US embassy cable - 05DHAKA4205

C O N F I D E N T I A L DHAKA 004205 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/22/2015 
TAGS: PHUM, EAGR, SENV, BG, Rural Development 
SUBJECT: BDG MADHUPUR FOREST PROJECT STILL DISTURBING GARO 
COMMUNITY 
 
REF: 04 DHAKA 00074 
 
Classified By: A/Political Counselor David Renz; reason para 1.4(d) 
 
1. (C) On August 21, Poloff met with Garo community leaders 
at the Pirgacha Mission about the BDG National and Eco Park 
projects' effects on the local Garo community in the Madhupur 
Forest in northern Bangladesh.  Father Eugene Homrich, an 
American priest and director of the Pirgacha Mission for the 
last fifty years, described the Garo Community efforts to 
resist BDG eviction notices from the Madhupur Forest since 
1962 and highlighted the recent case of violence and a 
fatality in January 2004 due to the BDG National and Eco Park 
projects (reftel).   Father Homrich repeatedly faulted the 
BDG Forestry Officials and an Asian Development Bank financed 
project for environmental degradation, depleting forest 
resources for personal gain, rampant corruption, and 
harassment through numerous false cases filed against the 
Garo community. 
 
2. (C) Homrich stated that while National Parks are 
supposedly designed to develop tourism and recreation and Eco 
Parks to preserve eco-systems, both projects in the Madhupur 
Forest area have only led to environmental degradation and 
destruction of forestland.  According to Homrich, the BDG has 
claimed to use some of the national park land for "social 
forestry" projects to give certain plots to disadvantaged and 
vulnerable social groups.  Instead, this land has been given 
to well-connected elites and has been used to cultivate 
bananas instead of preserve forestland, he claimed.  Homrich 
further asserted that when building materials for Eco Park 
and National Park walls have been stolen, the Garo community 
was wrongly accused of theft. 
 
3. (SBU) According to Ajay Mree, Chairman of the Indigenous 
Development Organization, the Forest Department currently has 
6,633 false cases against 3,000 Garo people pending; 
including a case against the Pirgacha Mission and against 
Garo people who are not living in the Madhupur Forest area. 
Maloti, the local women's leader, said like many others who 
have false cases filed against them, she has been going to 
court in Tangail 35 km away every other month for the past 
few years to avoid being arrested in relation to the case. 
 
4. (SBU) Eugin Nokrek, Chairman of the Tribal Welfare 
Association Madhupur Branch, noted that of the 13 BDG Eco 
Park Projects underway throughout Bangladesh, all are 
situated in areas where indigenous groups have traditionally 
lived.  On August 18, the Bangladesh Movement to Protect 
Indigenous People's Rights organized a discussion in Dhaka 
demanding an end to "encroachment on the lands of indigenous 
people in the name of eco parks and extensions of the Forest 
Department" in commemoration of an indigenous leader who was 
killed as he tried to resist an eviction five years ago. 
 
5. (C) COMMENT:  This prolonged struggle between the Garo 
community and the BDG in Madhupur Forest underscores the 
BDG's careless attitude towards indigenous group land rights 
throughout the country and the Forestry Department's 
reputation for mismanagement and corruption.  END COMMENT 
CHAMMAS