like mine,” he said. “Our local people saw them as wonderful modern people with great spending capacity. They then started aping the tourists and embraced their ways of life.”
Samten Wangchuk
from Kuensel
Saturday August 26, 2006
