Myanmar rejects initial UN attempt to see Suu Kyi
By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer – Fri Jul 3, 7:38 am ET
NAYPYITAW, Myanmar (AP) – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Friday that Myanmar's junta chief rejected his initial request to meet jailed opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a rocky start to what he has called "a very tough mission" to win her freedom.
Ban emerged from a two-hour meeting with Myanmar's reclusive Senior Gen. Than Shwe, saying he still hoped to meet the 64-year-old Nobel Peace laureate before he leaves the country on Saturday.
"I told him that I wanted to meet her, but he told me that she is (on) trial," Ban told reporters afterward. "But I told him that this is my proposal, and this is important, and I'm waiting for their reply."
The two met in an ornate reception hall with a colonnaded walkway and an indoor waterfall in Naypyitaw, the junta's remote administrative capital.
If Ban is allowed to meet with Suu Kyi, he will be the first U.N. secretary-general to do so since her first period of detention started in 1989.
Suu Kyi has been in detention for nearly 14 of the past 20 years, mostly under house arrest.
In May, she was charged with violating the terms of her house arrest when an uninvited American man swam secretly to her lakeside home in May and stayed for two days.
She has pleaded not guilty and faces five years in prison if convicted.
The trial has sparked outrage from world leaders, Hollywood celebrities, other Nobel laureates and human rights groups who say the military-controlled government is using the bizarre incident as an excuse to keep Suu Kyi behind bars through elections scheduled for 2010.
The elections are part of the junta's "roadmap to democracy," which critics say is a sham designed to cement the military's four-decade grip on power.
Ban said he also urged Than Shwe to "accelerate the process of democratization" and reiterated calls for the junta to free its estimated 2,100 political prisoners ahead of the elections.
"I was assured that the Myanmar authorities will make sure that this election will be held in a fair and free and transparent manner," he said, without elaborating.
Shortly after the U.N. chief arrived on Friday, the court presiding over Suu Kyi's widely criticized trial announced an adjournment until July 10. The trial had been set to resume after a monthlong delay during which lawyers appealed the court's decision to ban three key defense witnesses, one of whom was reinstated by an appeals court.
Defense witness Khin Moe Moe — a lawyer and member of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy — was due to testify Friday. But the presiding judge told lawyers that the case file had not yet been returned by the appeals court that had ruled to reinstate the witness, said attorney Nyan Win.
Suu Kyi is being detained at Myanmar's notorious Insein Prison, as is 53-year-old John William Yettaw of Falcon, Missouri, the intruder who is charged with trespassing.
Suu Kyi's opposition party won national elections in 1990, but Myanmar's generals refused to relinquish power. Her latest six-year round of house arrest was to expire last month.
Her supporters fear that Suu Kyi will be found guilty because the courts are under the influence of the ruling junta and usually mete out harsh punishment for political dissidents.
Ban was also scheduled to meet ethnic minority groups and leaders of political parties, including senior members of Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy, who were driven to Naypyitaw, government officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the itinerary.
Ban had previously said his talks would focus on "three of the most important issues for the future of Myanmar." They are gaining the release of all political prisoners including Suu Kyi; resumption of dialogue between the military government and its opposition; and creating conditions for credible elections.
Human Rights Watch urged Ban to make the trip "meaningful" after years of failed U.N. attempts to win Suu Kyi's freedom and promote democratic reforms. Myanmar has been under military rule since 1962.
"Time and again, the U.N. has politely requested Aung San Suu Kyi's release, but her 'release' back to house arrest would be a huge failure," Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch said in a statement. "He should make it clear that the time for stalling and playing games is over and that real change is needed now."
By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer – Fri Jul 3, 7:38 am ET
NAYPYITAW, Myanmar (AP) – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Friday that Myanmar's junta chief rejected his initial request to meet jailed opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a rocky start to what he has called "a very tough mission" to win her freedom.
Ban emerged from a two-hour meeting with Myanmar's reclusive Senior Gen. Than Shwe, saying he still hoped to meet the 64-year-old Nobel Peace laureate before he leaves the country on Saturday.
"I told him that I wanted to meet her, but he told me that she is (on) trial," Ban told reporters afterward. "But I told him that this is my proposal, and this is important, and I'm waiting for their reply."
The two met in an ornate reception hall with a colonnaded walkway and an indoor waterfall in Naypyitaw, the junta's remote administrative capital.
If Ban is allowed to meet with Suu Kyi, he will be the first U.N. secretary-general to do so since her first period of detention started in 1989.
Suu Kyi has been in detention for nearly 14 of the past 20 years, mostly under house arrest.
In May, she was charged with violating the terms of her house arrest when an uninvited American man swam secretly to her lakeside home in May and stayed for two days.
She has pleaded not guilty and faces five years in prison if convicted.
The trial has sparked outrage from world leaders, Hollywood celebrities, other Nobel laureates and human rights groups who say the military-controlled government is using the bizarre incident as an excuse to keep Suu Kyi behind bars through elections scheduled for 2010.
The elections are part of the junta's "roadmap to democracy," which critics say is a sham designed to cement the military's four-decade grip on power.
Ban said he also urged Than Shwe to "accelerate the process of democratization" and reiterated calls for the junta to free its estimated 2,100 political prisoners ahead of the elections.
"I was assured that the Myanmar authorities will make sure that this election will be held in a fair and free and transparent manner," he said, without elaborating.
Shortly after the U.N. chief arrived on Friday, the court presiding over Suu Kyi's widely criticized trial announced an adjournment until July 10. The trial had been set to resume after a monthlong delay during which lawyers appealed the court's decision to ban three key defense witnesses, one of whom was reinstated by an appeals court.
Defense witness Khin Moe Moe — a lawyer and member of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy — was due to testify Friday. But the presiding judge told lawyers that the case file had not yet been returned by the appeals court that had ruled to reinstate the witness, said attorney Nyan Win.
Suu Kyi is being detained at Myanmar's notorious Insein Prison, as is 53-year-old John William Yettaw of Falcon, Missouri, the intruder who is charged with trespassing.
Suu Kyi's opposition party won national elections in 1990, but Myanmar's generals refused to relinquish power. Her latest six-year round of house arrest was to expire last month.
Her supporters fear that Suu Kyi will be found guilty because the courts are under the influence of the ruling junta and usually mete out harsh punishment for political dissidents.
Ban was also scheduled to meet ethnic minority groups and leaders of political parties, including senior members of Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy, who were driven to Naypyitaw, government officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the itinerary.
Ban had previously said his talks would focus on "three of the most important issues for the future of Myanmar." They are gaining the release of all political prisoners including Suu Kyi; resumption of dialogue between the military government and its opposition; and creating conditions for credible elections.
Human Rights Watch urged Ban to make the trip "meaningful" after years of failed U.N. attempts to win Suu Kyi's freedom and promote democratic reforms. Myanmar has been under military rule since 1962.
"Time and again, the U.N. has politely requested Aung San Suu Kyi's release, but her 'release' back to house arrest would be a huge failure," Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch said in a statement. "He should make it clear that the time for stalling and playing games is over and that real change is needed now."
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U.N.'s Ban meets with Myanmar's junta supremo
By Louis Charbonneau – Fri Jul 3, 8:00 am ET
NAYPYIDAW, Myanmar (Reuters) – Myanmar junta supremo Than Shwe smiled briefly but gave nothing away as he listened Friday to U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon, at the start of what Ban has called a "tough mission" to promote democratic reform.
"I thank you for your invitation. I'm happy to be here and to see you are in good health since I last saw you," Ban told the 76-year-old general, wearing a khaki uniform adorned with medals.
The rare meeting with the reclusive general took place in Than Shwe's lavish Bayint Nuang Yeiktha office in Naypyidaw, the new capital hastily built in the hills of Shan Plateau in 2005.
Ban, on what he has called a "tough mission" to press the junta to release all political prisoners and hold fair and credible elections, commended the general for his contributions to peace, prosperity and democracy in the former Burma.
"I would like to help move your country forward and appreciate your commitment to moving your country forward," Ban said, offering a smile and a firm handshake to the man who has led the military regime for 17 of its 47 years in power.
Moments later, the media were ushered out of the room. Ban was expected to ask Than Shwe's permission to meet opposition leader Aung san Suu Kyi, who is on trial for breaching the terms of her house arrest.
Suu Kyi's trial was adjourned earlier Friday because of a clerical error by the court, according to her lawyer.
On arrival in Yangon, Ban said he would convey international concern about Suu Kyi's trial and press the regime to ensure next year's multi-party elections are credible and transparent.
"The genuine will of the Myanmar people should be reflected."
HIGH STAKES
The stakes are high for Ban and the risk of failure great.
Halfway through a five-year term at the helm of the United Nations, he has faced a wave of criticism from detractors who say his low-key approach to the job does not work.
He is eager to prove them wrong, U.N. diplomats say.
Ban made clear he was under no illusions about how difficult it would be to persuade the military junta to free prisoners and take concrete steps toward democracy ahead of the elections.
"I'll do my best (but) I do not believe my visit should be a make-or-break event... This will be a very difficult mission," he told reporters in Singapore earlier Friday.
He said he would also press Than Shwe and Prime Minister Thein Sein to engage in "meaningful and credible dialogue" with Suu Kyi and the opposition.
Ban said he would meet with representatives of "registered political parties" in Naypyidaw, including Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy.
However, Suu Kyi herself will not be at that meeting and it was not clear if Ban would be able to meet her at all.
She has spent 14 of the past 20 years in detention, mostly under house arrest at her lakeside home in Yangon. It will be up to Than Shwe whether Ban sees her.
Her lawyer said her trial had been postponed until July 10, apparently because the Supreme Court did not send case files to the district court, where Suu Kyi appeared Friday.
"Daw Aung San Suu Kyi expressed her surprise that this happened," lawyer Nyan Win told reporters.
The Nobel laureate, 64, was charged with violating the terms of her house arrest by allowing an American intruder to stay at her home in May, which prosecutors say breached a security law designed to thwart "subversive elements."
Critics say the charges are trumped up and that the trial is an attempt to keep Suu Kyi out of the way for the elections, expected to entrench nearly half a century of army rule.
Ban had expressed concern his visit would be used by the junta for propaganda purposes but he decided to go anyway, hoping his knack for quiet diplomacy would persuade the generals to compromise, as they did last year when Ban convinced them to lift humanitarian aid restrictions after Cyclone Nargis.
Analysts say Ban may have been given some indication by the generals, or by U.N. envoy Ibrahim Gambari after his trip last week, that his visit might bring some kind of positive result.
Human Rights Watch said Ban "should not accept the return of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to house arrest or vague statements about political reform as signs of a successful visit."
By Louis Charbonneau – Fri Jul 3, 8:00 am ET
NAYPYIDAW, Myanmar (Reuters) – Myanmar junta supremo Than Shwe smiled briefly but gave nothing away as he listened Friday to U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon, at the start of what Ban has called a "tough mission" to promote democratic reform.
"I thank you for your invitation. I'm happy to be here and to see you are in good health since I last saw you," Ban told the 76-year-old general, wearing a khaki uniform adorned with medals.
The rare meeting with the reclusive general took place in Than Shwe's lavish Bayint Nuang Yeiktha office in Naypyidaw, the new capital hastily built in the hills of Shan Plateau in 2005.
Ban, on what he has called a "tough mission" to press the junta to release all political prisoners and hold fair and credible elections, commended the general for his contributions to peace, prosperity and democracy in the former Burma.
"I would like to help move your country forward and appreciate your commitment to moving your country forward," Ban said, offering a smile and a firm handshake to the man who has led the military regime for 17 of its 47 years in power.
Moments later, the media were ushered out of the room. Ban was expected to ask Than Shwe's permission to meet opposition leader Aung san Suu Kyi, who is on trial for breaching the terms of her house arrest.
Suu Kyi's trial was adjourned earlier Friday because of a clerical error by the court, according to her lawyer.
On arrival in Yangon, Ban said he would convey international concern about Suu Kyi's trial and press the regime to ensure next year's multi-party elections are credible and transparent.
"The genuine will of the Myanmar people should be reflected."
HIGH STAKES
The stakes are high for Ban and the risk of failure great.
Halfway through a five-year term at the helm of the United Nations, he has faced a wave of criticism from detractors who say his low-key approach to the job does not work.
He is eager to prove them wrong, U.N. diplomats say.
Ban made clear he was under no illusions about how difficult it would be to persuade the military junta to free prisoners and take concrete steps toward democracy ahead of the elections.
"I'll do my best (but) I do not believe my visit should be a make-or-break event... This will be a very difficult mission," he told reporters in Singapore earlier Friday.
He said he would also press Than Shwe and Prime Minister Thein Sein to engage in "meaningful and credible dialogue" with Suu Kyi and the opposition.
Ban said he would meet with representatives of "registered political parties" in Naypyidaw, including Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy.
However, Suu Kyi herself will not be at that meeting and it was not clear if Ban would be able to meet her at all.
She has spent 14 of the past 20 years in detention, mostly under house arrest at her lakeside home in Yangon. It will be up to Than Shwe whether Ban sees her.
Her lawyer said her trial had been postponed until July 10, apparently because the Supreme Court did not send case files to the district court, where Suu Kyi appeared Friday.
"Daw Aung San Suu Kyi expressed her surprise that this happened," lawyer Nyan Win told reporters.
The Nobel laureate, 64, was charged with violating the terms of her house arrest by allowing an American intruder to stay at her home in May, which prosecutors say breached a security law designed to thwart "subversive elements."
Critics say the charges are trumped up and that the trial is an attempt to keep Suu Kyi out of the way for the elections, expected to entrench nearly half a century of army rule.
Ban had expressed concern his visit would be used by the junta for propaganda purposes but he decided to go anyway, hoping his knack for quiet diplomacy would persuade the generals to compromise, as they did last year when Ban convinced them to lift humanitarian aid restrictions after Cyclone Nargis.
Analysts say Ban may have been given some indication by the generals, or by U.N. envoy Ibrahim Gambari after his trip last week, that his visit might bring some kind of positive result.
Human Rights Watch said Ban "should not accept the return of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to house arrest or vague statements about political reform as signs of a successful visit."
*****************************************************
Trial of Myanmar's Suu Kyi adjourned for a week
Fri Jul 3, 12:57 am ET
YANGON (Reuters) – The court hearing the case of Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi adjourned her trial for another week on Friday, citing an administrative error, her lawyer said.
"The Supreme Court did not send the case files to the lower court, so the case has been adjourned until July 10," Nyan Win told reporters.
"Daw Aung San Suu Kyi expressed her surprise that this happened."
Suu Kyi, 64, is charged with breaching the terms of her house arrest by allowing an American intruder to stay at her home on May 4. She faces five years in prison if found guilty.
The postponement came as United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived in the military-ruled country for a two-day visit, during which he will meet with junta supremo Than Shwe and has asked to see Nobel laureate Suu Kyi.
Fri Jul 3, 12:57 am ET
YANGON (Reuters) – The court hearing the case of Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi adjourned her trial for another week on Friday, citing an administrative error, her lawyer said.
"The Supreme Court did not send the case files to the lower court, so the case has been adjourned until July 10," Nyan Win told reporters.
"Daw Aung San Suu Kyi expressed her surprise that this happened."
Suu Kyi, 64, is charged with breaching the terms of her house arrest by allowing an American intruder to stay at her home on May 4. She faces five years in prison if found guilty.
The postponement came as United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived in the military-ruled country for a two-day visit, during which he will meet with junta supremo Than Shwe and has asked to see Nobel laureate Suu Kyi.
*****************************************************
U.N.'s Ban to urge Myanmar leader to free prisoners
By Louis Charbonneau – Fri Jul 3, 2:06 am ET
YANGON (Reuters) – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says he has a "tough mission" when he meets Myanmar's top general Friday to urge the junta supremo to free all political prisoners and ensure next year's elections are credible.
Ban said on arrival in Yangon he would ask Senior General Than Shwe when they meet in the country's new capital, Naypyidaw, to allow him to see opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose trial was adjourned earlier Friday.
"I'm going to urge (the generals) to accelerate their political process ... and release all political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi," Ban told reporters.
He said he would convey international concern about Suu Kyi's trial and press the regime to ensure next year's planned multi-party elections are credible and transparent.
"The genuine will of the Myanmar people should be reflected," Ban said.
The stakes are high for Ban and the risk of failure great.
Halfway through a five-year term at the helm of the United Nations, Ban has faced a wave of criticism from detractors who say his low-key approach to the job does not work.
He is eager to prove them wrong, U.N. diplomats say.
Ban made clear he was under no illusions about how difficult it would be to persuade the military junta in the former Burma to free prisoners and take concrete steps toward democracy ahead of next year's multi-party elections.
"We must try our best to bring changes, he told reporters in Singapore before departing for Myanmar.
"I'll do my best (but) I do not believe my visit should be a make-or-break event... This will be a very difficult mission."
MEANINGFUL DIALOGUE
He said he would also press Than Shwe and Prime Minister Thein Sein to engage in "meaningful and credible dialogue" with Suu Kyi and the opposition.
Ban said he would meet with representatives of "registered political parties" in Naypyidaw, including Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy.
However, Suu Kyi herself will not be at that meeting and it was not clear if Ban would be able to meet her at all.
She has spent 14 of the past 20 years in detention, mostly under house arrest at her lakeside home in Yangon. It will be up to Than Shwe whether Ban sees her.
Her lawyer said her trial had been postponed until July 10, apparently because the Supreme Court did not send the case files to the North Yangon District Court, where Suu Kyi appeared Friday.
"Daw Aung San Suu Kyi expressed her surprise that this happened," Nyan Win told reporters.
The Nobel laureate, 64, was charged with violating the terms of her house arrest by allowing an American intruder to stay at her home in May, which prosecutors say breached a security law designed to thwart "subversive elements."
However, critics say the charges are trumped up and that the trial is an attempt to keep Suu Kyi out of the elections next year, which are expected to entrench nearly half a century of army rule.
Human rights groups are watching Ban's moves closely. According to several U.N. diplomats, New York-based Human Rights Watch advised Ban not to accept the junta's invitation, warning him it could be used for propaganda purposes.
But Ban, the diplomats said, decided to go anyway, hoping his presence and knack for quiet diplomacy would persuade the generals to compromise, as they did last year when Ban convinced them to lift restrictions on the delivery of humanitarian aid to victims of Cyclone Nargis.
Analysts say Ban may have been given some indication by the generals, or by U.N. envoy Ibrahim Gambari after his trip last week, that his visit might bring some kind of positive result.
Human Rights Watch said Ban "should not accept the return of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to house arrest or vague statements about political reform as signs of a successful visit."
"If no commitments for reform are made, Ban should clearly and publicly state that a process that mocks the very idea of fundamental freedoms and democracy will have no legitimacy," it said in a statement.
By Louis Charbonneau – Fri Jul 3, 2:06 am ET
YANGON (Reuters) – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says he has a "tough mission" when he meets Myanmar's top general Friday to urge the junta supremo to free all political prisoners and ensure next year's elections are credible.
Ban said on arrival in Yangon he would ask Senior General Than Shwe when they meet in the country's new capital, Naypyidaw, to allow him to see opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose trial was adjourned earlier Friday.
"I'm going to urge (the generals) to accelerate their political process ... and release all political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi," Ban told reporters.
He said he would convey international concern about Suu Kyi's trial and press the regime to ensure next year's planned multi-party elections are credible and transparent.
"The genuine will of the Myanmar people should be reflected," Ban said.
The stakes are high for Ban and the risk of failure great.
Halfway through a five-year term at the helm of the United Nations, Ban has faced a wave of criticism from detractors who say his low-key approach to the job does not work.
He is eager to prove them wrong, U.N. diplomats say.
Ban made clear he was under no illusions about how difficult it would be to persuade the military junta in the former Burma to free prisoners and take concrete steps toward democracy ahead of next year's multi-party elections.
"We must try our best to bring changes, he told reporters in Singapore before departing for Myanmar.
"I'll do my best (but) I do not believe my visit should be a make-or-break event... This will be a very difficult mission."
MEANINGFUL DIALOGUE
He said he would also press Than Shwe and Prime Minister Thein Sein to engage in "meaningful and credible dialogue" with Suu Kyi and the opposition.
Ban said he would meet with representatives of "registered political parties" in Naypyidaw, including Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy.
However, Suu Kyi herself will not be at that meeting and it was not clear if Ban would be able to meet her at all.
She has spent 14 of the past 20 years in detention, mostly under house arrest at her lakeside home in Yangon. It will be up to Than Shwe whether Ban sees her.
Her lawyer said her trial had been postponed until July 10, apparently because the Supreme Court did not send the case files to the North Yangon District Court, where Suu Kyi appeared Friday.
"Daw Aung San Suu Kyi expressed her surprise that this happened," Nyan Win told reporters.
The Nobel laureate, 64, was charged with violating the terms of her house arrest by allowing an American intruder to stay at her home in May, which prosecutors say breached a security law designed to thwart "subversive elements."
However, critics say the charges are trumped up and that the trial is an attempt to keep Suu Kyi out of the elections next year, which are expected to entrench nearly half a century of army rule.
Human rights groups are watching Ban's moves closely. According to several U.N. diplomats, New York-based Human Rights Watch advised Ban not to accept the junta's invitation, warning him it could be used for propaganda purposes.
But Ban, the diplomats said, decided to go anyway, hoping his presence and knack for quiet diplomacy would persuade the generals to compromise, as they did last year when Ban convinced them to lift restrictions on the delivery of humanitarian aid to victims of Cyclone Nargis.
Analysts say Ban may have been given some indication by the generals, or by U.N. envoy Ibrahim Gambari after his trip last week, that his visit might bring some kind of positive result.
Human Rights Watch said Ban "should not accept the return of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to house arrest or vague statements about political reform as signs of a successful visit."
"If no commitments for reform are made, Ban should clearly and publicly state that a process that mocks the very idea of fundamental freedoms and democracy will have no legitimacy," it said in a statement.
*****************************************************
Jul 2, 2009
NASDAQ - UN Chief To Meet Myanmar Junta Chief Again Saturday
NAYPYIDAW (AFP)--U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is to hold an unscheduled second meeting with the leader of Myanmar's military junta on Saturday, a U.N. spokesman said.
Ban held talks with regime leader Than Shwe on Friday in which the Myanmar leader stalled on allowing the head of the world body to visit democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.
"There will be a second meeting at 9:30 am (0300 GMT) on Saturday," U.N. spokesman Marie Okabe said Friday. No other meeting had been planned following Friday's talks in the remote capital Naypyidaw.
Ban would also give an unprecedented public address in Myanmar before his departure on Saturday evening, although the format had not yet been established, said senior U.N. officials travelling with Ban.
He had earlier called on Than Shwe to free all political prisoners including Aung and to allow him to visit the Nobel Peace laureate, who is currently on trial for breaching the terms of her house arrest.
But there was still no word on whether he would be permitted a meeting with 64-year-old Aung.
The U.N. officials said there had been a "very lively exchange of views" after Ban proposed a five-point agenda for democratic reforms in Myanmar, which has been ruled by the military since 1962.
There was "considerable resistance" from the Myanmar side to the proposals, they said.
The agenda included new calls for the establishment of a U.N. "good offices" bureau in Yangon, which would provide a permanent structure in the country for Ban and his special U.N. envoy to Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari.
He also proposed setting up a broad-based economic forum to help the country, which remains one of the world's poorest despite its rich natural resources including gas reserves.
The other points reiterated Ban's earlier calls for the release of political prisoners, the resumption of dialogue with the opposition and the holding of free and fair elections in 2010, the officials said.
NASDAQ - UN Chief To Meet Myanmar Junta Chief Again Saturday
NAYPYIDAW (AFP)--U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is to hold an unscheduled second meeting with the leader of Myanmar's military junta on Saturday, a U.N. spokesman said.
Ban held talks with regime leader Than Shwe on Friday in which the Myanmar leader stalled on allowing the head of the world body to visit democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.
"There will be a second meeting at 9:30 am (0300 GMT) on Saturday," U.N. spokesman Marie Okabe said Friday. No other meeting had been planned following Friday's talks in the remote capital Naypyidaw.
Ban would also give an unprecedented public address in Myanmar before his departure on Saturday evening, although the format had not yet been established, said senior U.N. officials travelling with Ban.
He had earlier called on Than Shwe to free all political prisoners including Aung and to allow him to visit the Nobel Peace laureate, who is currently on trial for breaching the terms of her house arrest.
But there was still no word on whether he would be permitted a meeting with 64-year-old Aung.
The U.N. officials said there had been a "very lively exchange of views" after Ban proposed a five-point agenda for democratic reforms in Myanmar, which has been ruled by the military since 1962.
There was "considerable resistance" from the Myanmar side to the proposals, they said.
The agenda included new calls for the establishment of a U.N. "good offices" bureau in Yangon, which would provide a permanent structure in the country for Ban and his special U.N. envoy to Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari.
He also proposed setting up a broad-based economic forum to help the country, which remains one of the world's poorest despite its rich natural resources including gas reserves.
The other points reiterated Ban's earlier calls for the release of political prisoners, the resumption of dialogue with the opposition and the holding of free and fair elections in 2010, the officials said.
*****************************************************
Jul 2, 2009
NASDAQ - UN Has Checkered History Of Diplomacy Over Myanmar
BANGKOK (AFP)--U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon's latest mission to Myanmar follows a checkered history of international diplomacy in the military-ruled nation, with diplomats securing few concessions in the past.
Ban's greatest success came in May 2008 when he flew in and persuaded junta leader Than Shwe belatedly to allow international aid into the country after Cyclone Nargis had killed 138,000 people.
But while it showed his quiet diplomacy could achieve results, it came at the expense of Ban agreeing not to mention the former Burma's suppression of pro- democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi and other dissidents.
"The U.N.'s recent efforts at mediation between the government and (opposition leader Suu Kyi's) National League for Democracy have not produced any concrete results," Human Rights Watch said in a statement Thursday.
Ban's special envoy to Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, has learnt better than most during his eight visits there how tricky it can be to deal with a reclusive regime that has more than 2,100 political prisoners behind bars.
The Nigerian diplomat's last mission, which ended last Saturday, was a precursor to the secretary general's visit, but ended without a meeting between Gambari and Myanmar's senior military, or opposition, figures.
During his seventh mission in February, Gambari met Suu Kyi before new criminal charges were launched against her but he didn't see Than Shwe.
Last August, the snub came from Nobel Laureate Suu Kyi herself when she refused to meet the U.N. troubleshooter, apparently over his lack of progress in talks with the regime.
The U.N. has been pushing through Gambari for a reopening of dialogue between the military government and Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party.
It has also urged the release of political prisoners, including Suu Kyi, ahead of general elections in 2010 - only to see her now facing trial for a bizarre incident in which an American man swam to her lakeside house.
NASDAQ - UN Has Checkered History Of Diplomacy Over Myanmar
BANGKOK (AFP)--U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon's latest mission to Myanmar follows a checkered history of international diplomacy in the military-ruled nation, with diplomats securing few concessions in the past.
Ban's greatest success came in May 2008 when he flew in and persuaded junta leader Than Shwe belatedly to allow international aid into the country after Cyclone Nargis had killed 138,000 people.
But while it showed his quiet diplomacy could achieve results, it came at the expense of Ban agreeing not to mention the former Burma's suppression of pro- democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi and other dissidents.
"The U.N.'s recent efforts at mediation between the government and (opposition leader Suu Kyi's) National League for Democracy have not produced any concrete results," Human Rights Watch said in a statement Thursday.
Ban's special envoy to Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, has learnt better than most during his eight visits there how tricky it can be to deal with a reclusive regime that has more than 2,100 political prisoners behind bars.
The Nigerian diplomat's last mission, which ended last Saturday, was a precursor to the secretary general's visit, but ended without a meeting between Gambari and Myanmar's senior military, or opposition, figures.
During his seventh mission in February, Gambari met Suu Kyi before new criminal charges were launched against her but he didn't see Than Shwe.
Last August, the snub came from Nobel Laureate Suu Kyi herself when she refused to meet the U.N. troubleshooter, apparently over his lack of progress in talks with the regime.
The U.N. has been pushing through Gambari for a reopening of dialogue between the military government and Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party.
It has also urged the release of political prisoners, including Suu Kyi, ahead of general elections in 2010 - only to see her now facing trial for a bizarre incident in which an American man swam to her lakeside house.
*****************************************************
Jul 2, 2009
NASDAQ - Myanmar, North Korea Vow To Expand Military Cooperation:Report
BANGKOK (Kyodo)--Myanmar's third-ranked leader made a top-secret visit to North Korea in November during which the two sides pledged to significantly expand cooperation in military training and arms production, Radio Free Asia reported Friday online, quoting a leaked report purportedly drafted by Myanmar's junta.
The 37-page report in Burmese claims to contain details of the Nov. 22-29 visit to North Korea by 17 Myanmar officials, billed as a goodwill visit to China and reportedly led by Gen. Thura Shwe Mann, Myanmar's third-ranked leader and armed forces chief of staff, the Radio Free Asia report said.
According to the report, Mann held talks with North Korean Chief of General Staff Kim Kyok-sik and signed a memorandum of understanding expanding military ties.
According to the report, the cooperation includes special forces training, the building of tunnels for aircraft and ships, and modernizing military arms.
The delegation also visited a Scud tactical ballistic missile factory outside Pyongyang, the report said.
NASDAQ - Myanmar, North Korea Vow To Expand Military Cooperation:Report
BANGKOK (Kyodo)--Myanmar's third-ranked leader made a top-secret visit to North Korea in November during which the two sides pledged to significantly expand cooperation in military training and arms production, Radio Free Asia reported Friday online, quoting a leaked report purportedly drafted by Myanmar's junta.
The 37-page report in Burmese claims to contain details of the Nov. 22-29 visit to North Korea by 17 Myanmar officials, billed as a goodwill visit to China and reportedly led by Gen. Thura Shwe Mann, Myanmar's third-ranked leader and armed forces chief of staff, the Radio Free Asia report said.
According to the report, Mann held talks with North Korean Chief of General Staff Kim Kyok-sik and signed a memorandum of understanding expanding military ties.
According to the report, the cooperation includes special forces training, the building of tunnels for aircraft and ships, and modernizing military arms.
The delegation also visited a Scud tactical ballistic missile factory outside Pyongyang, the report said.
*****************************************************
Channel NewsAsia - UN chief says Myanmar mission 'very difficult'
Posted: 03 July 2009 0245 hrs
SINGAPORE: UN chief Ban Ki-moon said on Thursday he was embarking on a "very difficult" mission to Myanmar aimed at obtaining political results from the ruling military, but pledged to do his best.
Speaking to reporters in Singapore on the eve of his trip, Ban said he had not received any confirmation that he would be allowed to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's jailed pro-democracy icon and opposition leader.
He said he will raise the issue of meeting with the Nobel laureate when he meets with Myanmar junta leader Senior General Than Shwe in the remote administrative capital of Naypyidaw on Friday.
"I will try to meet with representatives of all registered political parties including Aung San Suu Kyi, that's my hope," he told journalists here after a dinner hosted in his honour by Singapore's Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong.
"But I have to raise this issue with the Senior General directly, in person. I have not received any firm confirmation, but through (UN special envoy Ibrahim) Gambari I have clearly conveyed my wish to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi."
Ban underscored the challenges during his visit, which the New York-based Human Rights Watch warned would be a "huge failure" if he fails to secure the release of Aung San Suu Kyi.
"It is a very difficult mission," Ban said.
"But in order to bring changes to Myanmar in the political reconciliation and democratisation (process), we need to do our best."
Ban said he was aware that he was visiting Myanmar "under certain uncertainties", apparently referring to the resumption on Friday of Aung San Suu Kyi's trial for allegedly breaching the terms of her house arrest.
She faces up to five years in prison if convicted.
"But I am going to convey the concerns of the international community about the slow pace of the political reconciliation and democratisation process," he added.
As well as Senior General Than Shwe, Ban said he will also meet with Prime Minister Thein Sein and representatives of all registered political parties and former armed groups.
"Through my meetings... I will convey exactly what the international community expects and wishes (regarding) the way they want to see changes in Myanmar."
He will also visit the region devastated by Cyclone Nargis last year to see recovery efforts.
Ban arrived in Singapore on Thursday from Japan and has already met Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
Posted: 03 July 2009 0245 hrs
SINGAPORE: UN chief Ban Ki-moon said on Thursday he was embarking on a "very difficult" mission to Myanmar aimed at obtaining political results from the ruling military, but pledged to do his best.
Speaking to reporters in Singapore on the eve of his trip, Ban said he had not received any confirmation that he would be allowed to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's jailed pro-democracy icon and opposition leader.
He said he will raise the issue of meeting with the Nobel laureate when he meets with Myanmar junta leader Senior General Than Shwe in the remote administrative capital of Naypyidaw on Friday.
"I will try to meet with representatives of all registered political parties including Aung San Suu Kyi, that's my hope," he told journalists here after a dinner hosted in his honour by Singapore's Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong.
"But I have to raise this issue with the Senior General directly, in person. I have not received any firm confirmation, but through (UN special envoy Ibrahim) Gambari I have clearly conveyed my wish to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi."
Ban underscored the challenges during his visit, which the New York-based Human Rights Watch warned would be a "huge failure" if he fails to secure the release of Aung San Suu Kyi.
"It is a very difficult mission," Ban said.
"But in order to bring changes to Myanmar in the political reconciliation and democratisation (process), we need to do our best."
Ban said he was aware that he was visiting Myanmar "under certain uncertainties", apparently referring to the resumption on Friday of Aung San Suu Kyi's trial for allegedly breaching the terms of her house arrest.
She faces up to five years in prison if convicted.
"But I am going to convey the concerns of the international community about the slow pace of the political reconciliation and democratisation process," he added.
As well as Senior General Than Shwe, Ban said he will also meet with Prime Minister Thein Sein and representatives of all registered political parties and former armed groups.
"Through my meetings... I will convey exactly what the international community expects and wishes (regarding) the way they want to see changes in Myanmar."
He will also visit the region devastated by Cyclone Nargis last year to see recovery efforts.
Ban arrived in Singapore on Thursday from Japan and has already met Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
*****************************************************
MYANMAR: Cyclone survivors struggle with debt burden
OUTKWIN, 3 July 2009 (IRIN) - A year ago, Soe Soe was US$20 in debt. Like many survivors of Nargis who lost their homes, she had no choice but to borrow from money lenders to feed her family - often at extortionate interest rates.
But more than a year after the category four storm struck southern Myanmar - leaving close to 140,000 people dead and affecting more than two million - she says she is drowning in debt.
"For me it’s one disaster after another," the 29-year-old told IRIN from her makeshift hut in Outkwin Village in Pyapon Township, in the heart of Myanmar’s Ayeyarwady Delta and one of the hardest-hit areas.
She now owes about $200 and at an interest rate of 40 percent every two weeks, she is unlikely to be able to repay it.
Debt levels were already high before Nargis, according to the UN, but since then they have soared and credit is now harder to find. People are increasingly worried that they will not be able feed themselves, much less restore their livelihoods alone - pushing them increasingly into the hands of money lenders, who are thriving.
According to one interviewed by IRIN, interest rates are about 10-20 percent a month with some collateral, while others charge as much as 40 percent for a two-week period if there is a greater risk of default.
"We know our interest rates are higher than in previous years, but it's quite risky for us," one money lender in Outkwin said. "We can lose our money any time if they don’t pay back.”
Others maintain that the higher the interest rate, the more likely they will get their money back.
"I even had to leave a longyi [a sarong-like garment worn by men and women] as collateral,” said one mother of two.
Food debt
According to a Rapid Food Security Assessment conducted by the World Food Programme (WFP) earlier this year, 83 percent of households surveyed were reportedly in debt – with food the dominant expense.
The survey showed that 51 percent of sampled households in the Labutta and Bogale townships relied on food aid for rice supplies, while only 25 percent reported a recovery in their livelihoods.
"Recovery will require several more years of support and input," Chris Kaye, country director for WFP in Myanmar, told IRIN earlier.
That being the case, many survivors feel they have no choice but to accept higher interest rates, knowing they will face even tougher times ahead.
Aye Lwin, 41, from Phoshangyi Village, Dedaye Township, says her family of nine can barely afford one meal a day since they cannot borrow any more money.
“Is there anyone who will rescue us from this debt trap?” the mother-of-seven asked.
Last year she borrowed nearly $500 at 15 percent a month to buy fishing equipment, but this year’s catch has proven much smaller than in previous years and she can longer keep up with the payments.
OUTKWIN, 3 July 2009 (IRIN) - A year ago, Soe Soe was US$20 in debt. Like many survivors of Nargis who lost their homes, she had no choice but to borrow from money lenders to feed her family - often at extortionate interest rates.
But more than a year after the category four storm struck southern Myanmar - leaving close to 140,000 people dead and affecting more than two million - she says she is drowning in debt.
"For me it’s one disaster after another," the 29-year-old told IRIN from her makeshift hut in Outkwin Village in Pyapon Township, in the heart of Myanmar’s Ayeyarwady Delta and one of the hardest-hit areas.
She now owes about $200 and at an interest rate of 40 percent every two weeks, she is unlikely to be able to repay it.
Debt levels were already high before Nargis, according to the UN, but since then they have soared and credit is now harder to find. People are increasingly worried that they will not be able feed themselves, much less restore their livelihoods alone - pushing them increasingly into the hands of money lenders, who are thriving.
According to one interviewed by IRIN, interest rates are about 10-20 percent a month with some collateral, while others charge as much as 40 percent for a two-week period if there is a greater risk of default.
"We know our interest rates are higher than in previous years, but it's quite risky for us," one money lender in Outkwin said. "We can lose our money any time if they don’t pay back.”
Others maintain that the higher the interest rate, the more likely they will get their money back.
"I even had to leave a longyi [a sarong-like garment worn by men and women] as collateral,” said one mother of two.
Food debt
According to a Rapid Food Security Assessment conducted by the World Food Programme (WFP) earlier this year, 83 percent of households surveyed were reportedly in debt – with food the dominant expense.
The survey showed that 51 percent of sampled households in the Labutta and Bogale townships relied on food aid for rice supplies, while only 25 percent reported a recovery in their livelihoods.
"Recovery will require several more years of support and input," Chris Kaye, country director for WFP in Myanmar, told IRIN earlier.
That being the case, many survivors feel they have no choice but to accept higher interest rates, knowing they will face even tougher times ahead.
Aye Lwin, 41, from Phoshangyi Village, Dedaye Township, says her family of nine can barely afford one meal a day since they cannot borrow any more money.
“Is there anyone who will rescue us from this debt trap?” the mother-of-seven asked.
Last year she borrowed nearly $500 at 15 percent a month to buy fishing equipment, but this year’s catch has proven much smaller than in previous years and she can longer keep up with the payments.
*****************************************************
July 03, 2009 19:38 PM
Myanmar Sets New Target Of Rice Exporting In 2009-2010
YANGON, July 3 (Bernama) -- Myanmar has set a target of exporting 1.5 million tonnes of rice for the present fiscal year 2009-10, against 700,000 tonnes which was exported in the previous year, according to sources with the Ministry of Commerce Friday.
To realize the target, the Rice Entrepreneurs Association is encouraging farmers to strive for producing better quality rice to win the foreign market, reports Xinhua news agency.
The 2008-2009 rice export, which fetched about US$200 million, registered a record high over the previous years despite the impact of cyclone Nargis which occured in May last year.
Over the previous six fiscal years, the country's paddy production grew from 21 million tons in 2002-2003 to 32 million tonnes in 2008-2009.
With over 70 percent of Myanmar's 57.37 million's population being engaged in agricultural undertakings, the sector represents the mainstay of the country's economy, contributing 40 percent to the country's gross domestic product.
The country's per capita rice consumption stands 510 kilograms (kg) per year which are for rural people, while 408 kg for urban people. The annual consumption of rice by the entire country people reached over 17 million tonnes, statistics reveal.
Myanmar Sets New Target Of Rice Exporting In 2009-2010
YANGON, July 3 (Bernama) -- Myanmar has set a target of exporting 1.5 million tonnes of rice for the present fiscal year 2009-10, against 700,000 tonnes which was exported in the previous year, according to sources with the Ministry of Commerce Friday.
To realize the target, the Rice Entrepreneurs Association is encouraging farmers to strive for producing better quality rice to win the foreign market, reports Xinhua news agency.
The 2008-2009 rice export, which fetched about US$200 million, registered a record high over the previous years despite the impact of cyclone Nargis which occured in May last year.
Over the previous six fiscal years, the country's paddy production grew from 21 million tons in 2002-2003 to 32 million tonnes in 2008-2009.
With over 70 percent of Myanmar's 57.37 million's population being engaged in agricultural undertakings, the sector represents the mainstay of the country's economy, contributing 40 percent to the country's gross domestic product.
The country's per capita rice consumption stands 510 kilograms (kg) per year which are for rural people, while 408 kg for urban people. The annual consumption of rice by the entire country people reached over 17 million tonnes, statistics reveal.
*****************************************************
Jul 4, 2009
Asia Times Online - INTERVIEW: Missing the point on Myanmar
By Charles McDermid
HUA HIN, Thailand - Burmese writer and historian Thant Myint-U's first trip to Myanmar (in this interview referred to as Burma) was in 1974, for the funeral of his much-revered grandfather U Thant, former two-term United Nations secretary general from 1961 to 1971. It was an experience that shaped his understanding of the brutality of the military regime that rules the country to this day.
As John Lancaster of the New Yorker recounted:
When U Thant died, his body, accompanied by the family, was flown to Burma for burial. [Former dictator] Ne Win wanted U Thant buried in a private ceremony; but a convoy of students interrupted the funeral procession, and demanded that U Thant be buried at the site of the former Students' Union, which had been blown up by the military during the 1962 coup. The family was moved by the intensity of feeling but was not sure that a state funeral awarded by the dictatorship would have been appropriate; the Army lost its patience; monks and students were shot; and U Thant was laid to rest in the Cantonment Garden, near the Shwedagon Pagoda, Burma's most important Buddhist site.
This episode gave Thant an early education in the vileness and stupidity of the military dictatorship, and in the strength of feeling against the regime among ordinary Burmese.
After growing up in the north Bronx suburb of Riverdale, Thant became a senior UN official and a veteran of three UN peacekeeping operations. His views gained prominence in The River of Lost Footsteps (Farrar, Straus, 2006), a history of Burma that explains the country's turmoil and isolation in terms of the deeply wounded national psyche. As one reviewer noted, "Burmese history is, in Thant's account, the story of 'imperial ambitions' on the part of the various mini-states that competed to rule the country."
Thant blames the decades of failed international policy towards Burma on a misinterpretation of this history. His assessment of international news coverage is stark: "The military regime is bad, Aung San Suu Kyi good, and the international community needs to apply pressure on Yangon and pressure means no aid, trade sanctions, and more isolation."
In the last year, he has been to Burma six times and travelled extensively. He has seen profound changes and traditional barriers falling away. All the more case, Thant says, for a campaign to engage with the generals.
"In that period from 1962 to 1988, the country was almost entirely closed off and they practiced Burmese socialism - a command economy with barely any investment or trade. In the early 90s, a new generation of generals rose to the top. They saw China and Vietnam and put forward new laws for foreign trade and tourism - they said they wanted a million tourists [a year]. They wanted to be a right-wing, pro-West military government - like Indonesia was at the time and South Korea and Thailand had been," Thant said.
What resulted, in Thant's view, was a huge failure of the international community to engage and embrace these changes. Instead, sanctions soon followed.
"It was a narrow approach," he said. "We tried to further isolate the country as it was coming out of its own isolations. They built a wall around themselves in the 1960s and 70s, and then we built another wall around that."
Now living in Bangkok and working on a new book on Burma, he spoke to Asia Times Online correspondent Charles McDermid on July 2.
ATol: In your writings and interviews, you've pointed out that the Western media has a fairly simple line - you've called it "ahistorical" - on Burma. In terms of this, how is the current the situation being played in the Western press?
TMU: For the past 20 years, Burma has been portrayed in a media as primarily a democracy issue: the military regime and it's repression of the democracy movement led by Aung San Suu Kyi dominates what little coverage there is. It's a compelling story, and Aung San Suu Kyi has emerged as an iconic global figure. But it's also a story that's been frozen in time since the early 1990s - almost all the news about Burma is about this long standoff between her and the generals, it's very one dimensional. But Burma's a country of 60 million people, with dozens of ethnic nationalities, a civil war that's only beginning to end, mired in poverty, with massive social changes underway and a rapidly evolving relationship with India and China, yet no other issues seems to get any attention. We shouldn't then be surprised then that international policy often fails to gain any traction.
ATol: And yet that story continues to make news. To your mind, what's been left out of the picture?
TMU: For me, there are at least two key issues that are always missing. First, the civil war; Burma is only now emerging from six decades of continuous armed conflict. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Burmese government agreed to ceasefires with nearly two dozen ethnic-based rebel armies, bringing close to an end the longest-running armed conflict in the world. But there is still no permanent peace and much work needs to be done. Yet there has been almost no focus on this internationally, no encouragement, no help. Imagine the alternative - a still active war in the mountains between India and China - it's amazing that no one seems to care.
The other thing is that Burma is one of the world's poorest countries. Millions of ordinary people are living on the edge, and falling off that edge. What's often missing from Burma discussions is the voice of the poor, who desperately need to find new ways to simply survive and feed their families. I can't imagine that any democratic transition will be sustainable unless it happens at the same time as major progress in turning around the economy - yet here again, there is almost no international attention, though so much more could be done.
The big improvement in cooperation between the government and the international aid community since Cyclone Nargis last year is extremely important. Tens of thousands of people literally die each year from treatable diseases simply because of lack of funding - for political reasons more than anything, international donors provide Burma with only a tiny fraction per capita of what Laos and Cambodia receive, or Zimbabwe or Sudan. It's shameful.
ATol: What do you see resulting from the current visit of United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon?
TMU: I don't think it's fair to judge the trip without asking first, what do we want in Burma? The key governments involved - the US and China, etc - have very, very different views as to what the challenges in Burma are. For the West, it's mainly about democracy promotion. For neighboring governments, its primarily stability. For many other Asian countries its about business and development, believing perhaps that political change will follow economic growth.
It's incredibly hard for an international figure like Ban to simply go in and sort things out. In North Korea for example everyone accepts the focus is on nuclear proliferation; but - here it's much more complicated, there are so many different issues, and international opinion just on the nature of the problem is completely divided. There are opportunities for Ban Ki-moon, and I think there's still a lot of respect for his office. But his success on this trip will depend on his willingness to look at the big picture. He has to deal with some of the immediate political challenges, but if he simply repeats the mantra of the past many years and sees himself primarily as a broker between the government and Aung San Suu Kyi, I'm not sure he can get very far. I don't think he brings any leverage.
ATol: You've written that throughout its history, Burma has sought isolation. Why does the current government want to be cut off from the rest of the world?
TMU: Geography meant that Burma was for much of its history off the main trading routes between East and West. There was always the option to remain isolated. Burma's periods of creativity and even greatness were when it was willing to overcome this isolation and connect to the world. But the option of retreating back into its own shell was always there.
But more recently there's also the long history of repeated foreign invasions. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Burma was invaded three times by the British who then ruled for more than 100 years; then it was invaded by the Japanese in the 1940s, by Chinese nationalists in the 50s and by Chinese-backed communists in the 1960s. Thailand, the US and many other countries have also had their hand in Burmese politics for many decades. A xenophobia has developed that's going to be hard to dislodge.
In the 1950s, when remnants of Chiang Kai-shek's army crossed into Burma with support from the US and Thailand, Burma went for the first time to the UN for help. Its didn't work and the lesson they learned was that you can't rely on the UN. It was a turning point for the army. Before that they were mainly a small counter-insurgency force; afterwards the began to turn themselves into the massive military machine we have today. (See Strength and dishonor , Asia Times Online, July 3)
ATol: How does this anti-colonial mindset come through in the policies of today's government?
TMU: Anti-colonial rhetoric is imprinted on the minds of the Burmese officer corps; it is at the heart of the regime's self-perception even today. The military leaders see the country itself as a battlefield with ethnic-based insurgencies and other political enemies all around. They suspect that their enemies all have foreign ties and so their role, a patriotic one in their minds, is linked to the anti-colonial struggle. This has been their world view since the 1940s and it's how they still see things today.
This is an army - the only army I can think of, that has been fighting every year since World War II. The groups they have fought have been extraordinarily varied - from the Islamic mujahideen on the borders of what was then East Pakistan [Bangladesh] to Chinese-supported communists to right-wing, US- and Thai-backed militias to opium warlords and ethnic separatists; it's been a huge variety and they have been fighting for more than half a century. We see how war and especially counter-insurgency operations can brutalize an army after just a few years, imagine what it does after six decades.
Until you unravel some of these things, there won't be a stable democratic transition. I would like to see the UN take a deeper approach and think about the 60 years of poverty and armed conflict. The UN always says security, development and human rights are interlinked. I think this is right. But where is this more complex approach when it comes to Burma?
ATol: Your formula for change was once described as "debate, engagement and gradualism". Has this taken hold in policy circles - for example in the UN or in Washington?
TMU: It has been taken seriously. Just over the past few years I think many more Western policymakers have come to the conclusion that sanctions-based approaches just won't work with a regime like Burma's. There has been a willingness to go back to the drawing board and think about fresh approaches.
Sanctions are at best ineffective because they are not universal. The government is more than able to survive on just trade and investment from within the region. In the worst case, though sanctions are extremely counter-productive, in that they've held back the one big force - global capitalization - that could have actually started to change things. I fear the democracy movement has very little hope for success if it's going to fight on the current landscape, that was created and cultivated by the army over decades of fighting.
For me, the most important thing is to change the landscape first. The involvement of the West through aid, investment and tourism could be a huge part of changing this landscape. If over the past 20 years, if we hadn't had all these sanctions and boycotts, and and instead had focused on ending the armed conflicts, reforming the economy, and reconnecting Burma to the world, including through global capitalism, I think the pro-democracy movement would be in a much stronger position today.
ATol: What have the current events - the arrest and ongoing trial of Suu Kyi - done to this push for engaging with the generals?
TMU: It's clearly stalled that momentum. It's hard to push for engagement, which depends on taking a bigger picture view, when everything is understandably focused around her situation.
The problem is that some see sanctions as a stick, and that therefore reducing sanctions is someone taking a softer line against the regime. But in Burma's Alice in Wonderland world, it's the opposite that's true. If we didn't have sanctions, if we had the opposite, a flood of international trade and investment and tourism, with a robust international presence, and growing ties with the rest of the world, I really don't think army rule would last much longer. Look at the democratic transitions we've had elsewhere in the region - in Korea, Indonesia etc - none of those countries were under sanctions, all enjoyed closer ties with the West, and their army regimes eventually crumbled under their own weight. In Burma, through limited Western sanctions, I'm afraid we've created the perfect political economy for continued authoritarian rule.
ATol: What is your opinion of the pro-democracy movement?
TMU: It's a gamble. If let's say tomorrow we suddenly have a transition to democratic government, then everyone can say that her [Suu Kyi's] strategy has been a great success. If that doesn't happen, then there is the increasing cost of other roads not tested and opportunities lost as well as the enormous effect sanctions and aid cut-offs have had on ordinary people, especially the poorest and most vulnerable in the country.
ATol: Do you think the scheduled elections in 2010 will bring the democratic change the government has promised?
TMU: 2010 will at the very least represent the biggest political shake-up in Burma in 20 years. All kinds of new structures are being created, and this is happening at the same time as an important generational transition within the armed forces leadership. At the very least, it's a big internal transition and perhaps new opportunities.
I'm not enthusiastic about any scenario that is based on changes to the politics at the top. Where real change has to come is from the two much bigger issues: ending the armed conflict and economic change. I'm not a Marxist, but I do think that politics has a way of following economics. And the West has done nothing to try to shape the economic landscape, instead, through sanctions, it has more or less dealt itself out of the game.
ATol: What do you see for the future of Burma?
TMU: If 100 years from now, we wrote a book about the Burma of today, I doubt the focus would be on next year's elections, or the democracy movement or Aung San Suu Kyi's trial. I think we would see that the most important thing happening today is Burma's opening to China and its ability or inability to manage its position between the world's rising superpowers - China and India. Burma is a country of 60 million sandwiched between nearly two-and-a-half billion Chinese and Indians.
We talk about that in the West - the rise of China and India - think of what it will mean to the future of Burma. It will mean everything.
Will it be swallowed up? Or will it benefit from being between the two biggest and most dynamic countries in the world? If it can find a way for all its people to benefit, then Burma's future in the 21st century can still be a very bright one.
Charles McDermid is an Asia Times Online correspondent based in Thailand.
Asia Times Online - INTERVIEW: Missing the point on Myanmar
By Charles McDermid
HUA HIN, Thailand - Burmese writer and historian Thant Myint-U's first trip to Myanmar (in this interview referred to as Burma) was in 1974, for the funeral of his much-revered grandfather U Thant, former two-term United Nations secretary general from 1961 to 1971. It was an experience that shaped his understanding of the brutality of the military regime that rules the country to this day.
As John Lancaster of the New Yorker recounted:
When U Thant died, his body, accompanied by the family, was flown to Burma for burial. [Former dictator] Ne Win wanted U Thant buried in a private ceremony; but a convoy of students interrupted the funeral procession, and demanded that U Thant be buried at the site of the former Students' Union, which had been blown up by the military during the 1962 coup. The family was moved by the intensity of feeling but was not sure that a state funeral awarded by the dictatorship would have been appropriate; the Army lost its patience; monks and students were shot; and U Thant was laid to rest in the Cantonment Garden, near the Shwedagon Pagoda, Burma's most important Buddhist site.
This episode gave Thant an early education in the vileness and stupidity of the military dictatorship, and in the strength of feeling against the regime among ordinary Burmese.
After growing up in the north Bronx suburb of Riverdale, Thant became a senior UN official and a veteran of three UN peacekeeping operations. His views gained prominence in The River of Lost Footsteps (Farrar, Straus, 2006), a history of Burma that explains the country's turmoil and isolation in terms of the deeply wounded national psyche. As one reviewer noted, "Burmese history is, in Thant's account, the story of 'imperial ambitions' on the part of the various mini-states that competed to rule the country."
Thant blames the decades of failed international policy towards Burma on a misinterpretation of this history. His assessment of international news coverage is stark: "The military regime is bad, Aung San Suu Kyi good, and the international community needs to apply pressure on Yangon and pressure means no aid, trade sanctions, and more isolation."
In the last year, he has been to Burma six times and travelled extensively. He has seen profound changes and traditional barriers falling away. All the more case, Thant says, for a campaign to engage with the generals.
"In that period from 1962 to 1988, the country was almost entirely closed off and they practiced Burmese socialism - a command economy with barely any investment or trade. In the early 90s, a new generation of generals rose to the top. They saw China and Vietnam and put forward new laws for foreign trade and tourism - they said they wanted a million tourists [a year]. They wanted to be a right-wing, pro-West military government - like Indonesia was at the time and South Korea and Thailand had been," Thant said.
What resulted, in Thant's view, was a huge failure of the international community to engage and embrace these changes. Instead, sanctions soon followed.
"It was a narrow approach," he said. "We tried to further isolate the country as it was coming out of its own isolations. They built a wall around themselves in the 1960s and 70s, and then we built another wall around that."
Now living in Bangkok and working on a new book on Burma, he spoke to Asia Times Online correspondent Charles McDermid on July 2.
ATol: In your writings and interviews, you've pointed out that the Western media has a fairly simple line - you've called it "ahistorical" - on Burma. In terms of this, how is the current the situation being played in the Western press?
TMU: For the past 20 years, Burma has been portrayed in a media as primarily a democracy issue: the military regime and it's repression of the democracy movement led by Aung San Suu Kyi dominates what little coverage there is. It's a compelling story, and Aung San Suu Kyi has emerged as an iconic global figure. But it's also a story that's been frozen in time since the early 1990s - almost all the news about Burma is about this long standoff between her and the generals, it's very one dimensional. But Burma's a country of 60 million people, with dozens of ethnic nationalities, a civil war that's only beginning to end, mired in poverty, with massive social changes underway and a rapidly evolving relationship with India and China, yet no other issues seems to get any attention. We shouldn't then be surprised then that international policy often fails to gain any traction.
ATol: And yet that story continues to make news. To your mind, what's been left out of the picture?
TMU: For me, there are at least two key issues that are always missing. First, the civil war; Burma is only now emerging from six decades of continuous armed conflict. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Burmese government agreed to ceasefires with nearly two dozen ethnic-based rebel armies, bringing close to an end the longest-running armed conflict in the world. But there is still no permanent peace and much work needs to be done. Yet there has been almost no focus on this internationally, no encouragement, no help. Imagine the alternative - a still active war in the mountains between India and China - it's amazing that no one seems to care.
The other thing is that Burma is one of the world's poorest countries. Millions of ordinary people are living on the edge, and falling off that edge. What's often missing from Burma discussions is the voice of the poor, who desperately need to find new ways to simply survive and feed their families. I can't imagine that any democratic transition will be sustainable unless it happens at the same time as major progress in turning around the economy - yet here again, there is almost no international attention, though so much more could be done.
The big improvement in cooperation between the government and the international aid community since Cyclone Nargis last year is extremely important. Tens of thousands of people literally die each year from treatable diseases simply because of lack of funding - for political reasons more than anything, international donors provide Burma with only a tiny fraction per capita of what Laos and Cambodia receive, or Zimbabwe or Sudan. It's shameful.
ATol: What do you see resulting from the current visit of United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon?
TMU: I don't think it's fair to judge the trip without asking first, what do we want in Burma? The key governments involved - the US and China, etc - have very, very different views as to what the challenges in Burma are. For the West, it's mainly about democracy promotion. For neighboring governments, its primarily stability. For many other Asian countries its about business and development, believing perhaps that political change will follow economic growth.
It's incredibly hard for an international figure like Ban to simply go in and sort things out. In North Korea for example everyone accepts the focus is on nuclear proliferation; but - here it's much more complicated, there are so many different issues, and international opinion just on the nature of the problem is completely divided. There are opportunities for Ban Ki-moon, and I think there's still a lot of respect for his office. But his success on this trip will depend on his willingness to look at the big picture. He has to deal with some of the immediate political challenges, but if he simply repeats the mantra of the past many years and sees himself primarily as a broker between the government and Aung San Suu Kyi, I'm not sure he can get very far. I don't think he brings any leverage.
ATol: You've written that throughout its history, Burma has sought isolation. Why does the current government want to be cut off from the rest of the world?
TMU: Geography meant that Burma was for much of its history off the main trading routes between East and West. There was always the option to remain isolated. Burma's periods of creativity and even greatness were when it was willing to overcome this isolation and connect to the world. But the option of retreating back into its own shell was always there.
But more recently there's also the long history of repeated foreign invasions. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Burma was invaded three times by the British who then ruled for more than 100 years; then it was invaded by the Japanese in the 1940s, by Chinese nationalists in the 50s and by Chinese-backed communists in the 1960s. Thailand, the US and many other countries have also had their hand in Burmese politics for many decades. A xenophobia has developed that's going to be hard to dislodge.
In the 1950s, when remnants of Chiang Kai-shek's army crossed into Burma with support from the US and Thailand, Burma went for the first time to the UN for help. Its didn't work and the lesson they learned was that you can't rely on the UN. It was a turning point for the army. Before that they were mainly a small counter-insurgency force; afterwards the began to turn themselves into the massive military machine we have today. (See Strength and dishonor , Asia Times Online, July 3)
ATol: How does this anti-colonial mindset come through in the policies of today's government?
TMU: Anti-colonial rhetoric is imprinted on the minds of the Burmese officer corps; it is at the heart of the regime's self-perception even today. The military leaders see the country itself as a battlefield with ethnic-based insurgencies and other political enemies all around. They suspect that their enemies all have foreign ties and so their role, a patriotic one in their minds, is linked to the anti-colonial struggle. This has been their world view since the 1940s and it's how they still see things today.
This is an army - the only army I can think of, that has been fighting every year since World War II. The groups they have fought have been extraordinarily varied - from the Islamic mujahideen on the borders of what was then East Pakistan [Bangladesh] to Chinese-supported communists to right-wing, US- and Thai-backed militias to opium warlords and ethnic separatists; it's been a huge variety and they have been fighting for more than half a century. We see how war and especially counter-insurgency operations can brutalize an army after just a few years, imagine what it does after six decades.
Until you unravel some of these things, there won't be a stable democratic transition. I would like to see the UN take a deeper approach and think about the 60 years of poverty and armed conflict. The UN always says security, development and human rights are interlinked. I think this is right. But where is this more complex approach when it comes to Burma?
ATol: Your formula for change was once described as "debate, engagement and gradualism". Has this taken hold in policy circles - for example in the UN or in Washington?
TMU: It has been taken seriously. Just over the past few years I think many more Western policymakers have come to the conclusion that sanctions-based approaches just won't work with a regime like Burma's. There has been a willingness to go back to the drawing board and think about fresh approaches.
Sanctions are at best ineffective because they are not universal. The government is more than able to survive on just trade and investment from within the region. In the worst case, though sanctions are extremely counter-productive, in that they've held back the one big force - global capitalization - that could have actually started to change things. I fear the democracy movement has very little hope for success if it's going to fight on the current landscape, that was created and cultivated by the army over decades of fighting.
For me, the most important thing is to change the landscape first. The involvement of the West through aid, investment and tourism could be a huge part of changing this landscape. If over the past 20 years, if we hadn't had all these sanctions and boycotts, and and instead had focused on ending the armed conflicts, reforming the economy, and reconnecting Burma to the world, including through global capitalism, I think the pro-democracy movement would be in a much stronger position today.
ATol: What have the current events - the arrest and ongoing trial of Suu Kyi - done to this push for engaging with the generals?
TMU: It's clearly stalled that momentum. It's hard to push for engagement, which depends on taking a bigger picture view, when everything is understandably focused around her situation.
The problem is that some see sanctions as a stick, and that therefore reducing sanctions is someone taking a softer line against the regime. But in Burma's Alice in Wonderland world, it's the opposite that's true. If we didn't have sanctions, if we had the opposite, a flood of international trade and investment and tourism, with a robust international presence, and growing ties with the rest of the world, I really don't think army rule would last much longer. Look at the democratic transitions we've had elsewhere in the region - in Korea, Indonesia etc - none of those countries were under sanctions, all enjoyed closer ties with the West, and their army regimes eventually crumbled under their own weight. In Burma, through limited Western sanctions, I'm afraid we've created the perfect political economy for continued authoritarian rule.
ATol: What is your opinion of the pro-democracy movement?
TMU: It's a gamble. If let's say tomorrow we suddenly have a transition to democratic government, then everyone can say that her [Suu Kyi's] strategy has been a great success. If that doesn't happen, then there is the increasing cost of other roads not tested and opportunities lost as well as the enormous effect sanctions and aid cut-offs have had on ordinary people, especially the poorest and most vulnerable in the country.
ATol: Do you think the scheduled elections in 2010 will bring the democratic change the government has promised?
TMU: 2010 will at the very least represent the biggest political shake-up in Burma in 20 years. All kinds of new structures are being created, and this is happening at the same time as an important generational transition within the armed forces leadership. At the very least, it's a big internal transition and perhaps new opportunities.
I'm not enthusiastic about any scenario that is based on changes to the politics at the top. Where real change has to come is from the two much bigger issues: ending the armed conflict and economic change. I'm not a Marxist, but I do think that politics has a way of following economics. And the West has done nothing to try to shape the economic landscape, instead, through sanctions, it has more or less dealt itself out of the game.
ATol: What do you see for the future of Burma?
TMU: If 100 years from now, we wrote a book about the Burma of today, I doubt the focus would be on next year's elections, or the democracy movement or Aung San Suu Kyi's trial. I think we would see that the most important thing happening today is Burma's opening to China and its ability or inability to manage its position between the world's rising superpowers - China and India. Burma is a country of 60 million sandwiched between nearly two-and-a-half billion Chinese and Indians.
We talk about that in the West - the rise of China and India - think of what it will mean to the future of Burma. It will mean everything.
Will it be swallowed up? Or will it benefit from being between the two biggest and most dynamic countries in the world? If it can find a way for all its people to benefit, then Burma's future in the 21st century can still be a very bright one.
Charles McDermid is an Asia Times Online correspondent based in Thailand.
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Jul 4, 2009
Asia Times Online - BOOK REVIEW: Strength and dishonor
Building the Tatmadaw by Maung Aung Myoe
Reviewed by David Scott Mathieson
There is almost universal puzzlement as to the enduring staying power of the Myanmar military regime. With such widespread fear, distrust and outright hatred of the armed forces by the general population, not to mention a staggering number of ethnic armed groups which have been in revolt for decades or uneasy ceasefire for the past several years, how has the army maintained its grip on the state in one form or another since 1962?
Maung Aung Myoe, a Myanmar security scholar, answers some of these questions in his new book Building the Tatmadaw- albeit not always intentionally. He also manages to raise several more questions as to the durability of such a powerful if reviled institution. ("Tatmadaw" is Myanmar for "armed forces", and includes the army, navy and air force.)
While many observers alternately dismiss the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) and its massive army as an enigma wrapped in a puzzle, as inchoate xenophobic nationalists, or as delusional North-Korean type autocrats, Aung Myoe approaches the Tatmadaw as a rational functioning institution with its own desires, aims, purpose and limitations.
Aung Myoe, who received his PhD from the Australian National University and has held posts at Mandalay University, the National University of Singapore, the Myanmar military staff college, and now at Inha University of South Korea, has written one of the most insightful books yet on the Myanmar military. Building the Tatmadaw is a curious mix of in-depth analysis, supposition, ambiguity, technical catalogue, and at times down-right nerdy tank-spotting.
The book is arranged around several very tight chapters dealing with military doctrine and strategy, organization and force structure, armaments and force modernization, military training, and the financial side of force modernization and troop welfare. There are some important insights into Myanmar's military thinking, even if the author routinely engages in contradictions and offers insufficient details on defense expenditure, the actual size of the military and the internal dynamics and stability of the institution.
The opening chapter discusses the Tatmadaw's military doctrine, which while increasingly conventional in nature, is still predicated on counter-insurgency warfare against ethnic insurgents. The concept of "people's war under modern conditions" is at the heart of the Tatmadaw's stated doctrine, essentially a strategy of conventional defense against a feared-for low-level (foreign) invasion which includes elements of "resistance ... organized at the village, regional and national level to sap the will of the invading force" (p 35).
The Tatmadaw has over the past two decades embarked on a major conventional upgrade, as well as expanded its social mobilization to deter possible foreign intervention, including, the author writes, through aspects of "guerrilla warfare and tunnel warfare". This strategy explains the rationale behind recent significant arms purchases, including artillery, naval vessels and radar and anti-aircraft capabilities, as well as all the new digging of underground bunkers (with North Korean help) in Tatmadaw establishments around the country.
The "People's Militia" strategy has been a constant feature of speeches by Senior General Than Shwe over the past decade. There is very little information publicly available on the sinister sounding Directorate of People's Militias and Public Relations in the Ministry of Defense, but the growth in Nyi Naung Tatphwe (auxiliary forces) and social welfare organizations such as the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), with an estimated 25 million members, the Auxiliary Fire Brigade and the Myanmar War Veterans Association has been dramatic in recent years.
At this year's Armed Forces Day parade on March 27, in the new reclusive capital of Naypyitaw, several of these auxiliary forces were prominently represented and received awards from top military officers, including members of the Fire Brigade, National Police Force and the Myanmar Red Cross Society. One worrying trend throughout Myanmar has been the increased "para-militarization" of society, as family members of the Tatmadaw (especially their wives) and other local elites have been coerced into rudimentary military training.
These auxiliaries, in addition to scores of smaller Pyithu Sit (People's Militia) armed units loyal to and controlled by the Tatmadaw, are located in Myanmar 's borderlands and zones of low-intensity conflict. The next layer of defense is the large ethnic ceasefire groups which maintain control over semi-autonomous areas and business interests.
Recently leaked documents from the SPDC outline how dozens of non-state armed groups will be transformed into "border guard forces" in the lead-up to the 2010 election, in effect subordinating these groups as sub-contractors for border security duties and incrementally eroding their local economic power bases to consolidate central control.
According to the memo (seen by Asia Times Online), many groups are being instructed to reduce their manpower to around 326 troops and accept some 30 Tatmadaw members into their headquarters unit. The massive United Wa State Army (UWSA) and its 20,000 strong militia have already rejected the terms.
Fuzzy figures
Aung Myoe has disappointingly little to say about the failure of the Tatmadaw to resolve the long-postponed political aspirations of many of these groups, and it is not clear how effective "people's war" will be against internal opponents such as the well-armed Wa. The author engages in a long and confusingly semantic discussion over the contested size of the Myanmar military, a guessing game that has long enervated international observers, who identify the size of the Tatmadaw as a key index in the strength of the SPDC regime.
He concludes that with nearly 1,300 military units of various sizes, with nearly half (504) of them consisting of infantry battalions, that the Tatmadaw's "force structure is over 600,000 personnel". He qualifies this still further by claiming most of these troops are "Civilian Construction Corps". Pages later he discusses average battalion size, which in 1988 was ideally 777 soldiers per battalion and later grew to 814 in the 1990s, but later admits that the size was effectively 670 plus in the earlier period and 350 plus in the latter.
In 2008, the average infantry battalion size was 250 or less. At the same time, the author dismisses another estimate from a now deposed military intelligence colonel, Hla Min, that the Tatmadaw currently consists of only 350,000 personnel. All of this leaves the reader in confusion, though a reasonable deduction is that the size of the Tatmadaw is probably nearer the lower end of the estimates.
Force modernization, meanwhile, has been haphazard. While most small arms and light infantry weapons are domestically manufactured, they remain low-tech, and according to the author, "[T]he recent transfer of military technology from the [People's Republic of China] is not particularly advanced either". (p 202).
The SPDC continues to purchase foreign weapons systems in an attempt to effect a thorough force modernization. Russian MiG-29 fighter aircraft, North Korean multiple-launch rocket systems (and maybe rockets), Ukrainian armored personnel carriers, Chinese ships, fighter aircraft and trucks, artillery from Pakistan, Serbia and India, radios and cyber-warfare equipment from Singapore, and radar and anti-aircraft weapons from a host of suppliers make up a formidable shopping list. Yet there is little discussion about the absorption of these weapons systems and whether they can actually be deployed effectively. Purchase is one thing, effective performance a very different result.
Aung Myoe is also fuzzy on the financing of this profligate spending. Where did the money for arms purchases come from? Natural resources sales, natural gas, where in the government budget are there credible figures on defense expenditure? The author doesn't dwell much on these points. The extravagance required to sustain the military's vanity is nowhere better seen than in the new capital of Naypyitaw, with its three gigantic golden statues of former kings, eight-lane highways, massive replica of the Shwedagon pagoda, and expansive government buildings. Little of it is aesthetically appealing, as most of it is decidedly retro-fascist. This gated community designed by gauche gangsters seems to have been designed to distance themselves from the people they preside over with little compassion.
The book's sections on military training, especially officer indoctrination, are revealing. The author states that protocols adopted in the past several years prefer bo-laung (officer cadets) to attend the Defense Services Academy (DSA) without a university degree (they get an equivalent at the academy) and to come from a good family from the countryside and preferably not the cities.
The protocols also state that they have no connection to contemporary politics or protest tendencies, and that their wives should come from an educated middle-class background, although their educational status must increase in step with her husband's promotions. This is referred to as Sayar Dagar Setsanye (patron-client relationship) to ensure swift career advancement, as an officer and his wife are seen as the "father and mother of the battalion".
The author rejects reports of discrimination based on religion or ethnicity, and claims reforms in the 1990s have made the officer corps more equitable. He expends several pages detailing how the military has supposedly been more open to minority recruits, only to contradictorily conclude: "[A]s a result of these measures, the present day Tatmadaw is commanded by educated Buddhist officers with a rural background, most of whom are ethnic Bama [Myanmar]" (p 200), which sounds more like authoritarian homogenization. There is very little evidence that the army is an institution conducive for career advancement for any member of an ethnic group or a Christian, Muslim or woman.
Crimes of omission
The book hardly mentions training of the rank and file, a serious omission as it leaves the reader with little understanding of the life of an average soldier. Much of the training literature the Tatmadaw began to produce after 2000 is predominantly based on United States Army and Marine Corps field manuals.
This may be because the head of military training appointed in 1998, Brigadier General Aung Kyi, was trained at the US military special warfare center at Fort Bragg at one point in his career. There is also a thriving defense publication culture in Myanmar, with numerous translations of Sun Tzu, Carl von Clausewitz, Western strategic and defense studies journals, and even the homegrown and officially sanctioned, Sittheikpan Hnit Nipyinnyar (Military Science and Technology) Journal.
Another of the contradictions in this book concerns the relative privilege Tatmadaw members enjoy. The author writes, "Generally speaking, Tatmadaw members did not receive special privileges" and then clumsily contextualises that by saying, "Generally, despite the lack of off-budget welfare subsidies, soldiers were better off than their civilian counterparts and even more so compared with ordinary civilians" (p 167).
These glaring inconsistencies indicate the author is traversing a fine balance between a congratulatory and critical study of the military, but such contradictions yaw and pitch the narrative dramatically. It's as if the author is trying to suggest the reader pick one or the other of his parallel arguments: either clear Tatmadaw propaganda or open-source opacity. Yet Aung Myoe is rarely conclusive on what he thinks the right information is.
The Tatwadaw's morale is often a cause for speculation, particularly among those looking for cracks in military unity. A small section in the book on the financing of troop welfare is revealing, arguing that the central War Office could not sustain rations to frontline battalions who were compelled to generate their own funding, an exercise in self-reliance that quickly degenerated into rackets.
"Faced with unfair competition, monopoly, protection, and corruption, some people started seeing the Tatmadaw's commercial activities as vehicles for not only making the Tatmadaw a privileged institution, but also paving the way for military personnel to make their personal gains" (p 189). Aung Myoe inexplicably claims this self-sustainability policy has been repealed in recent years, yet corruption inside the Tatmadaw continues to flourish, including through land confiscation, exhortation of civilians, protection of opium fields, and seizing civilian property and goods.
Living conditions in remote combat areas are never explored, even though we know from a range of reports that the lives of soldiers and civilians are desperate. By quoting from a leaked internal Tatmadaw command document from 2006, which discusses increasing rates of desertion and low morale related to abuses by corrupt and "self centered" officers, the author tacitly acknowledges that there are deep fissures and tensions within the military.
How the military is perceived by average people is nowhere addressed in the book, nor are the voices of soldiers and officers themselves given space for institutional introspection.
The book's most important omission - and one that questions the author's credibility - concerns the Tatmadaw's deplorable human-rights record. Both inside and outside Myanmar, the Tatmadaw is synonymous with abuse. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Karen Human Rights Group, the Shan Women's Action Network and many others, have documented systematic violations such as forced recruitment of child soldiers, targeted attacks against civilians in ethnic minority areas, sexual violence against women, burning down of entire villages, the use of forced prisoner as porters in conflict areas and other violations of international law, as noted by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in June 2007 and in a recent report by five prominent international jurists writing for Harvard Law School.
Aung Myoe only briefly mentions abuses, such as the recruitment of child soldiers, and then just as "foreign media reports". The circumscribed nature of being an insider writing about such an important institution is evident in these vaguely worded or excluded issues in the book.
Methodologically, the book is a fascinating melange of sources: scholarly works on Myanmar, including the seminal works of Andrew Selth and Desmond Ball, Western defense doctrine theory, and liberal use of the online reference Wikipedia (whose highly detailed entries on the Myanmar military could have been written by the author). Aung Myoe also uses internal military documents - which indicates that he is probably sitting on a lot more that the SPDC doesn't want to see the light of day.
Transforming the Tatmadaw, by Andrew Selth, underscores the hard reality that for any major change to occur in Myanmar's long stagnant political deadlock, and even for significant economic or social change, the deeply entrenched Tatmadaw will either have to radically change and act as the vanguard or guardian of any transformation, or be swept aside.
Both seem unlikely at present, though social tensions are so deep in Myanmar that future uprisings like in 1988 or 2007 cannot be ruled out. Though his Myanmar citizenship doubtlessly circumscribes what he can say, Maung Aung Myoe's study is fundamental reading for anyone inside or outside Myanmar seeking to understand that long-delayed transition.
Building the Tatmadaw Myanmar Armed Forces Since 1948 by Maung Aung Myoe. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, 2009. ISBN 978-981-230-848-1. Price S$49.90, 255 pages.
David Scott Mathieson is Burma Researcher with New York-based Human Rights Watch.
Asia Times Online - BOOK REVIEW: Strength and dishonor
Building the Tatmadaw by Maung Aung Myoe
Reviewed by David Scott Mathieson
There is almost universal puzzlement as to the enduring staying power of the Myanmar military regime. With such widespread fear, distrust and outright hatred of the armed forces by the general population, not to mention a staggering number of ethnic armed groups which have been in revolt for decades or uneasy ceasefire for the past several years, how has the army maintained its grip on the state in one form or another since 1962?
Maung Aung Myoe, a Myanmar security scholar, answers some of these questions in his new book Building the Tatmadaw- albeit not always intentionally. He also manages to raise several more questions as to the durability of such a powerful if reviled institution. ("Tatmadaw" is Myanmar for "armed forces", and includes the army, navy and air force.)
While many observers alternately dismiss the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) and its massive army as an enigma wrapped in a puzzle, as inchoate xenophobic nationalists, or as delusional North-Korean type autocrats, Aung Myoe approaches the Tatmadaw as a rational functioning institution with its own desires, aims, purpose and limitations.
Aung Myoe, who received his PhD from the Australian National University and has held posts at Mandalay University, the National University of Singapore, the Myanmar military staff college, and now at Inha University of South Korea, has written one of the most insightful books yet on the Myanmar military. Building the Tatmadaw is a curious mix of in-depth analysis, supposition, ambiguity, technical catalogue, and at times down-right nerdy tank-spotting.
The book is arranged around several very tight chapters dealing with military doctrine and strategy, organization and force structure, armaments and force modernization, military training, and the financial side of force modernization and troop welfare. There are some important insights into Myanmar's military thinking, even if the author routinely engages in contradictions and offers insufficient details on defense expenditure, the actual size of the military and the internal dynamics and stability of the institution.
The opening chapter discusses the Tatmadaw's military doctrine, which while increasingly conventional in nature, is still predicated on counter-insurgency warfare against ethnic insurgents. The concept of "people's war under modern conditions" is at the heart of the Tatmadaw's stated doctrine, essentially a strategy of conventional defense against a feared-for low-level (foreign) invasion which includes elements of "resistance ... organized at the village, regional and national level to sap the will of the invading force" (p 35).
The Tatmadaw has over the past two decades embarked on a major conventional upgrade, as well as expanded its social mobilization to deter possible foreign intervention, including, the author writes, through aspects of "guerrilla warfare and tunnel warfare". This strategy explains the rationale behind recent significant arms purchases, including artillery, naval vessels and radar and anti-aircraft capabilities, as well as all the new digging of underground bunkers (with North Korean help) in Tatmadaw establishments around the country.
The "People's Militia" strategy has been a constant feature of speeches by Senior General Than Shwe over the past decade. There is very little information publicly available on the sinister sounding Directorate of People's Militias and Public Relations in the Ministry of Defense, but the growth in Nyi Naung Tatphwe (auxiliary forces) and social welfare organizations such as the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), with an estimated 25 million members, the Auxiliary Fire Brigade and the Myanmar War Veterans Association has been dramatic in recent years.
At this year's Armed Forces Day parade on March 27, in the new reclusive capital of Naypyitaw, several of these auxiliary forces were prominently represented and received awards from top military officers, including members of the Fire Brigade, National Police Force and the Myanmar Red Cross Society. One worrying trend throughout Myanmar has been the increased "para-militarization" of society, as family members of the Tatmadaw (especially their wives) and other local elites have been coerced into rudimentary military training.
These auxiliaries, in addition to scores of smaller Pyithu Sit (People's Militia) armed units loyal to and controlled by the Tatmadaw, are located in Myanmar 's borderlands and zones of low-intensity conflict. The next layer of defense is the large ethnic ceasefire groups which maintain control over semi-autonomous areas and business interests.
Recently leaked documents from the SPDC outline how dozens of non-state armed groups will be transformed into "border guard forces" in the lead-up to the 2010 election, in effect subordinating these groups as sub-contractors for border security duties and incrementally eroding their local economic power bases to consolidate central control.
According to the memo (seen by Asia Times Online), many groups are being instructed to reduce their manpower to around 326 troops and accept some 30 Tatmadaw members into their headquarters unit. The massive United Wa State Army (UWSA) and its 20,000 strong militia have already rejected the terms.
Fuzzy figures
Aung Myoe has disappointingly little to say about the failure of the Tatmadaw to resolve the long-postponed political aspirations of many of these groups, and it is not clear how effective "people's war" will be against internal opponents such as the well-armed Wa. The author engages in a long and confusingly semantic discussion over the contested size of the Myanmar military, a guessing game that has long enervated international observers, who identify the size of the Tatmadaw as a key index in the strength of the SPDC regime.
He concludes that with nearly 1,300 military units of various sizes, with nearly half (504) of them consisting of infantry battalions, that the Tatmadaw's "force structure is over 600,000 personnel". He qualifies this still further by claiming most of these troops are "Civilian Construction Corps". Pages later he discusses average battalion size, which in 1988 was ideally 777 soldiers per battalion and later grew to 814 in the 1990s, but later admits that the size was effectively 670 plus in the earlier period and 350 plus in the latter.
In 2008, the average infantry battalion size was 250 or less. At the same time, the author dismisses another estimate from a now deposed military intelligence colonel, Hla Min, that the Tatmadaw currently consists of only 350,000 personnel. All of this leaves the reader in confusion, though a reasonable deduction is that the size of the Tatmadaw is probably nearer the lower end of the estimates.
Force modernization, meanwhile, has been haphazard. While most small arms and light infantry weapons are domestically manufactured, they remain low-tech, and according to the author, "[T]he recent transfer of military technology from the [People's Republic of China] is not particularly advanced either". (p 202).
The SPDC continues to purchase foreign weapons systems in an attempt to effect a thorough force modernization. Russian MiG-29 fighter aircraft, North Korean multiple-launch rocket systems (and maybe rockets), Ukrainian armored personnel carriers, Chinese ships, fighter aircraft and trucks, artillery from Pakistan, Serbia and India, radios and cyber-warfare equipment from Singapore, and radar and anti-aircraft weapons from a host of suppliers make up a formidable shopping list. Yet there is little discussion about the absorption of these weapons systems and whether they can actually be deployed effectively. Purchase is one thing, effective performance a very different result.
Aung Myoe is also fuzzy on the financing of this profligate spending. Where did the money for arms purchases come from? Natural resources sales, natural gas, where in the government budget are there credible figures on defense expenditure? The author doesn't dwell much on these points. The extravagance required to sustain the military's vanity is nowhere better seen than in the new capital of Naypyitaw, with its three gigantic golden statues of former kings, eight-lane highways, massive replica of the Shwedagon pagoda, and expansive government buildings. Little of it is aesthetically appealing, as most of it is decidedly retro-fascist. This gated community designed by gauche gangsters seems to have been designed to distance themselves from the people they preside over with little compassion.
The book's sections on military training, especially officer indoctrination, are revealing. The author states that protocols adopted in the past several years prefer bo-laung (officer cadets) to attend the Defense Services Academy (DSA) without a university degree (they get an equivalent at the academy) and to come from a good family from the countryside and preferably not the cities.
The protocols also state that they have no connection to contemporary politics or protest tendencies, and that their wives should come from an educated middle-class background, although their educational status must increase in step with her husband's promotions. This is referred to as Sayar Dagar Setsanye (patron-client relationship) to ensure swift career advancement, as an officer and his wife are seen as the "father and mother of the battalion".
The author rejects reports of discrimination based on religion or ethnicity, and claims reforms in the 1990s have made the officer corps more equitable. He expends several pages detailing how the military has supposedly been more open to minority recruits, only to contradictorily conclude: "[A]s a result of these measures, the present day Tatmadaw is commanded by educated Buddhist officers with a rural background, most of whom are ethnic Bama [Myanmar]" (p 200), which sounds more like authoritarian homogenization. There is very little evidence that the army is an institution conducive for career advancement for any member of an ethnic group or a Christian, Muslim or woman.
Crimes of omission
The book hardly mentions training of the rank and file, a serious omission as it leaves the reader with little understanding of the life of an average soldier. Much of the training literature the Tatmadaw began to produce after 2000 is predominantly based on United States Army and Marine Corps field manuals.
This may be because the head of military training appointed in 1998, Brigadier General Aung Kyi, was trained at the US military special warfare center at Fort Bragg at one point in his career. There is also a thriving defense publication culture in Myanmar, with numerous translations of Sun Tzu, Carl von Clausewitz, Western strategic and defense studies journals, and even the homegrown and officially sanctioned, Sittheikpan Hnit Nipyinnyar (Military Science and Technology) Journal.
Another of the contradictions in this book concerns the relative privilege Tatmadaw members enjoy. The author writes, "Generally speaking, Tatmadaw members did not receive special privileges" and then clumsily contextualises that by saying, "Generally, despite the lack of off-budget welfare subsidies, soldiers were better off than their civilian counterparts and even more so compared with ordinary civilians" (p 167).
These glaring inconsistencies indicate the author is traversing a fine balance between a congratulatory and critical study of the military, but such contradictions yaw and pitch the narrative dramatically. It's as if the author is trying to suggest the reader pick one or the other of his parallel arguments: either clear Tatmadaw propaganda or open-source opacity. Yet Aung Myoe is rarely conclusive on what he thinks the right information is.
The Tatwadaw's morale is often a cause for speculation, particularly among those looking for cracks in military unity. A small section in the book on the financing of troop welfare is revealing, arguing that the central War Office could not sustain rations to frontline battalions who were compelled to generate their own funding, an exercise in self-reliance that quickly degenerated into rackets.
"Faced with unfair competition, monopoly, protection, and corruption, some people started seeing the Tatmadaw's commercial activities as vehicles for not only making the Tatmadaw a privileged institution, but also paving the way for military personnel to make their personal gains" (p 189). Aung Myoe inexplicably claims this self-sustainability policy has been repealed in recent years, yet corruption inside the Tatmadaw continues to flourish, including through land confiscation, exhortation of civilians, protection of opium fields, and seizing civilian property and goods.
Living conditions in remote combat areas are never explored, even though we know from a range of reports that the lives of soldiers and civilians are desperate. By quoting from a leaked internal Tatmadaw command document from 2006, which discusses increasing rates of desertion and low morale related to abuses by corrupt and "self centered" officers, the author tacitly acknowledges that there are deep fissures and tensions within the military.
How the military is perceived by average people is nowhere addressed in the book, nor are the voices of soldiers and officers themselves given space for institutional introspection.
The book's most important omission - and one that questions the author's credibility - concerns the Tatmadaw's deplorable human-rights record. Both inside and outside Myanmar, the Tatmadaw is synonymous with abuse. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Karen Human Rights Group, the Shan Women's Action Network and many others, have documented systematic violations such as forced recruitment of child soldiers, targeted attacks against civilians in ethnic minority areas, sexual violence against women, burning down of entire villages, the use of forced prisoner as porters in conflict areas and other violations of international law, as noted by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in June 2007 and in a recent report by five prominent international jurists writing for Harvard Law School.
Aung Myoe only briefly mentions abuses, such as the recruitment of child soldiers, and then just as "foreign media reports". The circumscribed nature of being an insider writing about such an important institution is evident in these vaguely worded or excluded issues in the book.
Methodologically, the book is a fascinating melange of sources: scholarly works on Myanmar, including the seminal works of Andrew Selth and Desmond Ball, Western defense doctrine theory, and liberal use of the online reference Wikipedia (whose highly detailed entries on the Myanmar military could have been written by the author). Aung Myoe also uses internal military documents - which indicates that he is probably sitting on a lot more that the SPDC doesn't want to see the light of day.
Transforming the Tatmadaw, by Andrew Selth, underscores the hard reality that for any major change to occur in Myanmar's long stagnant political deadlock, and even for significant economic or social change, the deeply entrenched Tatmadaw will either have to radically change and act as the vanguard or guardian of any transformation, or be swept aside.
Both seem unlikely at present, though social tensions are so deep in Myanmar that future uprisings like in 1988 or 2007 cannot be ruled out. Though his Myanmar citizenship doubtlessly circumscribes what he can say, Maung Aung Myoe's study is fundamental reading for anyone inside or outside Myanmar seeking to understand that long-delayed transition.
Building the Tatmadaw Myanmar Armed Forces Since 1948 by Maung Aung Myoe. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, 2009. ISBN 978-981-230-848-1. Price S$49.90, 255 pages.
David Scott Mathieson is Burma Researcher with New York-based Human Rights Watch.
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Two Myanmar hotels awarded in ASEAN energy saving building design contest
www.chinaview.cn 2009-07-03 12:12:05
YANGON, July 3 (Xinhua) -- Two hotels in Myanmar have won two gold medals in an energy saving building design contest for 2009, sponsored by the ASEAN Energy Center (AEC), the local weekly Popular News reported Friday.
The two winning hotels are the Shwe Intha Hotel in Inlay and Bell Hotel in Chaungtha, both of which are attractive tourist sites in the country.
The medals will be presented later this month in new capital Nay Pyi Taw of Myanmar, the host country for the contest this year.
In 2006, 2007 and 2008, Yangon's Kanbawza Bank, Pyay's Mingala Garden Hotel and Ngwesaung's Bay of Bangel Hotel respectively pocketed one medal each through such contest.
ASEAN energy saving building design contest has been held annually since 2000 by the AEC with the aim of disseminating knowledge of energy saving in buildings in Asian countries.
Meanwhile, other two hotels of Kandawgyi Palace Hotel from Yangon and Bayview Beach Resort in famous Ngapali Beach in Rakhine state have also grabbed the Institute of Customer Service (ICS) Award for the year 2008 presented by the Indochina Services Travel Group.
The ICS awards were presented through voting system on observation of services extended to customers over two types of hotels of urban and beach.
www.chinaview.cn 2009-07-03 12:12:05
YANGON, July 3 (Xinhua) -- Two hotels in Myanmar have won two gold medals in an energy saving building design contest for 2009, sponsored by the ASEAN Energy Center (AEC), the local weekly Popular News reported Friday.
The two winning hotels are the Shwe Intha Hotel in Inlay and Bell Hotel in Chaungtha, both of which are attractive tourist sites in the country.
The medals will be presented later this month in new capital Nay Pyi Taw of Myanmar, the host country for the contest this year.
In 2006, 2007 and 2008, Yangon's Kanbawza Bank, Pyay's Mingala Garden Hotel and Ngwesaung's Bay of Bangel Hotel respectively pocketed one medal each through such contest.
ASEAN energy saving building design contest has been held annually since 2000 by the AEC with the aim of disseminating knowledge of energy saving in buildings in Asian countries.
Meanwhile, other two hotels of Kandawgyi Palace Hotel from Yangon and Bayview Beach Resort in famous Ngapali Beach in Rakhine state have also grabbed the Institute of Customer Service (ICS) Award for the year 2008 presented by the Indochina Services Travel Group.
The ICS awards were presented through voting system on observation of services extended to customers over two types of hotels of urban and beach.
*****************************************************
Analysis: Why sanctions aren't working in Myanmar
July 2, 2009 -- Updated 0305 GMT (1105 HKT)
By Pauline Chiou
HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- Be it Iran or North Korea, economic sanctions are a well-used weapon in the diplomatic arsenal for dealing with international disputes. But do they work?
Consider the Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar. Ruled by the military since 1962, the state (formerly known as Burma) has been under sanctions from Western nations for more than a decade. Despite years of tightening economic pressure, military rule in Myanmar continues.
"I think sanctions have very little effect on the economy (of Myanmar) because they have very little in the way of international trade," said Sean Turnell, author of Fiery Dragons: Banks Moneylenders and Microfinance in Burma and an economics professor at Macquarie University in Australia.
While the U.S., European Union and Australia have banned new investment, non-sanctioning countries are taking advantage of business opportunities in Myanmar, which is rich with natural resources like natural gas, timber, jade and rubies.
China, Thailand, India and Singapore already have lucrative deals in place with Myanmar's military government.
Neighboring Thailand depends heavily on Myanmar's offshore natural gas and hydroelectric dams to provide power to the Thai population. China has signed a deal to build a natural gas pipeline from the west coast of Myanmar into western China. Thailand buys about 30 percent of its gas from Myanmar and uses gas to generate about two-thirds of its electricity.
Despite the American and European sanctions currently in place, U.S.-based Chevron and French-based TOTAL are doing business in Myanmar today because their contracts were signed with Myanmar's military government before international pressure was tightened.
The Yadana natural gas project, off the coast of Myanmar, involves three foreign firms: TOTAL, Chevron and the Petroleum Authority of Thailand (PTT). TOTAL has the biggest investment with a 31% stake in the project. TOTAL told CNN it paid $250 million in taxes to the Myanmar government in 2008.
Chevron did not respond to repeated phone and email requests for comment on this story, but Chevron's Web site said the company's local community projects benefit the people of Myanmar.
Western corporations have faced criticism for doing business in a country run by a government accused of human rights abuses. But these companies go to where the oil and gas lie -- often in unstable regions of the world.
"What we provide is a different example of work, of business and what good governance should be about," said Jean-Francois Lassalle, vice president of public affairs for Total. "Our employees have benefits from social pensions, employee representation, holidays and good contracts. We function in Burma the same way we do in Europe. In that sense, we're trying to be an example."
The company employs 250 permanent and more than 600 subcontracted workers in Myanmar, Lassalle said. TOTAL provides free medicine and education to the local population, along with funding for hospitals and orphanages. The company estimates its community projects affect 50,000 people in Myanmar.
The military regime has suppressed democracy movements for the past several decades. Myanmar's most famous citizen, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi -- whose party won the majority of seats in the 1990 election -- has been kept under house arrest and is currently on trial for alleged violations of her detention.
It is another indication of the military's tight grip on power, despite sanctions. Some experts say more should be done to hit the military regime where it hurts: their personal bank accounts.
The Myanmar military elite have millions in overseas bank accounts, experts say.
Southeast Asia expert Jamie Metzl of the non-profit Asia Society, said freezing personal assets of the military generals was a good idea but cautions it would be an uphill battle. Metzl believes that any such move would need the support of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) which includes Thailand -- a major trade partner -- and Singapore.
"If sanctions [of freezing personal assets] were put in place and if ASEAN states including Singapore were on board, then conceivably, there could be a way to reach some of those assets, although the generals could move them elsewhere."
Metzl noted that ASEAN tends to favor a policy of engagement with Myanmar: In other words, soft diplomacy rather than the harsh bite of economic sanctions. Unless all countries play ball, it is clear that economic sanctions can only do so much.
Fact Box
Yadana Project Corporate Partners
TOTAL 31%
CHEVRON 28%
PTT (Petroleum Authority of Thailand) 25%
M.O.G.E. (Myanmar state-owned utility) 15%
French-based TOTAL says it paid $250 million in taxes to Myanmar's government in 2008.
Taxes are based on the percentage of participation in the joint venture. U.S.-based Chevron did not respond to any of CNN's questions about the venture.
85% of the gas produced from the Yadana project is sold to Thailand. This gas makes up about 20% of Thailand's energy consumption.
SOURCE: CNN research
July 2, 2009 -- Updated 0305 GMT (1105 HKT)
By Pauline Chiou
HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- Be it Iran or North Korea, economic sanctions are a well-used weapon in the diplomatic arsenal for dealing with international disputes. But do they work?
Consider the Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar. Ruled by the military since 1962, the state (formerly known as Burma) has been under sanctions from Western nations for more than a decade. Despite years of tightening economic pressure, military rule in Myanmar continues.
"I think sanctions have very little effect on the economy (of Myanmar) because they have very little in the way of international trade," said Sean Turnell, author of Fiery Dragons: Banks Moneylenders and Microfinance in Burma and an economics professor at Macquarie University in Australia.
While the U.S., European Union and Australia have banned new investment, non-sanctioning countries are taking advantage of business opportunities in Myanmar, which is rich with natural resources like natural gas, timber, jade and rubies.
China, Thailand, India and Singapore already have lucrative deals in place with Myanmar's military government.
Neighboring Thailand depends heavily on Myanmar's offshore natural gas and hydroelectric dams to provide power to the Thai population. China has signed a deal to build a natural gas pipeline from the west coast of Myanmar into western China. Thailand buys about 30 percent of its gas from Myanmar and uses gas to generate about two-thirds of its electricity.
Despite the American and European sanctions currently in place, U.S.-based Chevron and French-based TOTAL are doing business in Myanmar today because their contracts were signed with Myanmar's military government before international pressure was tightened.
The Yadana natural gas project, off the coast of Myanmar, involves three foreign firms: TOTAL, Chevron and the Petroleum Authority of Thailand (PTT). TOTAL has the biggest investment with a 31% stake in the project. TOTAL told CNN it paid $250 million in taxes to the Myanmar government in 2008.
Chevron did not respond to repeated phone and email requests for comment on this story, but Chevron's Web site said the company's local community projects benefit the people of Myanmar.
Western corporations have faced criticism for doing business in a country run by a government accused of human rights abuses. But these companies go to where the oil and gas lie -- often in unstable regions of the world.
"What we provide is a different example of work, of business and what good governance should be about," said Jean-Francois Lassalle, vice president of public affairs for Total. "Our employees have benefits from social pensions, employee representation, holidays and good contracts. We function in Burma the same way we do in Europe. In that sense, we're trying to be an example."
The company employs 250 permanent and more than 600 subcontracted workers in Myanmar, Lassalle said. TOTAL provides free medicine and education to the local population, along with funding for hospitals and orphanages. The company estimates its community projects affect 50,000 people in Myanmar.
The military regime has suppressed democracy movements for the past several decades. Myanmar's most famous citizen, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi -- whose party won the majority of seats in the 1990 election -- has been kept under house arrest and is currently on trial for alleged violations of her detention.
It is another indication of the military's tight grip on power, despite sanctions. Some experts say more should be done to hit the military regime where it hurts: their personal bank accounts.
The Myanmar military elite have millions in overseas bank accounts, experts say.
Southeast Asia expert Jamie Metzl of the non-profit Asia Society, said freezing personal assets of the military generals was a good idea but cautions it would be an uphill battle. Metzl believes that any such move would need the support of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) which includes Thailand -- a major trade partner -- and Singapore.
"If sanctions [of freezing personal assets] were put in place and if ASEAN states including Singapore were on board, then conceivably, there could be a way to reach some of those assets, although the generals could move them elsewhere."
Metzl noted that ASEAN tends to favor a policy of engagement with Myanmar: In other words, soft diplomacy rather than the harsh bite of economic sanctions. Unless all countries play ball, it is clear that economic sanctions can only do so much.
Fact Box
Yadana Project Corporate Partners
TOTAL 31%
CHEVRON 28%
PTT (Petroleum Authority of Thailand) 25%
M.O.G.E. (Myanmar state-owned utility) 15%
French-based TOTAL says it paid $250 million in taxes to Myanmar's government in 2008.
Taxes are based on the percentage of participation in the joint venture. U.S.-based Chevron did not respond to any of CNN's questions about the venture.
85% of the gas produced from the Yadana project is sold to Thailand. This gas makes up about 20% of Thailand's energy consumption.
SOURCE: CNN research
*****************************************************
Friday 3 July 2009
Number 10 - Sarah Brown calls for release of Aung San Suu Kyi
Sarah Brown has joined high profile women from around the world calling for the release of Burmese political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi as United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon arrives in Burma.
Ms Suu Kyi is accused of violating the terms of her house arrest and could face a further five years in prison.
Sarah Brown has joined fifty First Ladies, Nobel Laureates and leaders from the world of politics, human rights and the arts to issue a 64 word message.
Number 10 - Sarah Brown calls for release of Aung San Suu Kyi
Sarah Brown has joined high profile women from around the world calling for the release of Burmese political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi as United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon arrives in Burma.
Ms Suu Kyi is accused of violating the terms of her house arrest and could face a further five years in prison.
Sarah Brown has joined fifty First Ladies, Nobel Laureates and leaders from the world of politics, human rights and the arts to issue a 64 word message.
*****************************************************
The Irrawaddy - Junta Itself is Main ‘Sanction’ on Burma: Expert
By WAI MOE, Friday, July 3, 2009
The economic policies of Burma’s ruling junta have done far more damage to the country’s prospects for development than international sanctions, according to Sean Turnell, a specialist on the Burmese economy from Australia’s McQuarie University.
“Burma is not poor because of sanctions,” said Turnell, who produces Burma Economic Watch, a periodical that monitors economic developments in one of the world’s poorest countries. “The biggest sanction on Burma is the Burmese regime itself.”
Turnell told The Irrawaddy on Friday that the junta’s “willful mismanagement” of the economy, including its refusal to respect property rights, is the main obstacle to Burma’s economic development.
In a wide-ranging discussion on the current state of the Burmese economy, Turnell said that the regime has “deliberately suppressed the history of Burma’s economic success” during the parliamentary period (1948-62), when the newly independent nation made a remarkable recovery from the devastation wrought by the Second World War.
“Burma doesn’t need a foreign model of development,” he said. “It just needs to look at its own history.”
After more than four-and-a-half decades of military rule, however, Burma’s rulers have completely lost touch with economic reality, he said, making the country a “very, very high-risk environment” for potential foreign investors.
Burma has been subject to Western economic sanctions since the current regime seized power in a bloody coup in 1988. Since then, however, the junta has strengthened its economic ties with its neighbors, particularly China and Thailand.
Singapore has also played a key role in supporting the regime, providing the generals with an offshore shelter for revenues from Burma’s exports of gas and other natural resources, according to Turnell.
The generals are believed to have pocketed at least US $2.5 billion from the sale of natural gas to more developed countries in the region. None of this money has been used to alleviate poverty or build a stronger economy, said Turnell.
Burma has been designated one of the world’s least developed countries by the United Nations for more than 20 years. On a UN Web site, Burma is described as “a resource-rich country that suffers from government controls and abject rural poverty.”
“[T]he military regime took steps in the early 1990s to liberalize the economy after decades of failure under the ‘Burmese Way to Socialism,’ but those efforts have since stalled,” according to the UN Web site.
In the Human Development Index 2008 Update, Burma’s per capita GDP (US $881 in 2006) ranked 163th out of 178 countries in the world.
Although the junta’s official statistics claim that the Burmese economy is growing at around 10 percent annually, Turnell said that various indicators, including weak domestic energy consumption, suggest that the economy is actually contracting.
According to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s latest report on Burma, the country’s real GDP growth for 2009 is projected to be only one percent, “owing to a combination of domestic factors and the impact of the global downturn.”
By WAI MOE, Friday, July 3, 2009
The economic policies of Burma’s ruling junta have done far more damage to the country’s prospects for development than international sanctions, according to Sean Turnell, a specialist on the Burmese economy from Australia’s McQuarie University.
“Burma is not poor because of sanctions,” said Turnell, who produces Burma Economic Watch, a periodical that monitors economic developments in one of the world’s poorest countries. “The biggest sanction on Burma is the Burmese regime itself.”
Turnell told The Irrawaddy on Friday that the junta’s “willful mismanagement” of the economy, including its refusal to respect property rights, is the main obstacle to Burma’s economic development.
In a wide-ranging discussion on the current state of the Burmese economy, Turnell said that the regime has “deliberately suppressed the history of Burma’s economic success” during the parliamentary period (1948-62), when the newly independent nation made a remarkable recovery from the devastation wrought by the Second World War.
“Burma doesn’t need a foreign model of development,” he said. “It just needs to look at its own history.”
After more than four-and-a-half decades of military rule, however, Burma’s rulers have completely lost touch with economic reality, he said, making the country a “very, very high-risk environment” for potential foreign investors.
Burma has been subject to Western economic sanctions since the current regime seized power in a bloody coup in 1988. Since then, however, the junta has strengthened its economic ties with its neighbors, particularly China and Thailand.
Singapore has also played a key role in supporting the regime, providing the generals with an offshore shelter for revenues from Burma’s exports of gas and other natural resources, according to Turnell.
The generals are believed to have pocketed at least US $2.5 billion from the sale of natural gas to more developed countries in the region. None of this money has been used to alleviate poverty or build a stronger economy, said Turnell.
Burma has been designated one of the world’s least developed countries by the United Nations for more than 20 years. On a UN Web site, Burma is described as “a resource-rich country that suffers from government controls and abject rural poverty.”
“[T]he military regime took steps in the early 1990s to liberalize the economy after decades of failure under the ‘Burmese Way to Socialism,’ but those efforts have since stalled,” according to the UN Web site.
In the Human Development Index 2008 Update, Burma’s per capita GDP (US $881 in 2006) ranked 163th out of 178 countries in the world.
Although the junta’s official statistics claim that the Burmese economy is growing at around 10 percent annually, Turnell said that various indicators, including weak domestic energy consumption, suggest that the economy is actually contracting.
According to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s latest report on Burma, the country’s real GDP growth for 2009 is projected to be only one percent, “owing to a combination of domestic factors and the impact of the global downturn.”
*****************************************************
The Irrawaddy - INGOs Kept Waiting for Visas
By WAI SANN, Friday, July 3, 2009
RANGOON—International aid workers are being kept waiting several weeks to get visas to enter Burma, according to international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) that are working for the recovery of cyclone-affected areas.
"This is a big headache for us,” an official from one of the INGOs told The Irrawaddy on condition of anonymity. “I don't know why the TCG (Tripartite Core Group) stopped facilitating the process of visas for international aid workers.”
Until March this year, INGOS reported that the process for obtaining visas for their staff had become easier and did not take much time. They attributed this efficiency to the efforts of the TCG, which was established in May 2008 as a working mechanism for coordinating, facilitating and monitoring the flow of international assistance into cyclone-hit areas.
The TCG comprises a joint assessment team of representatives from the Burmese military government, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) and the United Nations.
The military government drew international criticism and condemnation for not allowing many international aid workers into the country in the wake of the Cyclone Nargis disaster on May 2-3 last year, which killed some 138,000 people in Burma and affected more than two million.
However, in the months following the cyclone, the TCG was relatively successful in persuading the military junta to allow international aid workers to obtain visas and get access to the cyclone-affected areas.
However, since March this year, the group has not been in a position to help the INGOs, forcing the aid workers to apply for visas by themselves in the traditionally slow and bureaucratic old system whereby aid workers have to apply for visas through the Burmese line ministries, which in turn submit their applications to the Foreign Affairs Policy Committee (FAPC).
The FAPC handles all kinds of visa applications, and reportedly meets only once a week to consider the INGO visa issues.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)/ Rangoon, there are over 200 visa applications pending with the FAPC.
“This bureaucracy mechanism certainly holds back our work, and slows down recovery efforts,” said an international aid worker working with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
According to UN sources, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) is currently frustrated by being unable to operate a helicopter for recovery efforts because one of its pilots has been waiting for a visa in Bangkok for more than three weeks.
“We UN personnel, and some NGO personnel, use this helicopter to go to places like Bogalay and Laputta. It will have a huge impact on our traveling to the cyclone-affected area, which in another way will also have impact on the recovery work,” an official from the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) said.
"My impression is that the government no longer wants to cooperate with us, and doesn't want us to be involved in the recovery efforts," said an official from an NGO that is helping cyclone survivors in Laputta Township.
He said that some of their international staff have been waiting outside the country for Burmese visas for over four weeks, but none of them has been informed why the FAPC has taken so long to process or review their visa applications.
"We're used to this sort of bureaucracy in Burma,” an NGO official said. “But the government should know this is a very important time for the cyclone survivors. We are helping those cyclone survivors whom they [the junta] don't want to help.
”The recovery phase has just begun,” the official added. “We need more assistance and more international aid workers.”
By WAI SANN, Friday, July 3, 2009
RANGOON—International aid workers are being kept waiting several weeks to get visas to enter Burma, according to international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) that are working for the recovery of cyclone-affected areas.
"This is a big headache for us,” an official from one of the INGOs told The Irrawaddy on condition of anonymity. “I don't know why the TCG (Tripartite Core Group) stopped facilitating the process of visas for international aid workers.”
Until March this year, INGOS reported that the process for obtaining visas for their staff had become easier and did not take much time. They attributed this efficiency to the efforts of the TCG, which was established in May 2008 as a working mechanism for coordinating, facilitating and monitoring the flow of international assistance into cyclone-hit areas.
The TCG comprises a joint assessment team of representatives from the Burmese military government, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) and the United Nations.
The military government drew international criticism and condemnation for not allowing many international aid workers into the country in the wake of the Cyclone Nargis disaster on May 2-3 last year, which killed some 138,000 people in Burma and affected more than two million.
However, in the months following the cyclone, the TCG was relatively successful in persuading the military junta to allow international aid workers to obtain visas and get access to the cyclone-affected areas.
However, since March this year, the group has not been in a position to help the INGOs, forcing the aid workers to apply for visas by themselves in the traditionally slow and bureaucratic old system whereby aid workers have to apply for visas through the Burmese line ministries, which in turn submit their applications to the Foreign Affairs Policy Committee (FAPC).
The FAPC handles all kinds of visa applications, and reportedly meets only once a week to consider the INGO visa issues.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)/ Rangoon, there are over 200 visa applications pending with the FAPC.
“This bureaucracy mechanism certainly holds back our work, and slows down recovery efforts,” said an international aid worker working with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
According to UN sources, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) is currently frustrated by being unable to operate a helicopter for recovery efforts because one of its pilots has been waiting for a visa in Bangkok for more than three weeks.
“We UN personnel, and some NGO personnel, use this helicopter to go to places like Bogalay and Laputta. It will have a huge impact on our traveling to the cyclone-affected area, which in another way will also have impact on the recovery work,” an official from the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) said.
"My impression is that the government no longer wants to cooperate with us, and doesn't want us to be involved in the recovery efforts," said an official from an NGO that is helping cyclone survivors in Laputta Township.
He said that some of their international staff have been waiting outside the country for Burmese visas for over four weeks, but none of them has been informed why the FAPC has taken so long to process or review their visa applications.
"We're used to this sort of bureaucracy in Burma,” an NGO official said. “But the government should know this is a very important time for the cyclone survivors. We are helping those cyclone survivors whom they [the junta] don't want to help.
”The recovery phase has just begun,” the official added. “We need more assistance and more international aid workers.”
*****************************************************
The Irrawaddy - NLD Delegation Travels to Naypyidaw to Meet Ban Ki-moon
By LAWI WENG, Friday, July 3, 2009
Members of the central executive committee of Burma’s main opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), have traveled to the country’s remote new capital of Naypyidaw to meet visiting UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, according to the party.
Win Tin, a member of the NLD central executive committee, told The Irrawaddy on Friday that the Burmese military authorities took four members of his party to Naypyidaw by car yesterday. The four—Hla Pe, Soe Myint, Nyunt Wai and Than Tun—will meet Ban during a two-day visit to the country that started today.
The NLD’s central executive committee discussed Ban’s upcoming visit on Wednesday. The party decided to meet with the UN chief to speak with him about the release of political prisoners, calls for dialogue and a review of the current constitution, according to Win Tin.
Ban is expected to meet the junta leader, Snr-Gen Than Shwe, at Naypyidaw today. It is still not clear, however, whether he will be permitted to meet detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
According to Win Tin, the regime’s decision to take senior members of the NLD to Naypyidaw was probably an indication that they did not intend to allow Ban to meet Suu Kyi.
“I don’t think Ban Ki-moon will meet Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. But I want him to meet her. If he meets Than Shwe, he should meet her as well,” he said.
“He should not just listen to what the military government tells him, like [UN special envoy to Burma Ibrahim] Gambari. He should act like the secretary-general of the UN and meet Daw Aung San Suu Kyi,” said Win Tin.
The NLD’s leaders said that they did not expect Ban’s visit to Burma to have any great impact. However, the party said it welcomed his trip and his desire to help solve Burma’s political problems.
Prior to his visit, Ban told reporters in Japan that he would try to use his trip “to raise in the strongest possible terms” the concerns of the international community.
He said he would call on the junta to “release all political prisoners, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi,” and urge the resumption of a political dialogue with the opposition as a necessary part of the national reconciliation process. He also said he would tell the regime that it needs to create conditions conducive to credible elections in 2010.
Ahead of Ban’s trip to Burma, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said the UN chief should press the junta to release all political prisoners and engage in a dialogue with the opposition. Ban should not give legitimacy to the 2010 elections, the group said.
“There is a real danger that Burma’s generals will try to use Ban’s visit to legitimize the 2010 elections,” said Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch.
Meanwhile, Suu Kyi’s lawyer, Nyan Win, said that her trial has been adjourned until July 10. Suu Kyi is facing up to 5 years in prison for allegedly allowing an intruder to stay overnight in her home in early May.
By LAWI WENG, Friday, July 3, 2009
Members of the central executive committee of Burma’s main opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), have traveled to the country’s remote new capital of Naypyidaw to meet visiting UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, according to the party.
Win Tin, a member of the NLD central executive committee, told The Irrawaddy on Friday that the Burmese military authorities took four members of his party to Naypyidaw by car yesterday. The four—Hla Pe, Soe Myint, Nyunt Wai and Than Tun—will meet Ban during a two-day visit to the country that started today.
The NLD’s central executive committee discussed Ban’s upcoming visit on Wednesday. The party decided to meet with the UN chief to speak with him about the release of political prisoners, calls for dialogue and a review of the current constitution, according to Win Tin.
Ban is expected to meet the junta leader, Snr-Gen Than Shwe, at Naypyidaw today. It is still not clear, however, whether he will be permitted to meet detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
According to Win Tin, the regime’s decision to take senior members of the NLD to Naypyidaw was probably an indication that they did not intend to allow Ban to meet Suu Kyi.
“I don’t think Ban Ki-moon will meet Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. But I want him to meet her. If he meets Than Shwe, he should meet her as well,” he said.
“He should not just listen to what the military government tells him, like [UN special envoy to Burma Ibrahim] Gambari. He should act like the secretary-general of the UN and meet Daw Aung San Suu Kyi,” said Win Tin.
The NLD’s leaders said that they did not expect Ban’s visit to Burma to have any great impact. However, the party said it welcomed his trip and his desire to help solve Burma’s political problems.
Prior to his visit, Ban told reporters in Japan that he would try to use his trip “to raise in the strongest possible terms” the concerns of the international community.
He said he would call on the junta to “release all political prisoners, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi,” and urge the resumption of a political dialogue with the opposition as a necessary part of the national reconciliation process. He also said he would tell the regime that it needs to create conditions conducive to credible elections in 2010.
Ahead of Ban’s trip to Burma, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said the UN chief should press the junta to release all political prisoners and engage in a dialogue with the opposition. Ban should not give legitimacy to the 2010 elections, the group said.
“There is a real danger that Burma’s generals will try to use Ban’s visit to legitimize the 2010 elections,” said Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch.
Meanwhile, Suu Kyi’s lawyer, Nyan Win, said that her trial has been adjourned until July 10. Suu Kyi is facing up to 5 years in prison for allegedly allowing an intruder to stay overnight in her home in early May.
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