Myanmar's tourism dreams pierced by Rohingya crisis

Yahoo – AFP, Marion THIBAUT, October 29, 2017

In Myanmar, there are fears the Rohingya refugee crisis could throw the country's
fledgling tourism sector back to the dark days under military rule (AFP Photo/Ye Aung THU)

Only a few years ago Beyonce and Jay-Z were posing for photos among Myanmar's famed temples, heralding the former junta-run country's rise as one of the hottest new tourist destinations on the map.

But that dream is cracking as images of burnt villages and Muslim Rohingya fleeing army-led violence in western Rakhine shock the globe, sparking outrage over a staggering scale of human suffering that has festered along the border.

Ever since the bloodshed broke out in late August, tourism operators have witnessed a cascade of cancellations, rippling fear through a nascent industry that was gearing up for its high season in October.

"Almost all the trips scheduled for October and November have been cancelled due to instability in the country, because of the situation in Rakhine state," said Tun Tun Naing from New Fantastic Asia Travels and Tour, an agency that leads trips to the pristine beaches and mist-shrouded lakes that dot the lush country.

"Most groups in Japan, Australia and other Asian countries cited security reasons and some Europeans have clearly said they boycotted because of the humanitarian situation," he told AFP.

In Yangon, a bustling city known for its crumbling colonial architecture, some foreign tourists could still be seen circling the gilded Shwedagon Pagoda that looms over the former capital.

But they admitted that the ongoing crisis is an awkward backdrop for their holiday.

"It's very sad to see what the country is becoming, our guide told us that Muslims were dangerous and that they were not Burmese," said French tourist Christine, who declined to give her surname, of a crisis that has spiked religious tensions in the Buddhist majority country.

Some distinguished guests are also keeping their distance, with Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, and his wife Camilla deciding to skip a stop in the former colony during an autumn tour of Asia.

One step forward, two back?

There are fears the refugee crisis could throw Myanmar's fledgling tourism sector back to the dark days under military rule, when many travellers passed over the pariah state to avoid lining the pockets of generals who brutally suppressed human rights.

All that had started to change after the army initiated a transition to partial democracy in 2011.

The move saw Western sanctions lifted as foreign tourists flocked to landscapes unspoiled by the crowds and travel infrastructure that has mushroomed elsewhere in the region.

The first half of 2017 kicked off well with a 22 percent increase in visitors compared to the previous year, according to figures from the Ministry of Tourism, which hopes to double the number of annual arrivals to 7.5 million by 2020.

But at the end of August, western Rakhine state was in flames.

Raids by mobs of poorly-armed Rohingya militants prompted a military backlash so brutal the UN says it likely amounts to ethnic cleansing of the Muslim minority.

More than half a million Rohingya have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh in two months, carrying testimony of killings, rape and arson at the hands of soldiers and Buddhist mobs.

Their chilling stories, alongside photos of gaunt and weary refugees cramming into Bangladesh's ramshackle refugee camps, have seized headlines around the globe and cast a pall over the young democracy's rise.

A few hours south of the conflict zone in Rakhine state lies Mrauk-U, an ancient capital and hallowed archaeological site.

Two months into the crisis, locals say the site is empty of the tourists normally buzzing around its ruins.

"All people who live on tourism are out of work now," guide Aung Soe Myint told AFP.

Myanmar's tourism dreams crushed by Rohingya crisis https://t.co/D6vgGwq1Xq pic.twitter.com/8vyLTxjRrH

— AFP news agency (@AFP) October 29, 2017

Despite the clear seas and white sandy beaches of Raja Ampat, Indonesia, the islands' children face the gloomy reality of poor education

Despite the clear seas and white sandy beaches of Raja Ampat, Indonesia, the islands' children face the gloomy reality of poor education pic.twitter.com/gPzCjTsEsi

— AFP news agency (@AFP) October 16, 2017

Indonesian bishop resigns amid mistress, corruption allegations

Indonesian bishop Hubertus Leteng was accused of having a mistress and siphoning off more than 100,000 euros in church funds. Leteng has denied the allegations.

Deutsche Welle, 12 October 2017

Pope Francis on Wednesday accepted the resignation of Bishop Hubertus Leteng of Indonesia's Ruteng diocese, after the Vatican dispatched an investigator to look into allegations that he had had a mistress and skimmed over 100,000 euros ($118,000) from church funds.

The probe was triggered after dozens of priests resigned en masse to protest Leteng's conduct.

The 58-year-old Leteng has denied the allegations but did not offer any explanation about his premature retirement, almost 17 years before the usual retirement age for a bishop.

The Vatican also did not address the scandal or clarify why Leteng was retiring early. It named Sylvester San, a Bali-based Bishop of Denpasar, as a temporary replacement.

Leteng said the money was used to finance the education of poor youth, AP news agency reported, citing Ucanews, which reports on the Catholic Church in Asia. He termed allegations that he had a relationship with a woman "slanderous."

Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country, is home to some 45 bishops and 4,900 Catholic priests, according to 2015 Vatican data.

ap/bk (AFP, AP)

First global pact backing indigenous land rights launched

MSN – AFP, Marlowe HOOD, 3 October 2017

Provided by AFP Brazilian natives demonstrate in front of the Planalto Palace in
Brasilia, during the National Mobilization Week to protest and demand their rights, in 2015

Native peoples struggling to retain or regain stewardship of forests that sustained them for countless generations may finally have backing from an organisation with both swag and sway.

The International Land and Forest Tenure Facility -- the first and only global institution dedicated to securing the land rights of indigenous communities worldwide -- was formally launched in Stockholm on Tuesday.

Funded by Sweden, Norway and the Ford Foundation, a major US philanthropy, the Tenure Facility has already provided grants and guidance for pilot projects in Peru, Mali, and Indonesia, helping local communities leverage rarely enforced laws to protect their land and resources.

Disputes over land rights in tropical forests teeming with exploitable resources -- from hard woods to precious stones to oil -- can quickly escalate into deadly conflict, and local peoples more often than not wind up on the losing end.

More than 200 environmental campaigners, nearly half from indigenous tribes, were murdered around the world in 2016 alone, according to watchdog NGO Global Witness.

Restoring some measure of control to the original inhabitants of forests appropriated by corrupt governments or extraction industries has also proven an effective bulkhead against global warming, according to a 2014 global survey by the US-based World Resources Institute, a think tank.

In Brazil, for example, deforestation in indigenous community forests from 2000 to 2012 was less than 1 percent, compared with 7 percent outside those areas.

'Unrelenting conflicts'

Provided by AFP Representatives of indigenous communities and activists protest
in front of the Chinese Embassy in Lima, Peru, on September 22, 2017, to support the
Achuar, Kichwa and Quechua Amazonic tribes affected by oil industry activities on their
ancestral lands

Tropical vegetation soaks up planet-warming CO2 emitted by the burning of fossil fuels.

Destroying these forests outright not only reduces the area available to absorb carbon dioxide, it also releases CO2 into the atmosphere, accounting in recent decades -- along with agriculture and livestock -- for more than a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions.

"We see climate change and inequality as two of the greatest existential threats facing the planet," said Ford Foundation president Darren Walker.

"Creating mechanisms that allow indigenous peoples and local communities to gain tenure over their land or forests is a way to tackle both these problems," he told AFP ahead of a conference keyed to the launch.

Walker has pledged five million dollars, and expects -- based on other grants in the pipeline -- the facility to have 100 million within a year.

The project aims over the span of a decade to boost forestland properly titled to indigenous peoples by 40 million hectares, an area twice the size of Spain.

Such efforts, they calculate, would prevent deforestation of one million hectares and the release of 500 million tonnes of CO2, more than the annual emissions of Britain or Brazil.

"The Tenure Facility provides a powerful solution to save the world's forests from the ground up," said Carin Jamtin, director general of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, a key funder.

Corruption and abuses

More than two billion people live on and manage half the world's land area in customary or traditional systems, yet indigenous communities have formal legal ownership of only 10 percent.

And even where they do have title, corruption and abuses have led to protracted conflicts with local and national governments, companies and migrant workers.

Native populations can even run afoul of major green initiatives to fight climate change or stem biodiversity loss.

A controversial UN-backed programme, for example, known as REDD+ -- Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation -- creates incentives to keep forests intact, paid for by rich nations or companies seeking to offset pollution under carbon trading schemes.

But the projects that REDD+ finances can push aside the needs and rights of indigenous peoples who are often most directly affected by the changes set in motion, critics say.

A peer-reviewed 2013 study -- one of the few to examine the impacts on local communities -- concluded that less than half of 50-odd projects in Africa, Latin America and Asia did anything to alleviate the poverty of forest-dependent peoples.

But many did enhance their land tenure rights, they concluded.

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