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savePTfarmers   pm.11:29, Monday ( 895hit )
Daechuri villagers renew talks with the government

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)

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No Subject Name Date Hit
158
  Daechuri residents had to give up the autonomous commune...   
dope  07-02-15 1536
157
  Re-negotiation of base expansion is inevitable (press)   
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  Pyeongtaek's Mystery Ball in the Sky   
Radical Lang.Xchange  07-02-06 771
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  Base expansion constructions harms neighbors' health and the environment   
radical lang exchang  07-01-31 985
  Daechuri villagers renew talks with the government   
savePTfarmers  07-01-29 895
153
  Fundraising to support Dachuri residents   
radical lang exchang  07-01-29 694
152
  Daechuri end-of-year party   
saveptfarmers  07-01-01 870
151
  Village Leader Ji Tae Kim Released!   
nobasept  06-12-29 988
150
  Daechuri residents named 'the people of the year 2006'   
savePTfarmers  06-12-26 824
149
  Press Statement Related to the Delay in Base Relocation Plan   
nobasept  06-12-22 909
148
  Year-end rally and festival in Pyeongtaek   
saveptfarmers  06-12-17 922
147
  The Pyeongtaek U.S. Army Base Expansion will be delayed for 5 years   
radical lang xchange  06-12-14 869
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