Myanmar state media accuses Clinton of interference
Sun Jul 26, 7:23 am ET
YANGON (AFP) – Myanmar's state media Sunday accused US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of interfering with the internal affairs of Southeast Asia and said America's troops in Asia threatened world security.
Clinton attended Asia's largest security forum in Thailand last week where she urged Myanmar's military rulers to set pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi free, dangling the carrot of future business ties.
She also called for democratic reforms in the country and said expelling Myanmar from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) if Suu Kyi was not released would be an "appropriate" measure to consider.
"This is really interfering with ASEAN's internal affairs," said the state-run Myanma Ahlin newspaper.
"If ASEAN obeys the United States Secretary of State, ASEAN will be under the United States' influence," the comment piece said.
During the meetings in Phuket, Clinton expressed concerns about the possibility that North Korea was transferring weapons and nuclear technology to Myanmar.
However, in what Clinton later described as an "encouraging" move, Myanmar made a surprising show of support for sanctions designed to squeeze North Korea over its nuclear ambitions.
But the Myanma Ahlin article showed little sign of improved relations with the US, criticising its presence in Afghanistan.
"The real danger in the region resides in the US military troops in Asia. They are the ones who threaten the security of the whole world, not just in the region," it said.
On Friday, the country's English-language state newspaper The New Light of Myanmar criticised foreign calls for Suu Kyi's release from Insein prison, saying they showed "reckless disregard for the law".
But Suu Kyi's lawyers hailed international calls for her freedom as they gave their closing arguments in a bid to prevent her being jailed for five years on charges of breaching her house arrest rules.
Prosecution lawyers will give their final arguments Monday in the court case, which stems from an incident in which an American man swam to her lakeside home in May.
Suu Kyi has spent most of the last two decades in detention since the junta refused to recognise her party's victory in elections in 1990.
Sun Jul 26, 7:23 am ET
YANGON (AFP) – Myanmar's state media Sunday accused US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of interfering with the internal affairs of Southeast Asia and said America's troops in Asia threatened world security.
Clinton attended Asia's largest security forum in Thailand last week where she urged Myanmar's military rulers to set pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi free, dangling the carrot of future business ties.
She also called for democratic reforms in the country and said expelling Myanmar from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) if Suu Kyi was not released would be an "appropriate" measure to consider.
"This is really interfering with ASEAN's internal affairs," said the state-run Myanma Ahlin newspaper.
"If ASEAN obeys the United States Secretary of State, ASEAN will be under the United States' influence," the comment piece said.
During the meetings in Phuket, Clinton expressed concerns about the possibility that North Korea was transferring weapons and nuclear technology to Myanmar.
However, in what Clinton later described as an "encouraging" move, Myanmar made a surprising show of support for sanctions designed to squeeze North Korea over its nuclear ambitions.
But the Myanma Ahlin article showed little sign of improved relations with the US, criticising its presence in Afghanistan.
"The real danger in the region resides in the US military troops in Asia. They are the ones who threaten the security of the whole world, not just in the region," it said.
On Friday, the country's English-language state newspaper The New Light of Myanmar criticised foreign calls for Suu Kyi's release from Insein prison, saying they showed "reckless disregard for the law".
But Suu Kyi's lawyers hailed international calls for her freedom as they gave their closing arguments in a bid to prevent her being jailed for five years on charges of breaching her house arrest rules.
Prosecution lawyers will give their final arguments Monday in the court case, which stems from an incident in which an American man swam to her lakeside home in May.
Suu Kyi has spent most of the last two decades in detention since the junta refused to recognise her party's victory in elections in 1990.
*****************************************************
Saturday, Jul 25, 2009
The Hindu - Suu Kyi pleads in court for rule of law, balance
P. S. Suryanarayana
SINGAPORE: Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s celebrated democracy campaigner, on Friday called for “rule of law” and a “balance” among the institutions of state such as the executive and judiciary.
Ms. Suu Kyi’s plea was read out by her lawyer, Kyi Win, in a trial court in Yangon. She was present during the hearing.
Mr. Kyi Win was winding up defence arguments in the case about her alleged violation of terms of a recent phase of her house arrest which ended on May 27. Defence counsel will resume the concluding arguments on July 27. And, no date was set for the verdict.
A Nobel Peace Laureate, she has been subjected to over 14 years of detention since her National League for Democracy (NLD) won by a landslide margin in a rare general election that the military rulers held nearly two decades ago. She is being held as an under-trial detenu at a “guest house” within the premises of a high-security prison in Yagon.
The prosecution’s case now is that Ms. Suu Kyi, still under house arrest in early May, extended hospitality to a male American national, who swam undetected to her lakeside residence in Yangon to meet her.
NLD spokesperson Nyan Win, also a defence lawyer, told The Hindu from Yangon on Friday that two key arguments were advanced earlier in the day. Prosecution lawyers, it was emphasised, could not rely on the defunct 1974 Constitution to contend that Ms. Suu Kyi had “breached the law of limitations on individual rights,” especially as applicable to house arrests. In fact, in the aftermath of last year’s Cyclone Nargis, the military rulers held a referendum on a new Constitution and declared it ratified.
Countering the other argument that Ms. Suu Kyi was in “communication” with a foreigner, contrary to the conditions of house arrest, her lead defence counsel said she committed “no offence.” The purported “love letter” written to her by the American intruder was no proof that she had herself contacted him, it was submitted.
P. S. Suryanarayana
SINGAPORE: Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s celebrated democracy campaigner, on Friday called for “rule of law” and a “balance” among the institutions of state such as the executive and judiciary.
Ms. Suu Kyi’s plea was read out by her lawyer, Kyi Win, in a trial court in Yangon. She was present during the hearing.
Mr. Kyi Win was winding up defence arguments in the case about her alleged violation of terms of a recent phase of her house arrest which ended on May 27. Defence counsel will resume the concluding arguments on July 27. And, no date was set for the verdict.
A Nobel Peace Laureate, she has been subjected to over 14 years of detention since her National League for Democracy (NLD) won by a landslide margin in a rare general election that the military rulers held nearly two decades ago. She is being held as an under-trial detenu at a “guest house” within the premises of a high-security prison in Yagon.
The prosecution’s case now is that Ms. Suu Kyi, still under house arrest in early May, extended hospitality to a male American national, who swam undetected to her lakeside residence in Yangon to meet her.
NLD spokesperson Nyan Win, also a defence lawyer, told The Hindu from Yangon on Friday that two key arguments were advanced earlier in the day. Prosecution lawyers, it was emphasised, could not rely on the defunct 1974 Constitution to contend that Ms. Suu Kyi had “breached the law of limitations on individual rights,” especially as applicable to house arrests. In fact, in the aftermath of last year’s Cyclone Nargis, the military rulers held a referendum on a new Constitution and declared it ratified.
Countering the other argument that Ms. Suu Kyi was in “communication” with a foreigner, contrary to the conditions of house arrest, her lead defence counsel said she committed “no offence.” The purported “love letter” written to her by the American intruder was no proof that she had herself contacted him, it was submitted.
*****************************************************
The Buffalo News - Burmese refugees find home in Buffalo
Oppressed at home, refugees chase the American dream on city’s West Side
By Gene Warner - NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Updated: July 26, 2009, 10:44 AM / 4 comments
Law Eh Soe was one of only two photojournalists to chronicle the monks’ pro-democracy uprising two years ago in his native Burma.
He fled after government soldiers shot and killed a Japanese journalist.
Smiler Greely, another Burma native, spent 23 years in a refugee camp, a virtual city of 40,000 people crammed into a few square kilometers, living in bamboo houses with thatched roofs and no electricity.
He fled to give his three kids an education –and a country they could call home.
Myo Thant, a pro-democracy youth leader in Burma, spent 17 months under house arrest as a key aide to Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient.
He fled because he wouldn’t compromise his beliefs and knew he’d spend much of his life under house arrest, in prison –or worse.
All three refugees –bright, educated men forced from their homeland –now live on Buffalo’s West Side.
And they’re not alone. Buffalo is home to approximately 2,000 Burmese refugees – approaching 1 percent of the city’s population.
The figure is climbing quickly, and Buffalo has become the unofficial state capital for resettling refugees from Burma and elsewhere. This year, more than 30 percent of the refugees coming to New York State have settled in Western New York.
“If it weren’t for refugees, Buffalo would be shrinking even faster,” said Molly Short, executive director of Journey’s End Refugee Services. “This is the incoming population.”
The Burmese make up more than half the roughly 1,000 refugees who resettle in the Buffalo area each year.
Most of the Burmese have fled from refugee camps along the Thailand-Burma border, where some lived for years in primitive conditions, after 3,000 of their villages were destroyed.
They’ve settled mostly on the West Side, west of Richmond Avenue and south of Lafayette Avenue. Many spend their time in all-day English classes, fishing along the Niagara River and walking through their neighborhoods.
Many passers-by think they’re either Chinese or Vietnamese. And they’re adamant that their native land is Burma, not Myanmar, the recent name favored by the military government.
They’re new Buffalonians, chasing their own version of the American dream. But not just for themselves.
“This is only the first generation,” Law said, gesturing toward an English class of Burmese adults. “The second generation will be different. They will speak fluent English and be more educated.”
But Law sounded a warning for that younger generation:
“They shouldn’t forget their roots, and why we had to come to America. Thousands of our people stayed in Burma and suffered, and they shouldn’t forget that.”
New kid in town
The Burmese refugees who have formed their own community on the West Side, as well as smaller enclaves in Black Rock and Riverside, face two major hurdles in adapting to America.
First, few come here speaking much English. Authorities estimate that only 10 to 15 percent of Burmese refugees arrive with a workable mastery of the language. That’s why newcomers spend up to eight hours on weekdays in English class, first having to crack the intricacies of our alphabet.
The Burmese also have to overcome their own diversity. Burma has eight basic ethnic groups, dozens of sub-ethnic groups and about 100 language dialects. That means many of them need interpreters just to talk with each other.
Last week, Denise Phillips Beehag, director of refugee services for the International Institute of Buffalo, asked some Burmese refugees outside English class for permission to have their photos taken for The Buffalo News. She made her pitch in English, before it was translated by one interpreter into the Burmese dialect and then by another into the Karen dialect.
The Burmese refugees also come from three religious groups: Christian, Buddhist and Muslim.
Thant, the former youth leader, dismissed the notion that the Burmese are too divided by their ethnic, language and religious differences.
“We’re all the same,” he said. “We’ve all been oppressed. It doesn’t matter what language you speak. We’re all from Burma.”
The Burmese also face the same challenges confronting any new immigrant group –including the Irish, Italian, Polish and Hispanic groups before them.
“Every new group goes through this,” Beehag said. “They’re the new kid in town, and they’re going to be picked on. But it’s easier to pick on this group. They’re timid, they’re quiet, and they’re not assertive.”
Burmese refugees work with four local resettlement agencies: the International Institute, Journey’s End, Catholic Charities and Jewish Family Service. But the Burmese won’t tell their case managers when they don’t have food or electricity, Beehag said.
“You have to ask them,” Beehag said. “They don’t want to be a burden. That’s a challenge for resettlement agencies.”
These refugees have endured a great deal just to get here.
Burma, located in Southeast Asia, bordering Thailand, China and India, has been in civil war for more than five decades.
Listen to the stories of Law, Thant and Smiler, and you hear about the burning of villages, the shooting of innocent people, the house arrests of democratic leaders, the crowded and primitive refugee camps and the physical and psychological torture of those imprisoned for their beliefs.
You also learn how much freer they feel here, how much they still miss their own rivers and mountains, and how high their hopes are for the next generation of Burmese-Americans.
No Hollywood movie
Back home, Law Eh Soe graduated from Rangoon University with a law degree. But he didn’t want to be a lawyer or judge under the long-running martial law.
So he drifted into photojournalism, working for Japanese, French and European news agencies in Rangoon.
“The government didn’t like me because I showed my people’s daily life in Burma,” he said.
On Sept. 18, 2007, thousands of monks protested peacefully in the streets against the military regime. Law and one other photojournalist captured those images, and his photos appeared on CNN, Time magazine and even Al Jazeera.
Previously, Law and others had been warned whenever government soldiers started shooting. This time, there was no warning, and a Japanese journalist was killed in downtown Rangoon.
“When they started shooting, it wasn’t like a Hollywood movie,” Law, now 38, remembered. “In a movie, the journalist can take the picture. In Burma, when they started shooting, I had to run for my life.
“It was no longer safe for me. I thought I would be in prison, or they might hunt for me.”
Two days later, Law fled to a remote area in Burma, then to Thailand. Since resettling in Buffalo in March 2008, he lives with his mother and two brothers on 14th Street and works full time with the International Institute as an interpreter.
“The two important things we have here are freedom and hope. We didn’t have them in Burma. We had to live under fear and doubt, and we didn’t have freedom of speech. Here we can discuss what we want.”
The hardest part of his adjustment to America?
“Nothing is like home. I love to live here, [but] when I close my eyes, I miss my country. I can smell the rivers and the country roads and the mountains.”
Law marvels at the adjustments other Burmese have made.
Many, before moving into the refugee camps, came from remote areas, often in the mountains, where they had no cars or buses or electricity. Now they live in a fairly large American city, with buses, shopping malls, hospitals and other modern amenities.
“It’s like they moved to another planet.”
Man without a country
Smiler Greely’s story is more typical among Burmese refugees.
The son of a teacher and a local agricultural minister, young Smiler lived along the Burma-Thailand border, where the Burmese government attacked its own residents.
“You couldn’t live there anymore,” he said. “You didn’t need to make a decision. You just ran across the river.”
Beehag, from the International Institute, described a typical scenario.
“You’re in your village minding your own business, and your village is burned down by the military government. So you run, and you run until you feel safe and meet up with people from another village.”
At about age 11, Smiler moved to a refugee camp in Thailand, into a life of bamboo houses, thatched roofs, no electricity and little water. The food was rice, fish paste, salt and chili peppers.
“Every 15 days, you have to line up, wait for your name and get your ration of rice,” he said. “Then the next day, you get your fish paste…”
There was no freedom, no choice, he said. The civil war prevented him from returning to Burma. Stateless, living in Thailand, he and other refugees were not allowed to grow their own rice or raise their own animals. He stayed 23 years, past the birth of his three children.
“I was over 30 years old, and I didn’t have citizenship in any country,” he said. “I am not an animal. But what country do I belong to? My children were born in Thailand. They didn’t have any citizenship, because they were in a refugee camp.”
A whole family without a country.
“How can your children survive for the next generation? I’ve spent my whole life in a refugee camp. Are my children going to spend their life there? My grandchildren?”
That’s why Smiler, now 36, came to Buffalo, where he lives with his wife and three young children and works in a school program with Journey’s End.
Smiler wants others to understand where he’s come from and to learn the difference between a democracy and a repressive military dictatorship, where people are shot and young girls raped by soldiers.
“Geographically, I like Burma and the weather. I love the streams and rivers and forests in Thailand and Burma, but not the [Burmese] government.
“The government just kills their own people.”
Words from a poster
Following some of his greatest accomplishments –earning two degrees from Buffalo State College and being sworn in as a U. S. citizen in 2006 – Myo Thant has felt a twinge of sadness.
“I feel like I’m selfish, because my people are still in trouble, being killed and persecuted,” he said. “I feel responsible. I’m OK, but they’re not OK. Even though physically I’m here, my mind is not here. My mind is in Burma, with my people.”
Thant was a youth leader in Burma, becoming a trusted confidante of the National League for Democracy’s Suu Kyi.
“She called me like her son, because I was so young,” he said. “She said, ‘Why don’t you stay with me, to help me plan the youth activities?’ ”
That’s what Thant did, and from May 1996 until October 1997, he was under house arrest with Suu Kyi, the 64-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner who’s on trial in Burma.
Thant never thought about fleeing Burma. But he didn’t want to be in prison for his beliefs. He wanted to keep fighting for them. And that meant leaving.
“I would never change my beliefs,” he said. “The country must be free and democratic.”
Thant, 37, a Journey’s End case manager, wants to keep Burmese culture alive among the young refugees who settle here. Some day, he wants the Burmese to have their own festival, like the Italian Festival, to celebrate their food, their history, their culture, so the young people won’t forget.
This is a tough tightrope for local Burmese leaders to walk. They want their young people to learn English, get jobs and be self-sufficient in America. But Thant doesn’t want them to forget.
“Please speak your language in your home,” he advises his fellow Burmese. “Don’t speak English. You have to maintain your culture in your home.”
On the walls of Thant’s modest Normal Avenue flat, a poster of Suu Kyi looks down at him, with a saying that may sum up his mission:
“Please use your liberty to promote ours.”
Oppressed at home, refugees chase the American dream on city’s West Side
By Gene Warner - NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Updated: July 26, 2009, 10:44 AM / 4 comments
Law Eh Soe was one of only two photojournalists to chronicle the monks’ pro-democracy uprising two years ago in his native Burma.
He fled after government soldiers shot and killed a Japanese journalist.
Smiler Greely, another Burma native, spent 23 years in a refugee camp, a virtual city of 40,000 people crammed into a few square kilometers, living in bamboo houses with thatched roofs and no electricity.
He fled to give his three kids an education –and a country they could call home.
Myo Thant, a pro-democracy youth leader in Burma, spent 17 months under house arrest as a key aide to Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient.
He fled because he wouldn’t compromise his beliefs and knew he’d spend much of his life under house arrest, in prison –or worse.
All three refugees –bright, educated men forced from their homeland –now live on Buffalo’s West Side.
And they’re not alone. Buffalo is home to approximately 2,000 Burmese refugees – approaching 1 percent of the city’s population.
The figure is climbing quickly, and Buffalo has become the unofficial state capital for resettling refugees from Burma and elsewhere. This year, more than 30 percent of the refugees coming to New York State have settled in Western New York.
“If it weren’t for refugees, Buffalo would be shrinking even faster,” said Molly Short, executive director of Journey’s End Refugee Services. “This is the incoming population.”
The Burmese make up more than half the roughly 1,000 refugees who resettle in the Buffalo area each year.
Most of the Burmese have fled from refugee camps along the Thailand-Burma border, where some lived for years in primitive conditions, after 3,000 of their villages were destroyed.
They’ve settled mostly on the West Side, west of Richmond Avenue and south of Lafayette Avenue. Many spend their time in all-day English classes, fishing along the Niagara River and walking through their neighborhoods.
Many passers-by think they’re either Chinese or Vietnamese. And they’re adamant that their native land is Burma, not Myanmar, the recent name favored by the military government.
They’re new Buffalonians, chasing their own version of the American dream. But not just for themselves.
“This is only the first generation,” Law said, gesturing toward an English class of Burmese adults. “The second generation will be different. They will speak fluent English and be more educated.”
But Law sounded a warning for that younger generation:
“They shouldn’t forget their roots, and why we had to come to America. Thousands of our people stayed in Burma and suffered, and they shouldn’t forget that.”
New kid in town
The Burmese refugees who have formed their own community on the West Side, as well as smaller enclaves in Black Rock and Riverside, face two major hurdles in adapting to America.
First, few come here speaking much English. Authorities estimate that only 10 to 15 percent of Burmese refugees arrive with a workable mastery of the language. That’s why newcomers spend up to eight hours on weekdays in English class, first having to crack the intricacies of our alphabet.
The Burmese also have to overcome their own diversity. Burma has eight basic ethnic groups, dozens of sub-ethnic groups and about 100 language dialects. That means many of them need interpreters just to talk with each other.
Last week, Denise Phillips Beehag, director of refugee services for the International Institute of Buffalo, asked some Burmese refugees outside English class for permission to have their photos taken for The Buffalo News. She made her pitch in English, before it was translated by one interpreter into the Burmese dialect and then by another into the Karen dialect.
The Burmese refugees also come from three religious groups: Christian, Buddhist and Muslim.
Thant, the former youth leader, dismissed the notion that the Burmese are too divided by their ethnic, language and religious differences.
“We’re all the same,” he said. “We’ve all been oppressed. It doesn’t matter what language you speak. We’re all from Burma.”
The Burmese also face the same challenges confronting any new immigrant group –including the Irish, Italian, Polish and Hispanic groups before them.
“Every new group goes through this,” Beehag said. “They’re the new kid in town, and they’re going to be picked on. But it’s easier to pick on this group. They’re timid, they’re quiet, and they’re not assertive.”
Burmese refugees work with four local resettlement agencies: the International Institute, Journey’s End, Catholic Charities and Jewish Family Service. But the Burmese won’t tell their case managers when they don’t have food or electricity, Beehag said.
“You have to ask them,” Beehag said. “They don’t want to be a burden. That’s a challenge for resettlement agencies.”
These refugees have endured a great deal just to get here.
Burma, located in Southeast Asia, bordering Thailand, China and India, has been in civil war for more than five decades.
Listen to the stories of Law, Thant and Smiler, and you hear about the burning of villages, the shooting of innocent people, the house arrests of democratic leaders, the crowded and primitive refugee camps and the physical and psychological torture of those imprisoned for their beliefs.
You also learn how much freer they feel here, how much they still miss their own rivers and mountains, and how high their hopes are for the next generation of Burmese-Americans.
No Hollywood movie
Back home, Law Eh Soe graduated from Rangoon University with a law degree. But he didn’t want to be a lawyer or judge under the long-running martial law.
So he drifted into photojournalism, working for Japanese, French and European news agencies in Rangoon.
“The government didn’t like me because I showed my people’s daily life in Burma,” he said.
On Sept. 18, 2007, thousands of monks protested peacefully in the streets against the military regime. Law and one other photojournalist captured those images, and his photos appeared on CNN, Time magazine and even Al Jazeera.
Previously, Law and others had been warned whenever government soldiers started shooting. This time, there was no warning, and a Japanese journalist was killed in downtown Rangoon.
“When they started shooting, it wasn’t like a Hollywood movie,” Law, now 38, remembered. “In a movie, the journalist can take the picture. In Burma, when they started shooting, I had to run for my life.
“It was no longer safe for me. I thought I would be in prison, or they might hunt for me.”
Two days later, Law fled to a remote area in Burma, then to Thailand. Since resettling in Buffalo in March 2008, he lives with his mother and two brothers on 14th Street and works full time with the International Institute as an interpreter.
“The two important things we have here are freedom and hope. We didn’t have them in Burma. We had to live under fear and doubt, and we didn’t have freedom of speech. Here we can discuss what we want.”
The hardest part of his adjustment to America?
“Nothing is like home. I love to live here, [but] when I close my eyes, I miss my country. I can smell the rivers and the country roads and the mountains.”
Law marvels at the adjustments other Burmese have made.
Many, before moving into the refugee camps, came from remote areas, often in the mountains, where they had no cars or buses or electricity. Now they live in a fairly large American city, with buses, shopping malls, hospitals and other modern amenities.
“It’s like they moved to another planet.”
Man without a country
Smiler Greely’s story is more typical among Burmese refugees.
The son of a teacher and a local agricultural minister, young Smiler lived along the Burma-Thailand border, where the Burmese government attacked its own residents.
“You couldn’t live there anymore,” he said. “You didn’t need to make a decision. You just ran across the river.”
Beehag, from the International Institute, described a typical scenario.
“You’re in your village minding your own business, and your village is burned down by the military government. So you run, and you run until you feel safe and meet up with people from another village.”
At about age 11, Smiler moved to a refugee camp in Thailand, into a life of bamboo houses, thatched roofs, no electricity and little water. The food was rice, fish paste, salt and chili peppers.
“Every 15 days, you have to line up, wait for your name and get your ration of rice,” he said. “Then the next day, you get your fish paste…”
There was no freedom, no choice, he said. The civil war prevented him from returning to Burma. Stateless, living in Thailand, he and other refugees were not allowed to grow their own rice or raise their own animals. He stayed 23 years, past the birth of his three children.
“I was over 30 years old, and I didn’t have citizenship in any country,” he said. “I am not an animal. But what country do I belong to? My children were born in Thailand. They didn’t have any citizenship, because they were in a refugee camp.”
A whole family without a country.
“How can your children survive for the next generation? I’ve spent my whole life in a refugee camp. Are my children going to spend their life there? My grandchildren?”
That’s why Smiler, now 36, came to Buffalo, where he lives with his wife and three young children and works in a school program with Journey’s End.
Smiler wants others to understand where he’s come from and to learn the difference between a democracy and a repressive military dictatorship, where people are shot and young girls raped by soldiers.
“Geographically, I like Burma and the weather. I love the streams and rivers and forests in Thailand and Burma, but not the [Burmese] government.
“The government just kills their own people.”
Words from a poster
Following some of his greatest accomplishments –earning two degrees from Buffalo State College and being sworn in as a U. S. citizen in 2006 – Myo Thant has felt a twinge of sadness.
“I feel like I’m selfish, because my people are still in trouble, being killed and persecuted,” he said. “I feel responsible. I’m OK, but they’re not OK. Even though physically I’m here, my mind is not here. My mind is in Burma, with my people.”
Thant was a youth leader in Burma, becoming a trusted confidante of the National League for Democracy’s Suu Kyi.
“She called me like her son, because I was so young,” he said. “She said, ‘Why don’t you stay with me, to help me plan the youth activities?’ ”
That’s what Thant did, and from May 1996 until October 1997, he was under house arrest with Suu Kyi, the 64-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner who’s on trial in Burma.
Thant never thought about fleeing Burma. But he didn’t want to be in prison for his beliefs. He wanted to keep fighting for them. And that meant leaving.
“I would never change my beliefs,” he said. “The country must be free and democratic.”
Thant, 37, a Journey’s End case manager, wants to keep Burmese culture alive among the young refugees who settle here. Some day, he wants the Burmese to have their own festival, like the Italian Festival, to celebrate their food, their history, their culture, so the young people won’t forget.
This is a tough tightrope for local Burmese leaders to walk. They want their young people to learn English, get jobs and be self-sufficient in America. But Thant doesn’t want them to forget.
“Please speak your language in your home,” he advises his fellow Burmese. “Don’t speak English. You have to maintain your culture in your home.”
On the walls of Thant’s modest Normal Avenue flat, a poster of Suu Kyi looks down at him, with a saying that may sum up his mission:
“Please use your liberty to promote ours.”
*****************************************************
Published: Sunday July 26, 2009 MYT 8:55:00 AM
The Malaysia Star - Myanmar may get more money in fight against AIDS
YANGON, Myanmar (AP): Shrunken to 30 pounds (13.6 kilograms) of skin and bones, Ma Moe could barely walk when she arrived on the doorstep of the clinic nearly two years ago. AIDS had killed her husband three years earlier, and it was slowly killing her.
If not for the free medicine she receives, she would be dead, the 35-year-old widow said as she waited for her monthly visit. "I had no money, my house was destroyed by (Cyclone) Nargis, I had nowhere else to go."
The modest one-story wooden clinic, one of two dozen run by international aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres, is on the front lines of Myanmar's struggle against HIV/AIDS, a disease that often spells a slow death sentence for Burmese because of a shortage of antiretroviral medicines. As foreign donors largely shunned this isolated military-run nation, its AIDS epidemic, one of the most serious in Asia, steadily worsened out of the spotlight.
But now Western governments and donors have begun re-assessing their approach after years of tough sanctions failed to yield much progress. The Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a major international donor that pulled out in 2005, is considering returning to Myanmar, a decision that could inject millions of dollars in funding and triple the number of people getting life-saving medicine.
Donors have long feared that aid would only bolster the iron-hand rule of the military government. Myanmar receives only about $3 per capita in aid, compared with $23 for Vietnam and $50 for Laos.
An estimated 240,000 people are infected by the HIV virus that causes AIDS. Of those, about 76,000 are in need of the life-saving anti-retroviral treatment, but less than a quarter of them - about 18,000 - are getting it. The lack of accessible treatment translates into about 25,000 deaths a year.
At $30 a month, roughly equal to the average monthly salary here, the cost for the medication is beyond the reach of many. A lucky few get it free from Medecins Sans Frontieres, also known as Doctors Without Borders, which provides drugs and treatment to some 12,000 people across the country. A handful of smaller NGOs cover about 4,000 patients, while the government provides for about 1,800.
"There's such huge need but so little money from donors that we end up being the main provider of (anti-retroviral treatment)," said Luke Arend, the head of MSF in Myanmar. "It's probably the only place in the world where an NGO is effectively running the country's HIV program, as the national AIDS program has such limited funding. That's a sad state of affairs."
After years of silence and denial, the regime finally acknowledged the AIDS scourge in early 2000.
Some aid groups say privately that government health officials are now keenly aware of the problem but that the regime's priorities lie elsewhere. Myanmar, with one of the world's largest armies, spends the least amount of any country on its national health budget -- just 0.3 percent of GDP, of which a small amount goes toward AIDS.
The lines start early outside the AIDS clinic set in the middle of farmland on the outskirts of Yangon. By midmorning, the waiting room is jammed with patients - mothers holding babies, young couples, men visibly frail and emaciated.
The anti-retroviral drugs have returned Ma Moe, the young AIDS widow, to a visibly healthy glow. Her weight has rebounded back to normal. Sitting in a small room off the main clinic, she talked candidly about the disease she didn't know existed until after her husband died in 2006.
"I was scared to take a blood test. I didn't know anything about AIDS," she said. "The doctors warned me ahead of time that if I had HIV, I might die."
"My health has gotten better but I know in my mind I am still HIV positive. I know I can die without the drugs," she said.
In mid-2007, overwhelmed and beyond its capacity, MSF temporarily stopped taking new patients for more than a year. The result was starkly painful, said Dr. Soe Yadanar, who has been working in the clinics for a decade.
"While they waited, some died," she said. The situation could be very different by next year. The Global Fund, a U.N.-backed fund for three key diseases, is now considering an application by Myanmar for $320 million in funding, with the goal of treating 42,000 new AIDS cases within five years. A final decision could come by this fall.
Increasingly, Western nations have realized that broad sanctions are hurting their interests because the military junta is prepared to forego any aid with political strings attached, according to a report last fall by the International Crisis Group.
The European Union, including Britain, has reviewed its assistance policy to Myanmar.
Even the United States, perhaps the strongest supporter of ever-tightening aid restrictions, has said it is now in the process of reviewing its overall Myanmar policy. During a trip to Asia earlier this year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke plainly: "Clearly, the path we have taken in imposing sanctions hasn't influenced the Burmese junta."
The shift marks a turnaround in the political climate from even a few years ago, when Myanmar was treated as a complete pariah state.
In 2005, the Global Fund abruptly announced it was withdrawing from the country after less than a year. Spokesman Jon Liden said government restrictions barring access to certain areas of the country made it impossible to monitor how the $100 million in funding was being used.
"For us, there was no direct political considerations," he said. "We'd always be willing to provide funds regardless of the government, as long as we can ensure that it's being used effectively."
But other aid groups believed the decision was more likely the result of heavy political pressure exerted by the U.S., the largest donor to the Global Fund and one that strongly opposed any kind of aid.
Regardless of the reasons, the government read it negatively, said Andrew Kirkwood, country director for Save the Children in Myanmar.
"It sent a message to the (Myanmar) government that humanitarian assistance was political, despite the rhetoric that it was not linked. It did a great deal of damage to the relationship between international aid groups and the regime," he said.
For humanitarian groups, the key shift came in the aftermath of last year's devastating Cyclone Nargis, which claimed at least 138,000 lives and was impossible for other nations and aid groups to ignore.
After an initial bottleneck by Myanmar's military leaders, aid groups have flooded into the country, said Choo Phuah, country director for the UK-based International HIV/AIDS Alliance, which works with grassroots organizations in Myanmar.
"I think (Cyclone) Nargis did shift people's perspective about working in the country. Following the cyclone, many organizations started programs in the country," she said.
In the wake of Nargis, huge amounts of aid funding flowed into the country, she said, money that ultimately "has a momentum of its own."
The Malaysia Star - Myanmar may get more money in fight against AIDS
YANGON, Myanmar (AP): Shrunken to 30 pounds (13.6 kilograms) of skin and bones, Ma Moe could barely walk when she arrived on the doorstep of the clinic nearly two years ago. AIDS had killed her husband three years earlier, and it was slowly killing her.
If not for the free medicine she receives, she would be dead, the 35-year-old widow said as she waited for her monthly visit. "I had no money, my house was destroyed by (Cyclone) Nargis, I had nowhere else to go."
The modest one-story wooden clinic, one of two dozen run by international aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres, is on the front lines of Myanmar's struggle against HIV/AIDS, a disease that often spells a slow death sentence for Burmese because of a shortage of antiretroviral medicines. As foreign donors largely shunned this isolated military-run nation, its AIDS epidemic, one of the most serious in Asia, steadily worsened out of the spotlight.
But now Western governments and donors have begun re-assessing their approach after years of tough sanctions failed to yield much progress. The Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a major international donor that pulled out in 2005, is considering returning to Myanmar, a decision that could inject millions of dollars in funding and triple the number of people getting life-saving medicine.
Donors have long feared that aid would only bolster the iron-hand rule of the military government. Myanmar receives only about $3 per capita in aid, compared with $23 for Vietnam and $50 for Laos.
An estimated 240,000 people are infected by the HIV virus that causes AIDS. Of those, about 76,000 are in need of the life-saving anti-retroviral treatment, but less than a quarter of them - about 18,000 - are getting it. The lack of accessible treatment translates into about 25,000 deaths a year.
At $30 a month, roughly equal to the average monthly salary here, the cost for the medication is beyond the reach of many. A lucky few get it free from Medecins Sans Frontieres, also known as Doctors Without Borders, which provides drugs and treatment to some 12,000 people across the country. A handful of smaller NGOs cover about 4,000 patients, while the government provides for about 1,800.
"There's such huge need but so little money from donors that we end up being the main provider of (anti-retroviral treatment)," said Luke Arend, the head of MSF in Myanmar. "It's probably the only place in the world where an NGO is effectively running the country's HIV program, as the national AIDS program has such limited funding. That's a sad state of affairs."
After years of silence and denial, the regime finally acknowledged the AIDS scourge in early 2000.
Some aid groups say privately that government health officials are now keenly aware of the problem but that the regime's priorities lie elsewhere. Myanmar, with one of the world's largest armies, spends the least amount of any country on its national health budget -- just 0.3 percent of GDP, of which a small amount goes toward AIDS.
The lines start early outside the AIDS clinic set in the middle of farmland on the outskirts of Yangon. By midmorning, the waiting room is jammed with patients - mothers holding babies, young couples, men visibly frail and emaciated.
The anti-retroviral drugs have returned Ma Moe, the young AIDS widow, to a visibly healthy glow. Her weight has rebounded back to normal. Sitting in a small room off the main clinic, she talked candidly about the disease she didn't know existed until after her husband died in 2006.
"I was scared to take a blood test. I didn't know anything about AIDS," she said. "The doctors warned me ahead of time that if I had HIV, I might die."
"My health has gotten better but I know in my mind I am still HIV positive. I know I can die without the drugs," she said.
In mid-2007, overwhelmed and beyond its capacity, MSF temporarily stopped taking new patients for more than a year. The result was starkly painful, said Dr. Soe Yadanar, who has been working in the clinics for a decade.
"While they waited, some died," she said. The situation could be very different by next year. The Global Fund, a U.N.-backed fund for three key diseases, is now considering an application by Myanmar for $320 million in funding, with the goal of treating 42,000 new AIDS cases within five years. A final decision could come by this fall.
Increasingly, Western nations have realized that broad sanctions are hurting their interests because the military junta is prepared to forego any aid with political strings attached, according to a report last fall by the International Crisis Group.
The European Union, including Britain, has reviewed its assistance policy to Myanmar.
Even the United States, perhaps the strongest supporter of ever-tightening aid restrictions, has said it is now in the process of reviewing its overall Myanmar policy. During a trip to Asia earlier this year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke plainly: "Clearly, the path we have taken in imposing sanctions hasn't influenced the Burmese junta."
The shift marks a turnaround in the political climate from even a few years ago, when Myanmar was treated as a complete pariah state.
In 2005, the Global Fund abruptly announced it was withdrawing from the country after less than a year. Spokesman Jon Liden said government restrictions barring access to certain areas of the country made it impossible to monitor how the $100 million in funding was being used.
"For us, there was no direct political considerations," he said. "We'd always be willing to provide funds regardless of the government, as long as we can ensure that it's being used effectively."
But other aid groups believed the decision was more likely the result of heavy political pressure exerted by the U.S., the largest donor to the Global Fund and one that strongly opposed any kind of aid.
Regardless of the reasons, the government read it negatively, said Andrew Kirkwood, country director for Save the Children in Myanmar.
"It sent a message to the (Myanmar) government that humanitarian assistance was political, despite the rhetoric that it was not linked. It did a great deal of damage to the relationship between international aid groups and the regime," he said.
For humanitarian groups, the key shift came in the aftermath of last year's devastating Cyclone Nargis, which claimed at least 138,000 lives and was impossible for other nations and aid groups to ignore.
After an initial bottleneck by Myanmar's military leaders, aid groups have flooded into the country, said Choo Phuah, country director for the UK-based International HIV/AIDS Alliance, which works with grassroots organizations in Myanmar.
"I think (Cyclone) Nargis did shift people's perspective about working in the country. Following the cyclone, many organizations started programs in the country," she said.
In the wake of Nargis, huge amounts of aid funding flowed into the country, she said, money that ultimately "has a momentum of its own."
*****************************************************
July 26, 2009
The Straits Times - Aids funding for Myanmar
YANGON (Myanmar) - SHRUNKEN to 30 pounds (13.6kg) of skin and bones, Ma Moe could barely walk when she arrived on the doorstep of the clinic nearly two years ago. Aids had killed her husband three years earlier, and it was slowly killing her.
If not for the free medicine she receives, she would be dead, the 35-year-old widow said as she waited for her monthly visit. 'I had no money, my house was destroyed by (Cyclone) Nargis, I had nowhere else to go.'
The modest one-story wooden clinic, one of two dozen run by international aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres, is on the front lines of Myanmar's struggle against HIV/Aids, a disease that often spells a slow death sentence for Burmese because of a shortage of antiretroviral medicines.
As foreign donors largely shunned this isolated military-run nation, its Aids epidemic, one of the most serious in Asia, steadily worsened out of the spotlight.
But now Western governments and donors have begun re-assessing their approach after years of tough sanctions failed to yield much progress. The Global Fund for Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a major international donor that pulled out in 2005, is considering returning to Myanmar, a decision that could inject millions of dollars in funding and triple the number of people getting life-saving medicine.
Donors have long feared that aid would only bolster the iron-hand rule of the military government. Myanmar receives only about US$3 (S$4.32) per capita in aid, compared with US$23 for Vietnam and US$50 for Laos.
An estimated 240,000 people are infected by the HIV virus that causes Aids. Of those, about 76,000 are in need of the life-saving anti-retroviral treatment, but less than a quarter of them - about 18,000 - are getting it. The lack of accessible treatment translates into about 25,000 deaths a year.
At US$30 a month, roughly equal to the average monthly salary here, the cost for the medication is beyond the reach of many. A lucky few get it free from Medecins Sans Frontieres, also known as Doctors Without Borders, which provides drugs and treatment to some 12,000 people across the country. A handful of smaller NGOs cover about 4,000 patients, while the government provides for about 1,800.
'There's such huge need but so little money from donors that we end up being the main provider of (anti-retroviral treatment),' said Luke Arend, the head of MSF in Myanmar. 'It's probably the only place in the world where an NGO is effectively running the country's HIV programme, as the national Aids programme has such limited funding. That's a sad state of affairs.' After years of silence and denial, the regime finally acknowledged the Aids scourge in early 2000.
Some aid groups say privately that government health officials are now keenly aware of the problem but that the regime's priorities lie elsewhere.
The Straits Times - Aids funding for Myanmar
YANGON (Myanmar) - SHRUNKEN to 30 pounds (13.6kg) of skin and bones, Ma Moe could barely walk when she arrived on the doorstep of the clinic nearly two years ago. Aids had killed her husband three years earlier, and it was slowly killing her.
If not for the free medicine she receives, she would be dead, the 35-year-old widow said as she waited for her monthly visit. 'I had no money, my house was destroyed by (Cyclone) Nargis, I had nowhere else to go.'
The modest one-story wooden clinic, one of two dozen run by international aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres, is on the front lines of Myanmar's struggle against HIV/Aids, a disease that often spells a slow death sentence for Burmese because of a shortage of antiretroviral medicines.
As foreign donors largely shunned this isolated military-run nation, its Aids epidemic, one of the most serious in Asia, steadily worsened out of the spotlight.
But now Western governments and donors have begun re-assessing their approach after years of tough sanctions failed to yield much progress. The Global Fund for Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a major international donor that pulled out in 2005, is considering returning to Myanmar, a decision that could inject millions of dollars in funding and triple the number of people getting life-saving medicine.
Donors have long feared that aid would only bolster the iron-hand rule of the military government. Myanmar receives only about US$3 (S$4.32) per capita in aid, compared with US$23 for Vietnam and US$50 for Laos.
An estimated 240,000 people are infected by the HIV virus that causes Aids. Of those, about 76,000 are in need of the life-saving anti-retroviral treatment, but less than a quarter of them - about 18,000 - are getting it. The lack of accessible treatment translates into about 25,000 deaths a year.
At US$30 a month, roughly equal to the average monthly salary here, the cost for the medication is beyond the reach of many. A lucky few get it free from Medecins Sans Frontieres, also known as Doctors Without Borders, which provides drugs and treatment to some 12,000 people across the country. A handful of smaller NGOs cover about 4,000 patients, while the government provides for about 1,800.
'There's such huge need but so little money from donors that we end up being the main provider of (anti-retroviral treatment),' said Luke Arend, the head of MSF in Myanmar. 'It's probably the only place in the world where an NGO is effectively running the country's HIV programme, as the national Aids programme has such limited funding. That's a sad state of affairs.' After years of silence and denial, the regime finally acknowledged the Aids scourge in early 2000.
Some aid groups say privately that government health officials are now keenly aware of the problem but that the regime's priorities lie elsewhere.
*****************************************************
Jul 26, 2009
Asia Times Online - Nuclear powers revert to playground taunts
By Donald Kirk
WASHINGTON - First, United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a television interview in New Delhi that the North Koreans were like "small children and unruly teenagers and people who are demanding attention".
Then the North Koreans returned the compliment during an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum at Phuket in southern Thailand, saying Clinton "looks like a primary-school girl" or "a pensioner going shopping".
Talk about a hissy fit.
The exchange illustrated the depths of tensions on the Korean peninsula but did added nothing to the debate over the North's nuclear program. The "hostile policy" of the United States was to blame for "the aggravated situation", the North Koreans said, and six-party talks on their nuclear program, which include the US, Japan, Russia, South Korea and China, were definitely over.
There was no disputing that assessment if Clinton's tough talk was any indication. The US-North Korean confrontation has worsened dramatically since North Korea test-fired a long-range Taepodong-2 missile on April 5, conducted a second underground nuclear test on May 25, then fired a volley of mid-and-short-range missiles after the United Nations Security Council imposed new sanctions.
Clinton if anything seems considerably tougher, at least to judge by her public utterances, than the hardliners of the George W Bush administration, even during his first term when, in January 2002, he included North Korea in an "axis of evil" along with Iran and Iraq.
No way, she indicated, was the US going to shower North Korea with aid just for "returning to the table" - or for making good on promises they made "and then reneged on".
In other words, North Korea would have to do a lot more than shut down the five-megawatt nuclear reactor at at the Yongbyon complex and stop producing plutonium for more nuclear devices, as North Korea has said it is doing. North Korea would also have to do more than renew its commitment to the armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953 - a truce the North has said is now void.
Remember CVID - "complete, verifiable, irreversible disablement" - of the North's entire nuclear program?
That was the acronym bandied about during the first term of the Bush administration, but it fell into disuse in Bush's second term after Christopher Hill, then the top US nuclear envoy, persuaded North Korea to sign off on in September 2005 on a vaguely worded commitment to do away with its nukes in return for an enormous outlay of aid.
After the North conducted its first nuclear test, on October 9, 2006, Hill frantically got the US Treasury Department to take off the US's blacklist an obscure bank in Macao, through which the North had been channeling counterfeit US$100 "supernotes".
Then, in February and October 2007, North Korea appeared to come to terms on a program for disabling and then dismantling everything to do with producing nuclear devices.
Clinton, in Phuket, revived CVID, without quite calling it that. She warned that "complete and irreversible denuclearization is the only path for North Korea", but didn't quite get around to calling North Korea a member of the "axis of evil" - although she might have been thinking just that, considering US concerns about the nuclear program in Iran, to which North Korea has sold expertise and missiles.
Clinton, moreover, may have been tempted to add another country to the "axis", namely Myanmar, which is strongly suspected of harboring nuclear ambitions that it hopes to fulfill with North Korean aid. It is also seen as a transshipment point for North Korean missiles and other military items bound for sale elsewhere.
The commander of the US Pacific command, Admiral Timothy Keating, said the US would be concerned about Myanmar only if it is proved to be "receiving goods and assistance from North Korea".
Myanmar was assumed to be the destination of a North Korean freighter, the Kang Nam I, that finally turned back after the American destroyer the USS John McCain, equipped with Aegis-equipped ballistic missile defense systems, tailed it for a few days. It's widely believed that the Kang Nam I, regardless of what it had on board, did not want inspection at a refueling port on the way, probably Singapore. Its also possible Myanmar's authorities did not want to risk international condemnation by accepting its cargo.
Clinton, with that episode obviously in mind, sought to portray North Korea as isolated, alone in a hostile world in which even its closest friend, China, refuses to cooperate in proving critical supplies.
She seemed to believe, moreover, that she had everyone on her side, especially after the ASEAN confab came together in urging "all member countries of the United Nations" to carry out the terms of the UN resolution that bans dealing with North Korea on critical supplies.
Both China and Russia signed the recent UN Security Council resolution and appear so far to be cooperating. In a gesture laden with symbolic significance, Italy blocked the export to North Korea of a pair of luxury vessels reportedly made especially for the North's Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il.
Beneath such talk and gestures, though, there was no telling where the confrontation is leading. North Korea routinely denounced as "nonsense" all that Clinton said, but there was no overt sign the North was going to go beyond testing and risk a second Korean War - or even minor clashes.
Nobody at Phuket talked openly about North Korea's concerns about the present health of Kim Jong-il and the struggle for leadership. The conventional view, however, is that those worries lie behind much of the recent muscle-flexing.
Nor is the United States, for very different reasons, interested in going beyond Clinton's strong words.
President Barack Obama is far more worried about the US commitment to Afghanistan and Iraq, from which he still says the US will be able to withdraw its troops by the end of 2011. Interestingly, a major figure in carrying out US policy in Iraq is the same peace-minded diplomat who played such a pivotal role in the six-party talks - Christopher Hill, now the US ambassador to Iraq.
A clue to what might happen in a showdown is South Korea's purchase of record quantities of arms from the US. South Korean military imports from the US last year totaled $790 million, almost as much as the $808 million imported by Saudi Arabia, the second-largest buyer of US arms after front-ranked Israel, whose military imports from the US last year cost $1.35 billion.
Those numbers, of course, are far lower than the amount of energy aid the US is promising North Korea if it gives up its nukes. A North Korean official responded at Phuket calling the US proposal "nonsense" and talking about "sovereignty, security, namely life".
The official employed a particularly colorful metaphor, saying the US in effect "is telling us to take off all our clothes". That turn of phrase seemed to match his description of Clinton as "a funny lady" for her rhetorical displays.
It was always possible to interpret the verbal byplay as a sign of warming. At least North Korea did not call Clinton "human scum" - a phrase reserved for John Bolton, former undersecretary of state for arms control and later ambassador to the UN, and the hardest of hardliners in the bygone Bush administration.
Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.
Asia Times Online - Nuclear powers revert to playground taunts
By Donald Kirk
WASHINGTON - First, United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a television interview in New Delhi that the North Koreans were like "small children and unruly teenagers and people who are demanding attention".
Then the North Koreans returned the compliment during an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum at Phuket in southern Thailand, saying Clinton "looks like a primary-school girl" or "a pensioner going shopping".
Talk about a hissy fit.
The exchange illustrated the depths of tensions on the Korean peninsula but did added nothing to the debate over the North's nuclear program. The "hostile policy" of the United States was to blame for "the aggravated situation", the North Koreans said, and six-party talks on their nuclear program, which include the US, Japan, Russia, South Korea and China, were definitely over.
There was no disputing that assessment if Clinton's tough talk was any indication. The US-North Korean confrontation has worsened dramatically since North Korea test-fired a long-range Taepodong-2 missile on April 5, conducted a second underground nuclear test on May 25, then fired a volley of mid-and-short-range missiles after the United Nations Security Council imposed new sanctions.
Clinton if anything seems considerably tougher, at least to judge by her public utterances, than the hardliners of the George W Bush administration, even during his first term when, in January 2002, he included North Korea in an "axis of evil" along with Iran and Iraq.
No way, she indicated, was the US going to shower North Korea with aid just for "returning to the table" - or for making good on promises they made "and then reneged on".
In other words, North Korea would have to do a lot more than shut down the five-megawatt nuclear reactor at at the Yongbyon complex and stop producing plutonium for more nuclear devices, as North Korea has said it is doing. North Korea would also have to do more than renew its commitment to the armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953 - a truce the North has said is now void.
Remember CVID - "complete, verifiable, irreversible disablement" - of the North's entire nuclear program?
That was the acronym bandied about during the first term of the Bush administration, but it fell into disuse in Bush's second term after Christopher Hill, then the top US nuclear envoy, persuaded North Korea to sign off on in September 2005 on a vaguely worded commitment to do away with its nukes in return for an enormous outlay of aid.
After the North conducted its first nuclear test, on October 9, 2006, Hill frantically got the US Treasury Department to take off the US's blacklist an obscure bank in Macao, through which the North had been channeling counterfeit US$100 "supernotes".
Then, in February and October 2007, North Korea appeared to come to terms on a program for disabling and then dismantling everything to do with producing nuclear devices.
Clinton, in Phuket, revived CVID, without quite calling it that. She warned that "complete and irreversible denuclearization is the only path for North Korea", but didn't quite get around to calling North Korea a member of the "axis of evil" - although she might have been thinking just that, considering US concerns about the nuclear program in Iran, to which North Korea has sold expertise and missiles.
Clinton, moreover, may have been tempted to add another country to the "axis", namely Myanmar, which is strongly suspected of harboring nuclear ambitions that it hopes to fulfill with North Korean aid. It is also seen as a transshipment point for North Korean missiles and other military items bound for sale elsewhere.
The commander of the US Pacific command, Admiral Timothy Keating, said the US would be concerned about Myanmar only if it is proved to be "receiving goods and assistance from North Korea".
Myanmar was assumed to be the destination of a North Korean freighter, the Kang Nam I, that finally turned back after the American destroyer the USS John McCain, equipped with Aegis-equipped ballistic missile defense systems, tailed it for a few days. It's widely believed that the Kang Nam I, regardless of what it had on board, did not want inspection at a refueling port on the way, probably Singapore. Its also possible Myanmar's authorities did not want to risk international condemnation by accepting its cargo.
Clinton, with that episode obviously in mind, sought to portray North Korea as isolated, alone in a hostile world in which even its closest friend, China, refuses to cooperate in proving critical supplies.
She seemed to believe, moreover, that she had everyone on her side, especially after the ASEAN confab came together in urging "all member countries of the United Nations" to carry out the terms of the UN resolution that bans dealing with North Korea on critical supplies.
Both China and Russia signed the recent UN Security Council resolution and appear so far to be cooperating. In a gesture laden with symbolic significance, Italy blocked the export to North Korea of a pair of luxury vessels reportedly made especially for the North's Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il.
Beneath such talk and gestures, though, there was no telling where the confrontation is leading. North Korea routinely denounced as "nonsense" all that Clinton said, but there was no overt sign the North was going to go beyond testing and risk a second Korean War - or even minor clashes.
Nobody at Phuket talked openly about North Korea's concerns about the present health of Kim Jong-il and the struggle for leadership. The conventional view, however, is that those worries lie behind much of the recent muscle-flexing.
Nor is the United States, for very different reasons, interested in going beyond Clinton's strong words.
President Barack Obama is far more worried about the US commitment to Afghanistan and Iraq, from which he still says the US will be able to withdraw its troops by the end of 2011. Interestingly, a major figure in carrying out US policy in Iraq is the same peace-minded diplomat who played such a pivotal role in the six-party talks - Christopher Hill, now the US ambassador to Iraq.
A clue to what might happen in a showdown is South Korea's purchase of record quantities of arms from the US. South Korean military imports from the US last year totaled $790 million, almost as much as the $808 million imported by Saudi Arabia, the second-largest buyer of US arms after front-ranked Israel, whose military imports from the US last year cost $1.35 billion.
Those numbers, of course, are far lower than the amount of energy aid the US is promising North Korea if it gives up its nukes. A North Korean official responded at Phuket calling the US proposal "nonsense" and talking about "sovereignty, security, namely life".
The official employed a particularly colorful metaphor, saying the US in effect "is telling us to take off all our clothes". That turn of phrase seemed to match his description of Clinton as "a funny lady" for her rhetorical displays.
It was always possible to interpret the verbal byplay as a sign of warming. At least North Korea did not call Clinton "human scum" - a phrase reserved for John Bolton, former undersecretary of state for arms control and later ambassador to the UN, and the hardest of hardliners in the bygone Bush administration.
Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.
*****************************************************
Jul 26, 2009
Asia Times Online - Clinton talks tough in Thailand
By Jakkapun Kaewsangthong and Charles McDermid
PHUKET - United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Thailand this week to set things right with Southeast Asia - a region that has had its share of ups and downs with Washington.
In a three-day flurry of pastel pantsuits, celebrity appearances and tough talk, the former first lady claimed to set a new course for American regional foreign policy. Along the way, she sounded off on nuclear threats, human rights and terrorism while reassuring beleaguered long-time ally Thailand and trading insults with North Korea.
Clinton took pains to distance the new administration of US President Barack Obama from that of predecessor George W Bush, whose policies towards Asia, experts believe, were too tightly focused on the Korean Peninsula and counter-terrorism efforts.
"Under the Bush years, America's Asian policy was lopsided. For Bush, the war on terror ordered his agenda. The region has changed a lot, and Bush's policies failed to take these changes into account. China's role has expanded almost by default because of this," said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, director of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University. "Obama has calibrated the US role in Asia. If the US can use a more balanced and nuanced approach, it will be welcomed in a lot of Asian capitals."
The trip, according to Clinton, was all about political re-engagement. In an editorial published on July 21 in the Bangkok Post, she declared, "The United States and the nations of Southeast Asia are old friends facing new challenges."
Speaking to a gathering of counterparts in the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN), Clinton pulled no punches with the group's rogue member, Myanmar, and expressed sympathy and support for Indonesia in the aftermath of the July 17 suicide bombings in Jakarta which killed nine people and injured dozens more.
In the week's keynote event, Clinton signed a non-aggression pact with ASEAN and held the first-ever US meeting with the countries of the lower Mekong - the theatre of the Vietnam War, a conflict that Clinton opposed in her formative years as a student politician.
Hers was a diplomatic mission that had all the hallmarks of a concert tour; a visit from which statements and signals will not be soon forgotten. If counterbalancing China's rise in the region was the real reason behind the trip, America's anxiety about losing ground remained in the shadows.
As Clinton announced in her often-repeated rallying cry to Southeast Asia this week, "The US is back", although the remark remains open to interpretation.
Boosting Thai ties
The Clinton tour was short on scrutiny and long on praise for favored ASEAN partners. Prior to the trip, Clinton and senior State Department officials had gushed about Thailand, recently embroiled in political turmoil and the 10-member ASEAN's current chairman.
"...[A] lot of Americans don't know, Thailand has very deep and important ties with the United States," Clinton told FoxNews on July 20. "We have one of our biggest embassy operations in Thailand because Bangkok is the center for a lot of what we do in so many important areas."
In reality, that relationship has sagged in recent years, as detailed by Asia Times Online's Shawn W Crispin in When allies drift apart. In 2007, the US put Thailand on its "priority watch list" for violating intellectual property rights and the two also failed to negotiate a free-trade agreement. In 2008 to the present, the two sides have sparred over the extradition of Viktor Bout, the so-called "Merchant of Death" arms dealer busted by US Drug Enforcement agents in a Bangkok sting operation.
Clinton's choice to travel to Indonesia in her first jaunt to Southeast Asia earlier this year was taken as a diplomatic slight by some Thai officials. Still, the US and Thailand maintain strong law enforcement and military links, including the annual Cobra Gold exercises involving some 15,000 troops and Thailand's U Tapao airport - used regularly by the US military to refuel planes en route to Iraq and Afghanistan.
That cooperation extended to a US Central Intelligence Agency-run secret prison in Thailand, where at least one terrorist suspect was water-boarded by US officials and their hired private contractors, according to a recent Washington Post report. The Thai government continues to deny the reports, despite growing mention of the site's existence in US Congressional testimony.
And there was no mention this week of Thailand's escalating separatist insurgency in its southern provinces or the ongoing armed stand-off with Cambodia over an ancient border temple. Allegations of human rights abuses by Thailand - including the recent treatment of Rohingyha boat-people and Karen refugees from Myanmar - never came up despite a raft of human rights decrees.
In April, an earlier ASEAN summit in Pattaya was cancelled when anti-government protesters aligned with deposed former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra - now in exile and a fugitive from Thai justice - overran the meeting place and forced several heads of state to be evacuated.
With that stinging embarrassment, this week's high-profile meeting was seen as a must-win public relations move for the seven-month-old coalition government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. US praise and support could not have come at a more strategic time for his government, which many believe the military played a behind-the-scenes role in creating.
To ensure security, Bangkok deployed more than 10,000 soldiers and police to the island of Phuket to enforce the Internal Security Act, which banned all forms of protest within a five-kilometer radius of the venue. Troops in combat gear and armed with automatic rifles set up bomb-detection roadblocks and security checkpoints.
Old adversaries
The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) is billed as East Asia's top security-related summit, gathering 26 countries and the European Union, and Clinton came with a wide array of talking points, focusing sharply on North Korea and Myanmar, also known as Burma.
"We know that there are also growing concerns about military cooperation between North Korea and Burma, which we take very seriously," Clinton said. "It would be destabilizing for the region. It would pose a direct threat to Burma's neighbors. And it is something, as a treaty ally of Thailand, that we are taking very seriously."
She was referring to suspicions in Washington that Pyongyang might be selling nuclear and missile technology to Myanmar's ruling generals. In recent weeks, a North Korean freighter, the Kang Nam I, was steaming towards Myanmar with a suspected arms cargo.
According to reports, the US Navy shadowed the ship as Washington pressed other countries to deny it entry under a recently passed UN Security Council resolution against North Korea and the ship eventually turned around.
Clinton's focus on the two pariah states dominated media coverage of the ASEAN event. North Korea and Myanmar both had representatives at the ARF and it was widely believed that the US might use the forum to drum up regional support for more UN resolutions against North Korea.
After one-on-one meetings with fellow members of the six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear ambitions - minus Pyongyang - Clinton told reporters that the US, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea were a "united front" for an "irreversible denuclearization" of the Korean peninsula. "We won't reward North Korea just for returning to the table," Clinton said, adding, "We are in a strong position."
In an earlier television interview, she had likened North Korea to an "unruly child" and later claimed that the isolated country "had no friends". Not to be out-done, North Korean representatives in attendance responded by releasing a critical statement about Clinton: "Sometimes she looks like a primary-school girl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping."
Clinton also played tough with Myanmar. She mentioned that the US's policy review for the reclusive, military run country had been further put "on hold" by the ongoing trial and detention of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
"It's very important - it's so critical - that she be released. This would open up - at least for my government - a lot of opportunities for engagement and that includes investment and other forms of exchange," Clinton said on July 22.
Clinton stressed that as ASEAN as a whole was moving in a positive direction, especially in terms of protecting human rights, Myanmar was "moving in the opposite direction". She urged the regime to stop its war against ordinary citizens and ethnic groups. Not everyone is convinced the strong language will work.
"There's nothing wrong with the US prioritizing democracy and human rights issues in Burma, if it were part of a consistent policy of prioritizing these issues everywhere, including say in China or Saudi Arabia," Thant Myint U, a Burmese historian and author of River of Lost Footsteps told Asia Times Online. "The perception of double standards damages America's image, and many in the region think that the US is beating up on the Burmese government just because it's relatively cost-free - and creates a very cynical view of American foreign policy.
"There's a huge gap between US rhetoric on Burma and it's ability to actually influence events on the ground. As America's relative power in the region diminishes, the worry is that this becomes a more general trend, with nice-sounding statements on human rights and grandstanding for domestic audiences taking the place of more more modest but more results-oriented policies."
Clinton also used the forum to warn Iran that its pursuit of nuclear weapons was "unacceptable" and risked sparking an arms race in the Middle East.
"Iran needs to understand that its pursuit of nuclear weapons will not advance its security or achieve its goals of enhancing its power both regionally and globally," Clinton said. "That should affect the calculation of what Iran intends to do and what it believes is in its national security interests because it may render Iran less secure - not more secure."
Clinton hedged the strong remarks by stating that Iran has a right to the development of "peaceful and sustainable" nuclear power, and claimed she had discussed that possibility in a number of international settings. She concluded her remarks by rallying an unnamed international community around her cause - in this case Iran.
"The world community is united in its rejection of Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons and wants to point out it may not actually deliver the positioning and enhanced power that Iran believes it could," Clinton said.
Clinton's remarks on Iran came minutes before she was scheduled to sign ASEAN's Treaty of Amity and Cooperation [TAC] - a non-aggression pact that Washington wasreluctant to sign under the George W Bush administration.
Some have said the US is eager to sign the friendship agreement to counter the rise of China's influence in the region, although Beijing has already signed on. Others, such as political analyst Thitinan, call it a well-timed move to gain more access and good-will after a period of criticism that the US was neglecting the region. He calls it a "gate-opener".
"The signing of the TAC suggests the US will engage the entire region much more than in the past. It is highly significant of a new attitude towards Asia," Thitinan said. "It is important to note that Clinton's last meeting will be with the countries ofthe lower Mekong - Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. The US under Bush completely neglected these countries and all of mainland Southeast Asia."
The US-Lower Mekong Ministerial Meeting, a gathering to discuss the region's environment, health, education and infrastructure was the first of its kind, according to the US State Department. Clinton also announced the US intends to open a mission to ASEAN with an ambassador in Jakarta.
Charles McDermid and Jakkapun Kaewsangthong are Asia Times Online correspondents based in Thailand.
Asia Times Online - Clinton talks tough in Thailand
By Jakkapun Kaewsangthong and Charles McDermid
PHUKET - United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Thailand this week to set things right with Southeast Asia - a region that has had its share of ups and downs with Washington.
In a three-day flurry of pastel pantsuits, celebrity appearances and tough talk, the former first lady claimed to set a new course for American regional foreign policy. Along the way, she sounded off on nuclear threats, human rights and terrorism while reassuring beleaguered long-time ally Thailand and trading insults with North Korea.
Clinton took pains to distance the new administration of US President Barack Obama from that of predecessor George W Bush, whose policies towards Asia, experts believe, were too tightly focused on the Korean Peninsula and counter-terrorism efforts.
"Under the Bush years, America's Asian policy was lopsided. For Bush, the war on terror ordered his agenda. The region has changed a lot, and Bush's policies failed to take these changes into account. China's role has expanded almost by default because of this," said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, director of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University. "Obama has calibrated the US role in Asia. If the US can use a more balanced and nuanced approach, it will be welcomed in a lot of Asian capitals."
The trip, according to Clinton, was all about political re-engagement. In an editorial published on July 21 in the Bangkok Post, she declared, "The United States and the nations of Southeast Asia are old friends facing new challenges."
Speaking to a gathering of counterparts in the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN), Clinton pulled no punches with the group's rogue member, Myanmar, and expressed sympathy and support for Indonesia in the aftermath of the July 17 suicide bombings in Jakarta which killed nine people and injured dozens more.
In the week's keynote event, Clinton signed a non-aggression pact with ASEAN and held the first-ever US meeting with the countries of the lower Mekong - the theatre of the Vietnam War, a conflict that Clinton opposed in her formative years as a student politician.
Hers was a diplomatic mission that had all the hallmarks of a concert tour; a visit from which statements and signals will not be soon forgotten. If counterbalancing China's rise in the region was the real reason behind the trip, America's anxiety about losing ground remained in the shadows.
As Clinton announced in her often-repeated rallying cry to Southeast Asia this week, "The US is back", although the remark remains open to interpretation.
Boosting Thai ties
The Clinton tour was short on scrutiny and long on praise for favored ASEAN partners. Prior to the trip, Clinton and senior State Department officials had gushed about Thailand, recently embroiled in political turmoil and the 10-member ASEAN's current chairman.
"...[A] lot of Americans don't know, Thailand has very deep and important ties with the United States," Clinton told FoxNews on July 20. "We have one of our biggest embassy operations in Thailand because Bangkok is the center for a lot of what we do in so many important areas."
In reality, that relationship has sagged in recent years, as detailed by Asia Times Online's Shawn W Crispin in When allies drift apart. In 2007, the US put Thailand on its "priority watch list" for violating intellectual property rights and the two also failed to negotiate a free-trade agreement. In 2008 to the present, the two sides have sparred over the extradition of Viktor Bout, the so-called "Merchant of Death" arms dealer busted by US Drug Enforcement agents in a Bangkok sting operation.
Clinton's choice to travel to Indonesia in her first jaunt to Southeast Asia earlier this year was taken as a diplomatic slight by some Thai officials. Still, the US and Thailand maintain strong law enforcement and military links, including the annual Cobra Gold exercises involving some 15,000 troops and Thailand's U Tapao airport - used regularly by the US military to refuel planes en route to Iraq and Afghanistan.
That cooperation extended to a US Central Intelligence Agency-run secret prison in Thailand, where at least one terrorist suspect was water-boarded by US officials and their hired private contractors, according to a recent Washington Post report. The Thai government continues to deny the reports, despite growing mention of the site's existence in US Congressional testimony.
And there was no mention this week of Thailand's escalating separatist insurgency in its southern provinces or the ongoing armed stand-off with Cambodia over an ancient border temple. Allegations of human rights abuses by Thailand - including the recent treatment of Rohingyha boat-people and Karen refugees from Myanmar - never came up despite a raft of human rights decrees.
In April, an earlier ASEAN summit in Pattaya was cancelled when anti-government protesters aligned with deposed former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra - now in exile and a fugitive from Thai justice - overran the meeting place and forced several heads of state to be evacuated.
With that stinging embarrassment, this week's high-profile meeting was seen as a must-win public relations move for the seven-month-old coalition government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. US praise and support could not have come at a more strategic time for his government, which many believe the military played a behind-the-scenes role in creating.
To ensure security, Bangkok deployed more than 10,000 soldiers and police to the island of Phuket to enforce the Internal Security Act, which banned all forms of protest within a five-kilometer radius of the venue. Troops in combat gear and armed with automatic rifles set up bomb-detection roadblocks and security checkpoints.
Old adversaries
The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) is billed as East Asia's top security-related summit, gathering 26 countries and the European Union, and Clinton came with a wide array of talking points, focusing sharply on North Korea and Myanmar, also known as Burma.
"We know that there are also growing concerns about military cooperation between North Korea and Burma, which we take very seriously," Clinton said. "It would be destabilizing for the region. It would pose a direct threat to Burma's neighbors. And it is something, as a treaty ally of Thailand, that we are taking very seriously."
She was referring to suspicions in Washington that Pyongyang might be selling nuclear and missile technology to Myanmar's ruling generals. In recent weeks, a North Korean freighter, the Kang Nam I, was steaming towards Myanmar with a suspected arms cargo.
According to reports, the US Navy shadowed the ship as Washington pressed other countries to deny it entry under a recently passed UN Security Council resolution against North Korea and the ship eventually turned around.
Clinton's focus on the two pariah states dominated media coverage of the ASEAN event. North Korea and Myanmar both had representatives at the ARF and it was widely believed that the US might use the forum to drum up regional support for more UN resolutions against North Korea.
After one-on-one meetings with fellow members of the six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear ambitions - minus Pyongyang - Clinton told reporters that the US, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea were a "united front" for an "irreversible denuclearization" of the Korean peninsula. "We won't reward North Korea just for returning to the table," Clinton said, adding, "We are in a strong position."
In an earlier television interview, she had likened North Korea to an "unruly child" and later claimed that the isolated country "had no friends". Not to be out-done, North Korean representatives in attendance responded by releasing a critical statement about Clinton: "Sometimes she looks like a primary-school girl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping."
Clinton also played tough with Myanmar. She mentioned that the US's policy review for the reclusive, military run country had been further put "on hold" by the ongoing trial and detention of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
"It's very important - it's so critical - that she be released. This would open up - at least for my government - a lot of opportunities for engagement and that includes investment and other forms of exchange," Clinton said on July 22.
Clinton stressed that as ASEAN as a whole was moving in a positive direction, especially in terms of protecting human rights, Myanmar was "moving in the opposite direction". She urged the regime to stop its war against ordinary citizens and ethnic groups. Not everyone is convinced the strong language will work.
"There's nothing wrong with the US prioritizing democracy and human rights issues in Burma, if it were part of a consistent policy of prioritizing these issues everywhere, including say in China or Saudi Arabia," Thant Myint U, a Burmese historian and author of River of Lost Footsteps told Asia Times Online. "The perception of double standards damages America's image, and many in the region think that the US is beating up on the Burmese government just because it's relatively cost-free - and creates a very cynical view of American foreign policy.
"There's a huge gap between US rhetoric on Burma and it's ability to actually influence events on the ground. As America's relative power in the region diminishes, the worry is that this becomes a more general trend, with nice-sounding statements on human rights and grandstanding for domestic audiences taking the place of more more modest but more results-oriented policies."
Clinton also used the forum to warn Iran that its pursuit of nuclear weapons was "unacceptable" and risked sparking an arms race in the Middle East.
"Iran needs to understand that its pursuit of nuclear weapons will not advance its security or achieve its goals of enhancing its power both regionally and globally," Clinton said. "That should affect the calculation of what Iran intends to do and what it believes is in its national security interests because it may render Iran less secure - not more secure."
Clinton hedged the strong remarks by stating that Iran has a right to the development of "peaceful and sustainable" nuclear power, and claimed she had discussed that possibility in a number of international settings. She concluded her remarks by rallying an unnamed international community around her cause - in this case Iran.
"The world community is united in its rejection of Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons and wants to point out it may not actually deliver the positioning and enhanced power that Iran believes it could," Clinton said.
Clinton's remarks on Iran came minutes before she was scheduled to sign ASEAN's Treaty of Amity and Cooperation [TAC] - a non-aggression pact that Washington wasreluctant to sign under the George W Bush administration.
Some have said the US is eager to sign the friendship agreement to counter the rise of China's influence in the region, although Beijing has already signed on. Others, such as political analyst Thitinan, call it a well-timed move to gain more access and good-will after a period of criticism that the US was neglecting the region. He calls it a "gate-opener".
"The signing of the TAC suggests the US will engage the entire region much more than in the past. It is highly significant of a new attitude towards Asia," Thitinan said. "It is important to note that Clinton's last meeting will be with the countries ofthe lower Mekong - Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. The US under Bush completely neglected these countries and all of mainland Southeast Asia."
The US-Lower Mekong Ministerial Meeting, a gathering to discuss the region's environment, health, education and infrastructure was the first of its kind, according to the US State Department. Clinton also announced the US intends to open a mission to ASEAN with an ambassador in Jakarta.
Charles McDermid and Jakkapun Kaewsangthong are Asia Times Online correspondents based in Thailand.
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Joint painting show launched in Myanmar former capital
www.chinaview.cn 2009-07-25 14:56:39
YANGON, July 25 (Xinhua) -- A painting exhibition, by a dozen of Myanmar artists, was launched at the South Korean Embassy here Saturday, aimed at boosting cultural exchanges between Myanmar and South Korea.
A total of about 30 paintings of 11 artists, featuring eastern beauties, are displayed at the seven-day show named Eastern Beauties, sponsored by the embassy and Summit Art Collection.
Under the regional cultural exchange program, Myanmar musicians took part in a series of ASEAN-South Korea traditional orchestra concerts last month in South Korea.
In February this year, representatives of Myanmar, along with those of other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), attended an ASEAN-South Korea traditional music workshop held in Seoul and discussed organization of the concert series.
www.chinaview.cn 2009-07-25 14:56:39
YANGON, July 25 (Xinhua) -- A painting exhibition, by a dozen of Myanmar artists, was launched at the South Korean Embassy here Saturday, aimed at boosting cultural exchanges between Myanmar and South Korea.
A total of about 30 paintings of 11 artists, featuring eastern beauties, are displayed at the seven-day show named Eastern Beauties, sponsored by the embassy and Summit Art Collection.
Under the regional cultural exchange program, Myanmar musicians took part in a series of ASEAN-South Korea traditional orchestra concerts last month in South Korea.
In February this year, representatives of Myanmar, along with those of other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), attended an ASEAN-South Korea traditional music workshop held in Seoul and discussed organization of the concert series.
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The Irrawaddy - Suu Kyi Unsatisfied with Trial Delay: Lawyer
By SAW YAN NAING - Saturday, July 25, 2009
Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is unhappy with the repeated delays in the current trial against her, according one of her lawyers.
Nyan Win, a member of Suu Kyi’s legal team, told The Irrawaddy on Friday that she complained about the court’s decision to adjourn her trial until Monday because it gave the prosecution extra time to prepare its final arguments. Suu Kyi’s defense team made its closing arguments on Friday.
“I’m not satisfied with the delay,” Suu Kyi told her lawyer.
Kyi Win, Suu Kyi’s chief defense counsel, told the court on Friday that his client maintains that she is not guilty of the charges against her. He argued that under the 1974 law that she is accused of violating, it is not a crime to speak to a stranger or offer him food.
He also said that his client did not break the terms of her house arrest because she did not contact any outsiders by phone or letter.
Suu Kyi, 64, has been on trial at Rangoon’s notorious Insein Prison court since May 18. She is accused of illegally allowing an intruder, US national John William Yettaw, to stay at her home for two days.
The trial has provoked international outrage and is widely regarded as a ploy to allow the Burmese junta to keep Suu Kyi in detention ahead of elections slated for next year.
Critics say the trial has been highly biased. They note that the court approved 23 witnesses for the prosecution, of whom 14 appeared on the stand, while only two of the four witnesses requested by the defense were permitted to appear in court.
Burma does not have an independent judiciary.
Suu Kyi has spent nearly 14 of the past 20 years under house arrest. Her latest detention began in May 2003, when she and her supporters came under attack by junta-backed thugs while traveling in central Burma.
By SAW YAN NAING - Saturday, July 25, 2009
Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is unhappy with the repeated delays in the current trial against her, according one of her lawyers.
Nyan Win, a member of Suu Kyi’s legal team, told The Irrawaddy on Friday that she complained about the court’s decision to adjourn her trial until Monday because it gave the prosecution extra time to prepare its final arguments. Suu Kyi’s defense team made its closing arguments on Friday.
“I’m not satisfied with the delay,” Suu Kyi told her lawyer.
Kyi Win, Suu Kyi’s chief defense counsel, told the court on Friday that his client maintains that she is not guilty of the charges against her. He argued that under the 1974 law that she is accused of violating, it is not a crime to speak to a stranger or offer him food.
He also said that his client did not break the terms of her house arrest because she did not contact any outsiders by phone or letter.
Suu Kyi, 64, has been on trial at Rangoon’s notorious Insein Prison court since May 18. She is accused of illegally allowing an intruder, US national John William Yettaw, to stay at her home for two days.
The trial has provoked international outrage and is widely regarded as a ploy to allow the Burmese junta to keep Suu Kyi in detention ahead of elections slated for next year.
Critics say the trial has been highly biased. They note that the court approved 23 witnesses for the prosecution, of whom 14 appeared on the stand, while only two of the four witnesses requested by the defense were permitted to appear in court.
Burma does not have an independent judiciary.
Suu Kyi has spent nearly 14 of the past 20 years under house arrest. Her latest detention began in May 2003, when she and her supporters came under attack by junta-backed thugs while traveling in central Burma.
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Mizzima News - Aung San Suu Kyi’s lawyers present arguments in conclusion
by Mungpi
Friday, 24 July 2009 22:24
New Delhi (Mizzima) - Lawyers defending Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi presented their final argument on Friday saying if she is being charged under the1974 constitution, she must be released and allowed to enjoy the rights mentioned in the constitution.
Kyi Win, personal lawyer and member of the defence team of Aung San Suu Kyi, on Friday presented his argument at the special court in Insein prison but the court postponed the prosecution argument till Monday.
Nyan Win, a member of Aung San Suu Kyi’s legal team and spokesperson for her party, said “the session started at 2 p.m. and U Kyi Win submitted his argument. His submission alone lasted about two hours.”
The court adjourned at 4:40 p.m. as it ran out of time to continue with the hearing of the prosecution’s argument. The court fixed July 27 for the hearing of the arguments of the prosecution.
Nyan Win said Aung San Suu Kyi was unhappy with the time being limited that barred the prosecution lawyers from presenting their argument on the same day.
“She [Aung San Suu Kyi] wanted to hear the prosecution’s argument the same day and she was unhappy with postponement of the argument to Monday,” Nyan Win said.
During the session, Kyi Win argued that the 1974 constitution has been technically dissolved and Aung San Suu Kyi cannot be charged under the statutes of a defunct constitution.
But if, according to the prosecution, the 1974 constitution is still valid, it cannot be partially implemented and Aung San Suu Kyi should get her freedom and enjoy her rights as stated in the constitution before being charged for anything.
The Burmese pro-democracy leader has been charged for violating her house arrest terms by ‘harbouring’ an American, John William Yettaw, who swam across a lake and entered her home uninvited in early May.
If convicted, she could face up to five years in prison.
The session on Friday, is part of the final stage of the trial, which has been conducted behind closed-doors since May 18. But surprisingly, the authorities on Friday allowed diplomats from Britain, Germany, France and Italy to be present.
While a few hope that Aung San Suu Kyi will be declared innocent, the widespread speculation is that the junta has used the incident of Yettaw as a pretext to charge her and sentence her to yet another prison term.
by Mungpi
Friday, 24 July 2009 22:24
New Delhi (Mizzima) - Lawyers defending Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi presented their final argument on Friday saying if she is being charged under the1974 constitution, she must be released and allowed to enjoy the rights mentioned in the constitution.
Kyi Win, personal lawyer and member of the defence team of Aung San Suu Kyi, on Friday presented his argument at the special court in Insein prison but the court postponed the prosecution argument till Monday.
Nyan Win, a member of Aung San Suu Kyi’s legal team and spokesperson for her party, said “the session started at 2 p.m. and U Kyi Win submitted his argument. His submission alone lasted about two hours.”
The court adjourned at 4:40 p.m. as it ran out of time to continue with the hearing of the prosecution’s argument. The court fixed July 27 for the hearing of the arguments of the prosecution.
Nyan Win said Aung San Suu Kyi was unhappy with the time being limited that barred the prosecution lawyers from presenting their argument on the same day.
“She [Aung San Suu Kyi] wanted to hear the prosecution’s argument the same day and she was unhappy with postponement of the argument to Monday,” Nyan Win said.
During the session, Kyi Win argued that the 1974 constitution has been technically dissolved and Aung San Suu Kyi cannot be charged under the statutes of a defunct constitution.
But if, according to the prosecution, the 1974 constitution is still valid, it cannot be partially implemented and Aung San Suu Kyi should get her freedom and enjoy her rights as stated in the constitution before being charged for anything.
The Burmese pro-democracy leader has been charged for violating her house arrest terms by ‘harbouring’ an American, John William Yettaw, who swam across a lake and entered her home uninvited in early May.
If convicted, she could face up to five years in prison.
The session on Friday, is part of the final stage of the trial, which has been conducted behind closed-doors since May 18. But surprisingly, the authorities on Friday allowed diplomats from Britain, Germany, France and Italy to be present.
While a few hope that Aung San Suu Kyi will be declared innocent, the widespread speculation is that the junta has used the incident of Yettaw as a pretext to charge her and sentence her to yet another prison term.
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