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Reading years ago that the majority of us end our lives within 30 km of
where we were born, I remember thinking: Not me. But after meeting
Margareta Weisser, who knows.
After spending much of her life in Asia, she is relocating to the town
in Germany's Black Forest where she was born. "I've always been a bit of
a gypsy," she said in early April, preparing to leave Japan. "But I also
knew it wouldn't be forever. So I've rented a flat in Schramberg. I'm
ready to start again."
Since 1992, she has been on "unpaid leave" from the German Foreign
Service, operating as a development coworker under Germany's development
law, promoting grassroots projects in nine Asian countries among
indigenous tribes.
Small, bubbling with energy and fiercely sincere in her form of
independent Catholicism, Weisser (who is very much a one-woman band)
experienced a personal epiphany in the early 1980s. "My mother wrote,
suggesting I look up relatives in the Philippines. Soon I found myself
on a 10-day trek in a tribal area on the islands of Mindoro, where my
cousin had a parish, reeling at the poverty."
Climbing up to peer inside a hut, she found a native woman in labor.
Realizing that everyone assumed this "nice stupid tourist" was a Peace
Corps worker, Weisser ended up delivering a baby girl with a single
cotton ball and a small bowl of water. Maria is now a student and one of
Weisser's hundreds of surrogate sons and daughters scattered throughout
Asia.
This incident inspired an awareness of the problems of tribal people
suffering the consequences of economic development. It was in 1992 that
she established the nongovernment organization ATCA International (Assistance
for Tribal Communities in Asia). Five years later, with two decades of
activism behind her, she established a foundation in her name with the
aim of supporting indigenous Asians in their struggle for survival.
The Margareta Weisser Foundation in Vienna, as well as ATCA
International, now based in Schramberg, works in four fields:
development cooperation, lobbying, education and science. While some may
query the self-aggrandizement, it is only fair to remember that she has
worked unceasingly, putting herself repeatedly on the line (photographing
pirates, being arrested for carrying tapes considered subversive and
demonstrating that she can be a very bad enemy indeed) to leave
something in her name.
Asia was a dream from childhood. A former elementary school teacher
relayed on a recent visit that at age 7, Margareta had stated she
intended to go to Japan. "Schramberg claims Europe's oldest watch
factory. Postwar, lots of Japanese and other Asians came buying parts.
Maybe that's how my interest started."
After studies in London and Rome, Weisser took up employment at the
German Historical Institute in 1967. "After the Osaka Expo, the Japanese
Institute of Culture opened in Rome, so I began learning the language.
Then in 1975 a job came up at the German Embassy in Tokyo."
After a year back in Rome, she finally joined the German Foreign Service
and returned to Japan for a second term.
In 1981 she was posted to the German Embassy in Manila, where she stayed
four years. It was during this period she became involved in tribal
rights. "I was seconded to the ambassador, who was very much against
staff becoming involved in so-called internal affairs of the host
country. We're friendly now, but I had to develop a thick skin."
By this time she had been traveling throughout Asia and the South
Pacific for years. Through connections made in Rome, she led groups of
Italians wanting to explore local cultures. "Recognizing I was witness
to a vanishing world, I began taking pictures and making movies. I could
see the damage being done."
Every time she returned, she could see the difference. How long would
Palau's magnificent longhouses survive, she wondered. "As soon
Micronesia planned a 'Megaport,' I knew its traditional culture was
doomed. That project never materialized, but since Palau became an
independent state, business has flooded that part of the world with
immigrants, workers and tourists."
At the start of her activities in Mindoro, 18 German missionaries were
working but only one was actively supporting tribal people. "He was
working with the Hanunoo Mangyans, one of eight tribes of Mangyan in
Mindoro. Before World War II, 80 percent of the rain forest remained,
supporting 80,000 Mangyans and a similar number of 'lowlanders,' "
immigrants wanting to farm and mine. "Now only 4 percent of forest is
left, encroached upon by 800,000 lowlanders."
There are indigenous groups like this -- dislocated, politically and
economically marginalized -- all over Asia. Two hundred groups -- 6
million people -- are struggling to survive in the Philippines alone.
They face an uncertain future, because as their natural habitat changes,
the people disappear. "Fifty percent of the babies don't make it to age
2. Or, having retreated so high there's no water, people are forced to
submit. They then drift to the cities, becoming miserably poor and
losing their own identity, self-esteem and culture."
She began ATCA initiatives by arranging ethnological exhibits, giving
lectures and organizing high-level classical concerts; she then started
to coordinate assistance and self-reliance projects. She nagged embassy
colleagues, friends and relatives, Lions and Rotary clubs, church groups
and schools for help. In Europe she encouraged mission groups that were
none too keen to provide support in dangerous areas.
The range of ATCA's work now covers activities in countries that include
Indonesia, Laos, India and even China. ("How my baby grew!") The more
she travels, the more beautiful the world becomes, she says. "I get so
much from the indigenous people I meet. I never feel I give anything. If
I can earn their trust to the point we can figure out together what they
need, that's reward enough."
She is especially optimistic about native students being put through
university, because they can use the system to advance the rights of
their people. "Currently we've over 20 in the Philippines, 12 in Vietnam
and four in Bangladesh. The first will graduate in law in 2001. A
seminarian, now in social studies, will become leader of his tribe. As a
priest, he'd be a lost cause for his people, being sent far away for
many years."
The foundation will ensure that Weisser's work continues with a stable
base under Austrian law. She wants to concentrate her energies to
pulling the work back to grassroots action. "I don't want ATCA -- or my
young foundation -- to become political and academic. I want to maintain
contact between institutions and leaders dealing with tribal people to
the point they're 'developed' enough to raise their own voices."
Sadly Japan has failed Weisser in recent support. When she left the
German Consulate in Kobe in 1992, she had to leave her apartment. Xavier
priests took her in. The Japanese and German Catholic churches stood by
and watched as she sold her goods and chattels to continue her
activities. "Was I bitter? No, it was liberating."
Just before leaving the consulate, she called a news conference and made
an appeal for unused or partly used telephone cards. The response was a
landslide. "We were getting 3,000 to 4,000 letters a day. Truckloads.
The consulate was groaning: 'Margareta, this is the last thing you can
do to us!' But the funding generated a power of good."
Leaving the convent she came to Tokyo to work out of a room offered by
Italian Franciscans. After the last foreign priest died just after
Christmas, young Japanese Franciscans moved in, making it clear Weisser
was not welcome. "With no real affordable chance of a room elsewhere,
and no volunteers ready to help in a reasonable way, I decided it was
time to suspend operations."
A German protestant pastor in Nagano will carry on ATCA's work, but with
a very reduced office. "The good will was there, but I feel it fading
away. The Kobe earthquake crushed us. When the Italians sold up and
moved away, we had to rent; it was hard to survive on a commercial basis.
I tried to find voluntary commitment but it wasn't there. The Asian
crisis didn't help either. Basically we were hit from all sides."
I found Margareta Weisser Thursday last on a beach in Thailand, taking a
break from a project tour. She was reeling at the news (also by e-mail)
of the death of a Clarentian priest, the Rev. Roel, one of four hostages
killed on Basilan Island, in the Philippines. "I'm crying for him. He
was such a nice young guy. We really need to give credit to those who
work so hard in such difficult and dangerous circumstances."
In mid-May she will head for Schramberg to get established. Japan knows
where to find her, she says. "My life has been a series of new starts,
but all heading in one straight line. Having spent all my savings over
the last eight years, I'm not quite sure how I'll survive. But I'm
always ready to fight the good fight. I'll never give up."
The Japan Times: May 7, 2000
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