Her exploits had made Sunday's newspapers,
and her colleagues at the
protesters' main camp were abuzz at the
striking
photos splashed across front pages showing
students wrapping their
bodies protectively around stately old
trees. They
eagerly waited to greet Phinan as the
51-year-old environmentalist
struggled up the final hill.
But upon reaching the top, Phinan immediately
collapsed into the arms of
her friend and burst into tears. Perhaps
it was the
arduous trek which had gotten to her,
or perhaps she had simply become
overwhelmed at the enormity of the task
she had
set for herself, but over the next few
minutes all the despair borne of
a battle fought against tremendous odds
poured out in
the sobs which wracked her body.
''May mii kray ma chuay raw jring,'' she
cried. ''Nobody has come to
help us.''
Finally, her emotions spent and her energy
so drained that she had to be
helped into a car, Phinan was taken back
to camp.
There, she silently brooded over events.
Out of respect, her colleagues
left her alone as they quietly went about
their affairs.
For weeks now, pipeline opponents have
played a cat-and-mouse game with
Tasco Mannesman, the contractor building
the
project on behalf of the Petroleum Authority
of Thailand (PTT) to pipe
natural gas from Burma's Yadana field
to a power
plant in Ratchaburi.
Taking advantage of a nine-kilometre road
built by Tasco Mannesman to
bring in equipment, the protesters have
set up a
camp at KP26, a site along the pipeline's
route 26 kms from the border
post at Ban I-Tong where the pipeline
is to enter
Thailand. Communicating by walkie-talkie,
students and villagers from
the protest camp carry out surveys of
the
mountainous terrain as their leaders plot
how to protect the forest. Nor
are they above petty sabotage.
''Sometimes if we come across [the contractor's]
bamboo markers which
lay down the route for the pipeline, we'll
take them
out,'' confided one protester. ''And in
some cases, we have tried to
cover up the marks put on trees signifying
they should be
cut down.''
Most recently, upon receiving word that
some loggers hired by the PTT
had been spotted moving into the most
pristine
section of the Huay Khayeng Forest Reserve,
a team of protesters led by
Phinan marched five kilometres through
the jungle
to KP22 (a site on the pipeline route
22 kms from the border). There,
using non-violent tactics, they managed
to save the
trees for the time being.
Nevertheless, everyone knows who is the
cat and who is the mouse in this
contest, and the game itself may soon
be over.
The protesters are vastly overmatched,
and pipeline construction is
moving ahead both to the east and west
of their camp.
In fact, if they truly want to ''close
the forest'' to the contractor,
they will have to maintain two camps and
try to protect the
forest in between.
On Sunday afternoon, a revived Phinan attempted
to explain why her
spirit seemed so broken earlier in the
day. ''I came up
that hill, and I saw my friend and just
broke down. We have fought this
project for over a year, and we're always
retreating,
retreating. Now we only have this small
stretch of forest left ... ''
her voice trailed off. ''Sometimes, I
think there aren't many
people fighting with us, but in fact when
we have meetings, I can see
there are a lot.''
The question now is what will happen when
the pipeline builders, who
have already reached KP31 and are advancing
by an
estimated one km per day, finally reach
the demonstrators' encampment.
''We'll just dig under them,'' laughs one of the Tasco Mannesman workers.
''We'll play dead,'' suggests one of the environmentalists.
''I just don't know,'' says Phinan, shaking her head.
If the protesters' cause seems doomed,
however, so does the forest
itself, despite the claims of the PTT
that it will grow back as good as new.
A trip to the construction site shows just
how much devastation building
a pipeline can cause. The pipe itself
is only a few
feet in diameter, but each segment weighs
over 5,000 kilogrammes, and
the equipment needed to put it in place
is massive.
As a result, Tasco Mannesman is cutting
a swathe which looks to be
between 20 and 25 metres wide through
dense forest:
a bright orange strip of earth running
through brilliant green flora.
''You can see it's good forest here. It's
like this all along the
pipeline route from around KP19 to KP32,''
says Neung, a
Ramkhamhaeng student who has surveyed
the area extensively and, despite
being a protester, guides us around the
construction site as if he worked there.
He points to a stream: ''You
see, this is a 1A watershed, but it will
soon be gone. It's a real shame.''
A bulldozer drags off the heavier logs,
while a huge mechanical claw
grips a pile of foliage and dumps it onto
the back of a
truck to be hauled away. Dust is everywhere.
It lays centimetres thick
underfoot, and huge clouds of it billow
up with each
passing vehicle. ''Soon this place will
be a desert,'' sighs Neung
resignedly.
The biggest threat to the forest is not
the route being cleared for the
pipeline itself, but rather the poachers
and encroachers
who will inevitably use it once the contractors
are gone.
''It has already started,'' says Phipob
Thongchai, another leader of the
protesters. ''The nine-km road leading
to this camp [at
KP26] used to be a footpath. Now that
it has been widened, one of the
encroachers with land along it has brought
in some
earth-moving equipment. He's a police
general, so who's going to stop
him? It's really disgusting.''
Phinan also testifies as to how quick the
encroachers are to spot an
opening. ''We first came here on Dec 7.
By Dec 14, the
road had been built. Then we set up camp.
By Jan 6, people had already
come here to mark out their land. They
were just
standing around, picking out parcels.
That's how bad it is.''
The protesters are therefore urging that
the pipeline be constructed
along the paved road which winds from
Thong Pha
Phum up to Ban I-Tong, but the PTT claims
the road is too curvy and the
pipeline could suffer from landslides.
Phipob and
Phinan suggest that it is better to expand
the road now rather than cut
an entirely new route through the watershed
forest.
The government and the PTT, however, seem
to think it is too late for
any route changes, and the protesters'
cause has
been hampered because they entered the
debate so late in the game.
Although the pipeline route has been well
known and
documented in newspapers for years now,
Phinan says she and her
colleagues only found out it was passing
through
Kanchanaburi at the beginning of 1997.
''I admit that we were a bit selfish. We
had thought it was going to
pass through Ratchaburi -- our MPs said
it wasn't coming
through Kanchanaburi -- and so we didn't
pay much attention to the
issue,'' explains Phinan. She also believes
the
Kanchanaburi route was chosen by the PTT
because it is longer, would
require more funding and thus provide
more
opportunities for corruption. In fact,
it was probably chosen to keep
the pipeline's route in Burma as short
as possible for
security reasons.
While the pipeline's impact on Burma has
made it a source of controversy
the world over, the Thai protesters have
barely
mentioned the subject. Apparently, they
believe that raising the human
rights issue would be counter-productive.
''Most Thais don't see the importance of
the Burma issue,'' explained
Phinan frankly. ''Korn [Dabaransi, the
former industry
minister] once said to us, 'It's a foreign
issue, so let's not talk
about it'. In fact, a lot of people seem
to think it's a good thing to
take resources from our neighbouring country,
but we know what is
happening to the minority groups.