BURMA: PILLAGING PARADISE
16:00: Soundtrack starts
16:05 – 30:09 In a land of megacities, there are still, in south central China, places uncluttered by people; forested mountains, arcing north into India and Tibet. An ecological treasure trove.
31:00 – 43:15 Logging is illegal in Yunan Province; it has been for a decade. China's forested frontier with Burma's protected; there are two huge nature reserves --on the Chinese side.
44:00 – 53:17 But China's concern for the environment stops at the border; predatory Chinese logging firms accused of plunder in Burma.
UPSOT CHINESE LOGGERS
01:01:00 – 01:14:16 Ruili, a booming Chinese den of iniquity; a town grown fat on crossborder contraband, and the timber and drugs trades, its glassy glitz a veneer on its seedier sidelines.
ASTON: SECRET FILMING
01:16:00 – 01:23:00 After dark, sex for sale everywhere; often trafficked girls from over the border in Burma.
01:24:00 – 01:38:08 China's HIV/AIDS epidemic started here; Ruili now has the highest infection rates in the People's Republic; next door, Kachin State has the hightest HIV rates in Burma; it's no coincidence.
01:39:00 – 01:41:16 The disease spreads along the timber truck routes.
01:43:00 – 01:55:12 Just outside town; an illegal crossing; up and down this frontier, 15 tonnes of smuggled timber coming over every seven minutes. A million cubic metres in 2004.
01:56:00 – 02:05:16 Bosses, baffled by the presence of a camera; within minutes, evidence filmed of why environmental groups claim vast tracts of Burma are already logged out.
02:06:00 – 02:17:08 An unsustainable trade, and, says Global Witness, illegal. These: so-called luxury species: teak and tamalan; other hardwoods and softwoods are smuggled out too.
02:19:00 – 02:33:12 Illegal exports, illegal imports, worth 300 million US a year; since the Chinese government said it would clamp down on the timber smugglers four years ago, it's grown by 60 per cent, lining the pockets of Burma's generals.
02:35:00 – 02:42:13 Burma denies exporting teak; China denies it is or would ever plunder timber from neighbouring countries.
02:48:00 – 02:53:00 As the wood's smuggled out, the TV crew is smuggled in.
02:55:00 – 03:20:21 Kachin State, strategically sandwiched between India and China; in ten years, transformed from an obscure war-torn hellhole into a pillagers' playground. The crew's escorts: the former nationalist Kachin Insurgent Army, on ceasefire for a decade, but grumbling now that the dividend of the fragile peace has been banked by what they still call "the Burmese oppressor" and loggers from China.
SYNC
Senior Kachin nationalist official
03:23:00 – 03:41:09 "The Chinese are the transporters and the buyers and later they export the logs to China. This illegal trade is being done by these businessmen in league with local Burmese army officers. If we stop the timber trade, there will be conflict between the Burmese army and the KIA."
UPSOT CHAINSAW
03:46:00 – 03:56:00 And so it just goes on. This, a small operation, but we're told it's illegal. The loggers, all Chinese.
(BEHIND HOSPITAL)
04:02:00 – 04:12:00 Just off border backroads, zoom-lens glimpses of loggers at work; loading from stockpiles, this timber from teak forests far to the south.
UPSOT Timber yard manager
04:14:00 – 04:16:02 "mostly it is illegal..."
04:16:02 – 04:22:20This timber yard manager says 200 tonnes of teak leave his yard every week. All for China.
04:23:00 – 04:41:21 The Kachin borderlands -- controlled by the KIA under the ceasefire autonomy deal -- mostly logged out long ago, but elsewhere in the state, under the aegis of the Burmese military, rapacious logging continues, the highest rate of deforestation in Burma. And all roads lead to China.
(ROAD GANG)
04:47:00 – 05:02:00 To get the logs out, Chinese road-building gangs are brought in. Logging companies have built hundreds of miles of roads. Opium and heroin traffickers are known to use these routes too. Drugs are the biggest source of black market dollars for the generals.
05:04:00 – 05:07:15 Happy shiny tribespeople beam down from roadside billboards.
05:10:00 – 05:20:00This is Mai Ja Yang; Kachin tribespeople swamped by in-comers; a town run by mafia; it's unwise to film openly here.
05:23:00 – 05:35:02 Chinese gamblers, most, cross-border-commuters, fill the local casinos -- run by a network of big Chinese companies. Today Mai Ja Yang is full of brothels and drugs dens.
05:36:00 – 05:44:15 Many local Kachin are practising Christians, who despair over what's happening; moral decay, they say, has gone hand in hand with the timber trade.
SYNC
Local Christian
05:46:00 – 06:03:00 "I feel sad. We can't stop them by force, so we are trying to teach them about Jesus Christ. We have lost our forests. The big trees I remember from my boyhood are now disappearing. I don't support the logging industry and I will never involve myself in such a business."
06:05:00 – 06:22:07 The former guerrillas, today patrol their own tribal borderland, but they're now compromised, in bed with the enemy, bankrolled by taxing the timber trade. Global Witness reports that the bulk of the money -- meant to fund health and education -- has been misappropriated.
06:23:00 – 06:35:22 The former rebels now said to be losing their people's support; a belief that the ceasefire had more to do with selling trees to China get-rich-quick schemes than with addressing the grievances that underpinned the insurgency.
06:37:00 – 06:45:20 Rebel armies the world over have a habit of losing the plot once the war's over: restarting the war, now one solution.
SYNC
Senior Kachin nationalist official
06:46:00 – 01:19:15 "The Kachin people do not like war but now, war is inevitable; we have tried political negotiations but it was impossible to negotiate with our enemy. If the Burmese junta could just understand what the Kachin people want and if they are willing to negotiate, then our future will be a peaceful future."
07:10:00 – 07:28:17 But the future does not look bright; but then, neither is the present; promises of peace and prosperity have a hollow ring now. For the people of Kachin, as with millions of other Burmese, daily lives are plagued by poverty. Ecological devastation now adding to a catalogue of woe.
07:30:15 – 07:53:00 Dirty dollars earned from the illegal timber trade fuel conflict the world over -- the threat now, that unless China stops it, it'll rekindle the Kachin conflict too. The spotlight's now on China; its plunder exposed; its much-vaunted fraternal cross-border relationship build on little more than greed.
07:53:00 Soundtrack Ends
16:00: Soundtrack starts
16:05 – 30:09 In a land of megacities, there are still, in south central China, places uncluttered by people; forested mountains, arcing north into India and Tibet. An ecological treasure trove.
31:00 – 43:15 Logging is illegal in Yunan Province; it has been for a decade. China's forested frontier with Burma's protected; there are two huge nature reserves --on the Chinese side.
44:00 – 53:17 But China's concern for the environment stops at the border; predatory Chinese logging firms accused of plunder in Burma.
UPSOT CHINESE LOGGERS
01:01:00 – 01:14:16 Ruili, a booming Chinese den of iniquity; a town grown fat on crossborder contraband, and the timber and drugs trades, its glassy glitz a veneer on its seedier sidelines.
ASTON: SECRET FILMING
01:16:00 – 01:23:00 After dark, sex for sale everywhere; often trafficked girls from over the border in Burma.
01:24:00 – 01:38:08 China's HIV/AIDS epidemic started here; Ruili now has the highest infection rates in the People's Republic; next door, Kachin State has the hightest HIV rates in Burma; it's no coincidence.
01:39:00 – 01:41:16 The disease spreads along the timber truck routes.
01:43:00 – 01:55:12 Just outside town; an illegal crossing; up and down this frontier, 15 tonnes of smuggled timber coming over every seven minutes. A million cubic metres in 2004.
01:56:00 – 02:05:16 Bosses, baffled by the presence of a camera; within minutes, evidence filmed of why environmental groups claim vast tracts of Burma are already logged out.
02:06:00 – 02:17:08 An unsustainable trade, and, says Global Witness, illegal. These: so-called luxury species: teak and tamalan; other hardwoods and softwoods are smuggled out too.
02:19:00 – 02:33:12 Illegal exports, illegal imports, worth 300 million US a year; since the Chinese government said it would clamp down on the timber smugglers four years ago, it's grown by 60 per cent, lining the pockets of Burma's generals.
02:35:00 – 02:42:13 Burma denies exporting teak; China denies it is or would ever plunder timber from neighbouring countries.
02:48:00 – 02:53:00 As the wood's smuggled out, the TV crew is smuggled in.
02:55:00 – 03:20:21 Kachin State, strategically sandwiched between India and China; in ten years, transformed from an obscure war-torn hellhole into a pillagers' playground. The crew's escorts: the former nationalist Kachin Insurgent Army, on ceasefire for a decade, but grumbling now that the dividend of the fragile peace has been banked by what they still call "the Burmese oppressor" and loggers from China.
SYNC
Senior Kachin nationalist official
03:23:00 – 03:41:09 "The Chinese are the transporters and the buyers and later they export the logs to China. This illegal trade is being done by these businessmen in league with local Burmese army officers. If we stop the timber trade, there will be conflict between the Burmese army and the KIA."
UPSOT CHAINSAW
03:46:00 – 03:56:00 And so it just goes on. This, a small operation, but we're told it's illegal. The loggers, all Chinese.
(BEHIND HOSPITAL)
04:02:00 – 04:12:00 Just off border backroads, zoom-lens glimpses of loggers at work; loading from stockpiles, this timber from teak forests far to the south.
UPSOT Timber yard manager
04:14:00 – 04:16:02 "mostly it is illegal..."
04:16:02 – 04:22:20This timber yard manager says 200 tonnes of teak leave his yard every week. All for China.
04:23:00 – 04:41:21 The Kachin borderlands -- controlled by the KIA under the ceasefire autonomy deal -- mostly logged out long ago, but elsewhere in the state, under the aegis of the Burmese military, rapacious logging continues, the highest rate of deforestation in Burma. And all roads lead to China.
(ROAD GANG)
04:47:00 – 05:02:00 To get the logs out, Chinese road-building gangs are brought in. Logging companies have built hundreds of miles of roads. Opium and heroin traffickers are known to use these routes too. Drugs are the biggest source of black market dollars for the generals.
05:04:00 – 05:07:15 Happy shiny tribespeople beam down from roadside billboards.
05:10:00 – 05:20:00This is Mai Ja Yang; Kachin tribespeople swamped by in-comers; a town run by mafia; it's unwise to film openly here.
05:23:00 – 05:35:02 Chinese gamblers, most, cross-border-commuters, fill the local casinos -- run by a network of big Chinese companies. Today Mai Ja Yang is full of brothels and drugs dens.
05:36:00 – 05:44:15 Many local Kachin are practising Christians, who despair over what's happening; moral decay, they say, has gone hand in hand with the timber trade.
SYNC
Local Christian
05:46:00 – 06:03:00 "I feel sad. We can't stop them by force, so we are trying to teach them about Jesus Christ. We have lost our forests. The big trees I remember from my boyhood are now disappearing. I don't support the logging industry and I will never involve myself in such a business."
06:05:00 – 06:22:07 The former guerrillas, today patrol their own tribal borderland, but they're now compromised, in bed with the enemy, bankrolled by taxing the timber trade. Global Witness reports that the bulk of the money -- meant to fund health and education -- has been misappropriated.
06:23:00 – 06:35:22 The former rebels now said to be losing their people's support; a belief that the ceasefire had more to do with selling trees to China get-rich-quick schemes than with addressing the grievances that underpinned the insurgency.
06:37:00 – 06:45:20 Rebel armies the world over have a habit of losing the plot once the war's over: restarting the war, now one solution.
SYNC
Senior Kachin nationalist official
06:46:00 – 01:19:15 "The Kachin people do not like war but now, war is inevitable; we have tried political negotiations but it was impossible to negotiate with our enemy. If the Burmese junta could just understand what the Kachin people want and if they are willing to negotiate, then our future will be a peaceful future."
07:10:00 – 07:28:17 But the future does not look bright; but then, neither is the present; promises of peace and prosperity have a hollow ring now. For the people of Kachin, as with millions of other Burmese, daily lives are plagued by poverty. Ecological devastation now adding to a catalogue of woe.
07:30:15 – 07:53:00 Dirty dollars earned from the illegal timber trade fuel conflict the world over -- the threat now, that unless China stops it, it'll rekindle the Kachin conflict too. The spotlight's now on China; its plunder exposed; its much-vaunted fraternal cross-border relationship build on little more than greed.
07:53:00 Soundtrack Ends