The signs, erected by the Berawan people, a small indigenous ethnic group of approximately 1,000 people, draw the battleline in a land conflict that pits the Berawan against a Japanese hotel chain and the Sarawak state government. The bungalows rest on the non-Berawan side of the battleline; they comprise the Royal Mulu Resort, a five-star hotel for wealthy visitors to the breathtaking Mulu National Park.
Opened to foreign tourists in 1985, the park features the spectacular Mulu cave system, which includes the world's largest cave chamber. A recently constructed airstrip bordering the park makes this remote area far more accessible to outsiders than it was only a few years ago. Visitors can stay at low-priced tourist hostels run by Berawan entrepreneurs or at the Royal Mulu Resort which bills itself as offering "Adventure in the Lap of Luxury" and assures potential customers, "You won't be living in a tree-house in Mulu." Rooms at the luxury hotel, which is owned by local interests and operated by the Rihga Royal chain, cost from $100 to $800 a night.
Now the resort owners have provoked a conflict with the Berawan by preparing plans to expand the hotel and to construct a 200-acre golf course on land the Berawan claim is their ancestral, or Native Customary Right (NCR), land. The state government has lined up on the side of the hotel, a fact the Berawan link to the significant stake that family members of Sarawak's chief minister have in the hotel.
For the Berawan, the fight is the latest chapter in a decades-long struggle against "development projects." Like so many indigenous Dayak people in Sarawak, the Berawan have seen their means of survival undermined by the widespread logging of Sarawak's forests, which has deprived them of food and medicines and led to soil erosion and pollution of the rivers where they traditionally have fished.
While the Berawan-hotel dispute centers on a relatively small piece of territory, it is disturbingly representative of indigenous land conflicts in Sarawak. The Berawan themselves cast the conflict in broad terms and believe they are fighting on behalf of the state's entire indigenous population. "We feel that if the government can do this to us, it can do the same to native land anywhere in Sarawak," says Thomas Ngang, a leader of the Berawan.
Ancestral rights vs. family ties
The Berawan have strong evidence of their historic ties to the land for the proposed golf course. The land contains many markers of traditional Berawan use, including the remains of an old long house, a burial site and old gardens and fruit trees belonging to the Berawan, claims Ngang. It also, he adds, "is in the area where we hunt."
Representatives of the hotel in Mulu were unavailable for comment, and the Tokyo office of the Rihga Royal chain declined to respond to questions about the Berawan claims.
But the state government has been vocal in its refusal to recognize the Berawan land claim, with officials calling the Berawan "squatters" and "greedy people." Ngang retorts, "If we are squatters, the government should drop the chief minister and me in the Mulu cave and see who can find their way back." The state government says it is free to permit the hotel to use the disputed land, which it calls state land, as it wishes.
The Berawan charge that the government is refusing to recognize their NCR land because of the Sarawak chief minister's ties to Borsarmulu, the local company which owns the hotel. Lawyers hired by the Berawan have documented that the chief minister's brother, sister and brother-in-law sit on the board of directors of Borsarmulu. This sort of conflict of interest is typical in Sarawak, where the economy is dominated by small politically connected cliques, and it poses obvious difficulties for opponents of state- approved development projects.
Resisting the resort
With the government refusing to entertain repeated appeals for recognition of their land claims, the Berawan have resorted to various protest activities.
Since July 1992, they have temporarily blockaded the pathway to the resort's fuel storage area on several occasions, preventing oil from being delivered to the resort and threatening the resort's ability to continue operating. The Berawan held their most recent blockade during the last week of July and first week of August, with some of the Berawan who work in Sarawak's oil industry giving up their jobs in order to help staff the barricade.
Many Berawan work as guides for the national park, and they have tried to use their positions to advance their cause. The guides explain the Berawan concerns to all tourists, and ask the tourists to urge the government to recognize the Berawan NCR land claim. On August 2, in an attempt to increase the pressure on the government to recognize their land claims, the guides went on strike, essentially shutting down the national park, since tourists are not allowed to enter the park without a guide.
The Sarawak government's initial response to the Berawan's latest expression of militancy was forceful and unwavering. As the conflict heated up in the beginning of August, the police arrested a handful of people blockading the resort's fuel storage area and deployed more than a dozen paramilitary forces to the park. Awang Tengah Ali Husan, assistant minister in the Sarawak chief minister's office, told the Borneo Post, "The unsubstantiated claims by the Berawans will not be entertained even though the Mulu tribe has been staging strikes and protests."
Whether the government will maintain its hard-line position is unclear. The Berawan ultimately called off the August blockade, reportedly after the government announced that it would not negotiate with them if the protests continued. Although no date has been set for negotiations, the Berawan are hopeful that the government has softened its stand - but they are committed to resuming protests if the government refuses to enter a good-faith dialogue.
Development and dignity
The Berawan are careful to stress that they are not "anti-development." They support development of the national park as a tourist attraction - many of them now rely on tourism for their economic well-being - but they want their land rights recognized, and they want to be actively involved in decision-making about how land near the park will be used.
A leaflet distributed by the Berawan at the August blockade explained what is at stake in their fight: "It is a question of economic survival, and the defense of our fundamental rights to live as a people with dignity." For a people who have already seen their way of life profoundly changed by logging "development," the struggle over tourism at Mulu National Park may be the last opportunity to defend and assert their ancestral and community rights.
Officially, Ramos is the secretary-general of the National Federation of Free Trade Zone Workers in the Dominican Republic, an 18,704-square mile Caribbean nation of 7.3 million people. Chatting at a Santo Domingo hotel, the 30-year-old Ramos laughs as he refers to his "Federation of Fired People," then turns serious as he says: "Our hope is the AFL-CIO. It can get U.S. law imposed and insist that the law be followed so that we can have freedom of association and collective bargaining."
These are the rights that 150,000 Dominican workers, employed by 423 companies in this nation's 30 free trade zones, don't have now.
To try to obtain these basic human rights, the AFL-CIO petitioned the Office of U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor in June 1993 for a termination of the country's preferential trade status under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) and the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI). Under the GSP, companies can export tax-free raw or partly finished materials from the United States to the free trade zones, assemble those goods in the free trade zones and import the finished products back to the United States duty-free. The CBI is a program conferring special trade benefits on Caribbean nations.
At the same time, the AFL-CIO asked the U.S. government to withdraw the trade privileges it has accorded to Costa Rica and Haiti, citing violations of internationally recognized worker rights standards, and renewed its call for terminating trade benefits with three other Caribbean Basin countries, Panama, El Salvador and Guatemala.
Since 1968, when the Dominican Republic's first free trade zone was founded at La Romana by Gulf & Western, the country has taken greater advantage of the GSP than any other Caribbean nation.
More than half the free trade zone companies are U.S.-based - including such well-known names as Hanes, General Electric, Avon, Westinghouse, Baxter, Johnson & Johnson, Emerson Electric, Eli Lilly, Bristol-Myers and Abbott Labs. About a quarter of the companies are Dominican, usually subcontractors to big U.S. firms, according to Acelis Angeles de Glass, executive director of the National Council of Free Trade Zones for Export, a public-private organization that defines free trade zone policies and rules. A tenth of the free trade zone companies are South Korean; there are a dozen Taiwanese firms, a dozen Panamanian, and a few from Europe.
Wages in the free trade zones average about $175 a month, according to Angeles de Glass, and in 1992 the free trade zones sent $1.165 billion worth of goods abroad. Of that, 93 percent went to the mainland United States and Puerto Rico.
Just over two thirds of that value was in finished textiles - underwear, trousers, shirts, dresses, blouses. The next two biggest categories were shoes and electronics, each just under 5 percent of the total, followed by jewelry, which totaled just under 3 percent. Most of the remaining exported products consisted of sporting goods, metal products, tobacco, pharmaceuticals, furniture, luggage and other leatherware. About 3,000 products are on the list for duty-free U.S. access.
Free trade zones are one of the Dominican Republic's two boom areas in an economy whose jobless rate is conservatively estimated at 30 percent of the labor force and where the yearly per capita income is only about $1,000. The other boom area is tourism, helping to offset a drop in output - and prices - of such traditional products as sugar, coffee, bananas and minerals.
Trampled rights
But trade unionists in both the Dominican Republic and the U.S. charge the free trade zone boom is built on a foundation of worker exploitation. The AFL-CIO's petition says: "Despite the passage of a new labor code in May, 1992, worker rights are still being violated with impunity by companies in the free trade zones. After years of vigorous organizing by thousands of workers who have repeatedly and courageously signed membership petitions, and after years of government promises to protect their rights, the situation remains fundamentally unchanged. There is not a single functioning trade union, nor a single collective bargaining contract, in any of the free trade zones. The reason is clear. The new labor code, which theoretically provides protection from firing and other forms of retaliation against workers who seek to form trade unions, is simply not being enforced. The central problem is the notoriously inefficient and corrupt judicial system."
The AFL-CIO petition cites eight specific cases where companies denied workers their right to organize by firing union leaders or where "a combination of psychological pressures and monetary inducement of individual workers succeeded in nullifying the union's legal efforts to protect its members against employers' reprisals for organizing activities."
Ramos, who began his working career as a 15-year-old assembly line worker in a San Pedro de Macoris underwear plant, says there is "an institutionalized blacklist" in the free trade zones. He adds that it is not unusual for a company to fire its entire labor force "if unionization is threatened" - and then hire and train an all-new work force. He claims such firms as Westinghouse "fire their manager if there are signs of union activity." The bottom line, says Ramos, is that "in the Third World these companies want cheap labor and want to get away from unions." He says his country "has never followed international labor agreements," and that "the free trade zones are a marriage between corporate and government interests." Joaquin Balaguer, the nation's 86-year-old president, "knows this, and the U.S. government has the power to change this at no political cost."
Ramos claims the same phenomenon is evident in Costa Rica. "If there's no halt, we're going to have corporate colonialism all over the Western Hemisphere."
The corporate view
Those who manage the free trade zones, not surprisingly, offer an entirely different spin on the situation.
At the San Isidro Free Trade Zone, 10 miles east of Santo Domingo, Jose M. Ceron Peña, executive vice-president of the 230-acre San Isidro Free Trade Zone and president of Adozona, the Dominican Association of Industrial Free Trade Zones, says: "Labor conditions in the free trade zones are quite different from the rest of the country. It's easy to form a union. By law you have to have 20 people and they have immunity, you can't touch them. But the union is only as good as its bargaining power. Fifty-one percent of the workers have to agree to collective bargaining." Once a majority is achieved, he says, "management has to sit down with the union. But in most cases, the union hasn't been able to get 51 percent of the vote." Miguel Angel Pichardo, a free trade zone consultant in Santo Domingo, adds that "if free trade zone workers are not treated properly, they'll find unions, but less than 1 percent of the free trade zone companies are unionized." He charges that union leaders "don't work; they're living off the workers. The organizers all have nice cars, nice apartments and go abroad."
Of the 30 Dominican free trade zones, 16 are privately owned, 12 are public and two are mixed public-private. The private San Isidro Zone is a glossy new example. It was inaugurated in April 1988, and now rents to 20 companies with a total of 3,500 employees. Hanes, part of the Sara Lee Corporation (which did $13.2 billion worth of business last year, $5.4 billion in textiles alone), is one of the biggest tenants. It occupies a 76,000-square-foot building and a 21,000-square-foot building and San Isidro's management is building Hanes another 80,000-square-foot plant.
Ceron says that, over all, about 70 percent of free trade zone workers are women. By providing jobs, Pichardo asserts, the companies have improved living conditions for women. They have been "a great help in [alleviating] the prostitution situation and for [helping] women abandoned by their husbands." The prostitution to which he refers is one of the sleazier aspects of the Dominican Republic's tourist prosperity, so-called sex tourism.
Santiago M. Kalaf, 44, is general manager of the Itabo Free Trade Zone, 10 miles west of the Dominican capital and close to the principal port, Haina. Itabo also is privately owned, covers 150 acres and began in 1985. Kalaf says it has 6,500 employees "in close to 600,000 square feet of plants, mostly fully air-conditioned." He says the plants have lockers, lunch rooms and "free medical service in a unit staffed by four doctors, nurses and its own ambulance." Workers who don't live nearby use Itabo's "subsidized bus service" and there is also subsidized food, says Kalaf. "We don't allow companies in our park without employee facilities."
Kalaf insists, "I believe in unions, in the right of every employee to unionize. But the right to unionize shouldn't interfere with the right to work. If I treat my workers right and you're unable to convince them to join the union, you're not good for them. ... There are a lot of unions in free trade zones, but the minority doesn't rule. I'm not going to say there aren't bad companies, there probably are. But the AFL-CIO has a protectionist agenda, it overreacts and generalizes."
Kalaf concedes the Korean and Taiwanese companies in free trade zones may be anti-union, but notes "they have a different culture."
He agrees with the AFL-CIO petition that the judicial system is lagging, but says, "All Latin countries have the same problem; judges aren't speedy and they're vulnerable to money from both sides and to politics. There's nothing new about that, it's been going on for 50 years. There were probably 10,000 unresolved complaints under the old labor code."
The new labor code grew out of a controversy that began in 1990 with a petition to the U.S. Trade Representative from the human rights organization Americas Watch, complaining of the treatment of Haitian cane-cutters in Dominican bateys, the plantation barracks where Haitians were forced to live. A year-long review of the Dominican GSP status ensued and near the year's end an AFL-CIO committee began looking into the cane-cutters' and other union complaints. The GSP review dragged into a second year, the International Labor Organization (ILO) was alerted and finally, in 1992, Balaguer's government seemed to make improvements for the Haitians, for unions outside the free trade zones and in the labor code. This got the ILO off Balaguer's back and the United States decided against GSP-CBI termination.
But in more than a year, as Ramos stresses repeatedly, nothing really has changed in the free trade zones.
Only pressure from the United States seems to hold much prospect of improving the Dominican labor rights situation. Daniel Liranzo, deputy executive director of the National Council of Free Trade Zones for Export, concedes "the threat to lose GSP-CBI is real. ... For now it's quiet, but the AFL-CIO petition is putting on new pressure."
-William Steif
More than 50 farmers were arrested during the incident at the partially completed seed-processing plant in Bellary, 300 kilometers from Bangalore in South India. The $2.2 million plant was scheduled to begin commercial operations in three months. The farmers were later released.
Reports of the extent of damage caused ranged from near-total destruction to minimal damage. In Bangalore, Cargill Seeds authorities said "considerable structural damage" estimated at $15,750 had been caused to the administrative block, main compound wall, ablation block and security building. Police sources labeled the damage "minimal," adding that "timely intervention" by the police prevented extensive destruction.
This is the second action taken by the movement as part of a campaign targeting all multinational corporations in the seed sector. Last year approximately 1,000 farmers gathered at Cargill's offices to demand a ban on the entry of such companies into India. On December 29, KRRS activists destroyed the official records in the company's Bangladore office, but no officials were attacked in line with the Sangha's policy of non- violence.
The KRRS, led by professor of law Nanjudaswamy, launched its "seed satyagraha" (a "satyagraha" denotes actions of civil disobedience) late last year with the aim of protecting the "rights of farmers to produce, use, modify and conserve seeds." The 13- year-old movement grew out of the farmers' uprising against levies on irrigation water in the Dharwad district.
This fundamental right is under threat from multinational seed companies which see farmers' rights to their own seeds as an obstacle to market expansion by multinationals. The Bellary raid was carried out as part of protests against the acceptance of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) proposals on agriculture by the Indian government. The KRRS has been campaigning against the proposal for patenting of life forms for the past seven months.
According to news reports in India, the KRRS said the GATT proposals were detrimental to Indian agriculture as they were aimed at patenting plants and genes, and were part of an international conspiracy to deny farmers the right to produce, modify and sell seeds. They demanded a ban on multinationals in the seed sector, a total rejection of the GATT proposals and maintenance of status quo with regard to the Indian Patent Act of 1970, which excludes patents on all life forms.
KRRS General Secretary Hanumanagouda told the Union Government to make a decision on the GATT proposals only after discussion with state governments. He said that the Sangha had also been demanding that the Union Government furnish details of multinational corporations which had been allowed to set up business in Karnataka.
There are currently a total of six new multinationals in Karnataka either operating or scheduled to commence operations shortly in the fields of food and medicine.
"Our movement will be intensified, and the farmers will continue to wage a relentless battle against multinationals," said professor Nanjudaswamy. Two months ago, he announced the KRRS's intention to destroy the property of multinationals operating in Karnataka.
"This is a warning to Prime Minister Narasimha Rao," he added, referring to the Bellary attack as merely the first stage of a program which will escalate. He identified the W.R. Grace pesticide manufacturing plant in Tumkur and the Pioneer Hybrid Seeds Ltd. at Ranebennur as future targets for similar actions.
Cargill Seeds, a joint venture of the Delhi-based Tadco Group and Cargill Incorporated U.S.A., is constructing seed-processing plants and huge godowns in Bellary to store seeds. This latest incident would delay the completion of the project, and Cargill spokespersons have said the company is contemplating legal action.
-Third World Network Features