Days in Daechuri

Posted by savePTfarmers at 01:34 PM | Permalink

Daechuri villagers renewed talks with the Korean government early in January. The villagers, exhausted by several years of resistance to government threats and attacks, have in principle agreed to move out of their village. However, other Koreans continue to organize against the US base expansion.

In the ongoing negotiations with the villagers, the government is insisting that they move immediately into individual housing, a proposal that the villagers clearly reject. The Daechuri villagers' refusal to leave their land has always been motivated by their strong attachment to their land and their community. That's why the 46 families remaining in Daechuri are demanding a relocation village, where at least they will be able to continue to farm and live together as a community. A relocation village would be a small recognition, still inadequate, of everything the villagers will lose through their forced displacement.

While the government is insisting that the villagers move out immediately, villagers are refusing to leave Daechuri until a new village is complete. Since this could take one to two years, they are also demanding an end to the military occupation of their fields, so they can farm until they leave. Especially now that the Korean government has been forced to admit that cost overruns will delay the base expansion until at least 2013, there is no reason to push villagers out immediately.

Villagers have been forced into "accepting" their forced displacement after a brutal year: the destruction of their school, the demolition of vacant and re-occupied houses, dozens of politically motivated arrests (including of former village leader Kim Ji Tae), repeated police attacks, the fencing off of their fields with barbed wire, and arbitrary police checkpoints on the roads leading to the village. After most of their fields were occupied by the Korean army in May, villagers had come together to collectively farm the few fields left to them. But in November, the police returned to fence off the few fields that had been left free of barbed wire. Since then, the villagers find themselves with no way to support themselves, and an increasingly desperate financial situation.

The villagers' fight isn't over. They continue to hold their nightly candlelight vigil (now in its third year), to demand that the barbed wire be removed from their fields and that the government begin construction of a relocation village.

And even though Daechuri villagers are now negotiating the conditions of their forced displacement, the struggle against the base expansion continues. Some of the Daechuri “keepers”, who fixed up and moved into houses abandoned by former residents, will refuse to leave the village that has become their home. On the last weekend in January, Daechuri residents and supporters from around Korea renovated an abandoned house and transformed it into a peace museum.

The reasons for opposition to the base expansion are the same as ever: rejection of US intervention on the Korean peninsula and US imperialism in Northeast Asia, and the ongoing forced displacement of Daechuri residents. The KCPT alliance is calling for a full renegotiation of the base transfer agreement (see KCPT statement in previous post on www.antigizi.or.kr/english/ and www.saveptfarmers.org)

Posted by savePTfarmers at 11:30 PM | Permalink

Bank account for donations: 128-02-265980
Daechuri fundraising product orders: ptsallim@hanmail.net / 019-9151-2332

Dachuri residents have been undergoing hardship to live through this winter. At the end of December 2006, according to a survey conducted by the national magazine Hankyereh 21 and the village "keepers", Dachuri residents' economic status turned out to be seriously poor.
28 out of 46 households responded to the survey. 82 percent of them could not earn money through 2006, and 5 households (18%) have just earned some money working as apartment custodians, cleaners and daily paid workers.
Such poor circumstances led them to rely on their relatives, children or bank loans. Furthermore, some older people who had to deal with their problems on their own lived off of food that the village committee gave them.
Such a poor living status has in some cases made them withdraw the compensation for their properties (the money in return for forcefully taking over their properties) The residents have gone through an unspeakably difficult time since last year, when they couldn't cultivate their farms, under military occupation since May 2006.

(From www.antigizi.or.kr/. Translated by Radical Language Exchange www.seoulidarity.net)

Posted by savePTfarmers at 11:25 PM | Permalink

Posted by savePTfarmers at 08:34 PM | Permalink

Noam Chomsky was the first to sign this recently written statement of solidarity with Pyeongtaek farmers: 

We stand in solidarity with Pyeongtaek farmers

We stand in solidarity with the people of Daechuri and Doduri, South Korea who are protecting their homes, land, and livelihood from the U.S. military. We believe that the U.S. military must cease and desist its forced eviction of Pyeongtaek farmers. We demand that the governments of South Korea and the U.S. review and re-negotiate the planned expansion of the U.S. military base in Pyeongtaek.
The South Korean government should immediately withdraw all military troops from Daechuri and Doduri, allow the villagers to enter their fields, and retract its plan for the destruction of houses and villages.  The government must also make a public apology to the public for committing violence against its people and immediately release all prisoners. In addition, the South Korean government should reverse its agreement to the U.S. military “strategic flexibility” plan, of which the Pyeongtaek base expansion is a result. This shift toward “strategic flexibility” in U.S. military policy will only strengthen U.S. imperial ambitions in East Asia and threaten to unleash a crisis of war in the region.
The forcible displacement of Pyeongtaek farmers violates the housing rights specified in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Culture Rights, and the freedoms of body, of residence and transfer, of expression and of association as specified in the International Covenant on Civil and Politic Rights. The Korean government is party to both of these agreements. Already hundreds of people have been injured by South Korean riot police and hired thugs, simply for protecting themselves and their land from the impending social, cultural, economic, and environmental destruction caused by yet another U.S. military base.

Signed:

Noam Chomsky

Posted by savePTfarmers at 09:18 PM | Permalink

Daechuri leader Kim Ji Tae was finally released from prison on bail on December 28. Kim had been jailed in early June on bogus charges of inciting violence. His imprisonment was a political attack by the government, meant to demoralize and intimidate Daechuri residents and supporters. Kim's already groundless detention was prolonged several times by gratuitous appeals and other manuevers by the prosecuters.

Kim's release doesn't negate the injustice done by locking him up for seven months. It certainly doesn't show the "generosity" of the government. Kim will still have to face more hearings on the same bogus charges that he was initially jailed on. But his release is a relief for Kim, whose health had begun to suffer, for his family, and for other villagers. Kim has returned to his home in Daechuri, and is again active in the fight to stop the displacement of Daechuri farmers.

Posted by savePTfarmers at 07:29 PM | Permalink

 Daechuri residents and supporters came together to eat, dance and talk with each other at their end-of-the-year party on December 27.  A 12-person band came to play at the nightly candlelight vigil, and families and groups of people gathered to eat as they played.

Posted by savePTfarmers at 06:33 PM | Permalink