Pandia - The Myanmar search engine competiton is probably a trap
Posted on Sunday 23 August 2009
Burma (Myanmar) launches a search engine contest. Pandia suspects it is a ploy designed to develop censorship technology.
According to Alt Search Engines The Myanmar Computer Professional Association (MCPA) has invited individuals and groups to compete for the MCPA Challenge Winner 2009 under the title of the Myanmar Search Engine Contest.
The Alt Search Engine article looks like a rewrite of a press release, and is fetched from TMC.net. It says:
“The research-based contest is held with the aim of encouraging the development of the country’s information and communication technology (ICT), expanding the use of the yanmar language in ICT sector and enhancing the youth’s interest in the creation and ICT research.”
The contestants are given six months’ time to prepare for the research and the best contributor will be awarded 3,000 U.S. dollars in cash. That’s a lot of money in a poor country like Burma.
This must be a ploy blessed by the Burmese military dictatorship.
Censorship in Burma
The Economist reports that in Burma (AKA Myanmar) access to the internet is so tightly controlled that the few people who are allowed to go online, mostly government officials, are easy to monitor.
The government restricts Internet access through software-based censorship, including software provided by U.S. company Fortinet.
There are apparently internet cafes that try to get around the government’s proxy servers, but they are having a hard time doing it. The government recently took over the second ISP of Burma, apparently for political reasons.
For the rest access to the web is banned. To enforce this, the country’s military regime imposes jail terms of up to 15 years for unauthorized use of a modem.
What do they want?
Such a competition could not have been launched without the blessing of the regime. The regime is not interested in developing an Internet infrastructure that gives people full access to the Internet. This means that the competition has been launched to help the regime control the use of digital technology.
As far as we can see, there may be two options:
One could be to smoke out young Burmese with computer skills. If you identify them, you can stop them from developing technology that threatens the regime.
We know of activists that have managed to get around the walls of the censors. The opposition often use proxy servers and special software to get access to information.
Another one could be to get the winners of the competition to serve the regime by developing a search engine that can be used to block any kind of unwanted information.
It seems like the competition is open for non-Burmese as well, which means that they could hope to enlist politically naive computer experts in their fight against democracy.
There is only one possible conclusion in our mind: a total boycott of this competition.
Posted on Sunday 23 August 2009
Burma (Myanmar) launches a search engine contest. Pandia suspects it is a ploy designed to develop censorship technology.
According to Alt Search Engines The Myanmar Computer Professional Association (MCPA) has invited individuals and groups to compete for the MCPA Challenge Winner 2009 under the title of the Myanmar Search Engine Contest.
The Alt Search Engine article looks like a rewrite of a press release, and is fetched from TMC.net. It says:
“The research-based contest is held with the aim of encouraging the development of the country’s information and communication technology (ICT), expanding the use of the yanmar language in ICT sector and enhancing the youth’s interest in the creation and ICT research.”
The contestants are given six months’ time to prepare for the research and the best contributor will be awarded 3,000 U.S. dollars in cash. That’s a lot of money in a poor country like Burma.
This must be a ploy blessed by the Burmese military dictatorship.
Censorship in Burma
The Economist reports that in Burma (AKA Myanmar) access to the internet is so tightly controlled that the few people who are allowed to go online, mostly government officials, are easy to monitor.
The government restricts Internet access through software-based censorship, including software provided by U.S. company Fortinet.
There are apparently internet cafes that try to get around the government’s proxy servers, but they are having a hard time doing it. The government recently took over the second ISP of Burma, apparently for political reasons.
For the rest access to the web is banned. To enforce this, the country’s military regime imposes jail terms of up to 15 years for unauthorized use of a modem.
What do they want?
Such a competition could not have been launched without the blessing of the regime. The regime is not interested in developing an Internet infrastructure that gives people full access to the Internet. This means that the competition has been launched to help the regime control the use of digital technology.
As far as we can see, there may be two options:
One could be to smoke out young Burmese with computer skills. If you identify them, you can stop them from developing technology that threatens the regime.
We know of activists that have managed to get around the walls of the censors. The opposition often use proxy servers and special software to get access to information.
Another one could be to get the winners of the competition to serve the regime by developing a search engine that can be used to block any kind of unwanted information.
It seems like the competition is open for non-Burmese as well, which means that they could hope to enlist politically naive computer experts in their fight against democracy.
There is only one possible conclusion in our mind: a total boycott of this competition.
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THE ASAHI SHIMBUN - Myanmar group's visit here criticized
BY MAKOTO IGARASHI
2009/8/24
A delegation from Myanmar (Burma) led by a top official of a group linked to attacks on supporters of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is in Japan on an agricultural mission at the invitation of the Foreign Ministry.
The visit has angered supporters of democracy campaigners in Myanmar, coming soon after a court ruling led to the extension of Suu Kyi's house arrest by 18 months.
The group is led by Myanmar's minister for agriculture and irrigation, Htay Oo, secretary-general of the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), a political group that supports the country's military junta.
The USDA is reported to have been involved in the May 2003 attack on Suu Kyi and members of her group, leaving many dead or injured.
Its senior officials are subject to sanctions by the United States and the European Union, including entry bans and the freezing of assets.
Supporters of Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and others have voiced displeasure with the visit, which is being paid for by Japan.
"We find it hard to understand the Japanese government's intention in inviting (Htay Oo) just after Suu Kyi was found guilty (of breaching the terms of her detention)," said Yuki Akimoto of BurmaInfo, a group analyzing Myanmar's politics and relations with Japan.
According to the Foreign Ministry, Htay Oo's group is visiting Japan for a week from Thursday.
After visiting the Great Buddha of Kamakura, in Kanagawa Prefecture, on Thursday, they were to meet Japanese lawmakers and farm ministry officials and visit farming facilities, according to officials.
"We have invited (Htay Oo) as minister for agriculture and irrigation," said Keiichi Ono, director of the ministry's First Southeast Asian Division.
"It is important to have them visit and see Japanese agriculture firsthand."
The USDA is said to have played a part in the May 30, 2003, attack on Suu Kyi's group while she was on a campaign tour. She and other officials were detained by the junta that day.
USDA members are also said to have joined Myanmar troops who used force in cracking down on citizens taking part in anti-junta demonstrations in September 2007.
BY MAKOTO IGARASHI
2009/8/24
A delegation from Myanmar (Burma) led by a top official of a group linked to attacks on supporters of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is in Japan on an agricultural mission at the invitation of the Foreign Ministry.
The visit has angered supporters of democracy campaigners in Myanmar, coming soon after a court ruling led to the extension of Suu Kyi's house arrest by 18 months.
The group is led by Myanmar's minister for agriculture and irrigation, Htay Oo, secretary-general of the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), a political group that supports the country's military junta.
The USDA is reported to have been involved in the May 2003 attack on Suu Kyi and members of her group, leaving many dead or injured.
Its senior officials are subject to sanctions by the United States and the European Union, including entry bans and the freezing of assets.
Supporters of Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and others have voiced displeasure with the visit, which is being paid for by Japan.
"We find it hard to understand the Japanese government's intention in inviting (Htay Oo) just after Suu Kyi was found guilty (of breaching the terms of her detention)," said Yuki Akimoto of BurmaInfo, a group analyzing Myanmar's politics and relations with Japan.
According to the Foreign Ministry, Htay Oo's group is visiting Japan for a week from Thursday.
After visiting the Great Buddha of Kamakura, in Kanagawa Prefecture, on Thursday, they were to meet Japanese lawmakers and farm ministry officials and visit farming facilities, according to officials.
"We have invited (Htay Oo) as minister for agriculture and irrigation," said Keiichi Ono, director of the ministry's First Southeast Asian Division.
"It is important to have them visit and see Japanese agriculture firsthand."
The USDA is said to have played a part in the May 30, 2003, attack on Suu Kyi's group while she was on a campaign tour. She and other officials were detained by the junta that day.
USDA members are also said to have joined Myanmar troops who used force in cracking down on citizens taking part in anti-junta demonstrations in September 2007.
*************************************************************
The Washington Post - Strategies of Dissent Evolving in Burma
Activists Find Political Breathing Room in Humanitarian Nonprofit Groups
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 24, 2009
RANGOON, Burma -- Call it the evolutionary school of revolution.
After years of brutally suppressed street protests, many Burmese have adopted a new strategy that they say takes advantage of small political openings to push for greater freedoms. They are distributing aid, teaching courses on civic engagement and quietly learning to govern.
"We are trying to mobilize people by changing their thought process," said an entrepreneur in the city of Mandalay who is setting up classes on leadership. He added half in jest, "Civil society is a guerrilla movement."
Government critics including many Burmese say opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's return to house arrest this month underscores the junta's resolve to keep her out of reach of the population ahead of parliamentary elections next year that many dismiss as a sham. But a growing number of educated, middle-class Burmese are pinning their hopes on what they call "community-based organizations," finding outlets for entrepreneurship and room to maneuver politically in a country with one of the world's most repressive governments.
At first light on a recent Sunday, a dozen doctors piled into two old vans, stopped for a hearty breakfast of fish stew and sticky rice, then headed out to dispatch free medicine and consult villagers an hour outside Rangoon. The group first came together two years ago to care for demonstrators beaten by security forces during monk-led protests.
When Tropical Cyclone Nargis hit in May 2008, killing an estimated 140,000 people, the doctors joined countless Burmese in collecting emergency supplies for survivors while the junta rebuffed foreign aid dispatches.
Like many of those ad hoc groups, the doctors have since developed an informal nonprofit organization, meeting regularly and volunteering at an orphanage and in villages near Rangoon. The group's leader secured funding from a foreign nonprofit agency and named his team "Volunteers for the Vulnerable," or V4V.
But to avoid having their activities labeled as activism, the leader negotiates weekly with the authorities for access to the villages under cover of an anodyne Burmese fixture -- the abbot of a local Buddhist monastery.
For their own safety, the V4V founder said, "not even all our members know the name of the group."
Successive military governments in Burma since 1962 have clamped down on civil society and forbade associations of more than five people. Burmese say they have come to see the activities of semi-illicit groups such as V4V as rare outlets for entrepreneurship and for maneuvering politically.
"There is still room to change at the small scale," said an AIDS activist, sipping juice in a teashop. "Many people say civil society is dead. But it never dies. Sometimes it takes different forms, under pretext of religion, under pretext of medicine."
A 32-year-old writer here said his father was a local township representative for Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy, which won 1990 elections but was never allowed to take power. Suu Kyi has been confined to house arrest for 14 of the past 19 years, and the number of political detainees is estimated at about 2,000.
But the young writer sees a role for himself beyond the opposition party.
He said his life was transformed after he took a three-month course at a Rangoon nonprofit agency called Myanmar Egress, which runs classes for Burmese interested in development. Like many of the people interviewed for this story, he spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
He then quit his job at a business journal to freelance opinion columns under a pseudonym and has co-founded a nonprofit with other Egress alumni.
"I came to realize my daily life is being involved in politics, in the political economy," he said, a resolve triggered by the scenes of poverty he witnessed along his daily commute on a creaking, overcrowded bus through Rangoon. "My belief is that without political knowledge . . . people will just go around town and get shot. I am doing what I can as an educator and a journalist."
Civic Duties
Many people in Rangoon expressed feeling a similar sense of duty as they have watched their military rulers decimate the education system and deepen poverty through mismanagement of the economy. In the past 50 years, Burma has fallen from among the richest countries in Asia to the bottom of regional development rankings.
"In Burma, the middle class is very thin," said a 38-year-old graphic designer who in 2004 helped found an undercover nonprofit group that recruits potential political leaders. "We need to grow, strengthen that. Most democratic countries have a broader middle class. It is the only way to go forward."
Such groups have also allowed urbanites to network in ways previously inconceivable.
Humanitarian and Political
On a recent afternoon, students crowded into a musty hotel conference room for a three-hour lecture on civil society sponsored by Myanmar Egress.
Ten minutes before the class was to begin, barely a seat was vacant and still the students poured in, laughing, chatting or rifling through notes that curled at the edges in the damp heat. "They have a thirst for knowledge. They want to know. . . . They don't even take a break," said a 28-year-old Egress teacher, observing the 105 young adults from the back of the room. "This place is quite free, the only place we can talk about these things."
Some members of the groups reject any political motive in their activities, describing them as purely humanitarian. But others say that in Burma the two are intrinsically linked.
"At every meeting of nonprofits, the solution is always, in the end, political," said a Rangoon scholar who works with a foreign development organization.
The scholar is associated with a loose circle of influential academics, writers, negotiators between the junta and restive ethnic minorities, and businessmen at home and abroad who share a goal of finding a way through the political impasse.
"It's not that we oppose the NLD, but at least we take advantage of the opening space. . . . The NLD can't set a course. We have to find an alternative," said the scholar, who served 15 years in prison for writing about human rights.
But Suu Kyi's trial has made him less sanguine about prospects for change in next year's elections, the country's first since 1990. Going forward, he said, the key is "to prime the population for the transition."
Activists Find Political Breathing Room in Humanitarian Nonprofit Groups
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 24, 2009
RANGOON, Burma -- Call it the evolutionary school of revolution.
After years of brutally suppressed street protests, many Burmese have adopted a new strategy that they say takes advantage of small political openings to push for greater freedoms. They are distributing aid, teaching courses on civic engagement and quietly learning to govern.
"We are trying to mobilize people by changing their thought process," said an entrepreneur in the city of Mandalay who is setting up classes on leadership. He added half in jest, "Civil society is a guerrilla movement."
Government critics including many Burmese say opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's return to house arrest this month underscores the junta's resolve to keep her out of reach of the population ahead of parliamentary elections next year that many dismiss as a sham. But a growing number of educated, middle-class Burmese are pinning their hopes on what they call "community-based organizations," finding outlets for entrepreneurship and room to maneuver politically in a country with one of the world's most repressive governments.
At first light on a recent Sunday, a dozen doctors piled into two old vans, stopped for a hearty breakfast of fish stew and sticky rice, then headed out to dispatch free medicine and consult villagers an hour outside Rangoon. The group first came together two years ago to care for demonstrators beaten by security forces during monk-led protests.
When Tropical Cyclone Nargis hit in May 2008, killing an estimated 140,000 people, the doctors joined countless Burmese in collecting emergency supplies for survivors while the junta rebuffed foreign aid dispatches.
Like many of those ad hoc groups, the doctors have since developed an informal nonprofit organization, meeting regularly and volunteering at an orphanage and in villages near Rangoon. The group's leader secured funding from a foreign nonprofit agency and named his team "Volunteers for the Vulnerable," or V4V.
But to avoid having their activities labeled as activism, the leader negotiates weekly with the authorities for access to the villages under cover of an anodyne Burmese fixture -- the abbot of a local Buddhist monastery.
For their own safety, the V4V founder said, "not even all our members know the name of the group."
Successive military governments in Burma since 1962 have clamped down on civil society and forbade associations of more than five people. Burmese say they have come to see the activities of semi-illicit groups such as V4V as rare outlets for entrepreneurship and for maneuvering politically.
"There is still room to change at the small scale," said an AIDS activist, sipping juice in a teashop. "Many people say civil society is dead. But it never dies. Sometimes it takes different forms, under pretext of religion, under pretext of medicine."
A 32-year-old writer here said his father was a local township representative for Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy, which won 1990 elections but was never allowed to take power. Suu Kyi has been confined to house arrest for 14 of the past 19 years, and the number of political detainees is estimated at about 2,000.
But the young writer sees a role for himself beyond the opposition party.
He said his life was transformed after he took a three-month course at a Rangoon nonprofit agency called Myanmar Egress, which runs classes for Burmese interested in development. Like many of the people interviewed for this story, he spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
He then quit his job at a business journal to freelance opinion columns under a pseudonym and has co-founded a nonprofit with other Egress alumni.
"I came to realize my daily life is being involved in politics, in the political economy," he said, a resolve triggered by the scenes of poverty he witnessed along his daily commute on a creaking, overcrowded bus through Rangoon. "My belief is that without political knowledge . . . people will just go around town and get shot. I am doing what I can as an educator and a journalist."
Civic Duties
Many people in Rangoon expressed feeling a similar sense of duty as they have watched their military rulers decimate the education system and deepen poverty through mismanagement of the economy. In the past 50 years, Burma has fallen from among the richest countries in Asia to the bottom of regional development rankings.
"In Burma, the middle class is very thin," said a 38-year-old graphic designer who in 2004 helped found an undercover nonprofit group that recruits potential political leaders. "We need to grow, strengthen that. Most democratic countries have a broader middle class. It is the only way to go forward."
Such groups have also allowed urbanites to network in ways previously inconceivable.
Humanitarian and Political
On a recent afternoon, students crowded into a musty hotel conference room for a three-hour lecture on civil society sponsored by Myanmar Egress.
Ten minutes before the class was to begin, barely a seat was vacant and still the students poured in, laughing, chatting or rifling through notes that curled at the edges in the damp heat. "They have a thirst for knowledge. They want to know. . . . They don't even take a break," said a 28-year-old Egress teacher, observing the 105 young adults from the back of the room. "This place is quite free, the only place we can talk about these things."
Some members of the groups reject any political motive in their activities, describing them as purely humanitarian. But others say that in Burma the two are intrinsically linked.
"At every meeting of nonprofits, the solution is always, in the end, political," said a Rangoon scholar who works with a foreign development organization.
The scholar is associated with a loose circle of influential academics, writers, negotiators between the junta and restive ethnic minorities, and businessmen at home and abroad who share a goal of finding a way through the political impasse.
"It's not that we oppose the NLD, but at least we take advantage of the opening space. . . . The NLD can't set a course. We have to find an alternative," said the scholar, who served 15 years in prison for writing about human rights.
But Suu Kyi's trial has made him less sanguine about prospects for change in next year's elections, the country's first since 1990. Going forward, he said, the key is "to prime the population for the transition."
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Journal & Courier - Preschool to help Burmese kids with lead issues
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS • August 22, 2009
FORT WAYNE, Ind. (AP) - Burmese children suffering from lead poisoning will get help from a special preschool program in Allen County.
East Allen County Schools is launching a Targeted Assistance Preschool Program that will use speech, physical and occupational therapy to improve cognitive skills in children ages 3 to 5 who are affected by lead poisoning.
The preschool will accommodate up to 24 children. Classes begin Sept. 8 and will be paid for with federal stimulus money.
Participants were identified during door-to-door blood testing after health officials became concerned about a spike in lead poisoning in the Burmese community. The cases were tied to a traditional stomach medicine.
Fort Wayne is home to thousands of immigrants from Myanmar, also known as Burma.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS • August 22, 2009
FORT WAYNE, Ind. (AP) - Burmese children suffering from lead poisoning will get help from a special preschool program in Allen County.
East Allen County Schools is launching a Targeted Assistance Preschool Program that will use speech, physical and occupational therapy to improve cognitive skills in children ages 3 to 5 who are affected by lead poisoning.
The preschool will accommodate up to 24 children. Classes begin Sept. 8 and will be paid for with federal stimulus money.
Participants were identified during door-to-door blood testing after health officials became concerned about a spike in lead poisoning in the Burmese community. The cases were tied to a traditional stomach medicine.
Fort Wayne is home to thousands of immigrants from Myanmar, also known as Burma.
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Friday, August 21, 2009
World Tribune - Webb in Burma: What good are talks with Asian dictators?
PARIS — When a kangaroo court in Rangoon slapped an additional sentence on the already incarcerated pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the world winced. To be sure there was the perfunctory outrage, especially in Europe where French President Nicolas Sarkozy called the sentence on this Nobel laureate “a brutal and unjust verdict.”
And the European Union presidency demanded her “immediate freedom without conditions.”
Yet half a world away in the never-never land of Burma’s socialist republic, the ruling junta felt assured they would ride the most recent ripple of world outrage as much as they survived the near political tsunami wave of condemnation over their blundered and callous handling of foreign aid after a devastating typhoon in May 2008 killed over 100,000 of their own people.
Days after the verdict, the UN Security Council, despite laudable pressures from Britain, France, and the United States, could barely summon a mild verbal rebuke to the Burmese generals. Given strong political resistance by China and Russia, a Council statement (not a resolution) expressed “serious concern” over the court sentence, but could not utter the word “condemnation” as many countries including the U.S. had wanted.
At the time of independence from Britain after WWII, Burma held so much promise. A resource-rich and bountiful land, which could and should have been a model Southeast Asian state, sadly instead, the country slipped into the grip of a military rule whose bizarre blend of socialism, nationalism, self-reliance and corruption, made the country now known as Myanmar, a regime isolated save for a few friends like the People’s Republic of China and North Korea.
Burma which has been under military rule since 1962 plans an staged election next year, without of course the pesky participation of opposition politicians like Suu Kyi who may actually win as did her forces in 1990 before the results were overturned. She has since spent 14 of the past 20 years under house arrest.
Much of the international community has been striving for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and many other political prisoners. In Western Europe, Burma’s tragedy has long been a cause celebre much like the cause of Tibet. Significantly during the Bush Administration, the USA pushed hard for political openness but to little avail. And the United Nations has sent numerous envoys to the Southeast Asian land but with little tangible result.
In early July UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon visited Rangoon to try his diplomatic persuasion skills with the ruling generals. He came back embarrassingly empty handed.
U.S. Senator Jim Webb (D-Virginia) an Obama confident, recently visited Rangoon to try his hand at unlocking the bizarre maze of Burmese politics. On the one hand Webb succeeded in freeing an imprisoned American John Yettaw, an eccentric who triggered the whole fiasco in the first place by sneaking into Suu Kyi’s residence in May and allowing the Junta the perfect excuse to slam the laureate with a new trial for having broken the terms of her house arrest.
But Webb’s mission to Myanmar by the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on East Asia and Pacific affairs, brings a whole new legitimacy to a sordid regime long shunned by the West for good reason. Though Senator Webb has reflected the Obama Administration’s wish for a more “constructive” American engagement with Burma’s rulers, the aftermath of his dialogue with dictator General Than Shwe now faces a number of hurdles, most especially Aung San Suu Kyi’s vocal and politically active supporters in the USA, Europe, and needless to say Burma itself.
On the other hand, Washington’s opposition to the Junta rests primarily on human rights grounds and its lacking freedoms. Let’s face it, while Burma is a totally wretched regime, it does not really pose a regional danger to its neighbors, nor it does have any historic conflict with the USA, as does say North Korea. But this is not the time to end or ease economic sanctions
But why now? Clearly Washington wants to wean the Rangoon rulers from their political and military dependence on People’s China. This may be wishful thinking. Mainland China has a long border with Burma, and uses the Southeast Asian state as a natural resource entrepot for minerals, rubies and timber, as well as a geopolitical backdoor to the Bay of Bengal. In other words this is Beijing’s neighborhood. It is appallingly naive for Washington to assume otherwise.
World Tribune - Webb in Burma: What good are talks with Asian dictators?
PARIS — When a kangaroo court in Rangoon slapped an additional sentence on the already incarcerated pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the world winced. To be sure there was the perfunctory outrage, especially in Europe where French President Nicolas Sarkozy called the sentence on this Nobel laureate “a brutal and unjust verdict.”
And the European Union presidency demanded her “immediate freedom without conditions.”
Yet half a world away in the never-never land of Burma’s socialist republic, the ruling junta felt assured they would ride the most recent ripple of world outrage as much as they survived the near political tsunami wave of condemnation over their blundered and callous handling of foreign aid after a devastating typhoon in May 2008 killed over 100,000 of their own people.
Days after the verdict, the UN Security Council, despite laudable pressures from Britain, France, and the United States, could barely summon a mild verbal rebuke to the Burmese generals. Given strong political resistance by China and Russia, a Council statement (not a resolution) expressed “serious concern” over the court sentence, but could not utter the word “condemnation” as many countries including the U.S. had wanted.
At the time of independence from Britain after WWII, Burma held so much promise. A resource-rich and bountiful land, which could and should have been a model Southeast Asian state, sadly instead, the country slipped into the grip of a military rule whose bizarre blend of socialism, nationalism, self-reliance and corruption, made the country now known as Myanmar, a regime isolated save for a few friends like the People’s Republic of China and North Korea.
Burma which has been under military rule since 1962 plans an staged election next year, without of course the pesky participation of opposition politicians like Suu Kyi who may actually win as did her forces in 1990 before the results were overturned. She has since spent 14 of the past 20 years under house arrest.
Much of the international community has been striving for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and many other political prisoners. In Western Europe, Burma’s tragedy has long been a cause celebre much like the cause of Tibet. Significantly during the Bush Administration, the USA pushed hard for political openness but to little avail. And the United Nations has sent numerous envoys to the Southeast Asian land but with little tangible result.
In early July UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon visited Rangoon to try his diplomatic persuasion skills with the ruling generals. He came back embarrassingly empty handed.
U.S. Senator Jim Webb (D-Virginia) an Obama confident, recently visited Rangoon to try his hand at unlocking the bizarre maze of Burmese politics. On the one hand Webb succeeded in freeing an imprisoned American John Yettaw, an eccentric who triggered the whole fiasco in the first place by sneaking into Suu Kyi’s residence in May and allowing the Junta the perfect excuse to slam the laureate with a new trial for having broken the terms of her house arrest.
But Webb’s mission to Myanmar by the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on East Asia and Pacific affairs, brings a whole new legitimacy to a sordid regime long shunned by the West for good reason. Though Senator Webb has reflected the Obama Administration’s wish for a more “constructive” American engagement with Burma’s rulers, the aftermath of his dialogue with dictator General Than Shwe now faces a number of hurdles, most especially Aung San Suu Kyi’s vocal and politically active supporters in the USA, Europe, and needless to say Burma itself.
On the other hand, Washington’s opposition to the Junta rests primarily on human rights grounds and its lacking freedoms. Let’s face it, while Burma is a totally wretched regime, it does not really pose a regional danger to its neighbors, nor it does have any historic conflict with the USA, as does say North Korea. But this is not the time to end or ease economic sanctions
But why now? Clearly Washington wants to wean the Rangoon rulers from their political and military dependence on People’s China. This may be wishful thinking. Mainland China has a long border with Burma, and uses the Southeast Asian state as a natural resource entrepot for minerals, rubies and timber, as well as a geopolitical backdoor to the Bay of Bengal. In other words this is Beijing’s neighborhood. It is appallingly naive for Washington to assume otherwise.
*************************************************************
Newsweek - The Swimmer Speaks
John Yettaw, just back from his Burmese prison odyssey, explains how he unwittingly created an international diplomatic crisis.
By Tony Dokoupil | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Aug 21, 2009
How was a retired bus driver from Missouri able to make a flipper-clad, two-kilometer swim to the heavily guarded house of Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung Sang Suu Kyi, one of the world's most famous dissidents? While John Yettaw languished in Burmese jail during his trial for "illegal swimming," all we could do is speculate. But now, in an exclusive interview with NEWSWEEK, Yettaw has offered an explanation: Burmese security officials let him. "I don't know why they didn't stop me," he says. "The man with the AK-47 shook my hand and let me in."
In his first full-length interview, conducted by telephone from his home in central Missouri, Yettaw addressed the rationale for his undiplomatic dip, responding to critics and speaking at length about his commitment to Burma. "I want to free Myanmar. I want to stop the suffering there. I am antijunta. I will never be at peace, emotionally or psychologically, until that woman is free, until that nation is free," he said.
Yettaw burst onto the front pages of the world's papers in May, when he had made an uninvited two-day visit to the home of Suu Kyi. "The Lady," as locals call her, trounced opponents in the country's last open election in 1990, but the junta refused to recognize the results and has kept her under arrest for 14 of the past 20 years for trying to topple the regime. She was due to be released on May 27, just weeks after Yettaw showed up, well ahead of next year's landmark national elections—the first in two decades. But earlier this month, Suu Kyi was sentenced to 18 more months of home confinement. On Sunday, Yettaw was freed from seven years of hard labor when U.S. Sen. Jim Webb negotiated for his release; he was deported back to the United States.
A quixotic man who didn't have a passport until last year, Yettaw is an unlikely protagonist on the international political stage. The junta has said it believes that antigovernment activists used Yettaw to embarrass its leaders, while Suu Kyi's supporters say that the government used the American as a pretense for keeping their best-known critic under house arrest rather than risk igniting the opposition ahead of the 2010 elections. Yettaw's family, for its part, doesn't know what to believe. After years of questions that have gone unanswered and behavior that doesn't quite add up, they have come to accept Yettaw the way he is—bighearted but unsteady—without asking too many follow-ups.
Late Thursday night, the 53-year-old Missourian remained an enigmatic figure, failing to clarify lingering questions and offering rambling and occasionally contradictory responses. "I have to be careful what I say or it will hurt the people of Myanmar," he explained, using Burma's other name. Echoing his court testimony, he says he traveled to Burma hoping to visit the Nobelist Suu Kyi—and to warn her that he'd learned, in a divine vision, terrorists were planning to assassinate her. He denied that the military junta ruling the country had put him up to the visit. "I've been accused of being CIA, of being on the books of the junta. The idea is just ridiculous," he said.
Still, the question remains: why didn't guards stop Yettaw as he made his way across the lake to the home of the country's most famous prisoner? Yettaw had made a similar aquatic bid for the Suu Kyi house in November 2008, but he was turned away by her on-site companions. He told family that he had been captured by guards at gunpoint on his way back from her house. The guards, he says, apparently unaware of his first attempted visit to Suu Kyi's house, bought his story that he had fallen into the lake while fishing and let him go.
It's not clear why authorities took a harder line this time, putting Yettaw on trial and ultimately sentencing him to jail. He says he doesn't know, but indicates that authorities did not seem too concerned about stopping him: instead, a group of guards languidly threw rocks at him as he paddled along. "I told [the judge at trial], Haul them in here and ask them for yourself." He added: "Maybe they were just lazy, or untrained or so cocky that they didn't think anyone would try to swim by them," Yettaw said. "Maybe they are so used to people being scared that they didn't expect anyone to do something so courageous."
Yettaw declined to say where he initially got the idea to visit Suu Kyi by crossing the lake. But according to one Western diplomat, who requested anonymity in order to speak freely, intelligence reports show that senior Burmese officials were told to come up with a way to keep the Lady incarcerated, as her May 27 release date loomed. Around a week before Yettaw's second swim, this person says, two men posing as members of the reform-minded National League for Democracy allegedly approached Yettaw in Mae Sot, an untidy border town in Thailand, and told him that the Lady was ready to receive him. (The Burmese government did not respond to requests for comment.)
Yettaw won't say what he and Suu Kyi discussed once he made it to her house. "It is so personal that I have no right to discuss our conversation with anyone, not with my wife and not with my children," he said, adding that he is "brokenhearted" that she is under house arrest once more. Still, he doesn't see his actions as the cause of her predicament. "I didn't put her there. I didn't imprison that woman."
Actually, he says, his visit may have even saved Suu Kyi from the terrorists he believes were out to get her. He is not a hero, though: "I don't like titles. You can call me John." He bristles at the suggestion that he is unstable and possibly mentally ill, as some people, including one of his three ex-wives, has suggested. "I am not crazy. I am not insane. I am not bipolar."
Since touching down in Springfield, Mo., on Wednesday, Yettaw has kept a low profile—ducking out of an airport side door without picking up his luggage in order to avoid the waiting scrum of reporters and photographers. "I was really worried that he would be different or changed," Yettaw's 21-year-old daughter Carley, says. "But he wasn't. It was just like seeing my dad regular. It wasn't a big deal." His wife Betty has also downplayed the homecoming, focusing instead on the financial burden of her husband's long trip. Although Webb helped secure his release, Yettaw had to pay his own travel expenses and foot the bill for a nurse assigned to monitor his health. "They are breaking us," says Betty, who is also keen to deflect criticism of John. "Yeah, [Suu Kyi is] back under house arrest, but people who didn't know where the heck Burma was, who couldn't find it on the map for all their life, now know."
For now, Yettaw is taking his return to America "one day at a time." Later this month, he plans to pick up his three youngest children—he has five surviving kids in all—in California, where they stay with their mother every summer. He also intends to spend some time working on his two book projects: a "dissertation" about forgiveness (although he is not enrolled in an academic program) and a book "about a higher power, about recognizing the bitter and the sweet."
Would he go back to Burma? "Not without my family," he said, "and not without an invitation."
John Yettaw, just back from his Burmese prison odyssey, explains how he unwittingly created an international diplomatic crisis.
By Tony Dokoupil | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Aug 21, 2009
How was a retired bus driver from Missouri able to make a flipper-clad, two-kilometer swim to the heavily guarded house of Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung Sang Suu Kyi, one of the world's most famous dissidents? While John Yettaw languished in Burmese jail during his trial for "illegal swimming," all we could do is speculate. But now, in an exclusive interview with NEWSWEEK, Yettaw has offered an explanation: Burmese security officials let him. "I don't know why they didn't stop me," he says. "The man with the AK-47 shook my hand and let me in."
In his first full-length interview, conducted by telephone from his home in central Missouri, Yettaw addressed the rationale for his undiplomatic dip, responding to critics and speaking at length about his commitment to Burma. "I want to free Myanmar. I want to stop the suffering there. I am antijunta. I will never be at peace, emotionally or psychologically, until that woman is free, until that nation is free," he said.
Yettaw burst onto the front pages of the world's papers in May, when he had made an uninvited two-day visit to the home of Suu Kyi. "The Lady," as locals call her, trounced opponents in the country's last open election in 1990, but the junta refused to recognize the results and has kept her under arrest for 14 of the past 20 years for trying to topple the regime. She was due to be released on May 27, just weeks after Yettaw showed up, well ahead of next year's landmark national elections—the first in two decades. But earlier this month, Suu Kyi was sentenced to 18 more months of home confinement. On Sunday, Yettaw was freed from seven years of hard labor when U.S. Sen. Jim Webb negotiated for his release; he was deported back to the United States.
A quixotic man who didn't have a passport until last year, Yettaw is an unlikely protagonist on the international political stage. The junta has said it believes that antigovernment activists used Yettaw to embarrass its leaders, while Suu Kyi's supporters say that the government used the American as a pretense for keeping their best-known critic under house arrest rather than risk igniting the opposition ahead of the 2010 elections. Yettaw's family, for its part, doesn't know what to believe. After years of questions that have gone unanswered and behavior that doesn't quite add up, they have come to accept Yettaw the way he is—bighearted but unsteady—without asking too many follow-ups.
Late Thursday night, the 53-year-old Missourian remained an enigmatic figure, failing to clarify lingering questions and offering rambling and occasionally contradictory responses. "I have to be careful what I say or it will hurt the people of Myanmar," he explained, using Burma's other name. Echoing his court testimony, he says he traveled to Burma hoping to visit the Nobelist Suu Kyi—and to warn her that he'd learned, in a divine vision, terrorists were planning to assassinate her. He denied that the military junta ruling the country had put him up to the visit. "I've been accused of being CIA, of being on the books of the junta. The idea is just ridiculous," he said.
Still, the question remains: why didn't guards stop Yettaw as he made his way across the lake to the home of the country's most famous prisoner? Yettaw had made a similar aquatic bid for the Suu Kyi house in November 2008, but he was turned away by her on-site companions. He told family that he had been captured by guards at gunpoint on his way back from her house. The guards, he says, apparently unaware of his first attempted visit to Suu Kyi's house, bought his story that he had fallen into the lake while fishing and let him go.
It's not clear why authorities took a harder line this time, putting Yettaw on trial and ultimately sentencing him to jail. He says he doesn't know, but indicates that authorities did not seem too concerned about stopping him: instead, a group of guards languidly threw rocks at him as he paddled along. "I told [the judge at trial], Haul them in here and ask them for yourself." He added: "Maybe they were just lazy, or untrained or so cocky that they didn't think anyone would try to swim by them," Yettaw said. "Maybe they are so used to people being scared that they didn't expect anyone to do something so courageous."
Yettaw declined to say where he initially got the idea to visit Suu Kyi by crossing the lake. But according to one Western diplomat, who requested anonymity in order to speak freely, intelligence reports show that senior Burmese officials were told to come up with a way to keep the Lady incarcerated, as her May 27 release date loomed. Around a week before Yettaw's second swim, this person says, two men posing as members of the reform-minded National League for Democracy allegedly approached Yettaw in Mae Sot, an untidy border town in Thailand, and told him that the Lady was ready to receive him. (The Burmese government did not respond to requests for comment.)
Yettaw won't say what he and Suu Kyi discussed once he made it to her house. "It is so personal that I have no right to discuss our conversation with anyone, not with my wife and not with my children," he said, adding that he is "brokenhearted" that she is under house arrest once more. Still, he doesn't see his actions as the cause of her predicament. "I didn't put her there. I didn't imprison that woman."
Actually, he says, his visit may have even saved Suu Kyi from the terrorists he believes were out to get her. He is not a hero, though: "I don't like titles. You can call me John." He bristles at the suggestion that he is unstable and possibly mentally ill, as some people, including one of his three ex-wives, has suggested. "I am not crazy. I am not insane. I am not bipolar."
Since touching down in Springfield, Mo., on Wednesday, Yettaw has kept a low profile—ducking out of an airport side door without picking up his luggage in order to avoid the waiting scrum of reporters and photographers. "I was really worried that he would be different or changed," Yettaw's 21-year-old daughter Carley, says. "But he wasn't. It was just like seeing my dad regular. It wasn't a big deal." His wife Betty has also downplayed the homecoming, focusing instead on the financial burden of her husband's long trip. Although Webb helped secure his release, Yettaw had to pay his own travel expenses and foot the bill for a nurse assigned to monitor his health. "They are breaking us," says Betty, who is also keen to deflect criticism of John. "Yeah, [Suu Kyi is] back under house arrest, but people who didn't know where the heck Burma was, who couldn't find it on the map for all their life, now know."
For now, Yettaw is taking his return to America "one day at a time." Later this month, he plans to pick up his three youngest children—he has five surviving kids in all—in California, where they stay with their mother every summer. He also intends to spend some time working on his two book projects: a "dissertation" about forgiveness (although he is not enrolled in an academic program) and a book "about a higher power, about recognizing the bitter and the sweet."
Would he go back to Burma? "Not without my family," he said, "and not without an invitation."
*************************************************************
Newsweek - Player Hater
It seems absurd to send U.S. officials—even a retired one—to collect Americans imprisoned abroad. But often enough, it makes good sense.
By John Barry | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Aug 21, 2009 | Updated: 7:52 p.m. ET Aug 21, 2009
Why? Now that Laura Ling and Euna Lee are home from North Korea and John Yettaw has been freed from a Myanmar prison, that's surely the question. Why were three idiots worth rescue missions by a former U.S. president and a serving U.S. senator? They weren't kidnapped; they weren't hostages. All three knowingly broke the laws of the countries they were in, and, in the process, brought harm to innocents. The pair caught inside North Korea put at risk members of the human-rights network that was helping them with their story. (The two have still to give their version of events; Brent Marcus, spokesman for their employer, Current TV, says the network is respecting their request to have time to reunite with their families.) Yettaw's adventure led to a further 18 months of house arrest for the iconic opposition leader, 64-year-old Aung San Suu Kyi, who has already been confined for 14 of the past 20 years.
"I'm not particularly sympathetic," says Ambassador James Dobbins, a former senior State Department official and now director of RAND's international-security programs. "My immediate reaction is to wonder why people can't spend a few years in jail rather than counting on us to rescue them when they do things that are obviously stupid as well as illegal—things for which we would put them in jail in many cases. I can imagine the State Department grinds its teeth in frustration every time they find a new American who's done something stupid and now requires a former president of the United States go rescue them." Not many get such VIP treatment, of course. There are, according to the State Department, 2,652 Americans in jails around the world. (Many doing time for drug offenses.) Why were these three singled out for heavyweight intervention?
The answer is realpolitik. The Obama administration wants lines of communication to the North Korean and Burmese governments. "Humanitarian" missions to free Americans offer Obama an opportunity he wouldn't otherwise have. Clinton's trip to Pyongyang had huge behind-the-scenes help from the State Department, according to a source there who asked to remain anonymous; Webb's trip to Myanmar was blessed by it, according to reports.
Technically, the Logan Act of 1799 makes it a felony for private citizens to insert themselves into relations between the U.S. and other nations. But nobody has ever been prosecuted under this statute. After Jesse Jackson went to Cuba, Central America, and Syria in 1984—he was campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination—President Reagan wondered publicly whether Jackson had breached the Logan Act, but musing was as far as Reagan went. In the vitriolic debate of the 1980s over which faction the U.S. should support in Nicaragua—Sandinistas or Contras—Washington activists on both sides almost certainly breached the Logan Act. One group of liberals so feared FBI investigation that it shredded its files. (Nothing happened.) Since then, it could be argued, the rise of high-powered Washington lobbying firms on lucrative contracts to advise foreign governments has effectively shredded the Logan Act.
But the journeys by Clinton and Webb were clearly kosher because the U.S. government was involved in both. (Webb even flew into Burma on a U.S. Air Force plane.) But that category of intervention—nonofficial trips by current or former senior officials—does raise special problems. "So long as they go basically as facilitators, that's fine," says Ambassador Martin Indyk, who represented Washington in Israel during the Clinton administration. "But as negotiators? That's a different matter."
Yet it was exactly because of this semi-official imprimatur that Clinton and Webb succeeded. Both sides took Clinton's trip very seriously: Clinton had long discussions in Washington, and he took with him David Straub, for years one of the State Department's premier experts on Korea. (Straub, retired from the Foreign Service and teaching at Stanford, could only barely be called an "unofficial" traveler.) And, based on the official photographs, says Jonathan Pollack, a North Korea expert at the Naval War College, Pyongyang was no less serious. Media attention in the West may have focused on how spry North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, looked. But Pollack points to the official standing beside him, Kang Suk Ju. He's Kim's most senior foreign policy adviser—so senior, says Pollack, that U.S. diplomat Christopher Hill, who spent two years in the last administration trying to restart stalled negotiations with North Korea, was never allowed to met him. The North's message couldn't have been clearer: "Engage us at a sufficiently senior level, and we will respond."
The diplomatic kabuki behind Webb's trip was more restrained, but his efforts were just as worthy. Burma was just one stop on a five-nation Asian tour he'd begun to set up well before Yettaw's blunderings. Webb has long been a critic of U.S. sanctions on Burma, a policy in place since the ruling junta annulled the 1990 elections that would have made Suu Kyi prime minister. He has, equally consistently, warned the junta that only Suu Kyi's release could open the door to a new relationship with the United States. Now, as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's East Asia & Pacific subcommittee, Webb had the clout to get the junta's attention. He was granted an audience with its leader, General Than Shwe, and—even more remarkably—allowed a 40-minute session with Suu Kyi herself. The junta seems to have thrown in Yettaw's release as a sort of door prize, since no other high-ranking American has visited in years.
Still, this sort of results-oriented approach can be a double-edged sword. Former president Jimmy Carter alone has shown both edges. His indefatigable mediation efforts around the world have given him unique status: part lone visionary, part loose cannon. When the Haitian military needed to be persuaded to step aside in 1994, Carter was President Clinton's choice to lead a heavyweight U.S. team. On the other hand, when Carter went to North Korea that same year, Pollack says, "He went almost in defiance of the Clinton administration. And he literally made policy on the spot." Carter negotiated the outline of what became the "Agreed Framework" with North Korea and announced it to the CNN crew that had accompanied him, without clearing it first with the White House. Carter's interventions in the Middle East have been equally freelance, and sometimes deeply unwelcome to the U.S.—for example his embrace of Hamas. But, Dobbins says, "On balance even Carter was useful, though he did cause successive administrations some degree of anxiety".
Even "humanitarian" missions, like those by Clinton and Webb, have a calculus behind them. "The upside is that you get your people back, if the trip works," said Ambassador Thomas Pickering, who spoke for America in Russia, India, and Turtle Bay. "A downside is that you may have to pay a political price—the escalating level of visitor, for example—that otherwise could be given later as part of any negotiation." On the whole, Pickering sees benefits. The emissaries can "act as icebreakers." Their observations will be useful, while the contacts they make can come in handy later. And the more they are used, the less likely despotic regimes are to see them as validation so much as Washington's preferred tools—senior enough to carry messages to and fro, while unofficial enough to be disavowed if necessary.
Dobbins points to the other possible downside: "I can see the argument that you're just encouraging these kinds of regimes, and they'll just do it again. And that's probably true. But then, if they do it again, we'll do it again. We've got lots of former presidents, and it's not as if we have to husband this kind of influence. It's a renewable resource." If the last month is any indication, it's one the Obama team intends to keep tapping.
It seems absurd to send U.S. officials—even a retired one—to collect Americans imprisoned abroad. But often enough, it makes good sense.
By John Barry | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Aug 21, 2009 | Updated: 7:52 p.m. ET Aug 21, 2009
Why? Now that Laura Ling and Euna Lee are home from North Korea and John Yettaw has been freed from a Myanmar prison, that's surely the question. Why were three idiots worth rescue missions by a former U.S. president and a serving U.S. senator? They weren't kidnapped; they weren't hostages. All three knowingly broke the laws of the countries they were in, and, in the process, brought harm to innocents. The pair caught inside North Korea put at risk members of the human-rights network that was helping them with their story. (The two have still to give their version of events; Brent Marcus, spokesman for their employer, Current TV, says the network is respecting their request to have time to reunite with their families.) Yettaw's adventure led to a further 18 months of house arrest for the iconic opposition leader, 64-year-old Aung San Suu Kyi, who has already been confined for 14 of the past 20 years.
"I'm not particularly sympathetic," says Ambassador James Dobbins, a former senior State Department official and now director of RAND's international-security programs. "My immediate reaction is to wonder why people can't spend a few years in jail rather than counting on us to rescue them when they do things that are obviously stupid as well as illegal—things for which we would put them in jail in many cases. I can imagine the State Department grinds its teeth in frustration every time they find a new American who's done something stupid and now requires a former president of the United States go rescue them." Not many get such VIP treatment, of course. There are, according to the State Department, 2,652 Americans in jails around the world. (Many doing time for drug offenses.) Why were these three singled out for heavyweight intervention?
The answer is realpolitik. The Obama administration wants lines of communication to the North Korean and Burmese governments. "Humanitarian" missions to free Americans offer Obama an opportunity he wouldn't otherwise have. Clinton's trip to Pyongyang had huge behind-the-scenes help from the State Department, according to a source there who asked to remain anonymous; Webb's trip to Myanmar was blessed by it, according to reports.
Technically, the Logan Act of 1799 makes it a felony for private citizens to insert themselves into relations between the U.S. and other nations. But nobody has ever been prosecuted under this statute. After Jesse Jackson went to Cuba, Central America, and Syria in 1984—he was campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination—President Reagan wondered publicly whether Jackson had breached the Logan Act, but musing was as far as Reagan went. In the vitriolic debate of the 1980s over which faction the U.S. should support in Nicaragua—Sandinistas or Contras—Washington activists on both sides almost certainly breached the Logan Act. One group of liberals so feared FBI investigation that it shredded its files. (Nothing happened.) Since then, it could be argued, the rise of high-powered Washington lobbying firms on lucrative contracts to advise foreign governments has effectively shredded the Logan Act.
But the journeys by Clinton and Webb were clearly kosher because the U.S. government was involved in both. (Webb even flew into Burma on a U.S. Air Force plane.) But that category of intervention—nonofficial trips by current or former senior officials—does raise special problems. "So long as they go basically as facilitators, that's fine," says Ambassador Martin Indyk, who represented Washington in Israel during the Clinton administration. "But as negotiators? That's a different matter."
Yet it was exactly because of this semi-official imprimatur that Clinton and Webb succeeded. Both sides took Clinton's trip very seriously: Clinton had long discussions in Washington, and he took with him David Straub, for years one of the State Department's premier experts on Korea. (Straub, retired from the Foreign Service and teaching at Stanford, could only barely be called an "unofficial" traveler.) And, based on the official photographs, says Jonathan Pollack, a North Korea expert at the Naval War College, Pyongyang was no less serious. Media attention in the West may have focused on how spry North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, looked. But Pollack points to the official standing beside him, Kang Suk Ju. He's Kim's most senior foreign policy adviser—so senior, says Pollack, that U.S. diplomat Christopher Hill, who spent two years in the last administration trying to restart stalled negotiations with North Korea, was never allowed to met him. The North's message couldn't have been clearer: "Engage us at a sufficiently senior level, and we will respond."
The diplomatic kabuki behind Webb's trip was more restrained, but his efforts were just as worthy. Burma was just one stop on a five-nation Asian tour he'd begun to set up well before Yettaw's blunderings. Webb has long been a critic of U.S. sanctions on Burma, a policy in place since the ruling junta annulled the 1990 elections that would have made Suu Kyi prime minister. He has, equally consistently, warned the junta that only Suu Kyi's release could open the door to a new relationship with the United States. Now, as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's East Asia & Pacific subcommittee, Webb had the clout to get the junta's attention. He was granted an audience with its leader, General Than Shwe, and—even more remarkably—allowed a 40-minute session with Suu Kyi herself. The junta seems to have thrown in Yettaw's release as a sort of door prize, since no other high-ranking American has visited in years.
Still, this sort of results-oriented approach can be a double-edged sword. Former president Jimmy Carter alone has shown both edges. His indefatigable mediation efforts around the world have given him unique status: part lone visionary, part loose cannon. When the Haitian military needed to be persuaded to step aside in 1994, Carter was President Clinton's choice to lead a heavyweight U.S. team. On the other hand, when Carter went to North Korea that same year, Pollack says, "He went almost in defiance of the Clinton administration. And he literally made policy on the spot." Carter negotiated the outline of what became the "Agreed Framework" with North Korea and announced it to the CNN crew that had accompanied him, without clearing it first with the White House. Carter's interventions in the Middle East have been equally freelance, and sometimes deeply unwelcome to the U.S.—for example his embrace of Hamas. But, Dobbins says, "On balance even Carter was useful, though he did cause successive administrations some degree of anxiety".
Even "humanitarian" missions, like those by Clinton and Webb, have a calculus behind them. "The upside is that you get your people back, if the trip works," said Ambassador Thomas Pickering, who spoke for America in Russia, India, and Turtle Bay. "A downside is that you may have to pay a political price—the escalating level of visitor, for example—that otherwise could be given later as part of any negotiation." On the whole, Pickering sees benefits. The emissaries can "act as icebreakers." Their observations will be useful, while the contacts they make can come in handy later. And the more they are used, the less likely despotic regimes are to see them as validation so much as Washington's preferred tools—senior enough to carry messages to and fro, while unofficial enough to be disavowed if necessary.
Dobbins points to the other possible downside: "I can see the argument that you're just encouraging these kinds of regimes, and they'll just do it again. And that's probably true. But then, if they do it again, we'll do it again. We've got lots of former presidents, and it's not as if we have to husband this kind of influence. It's a renewable resource." If the last month is any indication, it's one the Obama team intends to keep tapping.
*************************************************************
EarthTimes - Liquor distillery fire kills five near Yangon
Posted : Sun, 23 Aug 2009 09:11:40 GMT
Yangon - A fire at a liquor distillery on the outskirts of Yangon killed at least five people and injured eight others, witnesses said Sunday. The fire raged through the Myanmar Winery Distillery Company Limited, situated about 50 kilometres north of Yangon, all Saturday night, leaving four employees dead who could be identified and one unidentified body.
Eight people were injured in the blaze, five of whom were admitted to Yangon General Hospital, and three others at Hlegu Hospital.
Some 47 fire trucks were sent to control the flames, which destroyed at least one of the vehicles before the fire was put out, a witness said.
The distillery, producer of a local liquor, was owned by five Myanmar nationals.
Posted : Sun, 23 Aug 2009 09:11:40 GMT
Yangon - A fire at a liquor distillery on the outskirts of Yangon killed at least five people and injured eight others, witnesses said Sunday. The fire raged through the Myanmar Winery Distillery Company Limited, situated about 50 kilometres north of Yangon, all Saturday night, leaving four employees dead who could be identified and one unidentified body.
Eight people were injured in the blaze, five of whom were admitted to Yangon General Hospital, and three others at Hlegu Hospital.
Some 47 fire trucks were sent to control the flames, which destroyed at least one of the vehicles before the fire was put out, a witness said.
The distillery, producer of a local liquor, was owned by five Myanmar nationals.
*************************************************************
EarthTimes - First-ever Japanese fashion show opens in Yangon
Posted : Sun, 23 Aug 2009 10:26:44 GMT
Yangon - In an effort to promote Japanese-Myanmar friendship, the first-ever Japanese fashion show was held at the posh Strand Hotel in Yangon Sunday, featuring a collection by well-known designer Junko Koshino. "I hope friendship between Myanmar and Japan can be promoted through this event," Japanese Ambassador Yasuaki Nogawa said. The Tokyo government sponsored the event as part of the Mekong-Japan Exchange Year 2009.
"It is a very good opportunity for sharing culture between two countries," Koshino said.
Her collection was shown off by 17 Myanmar models and four Japanese models.
In attendance were the members of the Japanese community in Yangon, government elites and other invited guests.
"It is a new step for the history of Myanmar-Japan friendship," a statement from the Japanese embassy in Yangon said.
Posted : Sun, 23 Aug 2009 10:26:44 GMT
Yangon - In an effort to promote Japanese-Myanmar friendship, the first-ever Japanese fashion show was held at the posh Strand Hotel in Yangon Sunday, featuring a collection by well-known designer Junko Koshino. "I hope friendship between Myanmar and Japan can be promoted through this event," Japanese Ambassador Yasuaki Nogawa said. The Tokyo government sponsored the event as part of the Mekong-Japan Exchange Year 2009.
"It is a very good opportunity for sharing culture between two countries," Koshino said.
Her collection was shown off by 17 Myanmar models and four Japanese models.
In attendance were the members of the Japanese community in Yangon, government elites and other invited guests.
"It is a new step for the history of Myanmar-Japan friendship," a statement from the Japanese embassy in Yangon said.
*************************************************************
EarthTimes - Bangladesh awards exploration rights in three offshore gas blocks
Posted : Mon, 24 Aug 2009 14:56:38 GMT
Dhaka - Bangladesh on Monday awarded three offshore gas blocks to two international oil companies for exploration and extraction of hydrocarbon in its territorial waters in the Bay of Bengal, officials said. US oil company ConocoPhillips will explore two blocks while Irish firm Tullow will explore the third, reported the government.
Contracts with both countries include provisions for export of gas in liquefied from.
Bangladesh has disputes with India and Myanmar about some of the blocks in the bay, but is in negotiations "to end the long standing disputes over maritime boundary. We are following a policy not to go for gas exploration works at the disputed areas," Muhith said.
Bangladesh should be able to lodge a claim about its maritime boundary with the United Nation within a June 2011 deadline, officials said.
Energy secretary Mohammad Mohsin said ConocoPhillips should conclude its exploration work with nine years. Tullow should wrap up its explorations within eight years.
Bangladesh, which has proven gas reserves of around 7 trillion cubic feet, is desperately looking for new reserves as an ongoing gas crisis in the country is expected to turn severe in 2011.
The country's industrial production and power generation have suffered as the country has faced a shortage of around 250 million cubic feet per day.
Posted : Mon, 24 Aug 2009 14:56:38 GMT
Dhaka - Bangladesh on Monday awarded three offshore gas blocks to two international oil companies for exploration and extraction of hydrocarbon in its territorial waters in the Bay of Bengal, officials said. US oil company ConocoPhillips will explore two blocks while Irish firm Tullow will explore the third, reported the government.
Contracts with both countries include provisions for export of gas in liquefied from.
Bangladesh has disputes with India and Myanmar about some of the blocks in the bay, but is in negotiations "to end the long standing disputes over maritime boundary. We are following a policy not to go for gas exploration works at the disputed areas," Muhith said.
Bangladesh should be able to lodge a claim about its maritime boundary with the United Nation within a June 2011 deadline, officials said.
Energy secretary Mohammad Mohsin said ConocoPhillips should conclude its exploration work with nine years. Tullow should wrap up its explorations within eight years.
Bangladesh, which has proven gas reserves of around 7 trillion cubic feet, is desperately looking for new reserves as an ongoing gas crisis in the country is expected to turn severe in 2011.
The country's industrial production and power generation have suffered as the country has faced a shortage of around 250 million cubic feet per day.
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Channel NewsAsia - Hundreds rally in Tokyo for release of Aung San Suu Kyi
Posted: 23 August 2009 2022 hrs
TOKYO: Some 300 Myanmar people held a rally in central Tokyo on Sunday, demanding the military government release pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose house arrest was extended this month.
The demonstrators, many wearing T-shirts with her picture, marched through the streets of the Shibuya district in downtown Tokyo, shouting slogans in unison and handing out leaflets to weekend shoppers.
They carried signs saying "Unjustice Court of Burma" or "Free Daw Aung San Suu Kyi", using a Burmese honorific for Suu Kyi, who has been detained for 14 of the past 20 years.
Earlier this month a prison court in Yangon convicted the Nobel Prize laureate for breaching security laws and sentenced her to house arrest for 18 months, drawing international condemnation.
Posted: 23 August 2009 2022 hrs
TOKYO: Some 300 Myanmar people held a rally in central Tokyo on Sunday, demanding the military government release pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose house arrest was extended this month.
The demonstrators, many wearing T-shirts with her picture, marched through the streets of the Shibuya district in downtown Tokyo, shouting slogans in unison and handing out leaflets to weekend shoppers.
They carried signs saying "Unjustice Court of Burma" or "Free Daw Aung San Suu Kyi", using a Burmese honorific for Suu Kyi, who has been detained for 14 of the past 20 years.
Earlier this month a prison court in Yangon convicted the Nobel Prize laureate for breaching security laws and sentenced her to house arrest for 18 months, drawing international condemnation.
*************************************************************
Myanmar, S Korea strive for enhancing bilateral co-op in multi-sectors
www.chinaview.cn 2009-08-23 20:22:10
by Chen Meihua
YANGON, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar and South Korea have been striving for enhancing bilateral relations especially bilateral cooperation in a number of sectors such as economy, investment, education, tourism and culture.
According to the official statistics, Myanmar-South Korea bilateral trade amounted to 252 million U.S. dollars in the fiscal year of 2008-09 (April-March), significantly increasing from 108.2million dollars in 2007-08.
Of the total, Myanmar's export to Korea took 63.7 million dollars while its import from the East Asian country stood 188.48 million dollars.
South Korea has become the 8th largest trading partner of Myanmar which exported to Korea about 3,000 items of goods covering agricultural produces, marine and forest products, and garments, while it mainly imported from Korea steel, garment, electrical and electronic goods.
In a bid to boost trade with Myanmar, South Korea granted import duty free and quota free on 253 more Myanmar goods items for this year which include agricultural produces, marine and forestry products, textile and traditional handicraft products.
South Korea's duty exemption on the Myanmar commodities has brought the total number of goods items at HS 6 digit level originated from least-developed countries including Myanmar to 4,074.
In the first half of this year, with the order increasing by 30percent, Myanmar's garment export to South Korea rose with a proceeds of 14.4 million U.S. dollars, up 16.2 percent compared with the same period of last year.
In the investment sector, South Korea's investment in Myanmar reached 240 million U.S. dollars up to March this year since 1988, standing as the 10th largest foreign investor in the country according to the Union of Myanmar Chamber of Commerce and Industry (UMFCCI).
The East Asian country's investment in 37 projects accounted for 1.52 percent of Myanmar's total foreign investment of 15 billion dollars, the UMFCCI said.
Meanwhile, a South Korean leading private HC company is seeking new investment in Yadanar Theinki mining block in Myanmar's northern Shan state on a mutually-beneficial basis and a field survey has been underway since early this year.
Moreover, A total of seven Myanmar companies and 70 Korean companies have sought investment and trade worth of 31 million U.S. dollars in Myanmar following a sideline meeting of private entrepreneurs of both countries at the June commemorative summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and South Korea held in Jeju Island.
To encourage Myanmar workers to work in South Korea and solve domestic unemployment problem, under an agreement between the two countries' labor ministries, Myanmar has sent 389 workers in the first seven months of this year to work in the sectors of agriculture, marine, and industries under an employment permit system (EP system).
At the same time, with the sponsor of Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), dozens of government employees from various ministries are to be sent this year to pursue advanced technological expertise in the industry and IT fields under Korean government sponsorship.
So far, a total of 1,000 Myanmar state employees have been sent under KOICA sponsorship since 1991.
As part of the two countries' cooperation in the technological development in the irrigation sector, the KOICA is also building an irrigation-related laboratory center in country's second largest of Mandalay.
The KOICA has stationed in Myanmar since 1991 providing the technical expertise and equipment needed for social service organizations as well as training in related fields.
Dealing with the education sector, the South Korean government is offering more scholarships for Myanmar pre-university students to study Korean language in Korean university for three years and winning students could benefit from studying at the National Institute for International Education (NIED) in South Korea's capital city of Seoul.
In tourism sector, the KOICA has been cooperating with the Myanmar Ministry of Culture in implementing project of greening the ancient city of Bagan to attract more world travelers to the tourist site. The move would also affect prevention against forest depletion and preserving natural environment.
Furthermore, the two countries have also been cooperating in the sector of culture. Besides launching Korean film week, Korean TV and the KBS shot a documentary film -- Insight in Asia 2009 during last year and more documentary video on Myanmar's Theravada Buddhism titled "Road to Nibbana" will also be shot in the country's famous Inlay Water Village in northern Shan State.
In November last year, the KBS group had also come to Myanmar and video Myanmar's ancient city of Bagan where over 2,000 pagodas and monasteries lie.
In February this year, the Myanmar Ministry of Information and the Korea Broadcasting Institute (KBI) signed an agreement on shooting documentary film on Myanmar's Buddhism and natural scenery which will be broadcast in Korean TV channels such as KBS-1, KBS-2, MBC, and SBS.
www.chinaview.cn 2009-08-23 20:22:10
by Chen Meihua
YANGON, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar and South Korea have been striving for enhancing bilateral relations especially bilateral cooperation in a number of sectors such as economy, investment, education, tourism and culture.
According to the official statistics, Myanmar-South Korea bilateral trade amounted to 252 million U.S. dollars in the fiscal year of 2008-09 (April-March), significantly increasing from 108.2million dollars in 2007-08.
Of the total, Myanmar's export to Korea took 63.7 million dollars while its import from the East Asian country stood 188.48 million dollars.
South Korea has become the 8th largest trading partner of Myanmar which exported to Korea about 3,000 items of goods covering agricultural produces, marine and forest products, and garments, while it mainly imported from Korea steel, garment, electrical and electronic goods.
In a bid to boost trade with Myanmar, South Korea granted import duty free and quota free on 253 more Myanmar goods items for this year which include agricultural produces, marine and forestry products, textile and traditional handicraft products.
South Korea's duty exemption on the Myanmar commodities has brought the total number of goods items at HS 6 digit level originated from least-developed countries including Myanmar to 4,074.
In the first half of this year, with the order increasing by 30percent, Myanmar's garment export to South Korea rose with a proceeds of 14.4 million U.S. dollars, up 16.2 percent compared with the same period of last year.
In the investment sector, South Korea's investment in Myanmar reached 240 million U.S. dollars up to March this year since 1988, standing as the 10th largest foreign investor in the country according to the Union of Myanmar Chamber of Commerce and Industry (UMFCCI).
The East Asian country's investment in 37 projects accounted for 1.52 percent of Myanmar's total foreign investment of 15 billion dollars, the UMFCCI said.
Meanwhile, a South Korean leading private HC company is seeking new investment in Yadanar Theinki mining block in Myanmar's northern Shan state on a mutually-beneficial basis and a field survey has been underway since early this year.
Moreover, A total of seven Myanmar companies and 70 Korean companies have sought investment and trade worth of 31 million U.S. dollars in Myanmar following a sideline meeting of private entrepreneurs of both countries at the June commemorative summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and South Korea held in Jeju Island.
To encourage Myanmar workers to work in South Korea and solve domestic unemployment problem, under an agreement between the two countries' labor ministries, Myanmar has sent 389 workers in the first seven months of this year to work in the sectors of agriculture, marine, and industries under an employment permit system (EP system).
At the same time, with the sponsor of Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), dozens of government employees from various ministries are to be sent this year to pursue advanced technological expertise in the industry and IT fields under Korean government sponsorship.
So far, a total of 1,000 Myanmar state employees have been sent under KOICA sponsorship since 1991.
As part of the two countries' cooperation in the technological development in the irrigation sector, the KOICA is also building an irrigation-related laboratory center in country's second largest of Mandalay.
The KOICA has stationed in Myanmar since 1991 providing the technical expertise and equipment needed for social service organizations as well as training in related fields.
Dealing with the education sector, the South Korean government is offering more scholarships for Myanmar pre-university students to study Korean language in Korean university for three years and winning students could benefit from studying at the National Institute for International Education (NIED) in South Korea's capital city of Seoul.
In tourism sector, the KOICA has been cooperating with the Myanmar Ministry of Culture in implementing project of greening the ancient city of Bagan to attract more world travelers to the tourist site. The move would also affect prevention against forest depletion and preserving natural environment.
Furthermore, the two countries have also been cooperating in the sector of culture. Besides launching Korean film week, Korean TV and the KBS shot a documentary film -- Insight in Asia 2009 during last year and more documentary video on Myanmar's Theravada Buddhism titled "Road to Nibbana" will also be shot in the country's famous Inlay Water Village in northern Shan State.
In November last year, the KBS group had also come to Myanmar and video Myanmar's ancient city of Bagan where over 2,000 pagodas and monasteries lie.
In February this year, the Myanmar Ministry of Information and the Korea Broadcasting Institute (KBI) signed an agreement on shooting documentary film on Myanmar's Buddhism and natural scenery which will be broadcast in Korean TV channels such as KBS-1, KBS-2, MBC, and SBS.
*************************************************************
Myanmar to hold mid-year gems emporium in Oct-Nov
www.chinaview.cn 2009-08-23 11:52:47
YANGON, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar will hold a mid-year gems emporium here in October-November this year to encourage national gem traders to sell more quality gems, jade, pearl and jewelry, sources with the Central Committee for Holding Myanmar Gems Emporium said Sunday.
Without specific date set, the 18th Mid-Year Gems Emporium will take place at the Myanmar Convention Center on the basis of competitive bidding, the sources said.
Mid-year gems emporium is introduced in addition to the annual ones to boost the country's foreign exchange earning.
In March this year, an annual gems emporium, which was the 46th,took place in Yangon, putting over 5,000 lots of jade among others.
Around 2,300 foreign merchants mostly from China, China's Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, India, Italy, Britain, Japan, Australia, the United States and Canada attended the annual event which reportedly fetched 191 million U.S. dollars.
Again in late June this year, Myanmar held a 13-day special gem show here, earning 292 million dollars.
The authorities designated the proceeds from the sale of gems at these emporiums as legal export earning to encourage the private sector in the development of the gem industry.
Myanmar started to hold gem shows annually in 1964, introducing the mid-year one in 1992 and the special one in 2004.
Myanmar, a well-known producer of gems in the world, boasts ruby, diamond, cat's eye, emerald, topaz, pearl, sapphire, coral and a variety of garnet tinged with yellow.
The government's Central Statistical Organization revealed that in the fiscal year 2008-09, Myanmar produced 32,921 tons of jade and 18,728 million carats of gems which include ruby, sapphire, spinel and peridot, as well as 201,081 mommis (754 kilograms) of pearl.
www.chinaview.cn 2009-08-23 11:52:47
YANGON, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar will hold a mid-year gems emporium here in October-November this year to encourage national gem traders to sell more quality gems, jade, pearl and jewelry, sources with the Central Committee for Holding Myanmar Gems Emporium said Sunday.
Without specific date set, the 18th Mid-Year Gems Emporium will take place at the Myanmar Convention Center on the basis of competitive bidding, the sources said.
Mid-year gems emporium is introduced in addition to the annual ones to boost the country's foreign exchange earning.
In March this year, an annual gems emporium, which was the 46th,took place in Yangon, putting over 5,000 lots of jade among others.
Around 2,300 foreign merchants mostly from China, China's Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, India, Italy, Britain, Japan, Australia, the United States and Canada attended the annual event which reportedly fetched 191 million U.S. dollars.
Again in late June this year, Myanmar held a 13-day special gem show here, earning 292 million dollars.
The authorities designated the proceeds from the sale of gems at these emporiums as legal export earning to encourage the private sector in the development of the gem industry.
Myanmar started to hold gem shows annually in 1964, introducing the mid-year one in 1992 and the special one in 2004.
Myanmar, a well-known producer of gems in the world, boasts ruby, diamond, cat's eye, emerald, topaz, pearl, sapphire, coral and a variety of garnet tinged with yellow.
The government's Central Statistical Organization revealed that in the fiscal year 2008-09, Myanmar produced 32,921 tons of jade and 18,728 million carats of gems which include ruby, sapphire, spinel and peridot, as well as 201,081 mommis (754 kilograms) of pearl.
*************************************************************
One arrested with arms from Indo-Myanmar border
STAFF WRITER 18:32 HRS IST
Aizawl, Aug 22 (PTI) One person was arrested with arms at Champhai market near Indo-Myanmar border, an official statement said today.
Officers of fourth battalion of Assam Rifles held the man and seized three .22 mm pistols and as many magazines from him on August 19, the statement said.
The man was handed over to the officers of Champhai police station the next day, the statement said.
It was still unknown whether the arms were meant for north east insurgents, sources said.
Mizoram, which shares 722-km porous international border with Myanmar and Bangladesh, has been one of the biggest routes for arms and narcotics trafficking in India.
STAFF WRITER 18:32 HRS IST
Aizawl, Aug 22 (PTI) One person was arrested with arms at Champhai market near Indo-Myanmar border, an official statement said today.
Officers of fourth battalion of Assam Rifles held the man and seized three .22 mm pistols and as many magazines from him on August 19, the statement said.
The man was handed over to the officers of Champhai police station the next day, the statement said.
It was still unknown whether the arms were meant for north east insurgents, sources said.
Mizoram, which shares 722-km porous international border with Myanmar and Bangladesh, has been one of the biggest routes for arms and narcotics trafficking in India.
*************************************************************
Bangkok Post - DAMMING OF A MIGHTY RIVER
The Tasang and Hutyi dam projects may force the Karenni people to relocate from their homes and lose their heritage
Writer: By Pongsit Pangsrivongse
Published: 23/08/2009 at 12:00 AM
Newspaper section: Brunch
The mighty Salween River stretches from the high plains of the Tibetan Plateau to the Andaman Sea. In Burma, it runs through the Mon and Shan States where it is the lifeblood of the indigenous people, nourishing the land and feeding the countless ethnic groups living there. Though their customs, languages and traditions vary, one thing unites them all - their reliance on the powerful Salween River. The fact that the fruitful river has always been full of fish enforces a sense of security for them. However, their sustainable lifestyle is reaching a precarious chapter, according to concerns echoed in the seminar on the construction of Tasang and Hutyi Dams. The recent seminar was arranged by local anti-dam groups, including Towards Ecological Recovery and Regional Alliance (Terra), Salween Watch, Healthy Public Policy Foundation (HPPF) and guest speakers such as Htoo Paw, a representative of the Karenni Human Rights Group.
According to the dam-protesting organiser, the construction of the Tasang and Hutyi Dams close to Tak province on the Thai-Burmese border will be a dire consequence to the ecology of the river and villagers who depend on its resources.
But the seminar did not touch only the environmental side.
Despite the fact that the project is purely civil construction, it has slowly unveiled the conflict between the junta and the indigenous people highlighted recently when the Karen National Union (KNU) was attacked by troops from the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) and the ruling junta's State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), according to Htoo Paw.
This invasion reportedly forced more than 4,000 Karennis out of their homes, thus adding to the ever growing number of desperate refugees attempting to seek asylum in Thailand.
What perhaps is more painful for the locals than losing their homes and their land is losing their heritage and their source of income and life staple. With the flooding of the land they have lived on for centuries, members of these tight-knit communities will be dispersed. Many of them will no longer be able to rely on the waters for fish.
The fear is real. According to Dr Nirand Pitakwatchara, a member of National Human Right Commission, some of the dam projects spelt doom for communities living around the project. "This is a lesson that should have been learned from the controversial Pak Moon Dam where the presence of a reservoir resulted in the decimation of fish species," said Dr Nirand, also a former Thai senator.
The implications extend beyond the rights of the indigenous people.
Forced relocation has already led to exponential migration into Thailand. Salween Watch, a Chiang Mai-based non-governmental organisation, estimated about 60,000 Burmese ethnic villagers will be displaced by the Tasang Dam alone.
With their land turned into a colossal lake covering 500,000 rai (80,000 hectares) and faced with the threat of the junta, they will have nowhere to turn but Tak province in Thailand, adding more to security problems.
Social stability aside, the two projects should also be revised in terms of investment worth. The two dams were the realisation of power plants under Thailand's Power Development Plan (PDP).
According to Suphakit Nuntavorakarn, economic researcher at Healthy Public Policy Foundation (HPPF), both projects should be revised or scrapped as the demand for energy has been lowered since the economic contraction.
Since 2003, according to an estimate by the HPPF, the electricity surplus has been around 1,000 megawatt (MW) each year. A building facility for one megawatt of electricity costs 30 million baht; around 30 billion baht was invested on unused electricity. Last year, the economic crisis resulted in an overestimation of electricity needed, resulting in an absurd surplus of 4,333MW.
It is not that the government did not recognise this over projection and risk of investment.
In February, the energy ministry revised the new PDP for 2009 to 2024. Plans to import electricity from neighbouring countries decreased to 5,036MW, from 13,244MW. The Hutgyi and Tasang Dams' construction should have been dropped along with the reductions in the import of electricity.
In these uncertain economic times it would be unwise to dispense funds so recklessly. Such an irrational investment will certainly not justify the catastrophic consequences of this dam, which will demolish the invaluable cultural heritage and dignity of the people so bonded to this great river, concluded the participants.
How are you helping to reduce your carbon footprint? Share your eco-friendly activities, or comments, or disapprovals and email outlook@bangkokpost.co.th. Remember to type 'Earth Alert' in the subject box.
The Tasang and Hutyi dam projects may force the Karenni people to relocate from their homes and lose their heritage
Writer: By Pongsit Pangsrivongse
Published: 23/08/2009 at 12:00 AM
Newspaper section: Brunch
The mighty Salween River stretches from the high plains of the Tibetan Plateau to the Andaman Sea. In Burma, it runs through the Mon and Shan States where it is the lifeblood of the indigenous people, nourishing the land and feeding the countless ethnic groups living there. Though their customs, languages and traditions vary, one thing unites them all - their reliance on the powerful Salween River. The fact that the fruitful river has always been full of fish enforces a sense of security for them. However, their sustainable lifestyle is reaching a precarious chapter, according to concerns echoed in the seminar on the construction of Tasang and Hutyi Dams. The recent seminar was arranged by local anti-dam groups, including Towards Ecological Recovery and Regional Alliance (Terra), Salween Watch, Healthy Public Policy Foundation (HPPF) and guest speakers such as Htoo Paw, a representative of the Karenni Human Rights Group.
According to the dam-protesting organiser, the construction of the Tasang and Hutyi Dams close to Tak province on the Thai-Burmese border will be a dire consequence to the ecology of the river and villagers who depend on its resources.
But the seminar did not touch only the environmental side.
Despite the fact that the project is purely civil construction, it has slowly unveiled the conflict between the junta and the indigenous people highlighted recently when the Karen National Union (KNU) was attacked by troops from the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) and the ruling junta's State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), according to Htoo Paw.
This invasion reportedly forced more than 4,000 Karennis out of their homes, thus adding to the ever growing number of desperate refugees attempting to seek asylum in Thailand.
What perhaps is more painful for the locals than losing their homes and their land is losing their heritage and their source of income and life staple. With the flooding of the land they have lived on for centuries, members of these tight-knit communities will be dispersed. Many of them will no longer be able to rely on the waters for fish.
The fear is real. According to Dr Nirand Pitakwatchara, a member of National Human Right Commission, some of the dam projects spelt doom for communities living around the project. "This is a lesson that should have been learned from the controversial Pak Moon Dam where the presence of a reservoir resulted in the decimation of fish species," said Dr Nirand, also a former Thai senator.
The implications extend beyond the rights of the indigenous people.
Forced relocation has already led to exponential migration into Thailand. Salween Watch, a Chiang Mai-based non-governmental organisation, estimated about 60,000 Burmese ethnic villagers will be displaced by the Tasang Dam alone.
With their land turned into a colossal lake covering 500,000 rai (80,000 hectares) and faced with the threat of the junta, they will have nowhere to turn but Tak province in Thailand, adding more to security problems.
Social stability aside, the two projects should also be revised in terms of investment worth. The two dams were the realisation of power plants under Thailand's Power Development Plan (PDP).
According to Suphakit Nuntavorakarn, economic researcher at Healthy Public Policy Foundation (HPPF), both projects should be revised or scrapped as the demand for energy has been lowered since the economic contraction.
Since 2003, according to an estimate by the HPPF, the electricity surplus has been around 1,000 megawatt (MW) each year. A building facility for one megawatt of electricity costs 30 million baht; around 30 billion baht was invested on unused electricity. Last year, the economic crisis resulted in an overestimation of electricity needed, resulting in an absurd surplus of 4,333MW.
It is not that the government did not recognise this over projection and risk of investment.
In February, the energy ministry revised the new PDP for 2009 to 2024. Plans to import electricity from neighbouring countries decreased to 5,036MW, from 13,244MW. The Hutgyi and Tasang Dams' construction should have been dropped along with the reductions in the import of electricity.
In these uncertain economic times it would be unwise to dispense funds so recklessly. Such an irrational investment will certainly not justify the catastrophic consequences of this dam, which will demolish the invaluable cultural heritage and dignity of the people so bonded to this great river, concluded the participants.
How are you helping to reduce your carbon footprint? Share your eco-friendly activities, or comments, or disapprovals and email outlook@bangkokpost.co.th. Remember to type 'Earth Alert' in the subject box.
*************************************************************
From The Sunday Times
August 23, 2009
Times Online - Tour operators defiant as Burma loophole is closed
Chris Haslam
A legal loophole allowing some of the UK’s leading operators to do business with Burma’s military junta has finally been closed, following a campaign by the pressure group Tourism Concern.
The new legislation makes it an offence for operators to provide financial benefits to prominent members of the military regime and its associates, many of whom have invested in luxury hotels and resorts in the impoverished country.
These include properties on Ngwe Saung beach, on the Bay of Bengal. Audley Travel, named by Tourism Concern as one of those operators using blacklisted hotels, describes it as an “unspoilt 15km stretch of white sand beach and local fishing villages with... several excellent boutique resorts.”
What the brochure doesn’t mention is that 16,000 locals were forcibly relocated to make way for development, 65% of farm land has been confiscated and fishing from those “unspoilt” beaches has been banned.
Audley defended its position on Burma, stating that it has removed from its website all properties with known connections to the government. “We strongly believe that responsibly managed tourism has positive effects,” it said. “Contact between travellers and the Burmese people brings greater understanding of the situation to both sides.”
Bales Worldwide, which offers the blacklisted Strand hotel, in Rangoon, said it was careful not to feature properties linked with the regime.
“We only use privately owned ground agents and internationally managed, non-government hotels,” it said.
“If our use of the Strand contravenes that policy, we will remove it from our portfolio.”
Other operators have argued that, while it is impossible to do business in Burma without enriching the regime, tourism has also brought desperately needed income to locals.
“Some small part of the money spent by travellers will end up with the government — that’s inevitable,” said Jim Louth, of Undiscovered Destinations. “But the benefits outweigh the negatives.”
Meanwhile, Burmese dissidents have dismissed claims that the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has changed her long-held stance on tourism to the country. A report in The Daily Telegraph claimed Suu Kyi had said tourism could help Burma, provided it was booked through private companies and not the government.
“I have never heard of our leader approving or supporting tourism to Burma while the regime is in power,” said Tayza Thuria, general secretary of the UK arm of Burma’s National League for Democracy.
With her northern shores under siege from toxic green algae, France’s tourism industry is now being attacked from the south by swarms of aggressive hornets, which have put six tourists in hospital and stung dozens more in the past fortnight. The Asian hornet, an invasive species accidentally introduced in 2005, has destroyed French honeybee populations and is now, it seems, turning its attention to humans. Attacks are most prevalent in southwest France, where authorities say anyone stung should seek immediate medical attention.
Posh chalets missing City boys
The exclusive ski company Descent International has gone into receivership, taking with it almost £500,000 in deposits from its well-heeled clientele, including a £30,000 down payment from the Duke of York for a week at one of the poshest chalets in the Alps.
Times are tough at the top end of the ski business, with former clients bereft of their bonuses and sales at an all-time low. One high-end operator admitted that it had sold just 11% of its stock by last week — against 38% by the same time last year — and another observed that the phones stopped ringing when Lehman Brothers went bust.
With so many operators on thin ice, The Sunday Times’s ski editor, Sean Newsom, says that it’s never been more important to book with a bonded operator, thus ensuring you get your money back if the company goes downhill. In past years, the coveted Christmas and half-term weeks were usually fully booked by mid-August; this year, despite having drastically reduced capacity, most operators still report peak-season availability.
Ski Dream said the combination of unprecedented availability and low prices make Christmas and New Year especially good value: “If you haven’t spent Christmas in the Alps, this is probably the best year ever to do so.”
August 23, 2009
Times Online - Tour operators defiant as Burma loophole is closed
Chris Haslam
A legal loophole allowing some of the UK’s leading operators to do business with Burma’s military junta has finally been closed, following a campaign by the pressure group Tourism Concern.
The new legislation makes it an offence for operators to provide financial benefits to prominent members of the military regime and its associates, many of whom have invested in luxury hotels and resorts in the impoverished country.
These include properties on Ngwe Saung beach, on the Bay of Bengal. Audley Travel, named by Tourism Concern as one of those operators using blacklisted hotels, describes it as an “unspoilt 15km stretch of white sand beach and local fishing villages with... several excellent boutique resorts.”
What the brochure doesn’t mention is that 16,000 locals were forcibly relocated to make way for development, 65% of farm land has been confiscated and fishing from those “unspoilt” beaches has been banned.
Audley defended its position on Burma, stating that it has removed from its website all properties with known connections to the government. “We strongly believe that responsibly managed tourism has positive effects,” it said. “Contact between travellers and the Burmese people brings greater understanding of the situation to both sides.”
Bales Worldwide, which offers the blacklisted Strand hotel, in Rangoon, said it was careful not to feature properties linked with the regime.
“We only use privately owned ground agents and internationally managed, non-government hotels,” it said.
“If our use of the Strand contravenes that policy, we will remove it from our portfolio.”
Other operators have argued that, while it is impossible to do business in Burma without enriching the regime, tourism has also brought desperately needed income to locals.
“Some small part of the money spent by travellers will end up with the government — that’s inevitable,” said Jim Louth, of Undiscovered Destinations. “But the benefits outweigh the negatives.”
Meanwhile, Burmese dissidents have dismissed claims that the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has changed her long-held stance on tourism to the country. A report in The Daily Telegraph claimed Suu Kyi had said tourism could help Burma, provided it was booked through private companies and not the government.
“I have never heard of our leader approving or supporting tourism to Burma while the regime is in power,” said Tayza Thuria, general secretary of the UK arm of Burma’s National League for Democracy.
With her northern shores under siege from toxic green algae, France’s tourism industry is now being attacked from the south by swarms of aggressive hornets, which have put six tourists in hospital and stung dozens more in the past fortnight. The Asian hornet, an invasive species accidentally introduced in 2005, has destroyed French honeybee populations and is now, it seems, turning its attention to humans. Attacks are most prevalent in southwest France, where authorities say anyone stung should seek immediate medical attention.
Posh chalets missing City boys
The exclusive ski company Descent International has gone into receivership, taking with it almost £500,000 in deposits from its well-heeled clientele, including a £30,000 down payment from the Duke of York for a week at one of the poshest chalets in the Alps.
Times are tough at the top end of the ski business, with former clients bereft of their bonuses and sales at an all-time low. One high-end operator admitted that it had sold just 11% of its stock by last week — against 38% by the same time last year — and another observed that the phones stopped ringing when Lehman Brothers went bust.
With so many operators on thin ice, The Sunday Times’s ski editor, Sean Newsom, says that it’s never been more important to book with a bonded operator, thus ensuring you get your money back if the company goes downhill. In past years, the coveted Christmas and half-term weeks were usually fully booked by mid-August; this year, despite having drastically reduced capacity, most operators still report peak-season availability.
Ski Dream said the combination of unprecedented availability and low prices make Christmas and New Year especially good value: “If you haven’t spent Christmas in the Alps, this is probably the best year ever to do so.”
*************************************************************
San Francisco Chronicle - Letters to the Editor: Abuses in Burma must end
Sunday, August 23, 2009
We cannot allow crimes against humanity to continue in Burma.
The Burmese military junta's recent guilty verdict against Aung San Suu Kyi starkly showed its plot to prevent the democratic icon from ending its crimes and illustrated a system continuing its unjust rule.
This system allows the regime to continue human-rights abuses. This includes the genocide in 3,300 ethnic villages and the internal displacement of 2 million Burmese refugees along Thailand's borders.
The world must focus its attention on Burma's situation but must be cautious in dealing with Burma. Sen. Jim Webb's recent visit can be manipulated to endorse the regime's crimes. We must use this opportunity to voice discouragement of these abuses to Burma's leaders.
Upon hearing of Aung San Suu Kyi's verdict, I became disappointed in Burma's continuing fall into calamity. Her unfair trial mocked justice and was a ploy used to prevent the spread of democracy. Just as the world reacted to the plight of South Africa, we must now focus on saving Burma. We must establish an international tribunal to prosecute this regime like the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. To heal this country, we must first end this dictatorship and allow democracy to take place.
JASON ROBLES, Pacifica
Sunday, August 23, 2009
We cannot allow crimes against humanity to continue in Burma.
The Burmese military junta's recent guilty verdict against Aung San Suu Kyi starkly showed its plot to prevent the democratic icon from ending its crimes and illustrated a system continuing its unjust rule.
This system allows the regime to continue human-rights abuses. This includes the genocide in 3,300 ethnic villages and the internal displacement of 2 million Burmese refugees along Thailand's borders.
The world must focus its attention on Burma's situation but must be cautious in dealing with Burma. Sen. Jim Webb's recent visit can be manipulated to endorse the regime's crimes. We must use this opportunity to voice discouragement of these abuses to Burma's leaders.
Upon hearing of Aung San Suu Kyi's verdict, I became disappointed in Burma's continuing fall into calamity. Her unfair trial mocked justice and was a ploy used to prevent the spread of democracy. Just as the world reacted to the plight of South Africa, we must now focus on saving Burma. We must establish an international tribunal to prosecute this regime like the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. To heal this country, we must first end this dictatorship and allow democracy to take place.
JASON ROBLES, Pacifica
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Aggregate Research Industries
ARI News - Hand grenade found in construction site in Myanmar former capital
Jun, 22 2009
(Yangon, Burma) -- A thickly-rusted hand grenade, suspected to be left by the World War-II, has been discovered in a construction site in Myanmar's former capital of Yangon, the local weekly Flower News reported Monday.
The grenade was unearthed recently by workers when they were digging deep below in the city's Bahan Township to start construction of a new building, the report said.
Meanwhile, a live bomb was also found in the reconstruction site of a burn-down supermarket, Yadanabon, in the second largest city of Mandalay in January this year.
The digger missed the trigger when the bomb was pushed, doubting that if the bomb was the left by the Japanese or the Allied Forces.
The 1,300-pound air-dropped bomb was assumed to be left by the Japanese or the Allied Forces during World War-II, according to the military experts.
ARI News - Hand grenade found in construction site in Myanmar former capital
Jun, 22 2009
(Yangon, Burma) -- A thickly-rusted hand grenade, suspected to be left by the World War-II, has been discovered in a construction site in Myanmar's former capital of Yangon, the local weekly Flower News reported Monday.
The grenade was unearthed recently by workers when they were digging deep below in the city's Bahan Township to start construction of a new building, the report said.
Meanwhile, a live bomb was also found in the reconstruction site of a burn-down supermarket, Yadanabon, in the second largest city of Mandalay in January this year.
The digger missed the trigger when the bomb was pushed, doubting that if the bomb was the left by the Japanese or the Allied Forces.
The 1,300-pound air-dropped bomb was assumed to be left by the Japanese or the Allied Forces during World War-II, according to the military experts.
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VOA News - Burma's Other Prisoners Still A Concern
21 August 2009
Burmese authorities have freed John Yettaw, who was convicted and sentenced following his uninvited visit to pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s house. In charges stemming from that incident, Ms. Suu Kyi was given an additional 18-month sentence, extending a detention that has lasted for much of the last 19 years.
While the United States welcomes Mr. Yettaw’s release, it remains very concerned about the continued detention of Ms. Suu Kyi and more than 2,100 other political prisoners, including Min Ko Naing, Ko Ko Gyi, and Su Su Nwe, who have been denied their liberty because of their pursuit of a government that respects the will, rights, and aspirations of all Burmese citizens.
While traveling in Burma in early May, Mr. Yettaw swam across a lake near Ms. Suu Kyi's home, driven he said by a vision that terrorists were bent on killing her. He was sentenced to a 7-year prison term, including 4 years of hard labor, on charges that he violated the terms of her house arrest. For allegedly harboring him, Ms. Suu Kyi’s sentence extends a detention that has lasted for much of the last 19 years.
President Barack Obama said he was pleased with the Burmese government's decision to free Mr. Yettaw. Burma has essentially been a military dictatorship for most of the last 47 years, and the U.S. has been looking for signs that Burma is fundamentally changing its policies. Mr. Yettaw's release, however well intended, is not an indication that that is happening.
Thousands of political activists remain in jail. Their release would be significant. Burma's military leaders should also engage in a meaningful dialogue with their political opponents and move toward a peaceful transition to genuine democracy and national reconciliation.
21 August 2009
Burmese authorities have freed John Yettaw, who was convicted and sentenced following his uninvited visit to pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s house. In charges stemming from that incident, Ms. Suu Kyi was given an additional 18-month sentence, extending a detention that has lasted for much of the last 19 years.
While the United States welcomes Mr. Yettaw’s release, it remains very concerned about the continued detention of Ms. Suu Kyi and more than 2,100 other political prisoners, including Min Ko Naing, Ko Ko Gyi, and Su Su Nwe, who have been denied their liberty because of their pursuit of a government that respects the will, rights, and aspirations of all Burmese citizens.
While traveling in Burma in early May, Mr. Yettaw swam across a lake near Ms. Suu Kyi's home, driven he said by a vision that terrorists were bent on killing her. He was sentenced to a 7-year prison term, including 4 years of hard labor, on charges that he violated the terms of her house arrest. For allegedly harboring him, Ms. Suu Kyi’s sentence extends a detention that has lasted for much of the last 19 years.
President Barack Obama said he was pleased with the Burmese government's decision to free Mr. Yettaw. Burma has essentially been a military dictatorship for most of the last 47 years, and the U.S. has been looking for signs that Burma is fundamentally changing its policies. Mr. Yettaw's release, however well intended, is not an indication that that is happening.
Thousands of political activists remain in jail. Their release would be significant. Burma's military leaders should also engage in a meaningful dialogue with their political opponents and move toward a peaceful transition to genuine democracy and national reconciliation.
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The Nation - America's political clout is rising in Asean
Kavi Chongkittavorn
Publication Date: 24-08-2009
When the American eagle comes swooping down the Irrawaddy Valley, it can produce an interesting strategic chain of reactions. Within days, Washington managed to transform itself from a sanction crusader to a political facilitator. While the jury is still out concerning the US diplomatic dynamic on Burma, it has already swiftly shaken the stand-off between China and India. It is no longer business as usual in the Bay of Bengal.
Beijing and New Delhi must be scratching their heads now trying to figure out how to respond to the US's strong overture into the Asean landscape, as never before seen. Doing nothing, on the part of India, is no longer an option. Protecting Burma at every twist and turn of events will not serve China's best interest. Recently, the zero-sum game between the two Asian giants maintained the status quo of dynamics in Burma. Since last week, the US has injected something new into the equation of power here.
Burma is sending signals that it now realises it could not and should not isolate itself and rely on Beijing's support and protection exclusively. A once passive India will also see an opening to craft its own strategy, independent of China's posturing over Burma. Rangoon still ignores the Asean appeal on Aung San Suu Kyi's pardon with its strong objections from Laos and Brunei.
One attribute in understanding the latest development was the US accession to the 33-year-old Treaty of Amity of Cooperation in Southeast Asia (TAC) in Phuket last month. Two quite stark perspectives between Burma and the US must be discerned. From the Burmese junta leaders' viewpoint, the US signatory would compel Washington to be more mindful of the principles enshrined in the TAC, in particular mutual respect for one another's sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs. Since its admission to Asean, Burma has frequently invoked these principles to shield itself from peer and external pressure.
From Washington, however, joining the treaty has a different take. Like the other 26 signatories, the US can still continue with its position on human rights and level criticism against Burma - just like the good old days. What is more important for the US is the enhancement of its strategic interest and stronghold in this diverse region after the grouping was founded in 1967. Gone were the days the US was often accused of imposing its regional security designs to serve its own global ambition. Accepting an indigenous code of conduct of 10-member countries - pawns during the Cold War - proved a hefty US burden to come to terms with - altogether 17 years in the making.
Indeed, the signatory gave value-added to the visits of US State Secretary Hillary Clinton and Virginia's Senator Jim Webb as well as their Burmese overtures. Upcoming reviews on US policy on Burma would certainly contain new elements regarding sanctions and future terms of engagement. What prevails next would also impact on the US role on Burma and its overall ties with Asean. And how the junta leaders choose to play Suu Kyi's freedom and upcoming election with Washington would soon be known. It could also define the new political parameter of US involvement in regional issues.
To understand the current US position in Asean, one needs to scrutinise the evolution of TAC. When Asean first approached all members of the UN Security Council after the Singapore Summit in 1992, the diplomats from US and dialogue partners represented at the summit were a bit bewildered. At the time, Asean and dialogue partners began to discuss the establishment of a multilateral security forum, which later became the Asean Regional Forum. In September of that year, the TAC became the first Asean treaty to be endorsed by the UN General Assembly. Unfortunately, none of the UNSC members have seriously studied the indigenous regional codes of conduct.
China did - and signed the TAC in 2003 after eight years of affirmative posturing. Throughout the 1995-2003 period, following the Mischief Reef incidents, Beijing painstakingly built up confidence among Asean members through the TAC - literally from zero to hero. That kind of level playing field was unprecedented for any major power, let alone China, which was still considered an arch-enemy in the early 1990s. India joined China as the first two nuclear powers to accede to the TAC. Then, the floodgate opened. Now Asean has a big headache concerning the ulterior motives of new signatories (Indonesia blocked Turkey's TAC accession in Phuket). Truth be told, Asean originally wanted the international community to accept TAC but later on aimed at the big five nuclear powers - which mattered the most to Asean peace and security.
That has been achieved. At present, Asean is no longer in a rush to get individual nuclear powers to sign on to the 1995 no-nuke treaty - known as South East Asian Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (SEANWFZ).
China was supposed to be the first to do so this year but Asean has since deferred such efforts. Asean wants all the big five to sign it at the same time to avoid so-called preferential treatment - something which used to be Beijing's purview. The Obama Administration has already shown its willingness to accede to SEANWFZ with some reservations pending further negotiations between the US and its allies and friends in Asean.
The US signature also provides much needed closure to the frequently asked question about whether the US remains interested in the region. Now with the hands of the world's superpower untied by regional conduct, Washington is already waving and shaking delightfully. In months to come, the US will certainly have more regional initiatives regarding the Asean Regional Forum, East Asia Summit, Asia Pacific Economic Community and other bilateral endeavours. Later this year, the US will become the first country to announce its first Asean-in-residence ambassador, outshining all the 28 countries that have already attached their Jakarta-based envoys to Asean. With the US presence in Jakarta at full throttle, Asean needs to commensurate and shape up—an eagle is nesting among the paddy stalks.
But one thing is still missing. For the three-decade old Asean-US relations and US political clout to prosper in a sustained manner, extraordinary efforts from Asean and US leaders are still needed to push for the institutionalisation of the summit level meeting. In the past, they did meet for a few times; they piggybacked on other summits, but never exclusively on their own. Past attempts proved to be elusive. Under this circumstance, the role of Asean chair is pivotal to materialise this long-held plan. When Filipino President Gloria Arroyo visited Washington recently, she urged US President Barack Obama to meet with the Asean leaders. The Philippines is the new US-Asean coordinator.
At the Phuket meeting, Asean Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan received strong words of support from Clinton on the proposed summit. Last week, Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva accepted US President Barack Obama's invitation as the Asean chair to attend the Pittsburg G20 summit on September 24 and 25 in the US. He will again join Indonesia, the only Asean member of G20, and the rest of Asean plus six members (Australia, India, Japan, China, South Korea). Like the prime minister did in the London G-20 summit in April, Abhisit must impress on the host, Obama, that Asean is no longer a faceless entity but a rising international actor capable of contributing to the recovery of current global financial crisis.
Kavi Chongkittavorn
Publication Date: 24-08-2009
When the American eagle comes swooping down the Irrawaddy Valley, it can produce an interesting strategic chain of reactions. Within days, Washington managed to transform itself from a sanction crusader to a political facilitator. While the jury is still out concerning the US diplomatic dynamic on Burma, it has already swiftly shaken the stand-off between China and India. It is no longer business as usual in the Bay of Bengal.
Beijing and New Delhi must be scratching their heads now trying to figure out how to respond to the US's strong overture into the Asean landscape, as never before seen. Doing nothing, on the part of India, is no longer an option. Protecting Burma at every twist and turn of events will not serve China's best interest. Recently, the zero-sum game between the two Asian giants maintained the status quo of dynamics in Burma. Since last week, the US has injected something new into the equation of power here.
Burma is sending signals that it now realises it could not and should not isolate itself and rely on Beijing's support and protection exclusively. A once passive India will also see an opening to craft its own strategy, independent of China's posturing over Burma. Rangoon still ignores the Asean appeal on Aung San Suu Kyi's pardon with its strong objections from Laos and Brunei.
One attribute in understanding the latest development was the US accession to the 33-year-old Treaty of Amity of Cooperation in Southeast Asia (TAC) in Phuket last month. Two quite stark perspectives between Burma and the US must be discerned. From the Burmese junta leaders' viewpoint, the US signatory would compel Washington to be more mindful of the principles enshrined in the TAC, in particular mutual respect for one another's sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs. Since its admission to Asean, Burma has frequently invoked these principles to shield itself from peer and external pressure.
From Washington, however, joining the treaty has a different take. Like the other 26 signatories, the US can still continue with its position on human rights and level criticism against Burma - just like the good old days. What is more important for the US is the enhancement of its strategic interest and stronghold in this diverse region after the grouping was founded in 1967. Gone were the days the US was often accused of imposing its regional security designs to serve its own global ambition. Accepting an indigenous code of conduct of 10-member countries - pawns during the Cold War - proved a hefty US burden to come to terms with - altogether 17 years in the making.
Indeed, the signatory gave value-added to the visits of US State Secretary Hillary Clinton and Virginia's Senator Jim Webb as well as their Burmese overtures. Upcoming reviews on US policy on Burma would certainly contain new elements regarding sanctions and future terms of engagement. What prevails next would also impact on the US role on Burma and its overall ties with Asean. And how the junta leaders choose to play Suu Kyi's freedom and upcoming election with Washington would soon be known. It could also define the new political parameter of US involvement in regional issues.
To understand the current US position in Asean, one needs to scrutinise the evolution of TAC. When Asean first approached all members of the UN Security Council after the Singapore Summit in 1992, the diplomats from US and dialogue partners represented at the summit were a bit bewildered. At the time, Asean and dialogue partners began to discuss the establishment of a multilateral security forum, which later became the Asean Regional Forum. In September of that year, the TAC became the first Asean treaty to be endorsed by the UN General Assembly. Unfortunately, none of the UNSC members have seriously studied the indigenous regional codes of conduct.
China did - and signed the TAC in 2003 after eight years of affirmative posturing. Throughout the 1995-2003 period, following the Mischief Reef incidents, Beijing painstakingly built up confidence among Asean members through the TAC - literally from zero to hero. That kind of level playing field was unprecedented for any major power, let alone China, which was still considered an arch-enemy in the early 1990s. India joined China as the first two nuclear powers to accede to the TAC. Then, the floodgate opened. Now Asean has a big headache concerning the ulterior motives of new signatories (Indonesia blocked Turkey's TAC accession in Phuket). Truth be told, Asean originally wanted the international community to accept TAC but later on aimed at the big five nuclear powers - which mattered the most to Asean peace and security.
That has been achieved. At present, Asean is no longer in a rush to get individual nuclear powers to sign on to the 1995 no-nuke treaty - known as South East Asian Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (SEANWFZ).
China was supposed to be the first to do so this year but Asean has since deferred such efforts. Asean wants all the big five to sign it at the same time to avoid so-called preferential treatment - something which used to be Beijing's purview. The Obama Administration has already shown its willingness to accede to SEANWFZ with some reservations pending further negotiations between the US and its allies and friends in Asean.
The US signature also provides much needed closure to the frequently asked question about whether the US remains interested in the region. Now with the hands of the world's superpower untied by regional conduct, Washington is already waving and shaking delightfully. In months to come, the US will certainly have more regional initiatives regarding the Asean Regional Forum, East Asia Summit, Asia Pacific Economic Community and other bilateral endeavours. Later this year, the US will become the first country to announce its first Asean-in-residence ambassador, outshining all the 28 countries that have already attached their Jakarta-based envoys to Asean. With the US presence in Jakarta at full throttle, Asean needs to commensurate and shape up—an eagle is nesting among the paddy stalks.
But one thing is still missing. For the three-decade old Asean-US relations and US political clout to prosper in a sustained manner, extraordinary efforts from Asean and US leaders are still needed to push for the institutionalisation of the summit level meeting. In the past, they did meet for a few times; they piggybacked on other summits, but never exclusively on their own. Past attempts proved to be elusive. Under this circumstance, the role of Asean chair is pivotal to materialise this long-held plan. When Filipino President Gloria Arroyo visited Washington recently, she urged US President Barack Obama to meet with the Asean leaders. The Philippines is the new US-Asean coordinator.
At the Phuket meeting, Asean Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan received strong words of support from Clinton on the proposed summit. Last week, Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva accepted US President Barack Obama's invitation as the Asean chair to attend the Pittsburg G20 summit on September 24 and 25 in the US. He will again join Indonesia, the only Asean member of G20, and the rest of Asean plus six members (Australia, India, Japan, China, South Korea). Like the prime minister did in the London G-20 summit in April, Abhisit must impress on the host, Obama, that Asean is no longer a faceless entity but a rising international actor capable of contributing to the recovery of current global financial crisis.
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The Age - 'Evidence lacking' of Burma's nuke plans
August 24, 2009 - 6:49PM
Information leaking out of Burma raises suspicions of a clandestine nuclear program in cahoots with North Korea but there's no solid evidence, a new study says.
The paper, released by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) says any suggestion of a secret weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program conducted by a rogue state like Burma must be cause for serious concern.
The author, Griffith University research fellow Andrew Selth, said no one could underestimate the lengths to which Burma's military leaders would go to stay in power and to protect the country from perceived external threats.
"Some of the information that has leaked out of Burma appears credible, and in recent years other snippets of information have emerged which, taken together, must raise suspicions," he said.
Relations between Burma and North Korea, which both achieved independence in 1948, have been traditionally patchy but warmed in 1988 when Burma was ostracised by the west after the abortive 1988 pro-democracy uprising.
Mr Selth said reliable information was scarce but it seemed that Burma had purchased weapons and munitions from North Korea. Periodic visits of North Korean freighters to Rangoon have prompted speculation that Burma has acquired more advanced weaponry, such as SCUD-type missiles.
Media reports last month claimed Burma had embarked on a secret nuclear weapons program, aided by North Korea which has long conducted a clandestine nuclear weapons program, testing devices in 2006 and 2009.
Mr Selth said the US had steadfastly refused to accuse Burma of a secret WMD program, probably because it did not feel there was sufficient reliable evidence to mount a public case.
"Understandably, foreign officials looking at this issue are being very cautious. No one wants a repetition of the mistakes which preceded the 2003 Iraq War, either in underestimating a country's capabilities, or by giving too much credibility to a few untested intelligence sources," he said.
Mr Selth said the challenge was to determine if Burma had such a program and if so, to do something about it.
He said Burma's regime did not seem to fear international criticism or the threat of increased sanctions.
"The exposure of a WMD program would probably see Burma expelled from ASEAN," he said.
"Even if that were to occur, however, the generals seem prepared to see Burma return to its pre-1988 isolation and poverty, if that was the price they had to pay to remain masters of the country's and their own destiny."
August 24, 2009 - 6:49PM
Information leaking out of Burma raises suspicions of a clandestine nuclear program in cahoots with North Korea but there's no solid evidence, a new study says.
The paper, released by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) says any suggestion of a secret weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program conducted by a rogue state like Burma must be cause for serious concern.
The author, Griffith University research fellow Andrew Selth, said no one could underestimate the lengths to which Burma's military leaders would go to stay in power and to protect the country from perceived external threats.
"Some of the information that has leaked out of Burma appears credible, and in recent years other snippets of information have emerged which, taken together, must raise suspicions," he said.
Relations between Burma and North Korea, which both achieved independence in 1948, have been traditionally patchy but warmed in 1988 when Burma was ostracised by the west after the abortive 1988 pro-democracy uprising.
Mr Selth said reliable information was scarce but it seemed that Burma had purchased weapons and munitions from North Korea. Periodic visits of North Korean freighters to Rangoon have prompted speculation that Burma has acquired more advanced weaponry, such as SCUD-type missiles.
Media reports last month claimed Burma had embarked on a secret nuclear weapons program, aided by North Korea which has long conducted a clandestine nuclear weapons program, testing devices in 2006 and 2009.
Mr Selth said the US had steadfastly refused to accuse Burma of a secret WMD program, probably because it did not feel there was sufficient reliable evidence to mount a public case.
"Understandably, foreign officials looking at this issue are being very cautious. No one wants a repetition of the mistakes which preceded the 2003 Iraq War, either in underestimating a country's capabilities, or by giving too much credibility to a few untested intelligence sources," he said.
Mr Selth said the challenge was to determine if Burma had such a program and if so, to do something about it.
He said Burma's regime did not seem to fear international criticism or the threat of increased sanctions.
"The exposure of a WMD program would probably see Burma expelled from ASEAN," he said.
"Even if that were to occur, however, the generals seem prepared to see Burma return to its pre-1988 isolation and poverty, if that was the price they had to pay to remain masters of the country's and their own destiny."
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The Irrawaddy - ‘Than Shwe Should Be the First to Blink’: Diplomat
By THE IRRAWADDY, Saturday, August 22, 2009
As Burma’s state-run media continues to call on Washington to lift sanctions following the highly publicized visit of pro-engagement US Senator Jim Webb, a Western diplomat close to US officials says it is now up to the Burmese regime to make the next move.
“I don’t think the US will be the first to blink. [Junta leader Snr-Gen] Than Shwe should be the one to blink now,” said the Bangkok-based diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.
He said that Than Shwe needs to demonstrate that he is genuinely interested in political dialogue by releasing Burma’s 2,100 political prisoners and allowing international monitors to ensure that next year’s election is credible.
So far, however, the regime in Burma hasn’t done anything to suggest that it wants to make political progress in the country, he said.
“Tangible and meaningful actions are needed, not just words,” he told The Irrawaddy.
During his visit to Burma last weekend, Webb—who is also the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia and Pacific Affairs—met with both Than Shwe and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
He also secured the release of American John William Yettaw, who had just been sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment for swimming to Suu Kyi’s lakeside home.
Suu Kyi, who had been put on trial for allowing Yettaw to stay overnight to recover from muscle cramps, received a three-year prison sentence that was immediately reduced to 18 months under house arrest.
“If they are serious about the new relationship with the US, they should commute Suu Kyi’s sentence completely and free her immediately,” said the Western diplomat.
After Webb’s visit, dissidents both inside and outside of Burma began to speculate about whether the US was going to shift its policy. However, given the ongoing political stalemate, Washington is not likely to make any major changes in its Burma policy, the diplomat said.
Indeed, the Obama administration has been careful to reiterate its position that encouraging national reconciliation in Burma, and not engagement with the regime, remains it top priority.
“We continue to look for signs that the Burmese government is prepared to embark on a meaningful dialogue with Aung Sun Suu Kyi, along with the rest of the democratic opposition,” the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, P J Crowley, told reporters at a daily State Department press briefing shortly after Webb’s visit.
In a statement thanking the regime for Yettaw’s release, the White House called on the junta to go further and free all political prisoners. “We urge the Burmese leadership in this spirit to release all the political prisoners it is holding in detention or in house arrest, including Aung San Suu Kyi,” the statement said.
It seems unlikely, then, that Washington will relax its sanctions on the Burmese junta as long as it continues to persecute its political opponents.
“How can the US lift its sanctions without action in Burma?” asked the Western diplomat, adding that Than Shwe has “done nothing to loosen his grip.”
During his meeting with Webb, Than Shwe reportedly told the senator that he could not allow UN chief Ban Ki-moon to meet Suu Kyi during his visit to Burma in June because she was on trial at the time. However, it is widely believed that his determination to isolate the pro-democracy leader stems from his strong personal animosity toward her.
Webb was the first senior US official to meet with Suu Kyi in more than a decade. In 1994, Congressman Bill Richardson spoke with the Nobel Peace Prize laureate for five hours at her house, accompanied by a reporter from The New York Times.
By contrast, Webb’s meeting with Suu Kyi took place at a government guest house and lasted less than one hour.
A Burmese source in Rangoon confirmed that the regime imposed a strict time limit on the meeting, effectively preventing Webb and Suu Kyi from discussing the issues of sanctions and engagement in any depth.
This may account for the confusion over what Suu Kyi said to Webb about her stance on engagement.
Although Webb said at a press conference following his trip to Burma that Suu Kyi seemed open to the idea of more “interaction” between the regime and the West, she actually said that there was a greater need for domestic dialogue, according to her lawyer.
Webb, who is known for his strong criticism of US sanctions on Burma, will brief US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on his visit when he returns to Washington.
During a recent visit to Southeast Asia, Clinton hinted that the Obama administration might be prepared to “open up doors for investment and for other exchanges that would help the people of Burma,” but made this conditional on Suu Kyi’s release.
Since then, the regime has given no indication that it is interested in meeting this precondition for engagement, meaning that for the time being, at least, efforts to improve relations between Washington and Naypyidaw are at a standstill.
By THE IRRAWADDY, Saturday, August 22, 2009
As Burma’s state-run media continues to call on Washington to lift sanctions following the highly publicized visit of pro-engagement US Senator Jim Webb, a Western diplomat close to US officials says it is now up to the Burmese regime to make the next move.
“I don’t think the US will be the first to blink. [Junta leader Snr-Gen] Than Shwe should be the one to blink now,” said the Bangkok-based diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.
He said that Than Shwe needs to demonstrate that he is genuinely interested in political dialogue by releasing Burma’s 2,100 political prisoners and allowing international monitors to ensure that next year’s election is credible.
So far, however, the regime in Burma hasn’t done anything to suggest that it wants to make political progress in the country, he said.
“Tangible and meaningful actions are needed, not just words,” he told The Irrawaddy.
During his visit to Burma last weekend, Webb—who is also the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia and Pacific Affairs—met with both Than Shwe and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
He also secured the release of American John William Yettaw, who had just been sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment for swimming to Suu Kyi’s lakeside home.
Suu Kyi, who had been put on trial for allowing Yettaw to stay overnight to recover from muscle cramps, received a three-year prison sentence that was immediately reduced to 18 months under house arrest.
“If they are serious about the new relationship with the US, they should commute Suu Kyi’s sentence completely and free her immediately,” said the Western diplomat.
After Webb’s visit, dissidents both inside and outside of Burma began to speculate about whether the US was going to shift its policy. However, given the ongoing political stalemate, Washington is not likely to make any major changes in its Burma policy, the diplomat said.
Indeed, the Obama administration has been careful to reiterate its position that encouraging national reconciliation in Burma, and not engagement with the regime, remains it top priority.
“We continue to look for signs that the Burmese government is prepared to embark on a meaningful dialogue with Aung Sun Suu Kyi, along with the rest of the democratic opposition,” the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, P J Crowley, told reporters at a daily State Department press briefing shortly after Webb’s visit.
In a statement thanking the regime for Yettaw’s release, the White House called on the junta to go further and free all political prisoners. “We urge the Burmese leadership in this spirit to release all the political prisoners it is holding in detention or in house arrest, including Aung San Suu Kyi,” the statement said.
It seems unlikely, then, that Washington will relax its sanctions on the Burmese junta as long as it continues to persecute its political opponents.
“How can the US lift its sanctions without action in Burma?” asked the Western diplomat, adding that Than Shwe has “done nothing to loosen his grip.”
During his meeting with Webb, Than Shwe reportedly told the senator that he could not allow UN chief Ban Ki-moon to meet Suu Kyi during his visit to Burma in June because she was on trial at the time. However, it is widely believed that his determination to isolate the pro-democracy leader stems from his strong personal animosity toward her.
Webb was the first senior US official to meet with Suu Kyi in more than a decade. In 1994, Congressman Bill Richardson spoke with the Nobel Peace Prize laureate for five hours at her house, accompanied by a reporter from The New York Times.
By contrast, Webb’s meeting with Suu Kyi took place at a government guest house and lasted less than one hour.
A Burmese source in Rangoon confirmed that the regime imposed a strict time limit on the meeting, effectively preventing Webb and Suu Kyi from discussing the issues of sanctions and engagement in any depth.
This may account for the confusion over what Suu Kyi said to Webb about her stance on engagement.
Although Webb said at a press conference following his trip to Burma that Suu Kyi seemed open to the idea of more “interaction” between the regime and the West, she actually said that there was a greater need for domestic dialogue, according to her lawyer.
Webb, who is known for his strong criticism of US sanctions on Burma, will brief US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on his visit when he returns to Washington.
During a recent visit to Southeast Asia, Clinton hinted that the Obama administration might be prepared to “open up doors for investment and for other exchanges that would help the people of Burma,” but made this conditional on Suu Kyi’s release.
Since then, the regime has given no indication that it is interested in meeting this precondition for engagement, meaning that for the time being, at least, efforts to improve relations between Washington and Naypyidaw are at a standstill.
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The Irrawaddy - Yettaw Says Guards Let Him Enter Suu Kyi Compound
Saturday, August 22, 2009
John Yettaw, the American man who made international headlines after he swam to the lakeside home of detained Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in May, said in an interview published on Friday that guards did nothing to prevent him from entering her compound.
“I don’t know why they [security guards] didn’t stop me,” Yettaw said in a telephone interview with Newsweek magazine. “The man with the AK-47 shook my hand and let me in.”
In his first public statement on the circumstances of his visit to Suu Kyi’s home since leaving Burma, Yettaw appeared to lend credence to suspicions that the incident was part of an effort by the Burmese junta to extend Suu Kyi’s detention, which was due to end just weeks after Yettaw’s sudden appearance on the scene.
Although Yettaw declined to explain why he decided to return to Suu Kyi’s home after an earlier intrusion last November, during which her live-in aides told him to leave, the Newsweek report cites a Western diplomatic source who said that he may have been lured back by agents posing as members of her political party.
The source, citing intelligence reports, said that around a week before Yettaw’s second swim, two men claiming to be members of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy allegedly approached him in the Thai border town of Mae Sot and told him that Suu Kyi was ready to meet him.
According to the source, the intelligence reports also showed that senior Burmese officials had been instructed to find a pretext to keep Suu Kyi incarcerated as her May 27 release date approached.
On August 11, she was found guilty of violating the terms of her house arrest for allowing Yettaw to stay at her home overnight. She was sentenced to a further 18 months under house arrest—long enough to prevent her participating in elections slated for next year.
Despite evidence to suggest that the junta may have had a hand in orchestrating the incident, Yettaw dismissed suggestions that he was working on behalf of the regime or anybody else. “I’ve been accused of being CIA, of being on the books of the junta. The idea is just ridiculous,” he told Newsweek.
“I want to free Myanmar [Burma]. I want to stop the suffering there. I am anti-junta. I will never be at peace, emotionally or psychologically, until that woman is free, until that nation is free,” he said.
Yettaw was released by Burmese authorities and left Burma on August 16 after US Senator Jim Webb negotiated with the junta for his release during a high-profile visit.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
John Yettaw, the American man who made international headlines after he swam to the lakeside home of detained Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in May, said in an interview published on Friday that guards did nothing to prevent him from entering her compound.
“I don’t know why they [security guards] didn’t stop me,” Yettaw said in a telephone interview with Newsweek magazine. “The man with the AK-47 shook my hand and let me in.”
In his first public statement on the circumstances of his visit to Suu Kyi’s home since leaving Burma, Yettaw appeared to lend credence to suspicions that the incident was part of an effort by the Burmese junta to extend Suu Kyi’s detention, which was due to end just weeks after Yettaw’s sudden appearance on the scene.
Although Yettaw declined to explain why he decided to return to Suu Kyi’s home after an earlier intrusion last November, during which her live-in aides told him to leave, the Newsweek report cites a Western diplomatic source who said that he may have been lured back by agents posing as members of her political party.
The source, citing intelligence reports, said that around a week before Yettaw’s second swim, two men claiming to be members of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy allegedly approached him in the Thai border town of Mae Sot and told him that Suu Kyi was ready to meet him.
According to the source, the intelligence reports also showed that senior Burmese officials had been instructed to find a pretext to keep Suu Kyi incarcerated as her May 27 release date approached.
On August 11, she was found guilty of violating the terms of her house arrest for allowing Yettaw to stay at her home overnight. She was sentenced to a further 18 months under house arrest—long enough to prevent her participating in elections slated for next year.
Despite evidence to suggest that the junta may have had a hand in orchestrating the incident, Yettaw dismissed suggestions that he was working on behalf of the regime or anybody else. “I’ve been accused of being CIA, of being on the books of the junta. The idea is just ridiculous,” he told Newsweek.
“I want to free Myanmar [Burma]. I want to stop the suffering there. I am anti-junta. I will never be at peace, emotionally or psychologically, until that woman is free, until that nation is free,” he said.
Yettaw was released by Burmese authorities and left Burma on August 16 after US Senator Jim Webb negotiated with the junta for his release during a high-profile visit.
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The Irrawaddy - Suu Kyi Asks for Return of Family Doctor
By WAI MOE, Monday, August 24, 2009
Burma’s pro-democracy leader is seeking to have her regular physician, Tin Myo Win, reinstated as her primary doctor, following her return to her home after being sentenced to 18-months of house arrest.
Nyan Win, one of Suu Kyi’s lawyer, told The Irrawaddy on Monday that since she returned home on August 11, the authorities sent another doctor to check on her health.
“She told officials that she wanted her family physician, Dr Tin Myo Win, to take care of her health,” Nyan Win said. “So far, I don’t think Dr Tin Myo Win has been able to visit her.”
Tin Myo Win was a leading pro-democracy activist during the 1988 uprising that toppled the 26-year rule of the late dictator Ne Win.
After the military coup in September 1988, Tin Myo Win became a member of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD). In the following year, he was jailed.
He was the only regular visitor to see Suu Kyi during 2003-09, when he performed monthly check ups.
His is regular visits were suspended when he was arrested and questioned after the American intruder John Yettaw entered Suu Kyi’s lakeside house in Rangoon in early May.
Nyan Win said Suu Kyi’s lawyers have asked the authorities to allow a meeting with their client to talk about an appeal of her conviction.
Last week, Suu Kyi asked clarification from authorities about one of eight conditions of her house arrest concerning visitors.
Suu Kyi was sentenced to 3-year imprisonment for violating the terms of her house arrest. Yettaw received a 7-year sentence. Her sentence was reduced to18-months under house arrest.
Yettaw was granted amnesty after US Sen Jim Webb met with Snr-Gen Than Shwe.
By WAI MOE, Monday, August 24, 2009
Burma’s pro-democracy leader is seeking to have her regular physician, Tin Myo Win, reinstated as her primary doctor, following her return to her home after being sentenced to 18-months of house arrest.
Nyan Win, one of Suu Kyi’s lawyer, told The Irrawaddy on Monday that since she returned home on August 11, the authorities sent another doctor to check on her health.
“She told officials that she wanted her family physician, Dr Tin Myo Win, to take care of her health,” Nyan Win said. “So far, I don’t think Dr Tin Myo Win has been able to visit her.”
Tin Myo Win was a leading pro-democracy activist during the 1988 uprising that toppled the 26-year rule of the late dictator Ne Win.
After the military coup in September 1988, Tin Myo Win became a member of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD). In the following year, he was jailed.
He was the only regular visitor to see Suu Kyi during 2003-09, when he performed monthly check ups.
His is regular visits were suspended when he was arrested and questioned after the American intruder John Yettaw entered Suu Kyi’s lakeside house in Rangoon in early May.
Nyan Win said Suu Kyi’s lawyers have asked the authorities to allow a meeting with their client to talk about an appeal of her conviction.
Last week, Suu Kyi asked clarification from authorities about one of eight conditions of her house arrest concerning visitors.
Suu Kyi was sentenced to 3-year imprisonment for violating the terms of her house arrest. Yettaw received a 7-year sentence. Her sentence was reduced to18-months under house arrest.
Yettaw was granted amnesty after US Sen Jim Webb met with Snr-Gen Than Shwe.
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The Irrawaddy - KNU Struggles to Acquire Arms
By SAW YAN NAING, Monday, August 24, 2009
Despite being a major player in one of the longest-running civil wars in the world, the guerilla soldiers of the Karen National Union (KNU) are currently finding it difficult to acquire weapons of any description for their armed struggle against the Burmese military regime.
A commander of KNU’s military wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), who asked to remain anonymous, said he is ready to buy weapons and has enough money to purchase what he needs, but he cannot find a broker who will sell to him.
“We have enough money,” he said. “We are in the market to buy dozens of assault rifles, preferable AK-47s, but it is proving hard to get them.
“We are careful with our old weapons and maintain them very well, so we can use them for a long time,” he said.
The KNLA produces some explosives, especially landmines; however, it is commonly believed that the Karen rebels do not have the capacity to produce high-grade weaponry, such as assault rifles, RPGs or mortars.
The KNLA commander said that the insurgents are able to pay for arms from the income they generate from local businesses, taxation and border trade with Thailand, including logging and the sale of gold and zinc.
He noted that the supply of arms has decreased greatly since the civil war ended in Cambodia and since the KNLA lost its base of Thai support.
The Times magazine in London reported in March that the KNU leadership was losing the support of the Thai government which it had previously been able to rely on for a supply of weapons.
Earlier this year, all KNLA commanders were asked to vacate Thai soil and return to areas under their control.
Founded in 1947, the KNU is the oldest rebel force in Burma and has been fighting for self-determination, autonomy and equality ever since the Burmese central government declared independence from Britain colonial rule in 1948.
By SAW YAN NAING, Monday, August 24, 2009
Despite being a major player in one of the longest-running civil wars in the world, the guerilla soldiers of the Karen National Union (KNU) are currently finding it difficult to acquire weapons of any description for their armed struggle against the Burmese military regime.
A commander of KNU’s military wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), who asked to remain anonymous, said he is ready to buy weapons and has enough money to purchase what he needs, but he cannot find a broker who will sell to him.
“We have enough money,” he said. “We are in the market to buy dozens of assault rifles, preferable AK-47s, but it is proving hard to get them.
“We are careful with our old weapons and maintain them very well, so we can use them for a long time,” he said.
The KNLA produces some explosives, especially landmines; however, it is commonly believed that the Karen rebels do not have the capacity to produce high-grade weaponry, such as assault rifles, RPGs or mortars.
The KNLA commander said that the insurgents are able to pay for arms from the income they generate from local businesses, taxation and border trade with Thailand, including logging and the sale of gold and zinc.
He noted that the supply of arms has decreased greatly since the civil war ended in Cambodia and since the KNLA lost its base of Thai support.
The Times magazine in London reported in March that the KNU leadership was losing the support of the Thai government which it had previously been able to rely on for a supply of weapons.
Earlier this year, all KNLA commanders were asked to vacate Thai soil and return to areas under their control.
Founded in 1947, the KNU is the oldest rebel force in Burma and has been fighting for self-determination, autonomy and equality ever since the Burmese central government declared independence from Britain colonial rule in 1948.
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Mizzima News - Aung San Suu Kyi worse off this time in detention: lawyer
by Phanida
Monday, 24 August 2009 20:28
Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – Detained Burmese democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi’s situation under house arrest this time around is worse than her earlier term, her lawyer Nyan Win said.
The Burmese opposition leader was escorted back to her lakeside house on August 11, after her three-year prison with hard labour was commuted to 18 months.
“But since her return, the situation under which she is detained seems to be far more complicated and is worse than her earlier house arrest term,” said Nyan Win, who is also the spokesperson for her party – the National League for Democracy.
He said, the eight-point condition imposed on her by the regime is amorphous and has created far more confusion.
“We don’t know if she can accept guests or whether the guests have to first seek permission. Even we, her lawyers, are not sure of the implications of the eight-point condition,” Nyan Win said.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s sentence was commuted from three years with hard labour by an executive order from the junta supremo Snr Gen Than Shwe, which was read out in the court on August 11. The order also imposed eight conditions that she had to abide by.
Than Shwe’s order, however, said she could be released if she is found serving her suspended sentence without violating the conditions.
The eight-point condition includes living in her lakeside house, freedom to stroll in the compound of her house, receiving medical treatment, receiving guests with prior permission from the authorities, allowed to watch Myanmar Television (MRTV), allowed to read books and journals and newspapers published after censorship and allowed to write to authorities if she wanted to do anything and seeking the permission of the concerned authorities before doing anything.
Nyan Win said the conditions are confusing and unclear. But he said, these points clearly indicate that the government wants Aung San Suu Kyi to steer clear of politics.
On August 11, the pro-democracy leader was visited by a physician sent by the government for a health check up, Nyan Win said.
“I don’t know if the doctor had examined her [Aung San Suu Kyi], but what she told us is that she had requested the authorities to send her family doctor Dr. Tin Myo Win,” Nyan Win said.
Following her return to her lakeside home, authorities removed two other workers living inside the compound of her house and only allowed her two party housemates – Khin Khin Win and Win Ma Ma – to stay with her.
by Phanida
Monday, 24 August 2009 20:28
Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – Detained Burmese democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi’s situation under house arrest this time around is worse than her earlier term, her lawyer Nyan Win said.
The Burmese opposition leader was escorted back to her lakeside house on August 11, after her three-year prison with hard labour was commuted to 18 months.
“But since her return, the situation under which she is detained seems to be far more complicated and is worse than her earlier house arrest term,” said Nyan Win, who is also the spokesperson for her party – the National League for Democracy.
He said, the eight-point condition imposed on her by the regime is amorphous and has created far more confusion.
“We don’t know if she can accept guests or whether the guests have to first seek permission. Even we, her lawyers, are not sure of the implications of the eight-point condition,” Nyan Win said.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s sentence was commuted from three years with hard labour by an executive order from the junta supremo Snr Gen Than Shwe, which was read out in the court on August 11. The order also imposed eight conditions that she had to abide by.
Than Shwe’s order, however, said she could be released if she is found serving her suspended sentence without violating the conditions.
The eight-point condition includes living in her lakeside house, freedom to stroll in the compound of her house, receiving medical treatment, receiving guests with prior permission from the authorities, allowed to watch Myanmar Television (MRTV), allowed to read books and journals and newspapers published after censorship and allowed to write to authorities if she wanted to do anything and seeking the permission of the concerned authorities before doing anything.
Nyan Win said the conditions are confusing and unclear. But he said, these points clearly indicate that the government wants Aung San Suu Kyi to steer clear of politics.
On August 11, the pro-democracy leader was visited by a physician sent by the government for a health check up, Nyan Win said.
“I don’t know if the doctor had examined her [Aung San Suu Kyi], but what she told us is that she had requested the authorities to send her family doctor Dr. Tin Myo Win,” Nyan Win said.
Following her return to her lakeside home, authorities removed two other workers living inside the compound of her house and only allowed her two party housemates – Khin Khin Win and Win Ma Ma – to stay with her.
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Gay beauty contest for HIV/AIDS education
Aug 24, 2009 (DVB)–A gay beauty contest is to be held at a top Rangoon hotel later this month to raise funds for HIV/AIDS education, according to sources from Burma's entertainment world.
A journalist in Rangoon said that the event, known as Red Ribbon, may have been inspired by a similar event held recently in the country's former capital that received high commendation.
“Last month a similar contest was held at Thingangyun [township’s] Orange Supermarket and a lot of people showed up there despite fairly expensive ticket prices that stood around 15,000 to 25,000 kyat [$US15 to $US25] ,” said the source.
“People are going to watch this one too – they’ve been waiting for it.”
Red Ribbon has been organised jointly by Revlon Cosmetic and Thidar, the wife of business tycoon Tayza, who owns Htoo Trading Company.
Aung Myo Min, director of the Human Rights Education Institute of Burma, welcomed the news as a positive sign that Burma has become more open in its acceptance of the homosexual community.
“I welcome such events that favour the gay community in Burma – this shows that society is beginning to accept them who, in the past, were left out,” said Aung Myo Min.
“Before, people used bind the links between HIV/AIDS and homosexual people – they were reduced to a level nothing more than their wigs and their make-up.
“We would be more satisfied to see them being regarded as a part of the society which is becoming more open and accepts people the way they are," he said.
It is only in the last ten years that the government has acknowledged the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Burma.
Aid groups have criticised the regime for not investing enough money to tackle the epidemic, with only 0.3 percent of the annual budget being spent on healthcare.
It is estimated that 240,000 people are infected by the HIV virus in Burma and 76,000 are in need of life-saving anti-retroviral treatment.
Of those, only 18,000 are receiving proper medical treatment and as a result 25,000 people are dying each year.
Reporting by Ahunt Phone Myat
Aug 24, 2009 (DVB)–A gay beauty contest is to be held at a top Rangoon hotel later this month to raise funds for HIV/AIDS education, according to sources from Burma's entertainment world.
A journalist in Rangoon said that the event, known as Red Ribbon, may have been inspired by a similar event held recently in the country's former capital that received high commendation.
“Last month a similar contest was held at Thingangyun [township’s] Orange Supermarket and a lot of people showed up there despite fairly expensive ticket prices that stood around 15,000 to 25,000 kyat [$US15 to $US25] ,” said the source.
“People are going to watch this one too – they’ve been waiting for it.”
Red Ribbon has been organised jointly by Revlon Cosmetic and Thidar, the wife of business tycoon Tayza, who owns Htoo Trading Company.
Aung Myo Min, director of the Human Rights Education Institute of Burma, welcomed the news as a positive sign that Burma has become more open in its acceptance of the homosexual community.
“I welcome such events that favour the gay community in Burma – this shows that society is beginning to accept them who, in the past, were left out,” said Aung Myo Min.
“Before, people used bind the links between HIV/AIDS and homosexual people – they were reduced to a level nothing more than their wigs and their make-up.
“We would be more satisfied to see them being regarded as a part of the society which is becoming more open and accepts people the way they are," he said.
It is only in the last ten years that the government has acknowledged the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Burma.
Aid groups have criticised the regime for not investing enough money to tackle the epidemic, with only 0.3 percent of the annual budget being spent on healthcare.
It is estimated that 240,000 people are infected by the HIV virus in Burma and 76,000 are in need of life-saving anti-retroviral treatment.
Of those, only 18,000 are receiving proper medical treatment and as a result 25,000 people are dying each year.
Reporting by Ahunt Phone Myat
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