SEA indigenous people to media: Give voice to our struggles
Bangkok, Thailand — Representing almost 50 million people with more than 1,000 groups scattered in 10 member-countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), indigenous people’s groups challenged media practitioners to be more prudent in reporting issues that affect their identity, culture and rights. In a recent two-day media dialogue here, indigenous people from […]
Bangkok, Thailand — Representing almost 50 million people with more than 1,000 groups scattered in 10 member-countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), indigenous people’s groups challenged media practitioners to be more prudent in reporting issues that affect their identity, culture and rights.
In a recent two-day media dialogue here, indigenous people from Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines discussed common and serious issues like discrimination, oppression and marginalization by nation-states. But these issues, they said, lacked sufficient media coverage.
“The coverage of media is difficult, especially here in the Mekong Region,” said Joan Carling, an Igorot from the Cordillera Region of the Philippines and secretary general of Asian Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP).
Carling added that except for the Philippines and Indonesia, indigenous people’s issues in other countries sorely lacked media attention due to discrimination and non-recognition of several states.
No media sympathy
Carling cited the Thai media coverage of a story about a series of crash landings of three military helicopters.
The real reason, she said, behind the crash landings were the government’s forest rangers who burned some houses of a community of Karen people, an indigenous people in Thailand. The three helicopters were responding to assist the rangers but went down one after the other.
Media sympathetically reported on the pilots, but did not adequately report on the plight of the Karen people, she said.
“What happened behind the accident? In the first place, it could have been avoided if they (forest rangers) did not burn the houses to drive away the Karen people,” said Carling.
Carling said that Karen people were being disregarded as an indigenous people. Media has fed on the general perception that hill tribes like the Karen are foreigners. This is also happening now in Cambodia, Carling added.
Asean integration
While member-countries in the Asean aim for integration in 2015, AIPP said that indigenous people in the region are now working to have them recognized as a political entity with collective concerns and issues as stated in United Nations principles.
According to Carling, however, the Asean Charter does not recognize indigenous people and even view them as threat. Asean member-countries, she added, have a long record of oppressing indigenous people and exploiting their economic and socio-cultural heritage.
“We lobbied hardly in the Asean. In meetings with country representatives, they adopted our proposal for legal recognition as distinct groups with collective rights. But it was stricken out when the member states held their meeting,” said Carling.
Aside from non-recognition in the Asean, some countries do not have national laws and policies that recognize indigenous people. In countries that have such laws, like the Philippines with its Indigenous Peoples Rights Act of 1997, violations of indigenous people’s rights still persist.
Indigenous people’s groups also fear that the Asean Community Integration by 2015 will further deprive them of their rights.
In the Asean economic blueprint, member-countries are pushing for a free trade and investment plan that include projects that threated indigenous people’s communities. These include interconnecting roads and highways, economic zones, mining, dams and power projects, palm oil plantation and other bio-fuel projects, commercial agriculture, as well as land concessions for economic purposes or for real estate development and commercial tourism.
For indigenous people, the projects mean further violations of their rights and the destruction of their ancestral lands. States and multi/transnational corporations have been targeting the rich natural resources of their communities for mineral extractions.
“If we lose our land and forest, we lose everything,” explained Carling.
The group challenged the media to give more attention to the emerging issues and concerns of the indigenous people of the Asean and put forward their collective interest in reporting. “We will explore the challenges that media face and come up with an action plan to make more visibile the interest of indigenous peoples, promote their voice, access and participation in media,” Carling concluded.
