The Washington Post - 28.08.2019

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28 , 2019 THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A

The World

MIGRANTS

Dozens feared dead

in capsizing off Libya

A boat carrying migrants bound
for Europe capsized Tuesday in
the Mediterranean Sea off Libya,
with about 40 people missing and
feared drowned, U.N. officials said.
At least 65 migrants were
rescued, said a spokesman for
Libya’s coast guard. The coast
guard gave a lower estimate for
those presumed drowned, saying
it was 15 to 20 people, and said five
people were confirmed dead.
The shipwreck was the latest
maritime disaster involving
migrants seeking a better life in
Europe. One month ago, up to 150
migrants were feared drowned
when two boats carrying about
300 people capsized off Libya. In
January, 17 died or were missing
off Libya, and in May, about 65

drowned off Tunisia.

The U.N. migration agency said

859 migrants have died in the

Mediterranean this year as of

Thursday.

Libya’s coast guard says it has

intercepted hundreds of migrants

at sea this month. The country

became a major crossing point for

migrants to Europe after the

ouster and death of dictator

Moammar Gaddafi in 2011, when

the nation was thrown into chaos.

— Associated Press

SYRIA

Kurdish militia pulling

out of border area

The Kurdish YPG militia will

pull forces and heavy weapons

from a strip along Syria’s border

with Turkey under U.S.-Turkish

deals, an official in a YPG-led

alliance said Tuesday.

The YPG , or People’s Protection

Units, withdrew from some

border positions in recent days,

the Kurdish-led authority running

north and east Syria also said.

The developments were a sign

of progress in talks between the

United States and Turkey aimed at

resolving deep differences over the

presence in the border area of

Kurdish fighters — U.S. allies

whom Turkey sees as enemies.

After Ankara repeatedly

warned that it would launch a

military incursion into northeast

Syria to push the YPG back from

the border, Turkey and the United

States said this month that they

had agreed on the first stages of a

border security deal, involving

what Turkey has called a “safe

zone” inside Syria.

The YPG spearheads the Syrian

Democratic Forces, which is allied

with the United States in the fight

against the Islamic State.

U.S. support for the YPG has

enraged Turkey, which deems the

militia a security threat linked to

Kurdish insurgents at home.

An SDF spokesman said the

strip along the border will vary

between three to nine miles and

will include rural areas or military

positions, not cities or towns.

— Reuters

EUROPE

Russia condemned by

court in Magnitsky case

A top European court ruled

Tuesday that Russia’s failure to

provide adequate medical care to

jailed lawyer Sergei Magnitsky

could have led to his 2009 death,

which sparked U.S. sanctions.

The European Court of Human

Rights ordered Russia to pay his

widow and mother 34,000 euros

($38,000) in damages.

The Russian Justice Ministry

said it is studying the ruling and

whether to appeal.

Magnitsky, who worked for an

international investment firm,

alleged that he had uncovered

$230 million in tax fraud by

Russian officials. He was then

jailed, accused of tax evasion

himself. He died after a year in

pretrial detention, at age 37, and a

Russian court found him guilty of

fraud four years later.

The European court said

Russian authorities’ handling of

Magnitsky’s pancreatitis and

other medical problems were

“manifestly inadequate” and

“unreasonably put his life in

danger.” It found that Russia’s

handling of his detention, the

investigation into his death and

his posthumous conviction

violated Magnitsky’s rights.

Magnitsky worked in Russia for

U.S.-born financier Bill Browder,

who lobbied U.S. lawmakers to

impose sanctions on top Russian

officials. Other nations have since

adopted legislation modeled on

the 2012 Magnitsky Act.

— Associated Press

Ombudsman calls Thai leader’s

oath unconstitutional:

Thailand’s ombudsman ruled that

the prime minister’s failure to

recite a key sentence in his oath of

office was unconstitutional and

that the matter will be referred to

the Constitutional Court to decide

whether the government was

legally installed. Prime Minister

Prayuth Chan-ocha omitted a

sentence about upholding the

constitution when he led his

cabinet in the oath July 16. If the

court rules that the government

lacks legitimacy, it might

invalidate measures it has

undertaken since assuming office.

— From news services

DIGEST

BY SIMON DENYER

civilian control zone, south
korea — Where once the air was
filled with the thud of artillery
shells, now there’s birdsong and
the rustling of animals in the
undergrowth. A landscape once
denuded by napalm and Agent
Orange is carpeted in green, a
winter home for red-crowned
cranes.
Almost seven decades after the
Korean War ended in a truce,
the demilitarized zone between
North and South Korea is strewn
with land mines and fenced with
barbed wire, but it has also be-
come a wildlife sanctuary like no
other place on the densely popu-
lated and intensively cultivated
peninsula.
This haven is under threat,
however, as South Korean politi-
cians push development projects
they say will advance the cause of
peace.
A road is being planned across
rich marshlands to the Kaesong
joint industrial zone in the North,
while three hiking routes and an
art museum have been opened on
the southern side of the DMZ.
Other projects, including a peace
bridge and a peace city, remain on
the drawing board as optimism
about peace ebbs amid a flurry of
North Korean missile tests, but
conservationists worry that it is
only a matter of time before they,
too, materialize.
“The flora and fauna here rep-
resent the best protected example
of what can live in this temperate
climate zone,” said Kim Seung-ho
of the DMZ Ecology Research
Institute, looking out from a van-
tage point bordering the zone to
the expanse of rivers, forests and
islands where humans dare not
tread.
“In terms of biodiversity, it’s
unparalleled in South Korea and
includes many species that need
to be preserved at an internation-
al level,” he said. “It’s also a good
example of how nature can re-
store itself when there is no hu-
man intervention for a long
time.”
The DMZ stretches 160 miles
from one shore of the Korean
Peninsula to the other. Across the
21 / 2 -mile-wide ribbon of land, sol-
diers from the North and the
South watch each other warily,
but beneath their guard posts,
plant and animal life flourishes.
On the southern side, a civilian
control zone (CCZ) provides an
additional buffer, between three
and 12 miles wide, where some
rice farming takes place but hu-
man access is limited.
The mountains along the bor-
der are home to the endangered
Amur leopard cat, Siberian flying
squirrel and even the occasional
Asiatic black bear, while rivers
and wetlands nourish golden ea-
gles, water deer, snow geese and
otters, as well as many endan-
gered species of fish and frogs.
But Kim says the voices of
conservationists are being
drowned out as South Korea
rushes to show visible signs of
detente with the North.
“Inter-Korean relations are
very important, but the natural
resources inside the DMZ are also
very, very precious,” he said. “The
South Korean government is pur-
suing this with a little too much
haste, because they want to show
peace is happening.”
That does not mean the South
Korean government is unaware
of the region’s value as a natural
resource.
In June, UNESCO designated
large swaths of the CCZ as “bio-
sphere reserves,” expressing hope
that revenue from eco-tourism
might lessen local resistance to
environmental projects.
South Korea says it would like
to work with the North to make
the entire DMZ a biosphere re-
serve, while its Forest Service is
conducting reforestation projects

at five locations near the border

this year, according to forestry

officer Kim Il-Sook.

The Environment Ministry is

also working on policy guidelines

to conserve nature in the border

area, said Han Sang-Yee, an offi-

cial in the ministry’s Nature and

Ecology Division.

Kim Seung-ho, the ecologist,

says there is no need to start

building a road to Kaesong while

sanctions on North Korea remain

in place.

“They are going to fill up the

marshlands to build this high-

way,” he said, pointing to the

wetlands past a fence topped with

barbed wire. “But we don’t even

know when Kaesong will be re-

opened, so I don’t think we

should push ahead with the

road.”

Nial Moores, the British co-

founder of Birds Korea, an or-

ganization devoted to the conser-

vation of birds and their habitats

in the region, says the CCZ has

been opened up and developed

significantly in the past decade.

“If one road is built, there is a

plan for a dozen more, so what

will this area start to look like?”

he said.

Of all the species that make the

DMZ their home, none is more

iconic than the red-crowned

crane. Across Korea, Japan and

China, the birds are symbols of

longevity, even immortality, of

purity and peace. They appear on

notes and coins, in paintings, on

chopsticks and ancient ceremo-

nial bronzeware, and even form

the logo of Japan’s national air-

line.

Of a population of just 3,

birds, one-third winter in the

Korean border area, spending

their days picking up spilled rice

from the fields of the CCZ and

their nights in the less disturbed

DMZ. North of the border, “food

is so important that when people

harvest rice fields, they don’t

leave any spilled rice,” said

Moores, a conservation scientist.

Preserving the habitat of these

majestic birds will require active

management, he said, but it could

someday form the basis of re-

search and collaboration be-

tween the two Koreas that would

benefit both countries.

“What kind of rice crops can be

grown with a reduced amount of

pesticide?” he said. “Are these rice

strains attractive to cranes?

There is the potential, time and

space to do some really great

research.”

The environmental pressures

on the two sides of the DMZ are

different but equally intense. Ur-

banized, rich, densely populated

South Korea still wants to be

self-sufficient in food and culti-

vates every available inch of suit-

able land. The North, driven by

poverty, is doing the same, as well

as overexploiting and, in many

places, polluting its rivers.

Last year, North Korea joined

the Ramsar Convention on Wet-

lands, an international treaty es-

tablished by UNESCO in 1971,

and put aside two important wet-

land areas for conservation.

Pyongyang officials understand

that their the country has limited

natural resources, Moores says,

so “they are very determined to

use their resources as wisely as

possible.”

But the North also views the

DMZ as primarily a military zone,

Moores adds, tending to see

grand — and unilateral — South

Korean proposals for biosphere

reserves and peace parks there as

potential “land grabs.”

Moores said what he wants to

see is habitat management and

research in the CCZ that offers

practical benefits for people and

wildlife alike — and ultimately a

channel for cooperation between

the two Koreas. But after two

decades working in conservation

in South Korea, he is frustrated.

“During that time, I've heard

dozens of proposals and counter-

proposals, but I have yet to see

any real management of habitat

in ways that really could help to

build trust and sustain popula-

tions of wild birds while improv-

ing the livelihoods of local peo-

ple,” he said.

“Twenty years have been lost,

effectively.”

[email protected]

Min Joo Kim contributed to this

report.

Wildlife thriving in DMZ, but for how long?

S. Korea’s rush to embrace development in the name of peace with the North may endanger rare habitats and species

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

MIN JOO KIM/THE WASHINGTON POST

TAKASHI NOGUCHI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

TOP: A view of North Korea from the village of Panmunjom, which

sits inside the demilitarized zone, shows undisturbed vegetation.

LEFT: Kim Seung-ho of the DMZ Ecology Research Institute

conducts studies of the environment at the inter-Korean border.

ABOVE: Red-crowned cranes, seen here in Hokkaido, Japan, are

found in abundance in the DMZ during winter.