Tibet Information Network - 10th May 1996

Tibet's forests are in danger of being destroyed by military and governmental deforestation, according to secret footage of tree-cutting in Tibet due to be broadcast by the BBC next week.

The footage is unique, in that it is believed to be the first underground video to be made entirely by a Tibetan inside Tibet and smuggled out of the country, without any foreign involvement.

The film, called "Cutting Down Tibet", shows huge logging camps in southern Tibet and trucks travelling from Kongpo, in southern Tibet, carrying four or five tree trunks each about 2 or 3 metres in diameter. In one seven-hour session the film crew counted 70 loaded trucks passing them, heading north towards Golmud in Qinghai from where they will be transported to inland China.

"Every day it's the same as this," the film-maker can be heard saying. "If they keep transporting logs like this for 5 or 6 years, Tibet's forests will be finished."

The film also shows logging operations near Dawu in Kham, about 500 km east of Kongpo, where timber is transported by up to 300 trucks each day eastwards into Sichuan province. Large timber-stocking camps are also shown covering several acres, where thousands of logs are stacked in huge piles awaiting transport to China. The workers in these stocking camps are Chinese, according to the film-maker. Most of the truck drivers are Chinese or, in the Kongpo-Nyingtri area of southern Tibet, Chinese Muslims from Qinghai.

The logging is a state enterprise and it is illegal for individuals to cut timber, according to the film-maker, who asked not to be named. "If one local person cuts down a tree they have to pay a fine of 50-60 yuan (US $6-7) or even 100 yuan, but the Chinese government cuts down trees anywhere it likes," says the film-maker, who did not find any signs of reforestation.

The film claims that the army is also operating a sideline business trade in transporting cut timber to China, particularly from its bases in Kongpo.

"The army trucks, when they come up here from China, bring food and other things for the army, and go back with the cut lengths of timber," said the film- maker, who describes the Kongpo area of Tibet as "one large military camp".

Klemens Ludwig, a German writer and researcher who travelled in Batang, eastern Tibet, in 1993 found that the actual tree cutting was done by Tibetan workers, who were paid 300 yuan ($33) a month by the local county government. "Between six and eight men work in each tree-cutters' camp, following exact instructions from the government as to where to cut, and using only axes," says Ludwig, who saw about 80 such camps on each hillside that was being clear-cut. In the sites he visited, the cut trees were collected by truck- drivers from Sichuan, whom he says were earning about 4,000 yuan ($440) per month.

- RISK OF FILMING FOR TIBETANS -

The film was made in conditions of great secrecy by the anonymous Tibetan, who slept in the mountains and filmed from hiding places - including at one point a toilet - from where he could watch the logging operations without being detected. He was too frightened to film any close-ups of people working and does not show tree-cutting.

Unauthorised filming is illegal in Tibet, and although this rule is waived for tourists Tibetans are at great risk if they have a video camera. "I'm very nervous, in case somebody sees me, so this film is not so good," he says during the film. "Sometimes I'm afraid, and sometimes I'm not afraid, and then I think that I am doing this for Tibet. Sometimes I think even if I die, I'm dying for Tibet."

Last September a Tibetan exile was detained by the Chinese authorities after he returned to Tibet for the first time in order to film traditional musicians and dancers, and has not been seen since. Ngawang Choephel, who lives in India but was given a Fulbright scholarship to study music for two years in the US, was last seen in Nyari prison, Shigatse, on 8th October 1995.

"While in prison, I met Ngawang Choephel on two occasions," said Dorje Rinchen, a Tibetan trader from India who was held for 2 months on suspicion of spying in the prison. "During these brief meetings, he told me that he had been recording old traditional Tibetan music and dances on video and that the Chinese authorities had arrested him from the market place in Shigatse. Ngawang Choephel also told me that the Chinese had confiscated his passport, camera and two video tapes," said Dorje, who has since returned India.

- FOREIGN INVESTMENT SOUGHT FOR TIBET FORESTRY -

The Chinese authorities do not deny that there is logging in Tibet, where forest production accounts for 14 percent of the regions gross domestic product, but say that reforestation is much greater than the loss of timber. "The forest growth in the Tibet Autonomous Region has greatly exceeded its timber consumption," reported Xinhua on 1st December 1994, following a one- year survey using remote-sensing technology. Tibet is China's largest forest zone with 7.6 million hectares of forests, including 2.08 billion cubic metres of living dragon spruce trees. 94% of the trees are mature or aged.

The survey said that 1.8 million cubic metres of timber is cut each year in Tibet, and showed that this was less than the increase in timber by counting both 40,670 hectares of new plantations and the annual growth rate of standing trees - said to be 1.42%, or 4.4 cubic metres per hectare, giving a total of 19.4 million cubic metres of new growth a year.

But the article agreed that cutting exceeds replanting and growth in Kongpo. "Tibet's tree cutting is far behind tree growth on the whole, except for in some areas such as Yadong, Gongbo Gyamda and Nyingchi counties," Xinhua said. The concession is significant since the prefecture of Kongpo-Nyingtri (Chinese: Gongbo, Nyingchi) includes 80% of Tibet's total forest area, with estimated timber reserves of 884m cubic metres.

The Chinese authorities are now energetically seeking investment to increase timber processing and extraction in Tibet and throughout China, and last October vice-Premier Zhu Rongji ordered "energetic efforts" to be made to "step up forestry production and forestry business operations", and officials called for "a vigorous expansion of the forestry sector".

Tibet is trying to attract foreign investment to boost the timber trade in Kongpo-Nyingtri and on 10th August last year Jin Xisheng, secretary of the Nyingtri prefectural party committee, called for foreign investors in forest extraction in his area, promising that "preferential policies allowing a good profit will be implemented", according to Xinhua.

Scholars say that in the 1980s the rapid loss of forest cover in China was causing soil erosion on a huge scale, with almost 5 billion tons of soil lost every year. The level of the Yellow River, which flows from north-eastern TIbet across China, rose 10 centimetres per year during the late 1980s, and in some areas the river bed is 10 meters or higher than the land along its banks, leading to "a very high danger from flooding", according to the Population And Development Review, 1990.

Extracts from "Cutting Down Tibet" are to be shown on BBC2 at 11.15 pm on Monday 13th May, as part of a new programme called Guerilla TV, which shows films made by non-professionals in Bolivia, Indonesia, the US and the UK who are using amateur video to broadcast their ideas.

The footage was smuggled out of Tibet by the film-maker to the exile group Gu-chu-sum, an organisation of Tibetans who were political prisoners but have since escaped to India. The film was edited and produced by the Tibet Information Network, an independent news and research organisation based in London.