DISCONTENT ON THE MOON
by Philip Cunningham

The Moon river is the lifeline of Isan, bringing sustenance
and irrigation to the poorest and most populous part of
Thailand. The World Bank identified the Moon, the greatest
of the Mekong's tributaries, as a suitable location for a
giant dam, and proceeded to fund a hydropower project that
is destroying the traditional way of life in a picturesque
river basin of self-sufficient villages.

Why is it that dams are always built in such beautiful
places? The Pak Moon Dam is located in the lush hilly zone
where Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia come together. Here the
yellow waters of the Moon surge downstream into the mud-red
Mekong mixing to form bi-colored waves, like coffee splashed
with cream. The banks on both sides are dark green, covered
with thick, jungly vegetation at the juncture known as the
"mae nam song si," or two-colored waters. Overlooking this
scene are the Pa Taem cliffs, protected surfaces of which
are scratched with artful paleolithic cave drawings, one of
the oldest sites of its kind in Asia.

A short distance upstream is another work of man, an
altogether different kind of scratch on the environment. The
Pak Moon Dam is a homely concrete monstrosity 300 meters
wide and 17 meters high. The World Bank provided technical
support and loans which will cost the people of Thailand
some 223 million dollars plus interest when the loan is paid
in full.

The electricity generating facility blocks and regulates the
natural flow of the Moon, but it's not been working as well
as proponents claimed it would and economists reckon it
won't pay for itself, let alone contribute meaningfully or
profitably to Thailand's electricity grid (the 1995
estimated Output was 0.04% of the total).

Failure to deliver what it was supposed to deliver is reason
enough to question the wisdom of the bankers and
technocrats, since it is ordinary Thai citizens who will
eventually have to pick up the tab. But the precipitous
decline in fish populations and growing poverty of villagers
along the banks of the river is stirring angry protest. By
some estimates, the Moon has lost ninety percent of the fish
that used to spawn here, and once enriched the Mekong
downstream in Laos and Cambodia.

Peasant folk, with a deep and abiding respect for their
river of life, opposed the dam early on, as did numerous
NGO's and technical experts. But it's not easy standing in
front of the steamroller of progress, especially when funded
by a prestigious US based institution such as the World
Bank. Early protests against the project were blithely
ignored by contemptuous yet insecure Bangkok politicians
suffering from development envy. Power hungry EGAT, (the
Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand.) "We are the
authorities, we have the law, we have the right to develop,"
said one of EGAT's public relation men recently. "We have to
have power."

Power indeed. The powerless and impoverished who have borne
the brunt of EGAT's power plunders are getting more and more
people to listen.

For one, the World Commission on dams released a draft study
highly critical of the Pak Moon project in February.
Furthermore, the Isan peasants, some of them in their tenth
year of protest, have upped the stakes: They are no longer
asking for compensation; -- they want the river back. It's
not that the Bangkok pols and crooks who routinely line
their pockets in the name of rural development suddenly had
a change of heart so much as the fact that EGAT suddenly
lost control of the dam. The villagers, tired of being
ignored, tired of being Dismissed, took things into their
own hands, in this case, literally.

The Pak Moon dam and Rasi Salai dam are both occupied round
the clock by angry peasants and no one steps near either
site, especially the edgy authoritarians at EGAT, without
protester permission. Journalists, demonstrators and rock
bands have been welcomed with open arms, but EGAT, which has
a long record of deceptive public announcements, has been
kept firmly at bay.

It's psychological warfare at the moment, with radical
supporters of the largely silent peasants countering the
noisy, defensive claims of EGAT on behalf of the largely
silent state. EGAT assistant governor Subhin Panyamags says
it's too late to do anything about the dam, echoing remarks
made by science minister Athit Urairat. "Compensation has
been paid," he announced at a recent seminar in Bangkok.
"This business is finished."

Wanida Tantiwitayapitak, a well-known Bangkok activist
serving as spokeswoman for the peasants is not easily cowed
by bureaucrats passing the buck. In a cover story in
Siamrath's weekly she said, "If we are to oppose an unjust
state, then we have to engage in rebellion," echoing the
strident rhetoric of Thai leftists of an earlier generation.
She says she doesn't mind being arrested. "The state is part
of an unjust system exploiting the poor."

Trying to pit farmer against fishermen, EGAT public
relations men claim they need to take control of the dam to
prevent farms from being flooded as the water was above the
flooding level of 110 meters. The protesters quickly
countered on June 10 with a photo provided to newspapers
showing a protestor dangling in front of the dam watermark
which was a good two meters below that level.

EGAT has also said the people of Ubol Rachatani Province
will suffer blackouts if the protesters failed to disperse,
but university experts came in and pointed out that the only
blackouts likely to occur would involve a malicious flip of
an EGAT switch since electricity is currently in over-supply
and not dependent on the dam which has never performed up to
standard. The Assembly of the Poor, as they are known in
Thailand's English press, represent a coalition of
villagers, fishermen and activists from Thai NGO's hoping to
stop the kind of development that only construction firms
and kickback rich politicians can love --something totally
unnecessary and ecological damaging that makes the place
where it is located worse off than before.

Peasant protest leader, Thongcharoen surrounded by a half
dozen villagers wearing rural threads, looked distinctly
uneasy and out of place when he came to Bangkok to speak to
foreign correspondents on May 31. Sporting a wispy Uncle Ho
style goatee, cowboy hat and a plaid peasant scarf, he spoke
in a quiet and dignified manner. "The Moon is our
bloodline...how dare they destroy nature...we predicted this
would happen...electricity output goes up and down but
villagers life only goes down. We used to have a rich
life...let it be the last dam."

The use of snappy sound bites was a bit disconcerting,
coming from a man otherwise convincing in his sincerity, but
the fact that there is a warrant out for his arrest might
help explain his inability to engage in any real
conversation. Surrounded by a dozen supporters both rural
and urban, Thongcharoen moved within in a bubble so tight
that even esteemed social activist Sulak Sivarak had trouble
breaking in. Isan villagers long dependent on the Moon for
fishing have the most easily defined complaint --the fish
are gone. Cambodians down river are suffering too, because
fish that can't return to their natural spawning grounds
upstream at the Moon, are not going to make the downriver
journey via the Mekong to Tonle Sap and beyond. The World
Commission on Dam study says 169 of 256 species have been
affected and 77 prevented from migrating. Furthermore, some
fifty breeding grounds in shallow rapids have been
submerged.

According to an American fisheries expert, long resident in
Thailand, the peasants are exactly right. "Dams kill
rivers," explains Tyson Roberts of the Smithsonian Tropical
Research Institute. A burly, cheerful man, whose thirty
years in country leads him to say "our" river, instead of
"their" river, Tyson says "the fish have to be able to go up
and down, and most can't scale the ladders. Fish ladders,"
he said, "are an afterthought, put in to counter ecological
criticism but actually ineffective." Social and
environmental considerations should be given equal weight to
financial considerations he says, adding. "Hydropower
threatens to destroy 20% of "our" fresh water fish. Damaging
the river ecology in term impacts fish populations in the
gulf and the sea."

But the seasoned protesters, wary of quick fix solutions
that EGAT technocrats have come up with, such as stocking
the Moon with new kinds of fish and generous (from the point
of view of poor peasants) offers of cash compensation are
calling for something less definable but more valuable, the
autonomy to preserve a way of life that has served them for
centuries, even millennia.

The Moon is blocked by a smaller dam at Rasi Salai, where
fisherman joined by rice farmers have taken over the
facility and threaten to tear it apart in a sympathetic
protest. The rice farmers not only complain about flooding,
but say their fields suffer increased salinity due to the
backed up waters and flooded forests. The protest at Rasi
Salai has gotten less attention in the press but is worth
taking note of for several reasons. Being smaller in size
and having earthen ramparts filled with stone, it can be,
and is, at least symbolically at the moment, being
deconstructed brick by brick.

During the height of the Cold War, this stretch of the Moon
river was "infested" with communist insurgents, some loyal
to Hanoi, but mostly under the command of the
China-dependent Communist Party of Thailand. Many of these
former rebels are still around, now advanced in years,
seamlessly blended into the social fabric as rice farmers,
teachers, even policemen. In fact, the notorious village of
Ku Sot, considered so red it was burned to the ground during
the heyday of Vietnam war era counterinsurgency, is not far
from the banks of the Moon. The above average political
awareness of peasants in this area is in part the legacy of
communism which flourished underground in Northeast Thailand
like nowhere else in the sixties And seventies.

The strident dream of changing Thailand by revolution was
undone long ago, not so much by the effectiveness of US
backed counter insurgency, (which tended to radicalize
people and produce more rebels) but because of the generally
easy going, happy go luck nature of the village folk who
don't take well to regimentation or dictatorship of any
sort. Nearby towns, such as Bungbun, are pleasant villages
composed of small merchants and small landholders who strive
more for self-sufficiency than integration with the distant
Bangkok government.

The politically savvy villagers here are not asking for
handouts, just a chance to be self-sufficient. Benign
neglect serves the region better than meddling from Bangkok,
abetted by the World Bank and other organizations of global
reach loyal to no one in particular. Villagers here grow
only one rice crop a year, like other parts of dry,
impoverished Isan, but they have been diligent and
industrious in building up cottage industries such as silk
weaving, and under nearly every wooden house on stilts, can
be heard the clackety clack rhythms of spindles and heavy
wooden looms.

News about the Pak Moon has been steady fare in Thai papers,
with constant hints of violence keeping readers on edge.
PROTESTERS FEAR BLOODY CRACKDOWN, THE DARK SIDE OF
DEVELOPMENT, PROTEST CHIEF DARES POLICE TO ACT, POWER SUPPLY
MAY BE HIT, etc.

The day after the headline, DAM PROTESTERS GET 10 AM
DEADLINE TO LEAVE, four popular musicians put on a concert
for the embattled protesters, injecting new life in the the
movement. Surachai Chantimatorn and Mongkol Utok of Caravan,
two veteran folksinger activists, were joined by the
comedian/singer Pongthep Kradonchamnan and the popular
heartthrob Pongsit Khampi. Unlike Bangkok's pop gliterati,
these singer-songwriters have deep roots in the countryside
and frequently pen "songs for life" about the oppressed and
dispossessed.

Writer Sulak Sivarak too has dedicated much of his work to
improve the life of the meek and abused, and his scorn for
those on high sometimes gets him in trouble. At a recent
public forum on the Moon in Bangkok, the British educated
scholar/activist held up a thousand-baht note to preface his
comments. "As you know," he says, waving pale pink bill in
the air, "the American dollar says 'In God we trust.' Well,
this is Thai money, Thai money shows, well, respectfully
speaking, their majesties, the King and the Queen and a
picture of a dam." Sulak's pointing out of the obvious
brought nervous chuckles to audience aware of Sulak's famous
lese majeste case that got him Chased out of the country.

Sulak went on to say that when he sent food to the
protestors at government house, he learned that the
hospitals had been ordered to stock up on blood supplies
since a violent confrontation seemed inevitable. "If you
want to show you have power, use non-violence." He lamented
the fact that Buddhist Thailand had been overtaken by a
western commercial culture that has distorted Descarte's
logic into "I buy, therefore I am," and proposes that
Buddhism could help set things right by re-asserting, "I
breathe, therefore I am," a simple view underscoring the
sanctity and equality of human life.

Sulak says the government must take the villagers seriously,
as they represent 85% of the nation. "Talk to them as
equals." He criticizes the EGAT fat cats and World Bank
experts for their five-star hotel lifestyle, divorced from
reality of countryside. He acknowledges that it is not easy
for the government to admit it is wrong, but said," if
government doesn't lose face, the people will suffer."

Melissa Foster, the only representative of the World Bank at
the meeting, spoke briefly in a sweet and soft-spoken manner
that did not entirely mask an awkward note of guilt in her
voice. She said she was at the forum not to preach but "to
listen and learn." That's a commendable approach, but why
didn't the World Bank listen and learn from the peasants ten
years ago before funding the controversial project? Kraisak
Chunhavan, son of former prime minister Chatchai, and a
member of parliament, takes issue with the World Bank view,
saying "I've been opposing dams all my life." He said even
when he worked as an advisor to the government, he couldn't
stop the bureaucracy from approving Pak Moon. "Dams are
named after royalty to avoid controversy," he noted wryly,
"but it backfires because when something goes wrong people
call it by royal name, like the "problem with Sirikit."

At this point, Kraisak looked around nervously, noting that
he, like Sulak, "had one foot in jail" for talking this way
about the monarchy. He said that developers "view farmers as
serfs," moving them around at will like pawns. "I hope this
is the last dam. Learn the lesson of Pak Moon or face the
consequences." he concluded, shifting from eloquent English
to tough Thai street talk.

"Mung sang, gu phao." You build it, We burn it."