The New York Times International - 13.08.2019

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4 | T UESDAY, AUGUST 13, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION

world

The Komodo dragon, a 10-foot lizard na-

tive only to a scattering of islands in In-

donesia, flicked its forked tongue. Two

boys were standing nearby, the perfect

size for dragon snacks.

A local guide shrugged at their unease

and urged them closer to the reptile.

Komodo dragons resemble dinosaurs

that missed their cue for extinction. Ca-

pable of smelling blood from miles away,

they eat water buffaloes, deer and one

another. Their saliva is laced with ven-

om. Females are unsentimental enough

to devour their own freshly hatched off-

spring.

Fatal attacks on humans are exceed-

ingly rare, though they do happen. But

the oversize lizard lounging near the

two young tourists had just gorged on

chicken and goat, and was lolling in the

kind of digestive stupor Americans

might experience after Thanksgiving.

It was safe, the guide promised, for a

family photograph with the alpha preda-

tor, one of only about 3,000 dragons left

in the world.

Tourists come to Komodo National

Park, which stretches across a volcanic

explosion of islands in the southern Pa-

cific Ocean, because of the dragons and

also for the vibrant sea life that lets

snorkelers and scuba divers share the

water with turtles and rays.

But like other tourist destinations

around the world, from Venice to the

Galápagos, the park is at risk of being

wrecked by its own popularity. The in-

undation of tourists is threatening the

very animals and pristine beauty draw-

ing them there.

While Komodo tourism generates sig-

nificant cash for one of Indonesia’s poor-

est regions, it has also brought piles of

trash, human encroachment and occa-

sional lizard smuggling.

Some environmentalists worry that

the stampede of visitors has set the

ecosystem off kilter. Dragons, they say,

should survive on wild deer and pigs,

not chickens and goats tossed from the

back of a truck by a ranger.

Over all, the number of foreign tour-

ists who visited the entire national park,

a UNESCO world heritage site, has dou-

bled since 2015, and the number of do-

mestic visitors has increased fivefold.

The park is now on the cruise ship cir-

cuit, with thousands of people disem-

barking each day.

Concerned about the onslaught of vis-

itors in this far-flung part of Indonesia,

provincial leaders want to close the is-

land of Komodo, where the largest popu-

lation of dragons lives — and where the

cruise ships dock — in January 2020.

The island would be off-limits for at least

a year.

Forgoing all that tourist revenue is no

easy call for such a poor region, but offi-

cials say it is essential for the park’s fu-

ture.

“If we don’t give the dragons their

habitat, they will be extinct within the

next 50 to 100 years,” said Yosef Nae Soi,

the deputy governor of East Nusa Teng-

gara Province, which includes the is-

lands that make up Komodo National

Park.

But the plan may be thwarted by the

Indonesian national government, which

will make a final decision this year, offi-

cials from the national Ministry of Envi-

ronment and Forestry say.

And even as local officials aim to close

the island of Komodo, the national gov-

ernment has unveiled a plan to create 10

“new Balis” across the archipelago na-

tion. It hopes to mimic the success of In-

donesia’s most famous holiday isle,

which faces its own severe overtourism.

“Indonesia needs to diversify its tour-

ism destinations,” said Guntur Sakti, a

spokesman for the national Ministry of

Tourism.

One of the 10 “new Balis” is Labuan

Bajo, a scruffy port town on the nearby

island of Flores that is the gateway to

Komodo National Park.

So far, the town’s main pier is still

mostly occupied with local commerce.

But Labuan Bajo is being trans-

formed, its once picturesque bay now a

giant construction site, as the half-fin-

ished hulks of luxury hotels destined for

dragon-spotters and divers rise in front

of primordial jungle. The smell of wet

concrete and construction dust mixes

with the aroma of clove cigarettes and

fried bananas.

Plastic bags float in the clear water,

like mutant jellyfish.

“It’s changing, and that’s good for

people like me,” said Sirilus Harmin, a

guide who left his mountain home for

new opportunities in Komodo National

Park.

Working as the guides who lead walks

in the dragon habitat, or operating sou-

venir stalls, are two of the few options

the locals now have to get by since their

traditional fishing and hunting ways

were curtailed when the national park

was formed in 1980.

But most of the $300 million in tour-

ism dollars spent in the region does not

reach locals, said Shana Fatina, director

of the tourism authority board for Labu-

an Bajo, which is trying to make sure

more of the spending flows into the

pockets of those who live in the region.

“We don’t want the communities to

just be an accessory, we want them to be

the main focus,” Ms. Shana said. “We

want to educate the public that going to

Komodo National Park is not like going

to an amusement park.”

The Himalayan nation of Bhutan has

avoided some of the ills of mass tourism

by imposing high daily spending min-

imums, an effective if elitist solution

that ensures that only the wealthy can

experience the country’s charms. Some

provincial officials in Komodo think that

the price of meeting the world’s largest

lizard should be increased to at least

$500, up from the approximately $10 ad-

mission charge to the park today.

“Komodo has to have its prestige,”

said Mr. Yosef, the deputy governor.

“This is the only place in the world with

Komodo dragons, so don’t sell them

cheap.”

And if Bhutan offers one possible ap-

proach on controlling, and rarefying,

crowds, another Asian country has al-

ready experimented with barring all

visitors to a popular site of natural

beauty. The early results are promising.

Last year in Thailand, tourism au-

thorities closed off Maya Bay, a cliff-

ringed beach that gained fame as the

site of the Leonardo DiCaprio film, “The

Beach.” Much of the Technicolor coral

reef had been destroyed by the thou-

sands of tourists who descended each

d a y.

Already, sharks have returned to

Maya Bay and coral is regenerating,

Thai park officials say. The marine re-

serve will be closed for up to five years.

If the island of Komodo is closed, the

decision will affect not just the humans

who wish to visit but also the humans

who have lived among the dragons for

centuries. They should be relocated, lo-

cal authorities say.

Legend holds that these villagers —

about 1,700 live on the island today —

share the same ancestors as the drag-

ons. Residents say the reptiles do not

bother them much because of this an-

cient bond.

But Mr. Yosef, the provincial deputy

governor, seems unsympathetic to the

human inhabitants of Komodo. “Komo-

do Island is for the Komodo dragon,” he

said. “The Komodo need a spacious

place to live where there are no hu-

mans.”

And if people refuse to leave the is-

land that has been their home for gener-

ations?

“If we have warned them and they do

not listen, it’s their own fault if the Ko-

modo eat them,” Mr. Yosef said. “It is our

offering to the Komodo.”

A commercial development in Labuan Bajo, a scruffy port town in Indonesia. The town is part of a plan by the government to create 10 “new Balis” across the archipelago nation.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ADAM DEAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Dragons need space, too

Many are drawn to Komodo National Park to see the dragons, but overtourism has led some officials to want to close the island of

Komodo, where tourism generates significant cash for one of Indonesia’s poorest regions. Below, shopping near Kuta beach in Bali.

Muktita Suhartono contributed report-

ing from Jakarta, Indonesia.

INDONESIA DISPATCH

KOMODO NATIONAL PARK, INDONESIA

BY HANNAH BEECH

Indonesia considers ways

to protect the world’s

largest lizard from tourism

THE NEW YORK TIMES

ing out of it is going to be very quick at

all .”

The Communist government’s narra-

tive of redemption through state-en-

forced “re-education,” despite its dysto-

pian echoes, remains the justification

for the camps.

The camps have already swallowed

up one million Muslims or more, by

most estimates, wrenching them from

their families and homes and subjecting

them to what activists, relatives of de-

tainees and former detainees describe

as stressful, even debilitating, indoctri-

nation. Detainees, they say, are forced to

renounce their religious beliefs and em-

brace the ideology of the Communist

Party.

The establishment of the detention

and re-education system — which Sec-

retary of State Mike Pompeo recently

called “the stain of the century” — has

generated the harshest criticism of Chi-

na’s record on human rights since the

bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown in

1989.

The government seems more eager to

quell international outrage over the

camps than to begin to wind down the

far-flung system it has built over the

past two years. It remains unapologeti-

cally proud of the centers, which were

established in a region that experienced

a string of deadly attacks up until 2016,

especially targeting ethnic Chinese and

government buildings.

The chairman of the Xinjiang regional

government, Shohrat Zakir, declared

that the re-education system was ac-

complishing its goal of eliminating radi-

calism and separatism.

Whether the government succeeds in

stamping out the threat of terrorism re-

mains to be seen. The authorities in Xin-

jiang have taken some steps to relax the

suffocating surveillance and travel re-

strictions on Uighurs and others in the

region.

Security in major cities in southern

Xinjiang has visibly eased somewhat,

including in Hotan, Yarkand and Kash-

gar, all centers of Uighur traditions and

resistance to Chinese dominance. There

are fewer checkpoints now, though resi-

dents have to pass through scanners

with facial-recognition software when

they move between cities.

Mr. Zakir, the regional chairman, wel-

comed visitors to the region to see the

changes for themselves, but it is clear

that the authorities are not yet prepared

to allow unfettered access.

Local officials instead offered to orga-

nize visits and interviews that, in some

cases, did more to raise questions than

to dispel them.

Mr. Kebayir’s village, a farming settle-

ment reclaimed out of the desert after

2014 and called Harmony New Village,

also has a smaller re-education center

that continues to hold more than 300 lo-

cal Uighurs, ages 24 to 41, according to

Wuergulia Ashim, an official there.

The center offered a model of how the

Chinese government describes the in-

doctrination camps — a kind of boarding

school and training center that turns lo-

cal residents into loyal citizens. Former

detainees have disputed this descrip-

tion, saying that life inside the camps is

far harsher and that inmates included

professionals and officials who were not

in need of job training.

Ms. Ashim said “more and more” of

the detainees, whom she called stu-

dents, were “graduating” from the cen-

ter. They are confined from Monday

morning to Saturday afternoon, when

they are allowed to return home briefly.

Detainees sleep six to room. There is a

music room, an art room, a library with

books mostly in Chinese, a room to learn

how to give manicures and another to

learn how to cut hair. There was also a

psychological counseling room. “Have a

heart-to-heart,” read a sign on the wall.

“Your secrets are my responsibility.”

The walls of classrooms were deco-

rated with Communist Party adages

and displayed exemplary class work. “I

have achieved true happiness because I

was born in a country that is prosper-

ous, strong and democratic,” one essay

read. “How happy we are!”

Even the carefully choreographed

meeting with Mr. Kebayir, conducted

over an impressive spread of glass dish-

es bearing bread, fruits and nuts, fal-

tered under questioning.

A seemingly rehearsed monotone

slipped when the conversation turned to

details of Mr. Kebayir’s detention, and

one official tried to cut him off. A ques-

tion about how many detainees were

housed with Mr. Kebayir, an official said

angrily, was a leading one.

By his account, Mr. Kebayir was now

earning a decent wage — 2,100 renminbi

last month, about $300 — stitching soles

onto leather shoes at one of the new fac-

tories. Before he entered the camp, he

said, he struggled as a poorly educated

farmer, growing corn and walnuts.

He paused awkwardly when pressed

about the details of his re-education. He

said most of the others there were young

men from the countryside, but he did not

know any of them personally.

Much of the instruction involved agri-

cultural techniques, he said, but he also

learned Chinese, the tenets of the Com-

munist Party and what he called

“healthy life habits.” He credited the in-

structors with dispelling his budding ex-

tremist thinking.

“Before I couldn’t even write my own

name in Chinese,” he said. “Now I can

speak the national language, my think-

ing is clear, and I have job skills.”

He initially said that he had volun-

teered to “enroll” but later acknowl-

edged that village officials had picked

him because of antisocial behavior, like

watching the Islamic-themed videos

and spending time at home alone. The

latter seemed to be contradicted by the

fact that he was married and had a

daughter, now 2.

“Young people can be extremely vul-

nerable to extremist ideas,” he said.

‘Re-education’ camps

are still being operated

C HINA, FROM PAGE 1

PLANET LABS

Above, Uighur women in a settlement called Harmony New Village. Top, a satellite

image taken over Hotan shows that a new Muslim detention center, far right, has risen.

GILLES SABRIÉ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Austin Ramzy contributed reporting

from Hong Kong.

• An article on Friday about the effect of
  climate change on the global food sup-
  ply misquoted and misattributed com-
  ments about proposals to address a pos-
  sible food crisis. Those comments were
  made by Pamela McElwee, not Cynthia
  Rosenzweig. Dr. McElwee said, “What
  some of these solutions do require is at-
  tention, financial support, enabling en-
  vironments.” She did not say, “But what
  some of these solutions do require is at-
  tention, financial support, enabling en-
  vironments.”
  
  
  • An article on Thursday about Beijing’s
    need for private businesses to bolster
    the economy misstated the increased
    use by RiseSun Real Estate Develop-
    ment of notes issued in China by compa-
    nies and banks in lieu of cash. The devel-
    oper said its use of commercial accept-
    ance notes, which are issued by compa-
    nies, and similar notes backed by banks
    had increased by nine times last year,
    not more than 13 times. Its use of com-
    mercial acceptance notes alone in-
    creased by 13 times over that period.
  
  
  
  

CORRECTIONS

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next 50 to 100 years,” said Yosef Nae Soi,

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next 50 to 100 years,” said Yosef Nae Soi,

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gara Province, which includes the is-

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gara Province, which includes the is-

lands that make up Komodo National

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lands that make up Komodo National

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Indonesian national government, which

VK.COM/WSNWS

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will make a final decision this year, offi-

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will make a final decision this year, offi-

cials from the national Ministry of Envi-

VK.COM/WSNWS

cials from the national Ministry of Envi-

ronment and Forestry say.ronment and Forestry say.VK.COM/WSNWS