Myanmar’s indigenous people fight ‘fortress’ conservation

August 5, 2018
By Rina Chandran
Reuters

BANGKOK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Saw Ma Bu’s family has lived in the mountainous forests of Myanmar’s Kayin state for generations, farming and fishing in the Salween river, even as a decades-long armed conflict raged in the region.

Now, he says, they fear their way of life is under threat as the government declares swathes of forest in indigenous Karen homelands as protected areas.