Suu Kyi back in Myanmar's political arena: analysts
by Didier Lauras – Sat Oct 10, 11:08 pm ET
BANGKOK (AFP) – Although still under house arrest, Aung San Suu Kyi has returned to an active political role by initiating dialogue with both Myanmar's junta and Western nations, analysts say.
In the space of seven days, after a Yangon court rejected the pro-democracy leader's appeal against her recently extended house arrest, her status appeared to shift rapidly from political prisoner to potential key negotiator.
"She is politically active and significant. She still has a role in Burma," said Win Min, an activist and scholar in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai, using Myanmar's former name.
Events over the past week in the military-ruled nation have moved at a dizzying pace when compared with the stagnation of recent months.
Suu Kyi, detained for around 14 of the past 20 years, had two meetings with Aung Kyi, the labour minister and official liaison between her and the junta, the first such talks since January 2008.
The frail 64-year-old was subsequently granted permission by the ruling generals to discuss Western sanctions imposed on Myanmar with top United States, British and Australian diplomats in Yangon on Friday.
"She was very very engaged in the subject, very interested in going into detail on what she wanted to talk about and she seemed as ever very eloquent," said British ambassador Andrew Heyn in an interview with BBC.
Suu Kyi wrote a letter to Senior General Than Shwe at the end of September offering her co-operation in getting Western sanctions lifted, after years of favouring harsh measures against the generals.
Contrary to expectations, the junta chief seems to have accepted her proposal -- at least for the time being.
"She would like to see herself as a pivotal point in the relations between the junta and the US. They might be prepared to allow this to some extent," said former British ambassador Derek Tonkin.
The military regime has promised elections for 2010, the first in Myanmar since 1990, when Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party won by a landslide but was never allowed to take power.
With the opposition leader set to remain out of the way next year thanks to the recent 18-month extension to her house arrest, many observers believe the polls are a sham that will only strengthen the junta's power.
The reclusive regime chief, according to some analysts, is likely to try to use his opponent -- whom he loathes -- to restore his image for the elections.
"Than Shwe is the only one who took all these decisions," said the activist Win Min, referring to the rejection of Suu Kyi's appeal and her various subsequent meetings in recent days.
"He decided not to release her but to give her a little bit of freedom so that he could appear somehow as someone flexible," he added.
But Suu Kyi's lawyer Nyan Win was confident she could play an increasingly important part in developments over the coming months, especially following Washington's recent decision to re-engage the junta.
"We assume that her meeting with diplomats to lift sanctions is the start of her political role because sanctions themselves are a matter of politics," Nyan Win told AFP.
"Aung San Suu Kyi always has the right to participate in politics. It is not a concern whether or not she's under house arrest," he added.
Yet scepticism remains that the iron-fisted regime could repeat past behaviour and offer goodwill gestures before violently closing all doors to dialogue again.
One fundamental sign of progress would be a meeting between Suu Kyi and Than Shwe himself, as the pair have not met for years. Nyan Win raised the possibility of such talks on Friday.
But "The Lady", as she is widely known in Myanmar, would have to consult with other NLD members first and also see minister Aung Kyi again before a meeting with the junta leader would be possible, former ambassador Tonkin suggested.
He acknowledged however that the two sides were at least finally communicating.
"We don't know where this conversation is going to go. But it is taking place. It's the best game in town at the present time and we need to see where it goes," he said.
by Didier Lauras – Sat Oct 10, 11:08 pm ET
BANGKOK (AFP) – Although still under house arrest, Aung San Suu Kyi has returned to an active political role by initiating dialogue with both Myanmar's junta and Western nations, analysts say.
In the space of seven days, after a Yangon court rejected the pro-democracy leader's appeal against her recently extended house arrest, her status appeared to shift rapidly from political prisoner to potential key negotiator.
"She is politically active and significant. She still has a role in Burma," said Win Min, an activist and scholar in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai, using Myanmar's former name.
Events over the past week in the military-ruled nation have moved at a dizzying pace when compared with the stagnation of recent months.
Suu Kyi, detained for around 14 of the past 20 years, had two meetings with Aung Kyi, the labour minister and official liaison between her and the junta, the first such talks since January 2008.
The frail 64-year-old was subsequently granted permission by the ruling generals to discuss Western sanctions imposed on Myanmar with top United States, British and Australian diplomats in Yangon on Friday.
"She was very very engaged in the subject, very interested in going into detail on what she wanted to talk about and she seemed as ever very eloquent," said British ambassador Andrew Heyn in an interview with BBC.
Suu Kyi wrote a letter to Senior General Than Shwe at the end of September offering her co-operation in getting Western sanctions lifted, after years of favouring harsh measures against the generals.
Contrary to expectations, the junta chief seems to have accepted her proposal -- at least for the time being.
"She would like to see herself as a pivotal point in the relations between the junta and the US. They might be prepared to allow this to some extent," said former British ambassador Derek Tonkin.
The military regime has promised elections for 2010, the first in Myanmar since 1990, when Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party won by a landslide but was never allowed to take power.
With the opposition leader set to remain out of the way next year thanks to the recent 18-month extension to her house arrest, many observers believe the polls are a sham that will only strengthen the junta's power.
The reclusive regime chief, according to some analysts, is likely to try to use his opponent -- whom he loathes -- to restore his image for the elections.
"Than Shwe is the only one who took all these decisions," said the activist Win Min, referring to the rejection of Suu Kyi's appeal and her various subsequent meetings in recent days.
"He decided not to release her but to give her a little bit of freedom so that he could appear somehow as someone flexible," he added.
But Suu Kyi's lawyer Nyan Win was confident she could play an increasingly important part in developments over the coming months, especially following Washington's recent decision to re-engage the junta.
"We assume that her meeting with diplomats to lift sanctions is the start of her political role because sanctions themselves are a matter of politics," Nyan Win told AFP.
"Aung San Suu Kyi always has the right to participate in politics. It is not a concern whether or not she's under house arrest," he added.
Yet scepticism remains that the iron-fisted regime could repeat past behaviour and offer goodwill gestures before violently closing all doors to dialogue again.
One fundamental sign of progress would be a meeting between Suu Kyi and Than Shwe himself, as the pair have not met for years. Nyan Win raised the possibility of such talks on Friday.
But "The Lady", as she is widely known in Myanmar, would have to consult with other NLD members first and also see minister Aung Kyi again before a meeting with the junta leader would be possible, former ambassador Tonkin suggested.
He acknowledged however that the two sides were at least finally communicating.
"We don't know where this conversation is going to go. But it is taking place. It's the best game in town at the present time and we need to see where it goes," he said.
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Myanmar's Suu Kyi, diplomats discuss sanctions: US
Fri Oct 9, 3:28 am ET
YANGON (AFP) – Detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi discussed sanctions against military-ruled Myanmar in a rare meeting with Western diplomats Friday, the US embassy in Yangon said.
The Nobel Laureate met with the heads of the US, UK and Australian embassies for one hour at a government guesthouse, following a letter she wrote to the junta chief, embassy spokesman Drake Weisert told AFP.
"The meeting follows Aung San Suu Kyi's request in a letter to Senior General Than Shwe to meet representatives of the US and other countries to discuss their respective policies on sanctions," he said.
"We can confirm that sanctions were discussed at the meeting. However, we do not want to pre-empt Aung San Suu Kyi's discussions with the authorities by discussing the details of the meeting," he added.
In the past week the Nobel Laureate has had two meetings with Aung Kyi, the official liaison between herself and the junta -- the first time they have met for talks since January 2008.
Suu Kyi's correspondence with Than Shwe, which came as the US unveiled a major policy shift to re-engage the junta, marks an easing of her stance after years of advocating punitive measures against the junta
Last week Suu Kyi's appeal against her extended house arrest was rejected, when judges upheld her conviction over an incident in which an American man swam uninvited to her house in May.
The guilty verdict for the frail 64-year-old, who has spent much of the past 20 years in detention, earned her an extra 18 months in detention and provoked international outrage.
Fri Oct 9, 3:28 am ET
YANGON (AFP) – Detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi discussed sanctions against military-ruled Myanmar in a rare meeting with Western diplomats Friday, the US embassy in Yangon said.
The Nobel Laureate met with the heads of the US, UK and Australian embassies for one hour at a government guesthouse, following a letter she wrote to the junta chief, embassy spokesman Drake Weisert told AFP.
"The meeting follows Aung San Suu Kyi's request in a letter to Senior General Than Shwe to meet representatives of the US and other countries to discuss their respective policies on sanctions," he said.
"We can confirm that sanctions were discussed at the meeting. However, we do not want to pre-empt Aung San Suu Kyi's discussions with the authorities by discussing the details of the meeting," he added.
In the past week the Nobel Laureate has had two meetings with Aung Kyi, the official liaison between herself and the junta -- the first time they have met for talks since January 2008.
Suu Kyi's correspondence with Than Shwe, which came as the US unveiled a major policy shift to re-engage the junta, marks an easing of her stance after years of advocating punitive measures against the junta
Last week Suu Kyi's appeal against her extended house arrest was rejected, when judges upheld her conviction over an incident in which an American man swam uninvited to her house in May.
The guilty verdict for the frail 64-year-old, who has spent much of the past 20 years in detention, earned her an extra 18 months in detention and provoked international outrage.
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Myanmar builds troops on border, says Bangladesh
By Anis Ahmed – Sun Oct 11, 7:41 am ET
DHAKA (Reuters) – Bangladesh said on Sunday it had sent army reinforcements to the border with Myanmar as Yangon was undertaking a military build-up along the 320-km (200-mile) frontier, partly overlooking the Naf river.
But talking to reporters in the afternoon, Foreign Minister Dipu Moni called the military movements on the Myanmar side a "routine practice, not a build up."
The minister said she would meet her Myanmar counterpart in Colombo on October 15 on the sidelines of Asian Cooperation Dialogue and discuss bilateral issues. She did not elaborate.
Senior military officials had earlier said Bangladesh sent three army brigades to its southeastern hilly border after Myanmar deployed fresh regular army contingents along with Nasaka border troops, dug bunkers and added artillery.
"They look like going for a massive build-up," said Lieutenant-Colonel Azam of the Bangladesh Rifles (border guards) at Naikhyangchhari, a paramilitary frontier camp. The colonel gave only one name.
"But we hope the build up will not escalate into a shootout," he told a Reuters reporter at Cox's Bazar border district.
Border rumblings happen sporadically between the two countries and there are sometimes minor clashes, but they usually do not escalate beyond that.
Intelligence officials said Myanmar had already reopened a long-disused military airport at Sittowe (Akyab) near the border, and was renovating another.
A leading Bangladesh daily, Jugantar, printed photographs on Sunday showing aircraft at the Sittowe base and troops in armored vehicles moving on the border.
Officials said on Sunday they were "closely monitoring" the situation on the Myanmar side of the border.
"We (are) seeing some abnormal movement of troops and amour on their side but are not sure what that is for," said Colonel Didarul Alam of the Bangladesh Army, in Chittagong port city.
Security sources say Myanmar is erecting barbed-wire fences along its border with Bangladesh, ostensibly to hold off an influx of Muslim refugees into Bangladesh.
But military and civil officials said that did not warrant rebuilding air bases or deploying thousands of regular troops.
Dipu Moni said the fence was being erected "in conformance with international laws."
There are more than 21,000 Muslim "Rohingya" refugees from western Myanmar in two Bangladeshi camps but many more have mingled with local residents since a major influx in 1992, local and U.N. officials say.
By Anis Ahmed – Sun Oct 11, 7:41 am ET
DHAKA (Reuters) – Bangladesh said on Sunday it had sent army reinforcements to the border with Myanmar as Yangon was undertaking a military build-up along the 320-km (200-mile) frontier, partly overlooking the Naf river.
But talking to reporters in the afternoon, Foreign Minister Dipu Moni called the military movements on the Myanmar side a "routine practice, not a build up."
The minister said she would meet her Myanmar counterpart in Colombo on October 15 on the sidelines of Asian Cooperation Dialogue and discuss bilateral issues. She did not elaborate.
Senior military officials had earlier said Bangladesh sent three army brigades to its southeastern hilly border after Myanmar deployed fresh regular army contingents along with Nasaka border troops, dug bunkers and added artillery.
"They look like going for a massive build-up," said Lieutenant-Colonel Azam of the Bangladesh Rifles (border guards) at Naikhyangchhari, a paramilitary frontier camp. The colonel gave only one name.
"But we hope the build up will not escalate into a shootout," he told a Reuters reporter at Cox's Bazar border district.
Border rumblings happen sporadically between the two countries and there are sometimes minor clashes, but they usually do not escalate beyond that.
Intelligence officials said Myanmar had already reopened a long-disused military airport at Sittowe (Akyab) near the border, and was renovating another.
A leading Bangladesh daily, Jugantar, printed photographs on Sunday showing aircraft at the Sittowe base and troops in armored vehicles moving on the border.
Officials said on Sunday they were "closely monitoring" the situation on the Myanmar side of the border.
"We (are) seeing some abnormal movement of troops and amour on their side but are not sure what that is for," said Colonel Didarul Alam of the Bangladesh Army, in Chittagong port city.
Security sources say Myanmar is erecting barbed-wire fences along its border with Bangladesh, ostensibly to hold off an influx of Muslim refugees into Bangladesh.
But military and civil officials said that did not warrant rebuilding air bases or deploying thousands of regular troops.
Dipu Moni said the fence was being erected "in conformance with international laws."
There are more than 21,000 Muslim "Rohingya" refugees from western Myanmar in two Bangladeshi camps but many more have mingled with local residents since a major influx in 1992, local and U.N. officials say.
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Myanmar, S Korean businessmen to boost co-op in industrial sector
www.chinaview.cn 2009-10-10 13:37:47
YANGON, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- Businessmen from Union of Myanmar Chambers of Commerce and Industry (UMFCCI) and South Korea Importers Association are to hold a meeting in Yangon to seek business opportunities through cooperation in industrial sector, sources with the UMFCCI said on Saturday.
The meeting, to be held on Oct. 19 will be attended by South Korean entrepreneurs dealing in metal, ore, rubber, chemicals, wooden furniture, kitchen utensils, household goods, souvenirs, electric motor parts, equipment for producing wrench, tile, surveying equipment spare parts, marine products, canned food, color sorter and gas cylinder spare parts industries, the sources said.
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 South Korea amounted to 63.7 million dollars while its import from the East Asian country stood at 188.48 million dollars.
South Korea has become the 8th largest trading partner of Myanmar which exported to South Korea about 3,000 items of goods covering agricultural produces, marine and forest products, and garments, while it mainly imported from South Korea steel, garment, electrical and electronic goods.
www.chinaview.cn 2009-10-10 13:37:47
YANGON, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- Businessmen from Union of Myanmar Chambers of Commerce and Industry (UMFCCI) and South Korea Importers Association are to hold a meeting in Yangon to seek business opportunities through cooperation in industrial sector, sources with the UMFCCI said on Saturday.
The meeting, to be held on Oct. 19 will be attended by South Korean entrepreneurs dealing in metal, ore, rubber, chemicals, wooden furniture, kitchen utensils, household goods, souvenirs, electric motor parts, equipment for producing wrench, tile, surveying equipment spare parts, marine products, canned food, color sorter and gas cylinder spare parts industries, the sources said.
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 South Korea amounted to 63.7 million dollars while its import from the East Asian country stood at 188.48 million dollars.
South Korea has become the 8th largest trading partner of Myanmar which exported to South Korea about 3,000 items of goods covering agricultural produces, marine and forest products, and garments, while it mainly imported from South Korea steel, garment, electrical and electronic goods.
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TVNZ - Senator urges US free trade deal with ASEAN
Published: 12:17PM Saturday October 10, 2009
A senior Republican senator is calling for a free trade agreement between the United States and countries in Southeast Asia.
"The United States should proceed to develop a comprehensive strategy toward engaging ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) in serious FTA discussions," Senator Richard Lugar said in a statement.
The proposal comes at time when many business groups are complaining US President Barack Obama does not have an agenda to open new markets for US exports.
"China, India, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea have already finalised FTAs with ASEAN and are sharpening a competitive edge over the US in Southeast Asia," Lugar said.
Obama will visit Singapore next month for the annual meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.
Most of the 10 members of ASEAN - Brunei, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam - are also members of APEC.
The United States has extensive trade restrictions on Myanmar but "that should not deter US efforts to reach an FTA with the rest of ASEAN," Lugar said.
There was no immediate reaction from US Trade Representative's office to Lugar's proposal, which he said he planned to introduce in the Senate next week.
Former President George W Bush proposed creating a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific, building on existing free trade pacts with Chile and Singapore.
However, the Obama administration still has not decided whether to proceed with that.
The White House also has not made a push to win approval of free trade agreements with New Zealand, Colombia, Panama and South Korea left over from the Bush administration.
Published: 12:17PM Saturday October 10, 2009
A senior Republican senator is calling for a free trade agreement between the United States and countries in Southeast Asia.
"The United States should proceed to develop a comprehensive strategy toward engaging ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) in serious FTA discussions," Senator Richard Lugar said in a statement.
The proposal comes at time when many business groups are complaining US President Barack Obama does not have an agenda to open new markets for US exports.
"China, India, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea have already finalised FTAs with ASEAN and are sharpening a competitive edge over the US in Southeast Asia," Lugar said.
Obama will visit Singapore next month for the annual meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.
Most of the 10 members of ASEAN - Brunei, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam - are also members of APEC.
The United States has extensive trade restrictions on Myanmar but "that should not deter US efforts to reach an FTA with the rest of ASEAN," Lugar said.
There was no immediate reaction from US Trade Representative's office to Lugar's proposal, which he said he planned to introduce in the Senate next week.
Former President George W Bush proposed creating a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific, building on existing free trade pacts with Chile and Singapore.
However, the Obama administration still has not decided whether to proceed with that.
The White House also has not made a push to win approval of free trade agreements with New Zealand, Colombia, Panama and South Korea left over from the Bush administration.
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Time Magazine - Getting to Know Burma's Ruling General
By Andrew Marshall, Monday, Oct. 19, 2009
Among Manchester United Football Club's 300 million or so supporters worldwide are two Burmese men whose love of the game spans generations. One is a stout, bespectacled, betel nut — chewing septuagenarian, the other his favorite teenage grandson, and like many of their soccer-mad compatriots they stay up late into Burma's tropical nights to watch live broadcasts from faraway England. So far, so normal. But knowing the grandfather in this touching scene is Senior General Than Shwe, the xenophobic chief of Burma's junta, makes it seem all wrong. Rabidly anti-Western, yet pro-Wayne Rooney, is this the tyrant we know and hate?
That English football is one of Than Shwe's surprise passions might seem trivial, but it raises a serious question. With U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying on Sept. 24 that Washington would begin "engaging directly" with Burma's military leaders after 20 years of American censure and sanctions, how well do we really know the junta? "We don't understand it very well at all, although it's not very easy to understand," says Donald M. Seekins, a Burma scholar at Meio University in Okinawa, Japan. Trying to fathom the regime's worldview doesn't mean we condone its human-rights abuses; many believe that ongoing atrocities by the Burmese military constitute war crimes. But policies based on a flawed understanding of Than Shwe and his men will be ineffective or even counterproductive, warn Burma experts. Now, therefore, is time to get to know the generals — starting with the man his soldiers call Aba Gyi, or Grandfather.
Loyalty — and Dishonor
Than Shwe, the junta's chief since 1992, is Burma's enigmatic but undisputed leader. "He exercises almost absolute power," says Seekins. "Nobody wants to challenge him, at least openly." His origins were humble. Born in a village not far from Mandalay, Burma's last royal capital, he dropped out of high school and worked in a post office before joining officer-training school and rising up through the military ranks, specializing in psychological warfare. Unquestioning loyalty was "the secret of his success," says Benedict Rogers, co-author of a forthcoming book called Than Shwe: Unmasking Burma's Tyrant. "He always followed orders. He was never seen by anyone as a threat, and therefore was rewarded with promotions, precisely because he didn't really demonstrate any flair or initiative."
Since reaching the top, Than Shwe has shown "a talent for hanging on to power," says Seekins. Rivals are ruthlessly purged: Khin Nyunt, his ambitious former spy chief, has been under house arrest since 2004. Burma watchers say loyal officers are rewarded with opportunities to enrich themselves through graft and rent-seeking.
The West might regard him as backward, but Than Shwe, 76, sees himself as a bold reformer who took a bankrupt nation and threw it open to foreign investment, who built not just roads and bridges but a grand new capital called Naypyidaw — "Abode of Kings." The reality is a little different. Foreign trade has enriched the junta; the Yadana natural-gas project alone has earned the regime $4.83 billion since 2000, according to the Washington-based nonprofit EarthRights International in a recent report. But most Burmese still live in wretched poverty. The new capital is an expensive boondoggle.
And yet to write off Than Shwe as the deluded head of a hermit regime is a mistake. The junta has shrewdly adapted to 20 years of breakneck growth in Asia, first drawing investment from Southeast Asian neighbors — until a new regional giant emerged. "In 1988, nobody in the Burmese military knew how quickly China would grow economically," says Seekins. "But as this was happening [the regime] took advantage of that situation to promote close ties to China." Burma joined ASEAN in 1997, gaining further allies against Western criticism and more trade opportunities (Thailand gets most of its natural gas from Burma), and is improving ties with India. Even at Naypyidaw, once a symbol of seclusion, the junta plans to build an international airport to handle over 10 million passengers a year. "They're much less isolationist than we think, although they choose their friends carefully," says Rogers. "Those friends tend to be countries that turn a blind eye to their conduct."
Even the junta's notorious xenophobia is rooted less in a desire for isolation than in an ingrained fear of invasion. Burma has been occupied by many foreign powers over the centuries and riven by ethnic insurgencies since its independence from Britain in 1948. The Burmese military's historical role is to safeguard the country from all foes, foreign and domestic. The generals regard a threat to their regime as a threat to the nation. This might seem "misguided, even deluded," observes Andrew Selth, a Burma analyst with Australia's Griffith University, but the generals' fear of invasion is real and has been constantly stoked by Western actions and rhetoric. During pro-democracy protests in 1988, the U.S. deployed a naval taskforce off Burma's coast and later lumped the country with Iran and North Korea as an "outpost of tyranny." Whether real or perceived, Western hostility has prompted the junta to take two concrete actions: building one of Asia's largest standing armies, and seeking closer links with China and Russia, both permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.
Rogues Gallery
Than Shwe is burma's paramount ruler, but he is not alone at the top. Hard-line loyalists within the military include General Thura Shwe Mann, his likely successor, and U Thaung, a former ambassador to the U.S., now the Science and Technology Minister who is believed to be driving the junta's long-held ambitions to acquire nuclear technology. Also influential are a handful of Burmese business tycoons, many of whom — like the generals themselves — are the subject of U.S. and E.U. sanctions that severely restrict overseas travel and investments. Lobbying of Than Shwe by these business cronies could explain the warm welcome accorded in August to pro-engagement Senator Jim Webb. State-run television showed a smiling Than Shwe pumping the former combat Marine's hand, while the New Light of Myanmar newspaper, a junta mouthpiece, reminded its readers that "even an influential U.S. senator opposes the economic sanctions against our country."
The junta has survived and prospered despite two decades of ever tightening sanctions. Yet the years have not dimmed its desire to have those sanctions lifted. "Many people say [Than Shwe] doesn't care what the world thinks, but he does want pariah status removed," says Rogers. He also wants "a veneer of legitimacy" and hopes the planned 2010 elections will provide it. Than Shwe has vowed to create a so-called "discipline-flourishing democracy" that will not only entrench military rule but protect his legacy — and his skin. In 2002, suspecting a plot against him, Than Shwe put Ne Win, the man who had first elevated him to power, and his daughter under house arrest and jailed his grandsons. "Ne Win died in ignominy," says Christina Fink, author of Living Silence: Burma Under Military Rule, a landmark book about life under the junta. "Than Shwe must be painfully aware that the same could happen to him." The junta chief has another weakness: his family. He allows them "to run wild," says Rogers. In July 2006, his jewel-bedecked daughter Thandar Shwe, one of eight children, married an army major in a lavish ceremony that angered many in this poverty-stricken nation.
Standing Alone
Many in Burma's pro-democracy movement — and in the U.S. Congress — view any overtures to the generals as appeasement and say Than Shwe personally has blood on his hands. Aung Lynn Htut, a former Burmese diplomat and army major who defected to the U.S. in 2005, claims Grandfather personally ordered the massacre of 81 men, women and children on a remote Burmese island in 1998. Five years later, Than Shwe's thugs attacked the convoy of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi at Depayin, west of Mandalay, killing or injuring dozens of her supporters.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate remains his greatest rival. "He personally dislikes her," says Seekins. "It's not just a political calculation. He finds her too opinionated, too Westernized, too outspoken as a woman." In August Suu Kyi was found guilty of violating the terms of her house arrest after an American man swam uninvited to her lakeside home. Her initial three-year prison sentence was commuted to 18 months of house arrest because, said the order read aloud in court, Than Shwe "desires ... to exercise leniency upon her."
Military defector Aung Lynn Htut is unconvinced. He warns that his former commander will do anything to discredit Suu Kyi, a longtime supporter of Western sanctions. Than Shwe met Webb as part of a campaign to portray the Nobel laureate as "the enemy of the Burmese people [who] is too stubborn to lift sanctions," he says. But even Suu Kyi's pro-sanctions stance is no longer a given. U.S. engagement was "a good thing," she admitted recently through a spokesman for her National League for Democracy party.
Suu Kyi sounded cautious, and who can blame her? Than Shwe "remains impervious to the appeal of reform or compromise with the opposition because he wishes at all costs to maintain a personal monopoly on power," says Seekins. So will a fresh diplomatic onslaught work? The new U.S. approach on Burma is the product of a White House that stresses diplomacy over confrontation. "It's more a change in tactics than overall strategy," says Fink. Also driving the policy review are Washington's concerns over China's influence over Burma and Than Shwe's apparent nuclear ambitions. Seekins believes Washington risks overestimating the junta's willingness to open up. "The U.S. government may find itself in the same position as the Japanese government during the 1990s, when Tokyo believed it could get the [regime] to mend its ways by giving it some economic incentives."
For now, at least, the junta seems to be engaging all over the place. Last month its Prime Minister, General Thein Sein, became the highest-ranking Burmese official in 14 years to address the U.N. General Assembly. He told delegates that sanctions were "unjust." While in New York City, Thein Sein conferred with both Webb and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell. Back in Burma, Suu Kyi met a senior junta official and is thought to have discussed the lifting of sanctions.
That won't happen anytime soon. It would send "the wrong signal," warned Campbell. His boss agrees. "Sanctions remain important as part of our policy," said Hillary Clinton, describing them and engagement as "tools" to achieve the same goal: democracy in Burma. Considering Than Shwe's nonexistent track record on reform, U.S. officials are right to downplay the impact of engagement. Barring any real concessions from the hard man himself — starting with the release of Suu Kyi and other political prisoners prevented from running in next year's polls — democracy remains a distant prospect. "Everyone is calling for reform, but I don't think Than Shwe feels any urgency about it," says Seekins. "Nothing much will change until he passes from the scene." One man controls everything that happens in Burma.
By Andrew Marshall, Monday, Oct. 19, 2009
Among Manchester United Football Club's 300 million or so supporters worldwide are two Burmese men whose love of the game spans generations. One is a stout, bespectacled, betel nut — chewing septuagenarian, the other his favorite teenage grandson, and like many of their soccer-mad compatriots they stay up late into Burma's tropical nights to watch live broadcasts from faraway England. So far, so normal. But knowing the grandfather in this touching scene is Senior General Than Shwe, the xenophobic chief of Burma's junta, makes it seem all wrong. Rabidly anti-Western, yet pro-Wayne Rooney, is this the tyrant we know and hate?
That English football is one of Than Shwe's surprise passions might seem trivial, but it raises a serious question. With U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying on Sept. 24 that Washington would begin "engaging directly" with Burma's military leaders after 20 years of American censure and sanctions, how well do we really know the junta? "We don't understand it very well at all, although it's not very easy to understand," says Donald M. Seekins, a Burma scholar at Meio University in Okinawa, Japan. Trying to fathom the regime's worldview doesn't mean we condone its human-rights abuses; many believe that ongoing atrocities by the Burmese military constitute war crimes. But policies based on a flawed understanding of Than Shwe and his men will be ineffective or even counterproductive, warn Burma experts. Now, therefore, is time to get to know the generals — starting with the man his soldiers call Aba Gyi, or Grandfather.
Loyalty — and Dishonor
Than Shwe, the junta's chief since 1992, is Burma's enigmatic but undisputed leader. "He exercises almost absolute power," says Seekins. "Nobody wants to challenge him, at least openly." His origins were humble. Born in a village not far from Mandalay, Burma's last royal capital, he dropped out of high school and worked in a post office before joining officer-training school and rising up through the military ranks, specializing in psychological warfare. Unquestioning loyalty was "the secret of his success," says Benedict Rogers, co-author of a forthcoming book called Than Shwe: Unmasking Burma's Tyrant. "He always followed orders. He was never seen by anyone as a threat, and therefore was rewarded with promotions, precisely because he didn't really demonstrate any flair or initiative."
Since reaching the top, Than Shwe has shown "a talent for hanging on to power," says Seekins. Rivals are ruthlessly purged: Khin Nyunt, his ambitious former spy chief, has been under house arrest since 2004. Burma watchers say loyal officers are rewarded with opportunities to enrich themselves through graft and rent-seeking.
The West might regard him as backward, but Than Shwe, 76, sees himself as a bold reformer who took a bankrupt nation and threw it open to foreign investment, who built not just roads and bridges but a grand new capital called Naypyidaw — "Abode of Kings." The reality is a little different. Foreign trade has enriched the junta; the Yadana natural-gas project alone has earned the regime $4.83 billion since 2000, according to the Washington-based nonprofit EarthRights International in a recent report. But most Burmese still live in wretched poverty. The new capital is an expensive boondoggle.
And yet to write off Than Shwe as the deluded head of a hermit regime is a mistake. The junta has shrewdly adapted to 20 years of breakneck growth in Asia, first drawing investment from Southeast Asian neighbors — until a new regional giant emerged. "In 1988, nobody in the Burmese military knew how quickly China would grow economically," says Seekins. "But as this was happening [the regime] took advantage of that situation to promote close ties to China." Burma joined ASEAN in 1997, gaining further allies against Western criticism and more trade opportunities (Thailand gets most of its natural gas from Burma), and is improving ties with India. Even at Naypyidaw, once a symbol of seclusion, the junta plans to build an international airport to handle over 10 million passengers a year. "They're much less isolationist than we think, although they choose their friends carefully," says Rogers. "Those friends tend to be countries that turn a blind eye to their conduct."
Even the junta's notorious xenophobia is rooted less in a desire for isolation than in an ingrained fear of invasion. Burma has been occupied by many foreign powers over the centuries and riven by ethnic insurgencies since its independence from Britain in 1948. The Burmese military's historical role is to safeguard the country from all foes, foreign and domestic. The generals regard a threat to their regime as a threat to the nation. This might seem "misguided, even deluded," observes Andrew Selth, a Burma analyst with Australia's Griffith University, but the generals' fear of invasion is real and has been constantly stoked by Western actions and rhetoric. During pro-democracy protests in 1988, the U.S. deployed a naval taskforce off Burma's coast and later lumped the country with Iran and North Korea as an "outpost of tyranny." Whether real or perceived, Western hostility has prompted the junta to take two concrete actions: building one of Asia's largest standing armies, and seeking closer links with China and Russia, both permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.
Rogues Gallery
Than Shwe is burma's paramount ruler, but he is not alone at the top. Hard-line loyalists within the military include General Thura Shwe Mann, his likely successor, and U Thaung, a former ambassador to the U.S., now the Science and Technology Minister who is believed to be driving the junta's long-held ambitions to acquire nuclear technology. Also influential are a handful of Burmese business tycoons, many of whom — like the generals themselves — are the subject of U.S. and E.U. sanctions that severely restrict overseas travel and investments. Lobbying of Than Shwe by these business cronies could explain the warm welcome accorded in August to pro-engagement Senator Jim Webb. State-run television showed a smiling Than Shwe pumping the former combat Marine's hand, while the New Light of Myanmar newspaper, a junta mouthpiece, reminded its readers that "even an influential U.S. senator opposes the economic sanctions against our country."
The junta has survived and prospered despite two decades of ever tightening sanctions. Yet the years have not dimmed its desire to have those sanctions lifted. "Many people say [Than Shwe] doesn't care what the world thinks, but he does want pariah status removed," says Rogers. He also wants "a veneer of legitimacy" and hopes the planned 2010 elections will provide it. Than Shwe has vowed to create a so-called "discipline-flourishing democracy" that will not only entrench military rule but protect his legacy — and his skin. In 2002, suspecting a plot against him, Than Shwe put Ne Win, the man who had first elevated him to power, and his daughter under house arrest and jailed his grandsons. "Ne Win died in ignominy," says Christina Fink, author of Living Silence: Burma Under Military Rule, a landmark book about life under the junta. "Than Shwe must be painfully aware that the same could happen to him." The junta chief has another weakness: his family. He allows them "to run wild," says Rogers. In July 2006, his jewel-bedecked daughter Thandar Shwe, one of eight children, married an army major in a lavish ceremony that angered many in this poverty-stricken nation.
Standing Alone
Many in Burma's pro-democracy movement — and in the U.S. Congress — view any overtures to the generals as appeasement and say Than Shwe personally has blood on his hands. Aung Lynn Htut, a former Burmese diplomat and army major who defected to the U.S. in 2005, claims Grandfather personally ordered the massacre of 81 men, women and children on a remote Burmese island in 1998. Five years later, Than Shwe's thugs attacked the convoy of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi at Depayin, west of Mandalay, killing or injuring dozens of her supporters.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate remains his greatest rival. "He personally dislikes her," says Seekins. "It's not just a political calculation. He finds her too opinionated, too Westernized, too outspoken as a woman." In August Suu Kyi was found guilty of violating the terms of her house arrest after an American man swam uninvited to her lakeside home. Her initial three-year prison sentence was commuted to 18 months of house arrest because, said the order read aloud in court, Than Shwe "desires ... to exercise leniency upon her."
Military defector Aung Lynn Htut is unconvinced. He warns that his former commander will do anything to discredit Suu Kyi, a longtime supporter of Western sanctions. Than Shwe met Webb as part of a campaign to portray the Nobel laureate as "the enemy of the Burmese people [who] is too stubborn to lift sanctions," he says. But even Suu Kyi's pro-sanctions stance is no longer a given. U.S. engagement was "a good thing," she admitted recently through a spokesman for her National League for Democracy party.
Suu Kyi sounded cautious, and who can blame her? Than Shwe "remains impervious to the appeal of reform or compromise with the opposition because he wishes at all costs to maintain a personal monopoly on power," says Seekins. So will a fresh diplomatic onslaught work? The new U.S. approach on Burma is the product of a White House that stresses diplomacy over confrontation. "It's more a change in tactics than overall strategy," says Fink. Also driving the policy review are Washington's concerns over China's influence over Burma and Than Shwe's apparent nuclear ambitions. Seekins believes Washington risks overestimating the junta's willingness to open up. "The U.S. government may find itself in the same position as the Japanese government during the 1990s, when Tokyo believed it could get the [regime] to mend its ways by giving it some economic incentives."
For now, at least, the junta seems to be engaging all over the place. Last month its Prime Minister, General Thein Sein, became the highest-ranking Burmese official in 14 years to address the U.N. General Assembly. He told delegates that sanctions were "unjust." While in New York City, Thein Sein conferred with both Webb and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell. Back in Burma, Suu Kyi met a senior junta official and is thought to have discussed the lifting of sanctions.
That won't happen anytime soon. It would send "the wrong signal," warned Campbell. His boss agrees. "Sanctions remain important as part of our policy," said Hillary Clinton, describing them and engagement as "tools" to achieve the same goal: democracy in Burma. Considering Than Shwe's nonexistent track record on reform, U.S. officials are right to downplay the impact of engagement. Barring any real concessions from the hard man himself — starting with the release of Suu Kyi and other political prisoners prevented from running in next year's polls — democracy remains a distant prospect. "Everyone is calling for reform, but I don't think Than Shwe feels any urgency about it," says Seekins. "Nothing much will change until he passes from the scene." One man controls everything that happens in Burma.
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EarthTimes - Myanmar women's hair finances bridge building
Posted : Sun, 11 Oct 2009 10:58:55 GMT
Yangon - Proceeds from hair donated by Myanmar women worth 200 million kyat (180,000 dollars) have been used to repair bridges leading to one of the country's most sacred pagodas, media reports said Sunday. Some 100,000 women donated 2,400 kilograms of hair to fund the rebuilding of 16 bridges along a 26-kilometre stretch of road leading in to Alaungdaw Kathapa National Park, home to the Alaungdaw Kathapa Pagoda - one of the most reverred Buddhist sites in Myanmar's Sagaing Division, the Myanmar Times reported.
The donated hair was sold to Chinese merchants in Mandalay for about 100,000 kyat (90 dollars) per viss (1.6 kilograms).
Women's hair is a popular export item from Myanmar, one of the world's poorest countries that has been under military rule since 1962.
So far, 11 out of 16 bridges to the pagoda have been repaired and the remaining five are expected to be completed by early 2010, the pagoda's abbot Sayadaw Damadaya Ashin Waryamarnanda told the weekly newspaper.
In March 2009, organisers of the bridge repair project called on women to donate their hair and quickly set up 13 hair donation centres in Sagaing Division townships.
"The idea of donating hair came earlier this year from the women who lived along the road. They wanted to contribute but they had no money, so they asked sayadaw to accept their hair instead," Sayadaw Damadaya Ashin Waryamarnanda said.
Myanmar, also called Burma, is a predominatly Buddhist country.
In September, 2007, Buddhist monks led peaceful protests against the military regime's mismanagement of the economy, prompting a bloody crackdown that left more than 30 dead and many injured.
Since the crackdown, many temples and pagodas have had their monkhoods reduced in numbers, or infirtrated by "government monks," according top a recent Human Rights Watch report.
Posted : Sun, 11 Oct 2009 10:58:55 GMT
Yangon - Proceeds from hair donated by Myanmar women worth 200 million kyat (180,000 dollars) have been used to repair bridges leading to one of the country's most sacred pagodas, media reports said Sunday. Some 100,000 women donated 2,400 kilograms of hair to fund the rebuilding of 16 bridges along a 26-kilometre stretch of road leading in to Alaungdaw Kathapa National Park, home to the Alaungdaw Kathapa Pagoda - one of the most reverred Buddhist sites in Myanmar's Sagaing Division, the Myanmar Times reported.
The donated hair was sold to Chinese merchants in Mandalay for about 100,000 kyat (90 dollars) per viss (1.6 kilograms).
Women's hair is a popular export item from Myanmar, one of the world's poorest countries that has been under military rule since 1962.
So far, 11 out of 16 bridges to the pagoda have been repaired and the remaining five are expected to be completed by early 2010, the pagoda's abbot Sayadaw Damadaya Ashin Waryamarnanda told the weekly newspaper.
In March 2009, organisers of the bridge repair project called on women to donate their hair and quickly set up 13 hair donation centres in Sagaing Division townships.
"The idea of donating hair came earlier this year from the women who lived along the road. They wanted to contribute but they had no money, so they asked sayadaw to accept their hair instead," Sayadaw Damadaya Ashin Waryamarnanda said.
Myanmar, also called Burma, is a predominatly Buddhist country.
In September, 2007, Buddhist monks led peaceful protests against the military regime's mismanagement of the economy, prompting a bloody crackdown that left more than 30 dead and many injured.
Since the crackdown, many temples and pagodas have had their monkhoods reduced in numbers, or infirtrated by "government monks," according top a recent Human Rights Watch report.
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EarthTimes - Myanmar to hold elections in 2010, junta chief says
Posted : Sat, 10 Oct 2009 06:10:45 GMT
Yangon - Myanmar's military supremo has confirmed that a general election is scheduled for 2010, state media reported Saturday. "Elections will be systematically held in 2010 for Hluttaws [parliaments] that will emerge in accordance with the constitution," Senior General Than Shwe said Friday in a speech to the Myanmar War Veterans Organization, The New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported.
"In the period of changing from one system to another, various parties and different beliefs will emerge," said Than Shwe, the head of the State Peace and Development Council, as the ruling junta calls itself.
The election, which promises to be neither free nor fair in a country long condemned for human rights abuses, was planned after the passage of the 2008 constitution, which essentially cements the military's control over any democratically elected government.
Than Shwe spoke at the military's headquarters in the capital, Naypyitaw, on the same day that the regime allowed opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi a rare meeting with foreign diplomats in Yangon, the former capital.
Suu Kyi, the leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) opposition party, was allowed to meet acting US Charge d'Affaires Thomas Vajda; British Ambassador Andrew Heyn, who represented the European Union; and Australian Deputy Head of Mission Simon Christopher Starr for an hour to discuss the possible lifting of sanctions on Myanmar.
"Aung San Suu Kyi sought the meeting to obtain information about the sanctions policies of the Australian and the United States governments and the European Union to inform her discussions with the State Peace and Development Council," the Australian embassy said in a statement after the talks.
"The government [of Australia] sees this as a positive step by both the Burmese authorities and Aung San Suu Kyi," the statement added.
Western democracies and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon have warned that the world community would not accept the outcome of a general election next year unless the NLD participates in the polls and Suu Kyi is freed from house detention, where she has been kept for 14 of the past 20 years.
The surprise meeting Friday followed two sessions of talks this month between Suu Kyi and the junta's liaison, Relations Minister Aung Kyi, to discuss her proposal to help end sanctions against the regime.
Suu Kyi sent a letter September 25 to Than Shwe, offering to help persuade Western democracies to lift their economic sanctions.
Suu Kyi, 64, asked Than Shwe permission to meet with Western diplomats and expressed willingness to cooperate with the junta on sanctions.
International sanctions have been imposed on Myanmar since 1988 when the military brutally cracked down on pro-democracy demonstrations, leaving an estimated 3,000 people dead.
The United States and the European Union increased their sanctions after the junta refused to acknowledge the NLD's victory in 1990 elections and then arrested critics and suppressed all forms of dissent. Many of the sanctions target the top generals specifically.
Than Shwe hinted this year that he would be willing to open a political dialogue with Suu Kyi if she agreed to cooperate on the sanctions issue.
Most Western nations have demanded that Than Shwe release Suu Kyi and about 2,000 other political prisoners as a first step toward democratization in the country, which has been under military rule since 1962. Suu Kyi and the NLD demand the same thing.
Posted : Sat, 10 Oct 2009 06:10:45 GMT
Yangon - Myanmar's military supremo has confirmed that a general election is scheduled for 2010, state media reported Saturday. "Elections will be systematically held in 2010 for Hluttaws [parliaments] that will emerge in accordance with the constitution," Senior General Than Shwe said Friday in a speech to the Myanmar War Veterans Organization, The New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported.
"In the period of changing from one system to another, various parties and different beliefs will emerge," said Than Shwe, the head of the State Peace and Development Council, as the ruling junta calls itself.
The election, which promises to be neither free nor fair in a country long condemned for human rights abuses, was planned after the passage of the 2008 constitution, which essentially cements the military's control over any democratically elected government.
Than Shwe spoke at the military's headquarters in the capital, Naypyitaw, on the same day that the regime allowed opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi a rare meeting with foreign diplomats in Yangon, the former capital.
Suu Kyi, the leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) opposition party, was allowed to meet acting US Charge d'Affaires Thomas Vajda; British Ambassador Andrew Heyn, who represented the European Union; and Australian Deputy Head of Mission Simon Christopher Starr for an hour to discuss the possible lifting of sanctions on Myanmar.
"Aung San Suu Kyi sought the meeting to obtain information about the sanctions policies of the Australian and the United States governments and the European Union to inform her discussions with the State Peace and Development Council," the Australian embassy said in a statement after the talks.
"The government [of Australia] sees this as a positive step by both the Burmese authorities and Aung San Suu Kyi," the statement added.
Western democracies and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon have warned that the world community would not accept the outcome of a general election next year unless the NLD participates in the polls and Suu Kyi is freed from house detention, where she has been kept for 14 of the past 20 years.
The surprise meeting Friday followed two sessions of talks this month between Suu Kyi and the junta's liaison, Relations Minister Aung Kyi, to discuss her proposal to help end sanctions against the regime.
Suu Kyi sent a letter September 25 to Than Shwe, offering to help persuade Western democracies to lift their economic sanctions.
Suu Kyi, 64, asked Than Shwe permission to meet with Western diplomats and expressed willingness to cooperate with the junta on sanctions.
International sanctions have been imposed on Myanmar since 1988 when the military brutally cracked down on pro-democracy demonstrations, leaving an estimated 3,000 people dead.
The United States and the European Union increased their sanctions after the junta refused to acknowledge the NLD's victory in 1990 elections and then arrested critics and suppressed all forms of dissent. Many of the sanctions target the top generals specifically.
Than Shwe hinted this year that he would be willing to open a political dialogue with Suu Kyi if she agreed to cooperate on the sanctions issue.
Most Western nations have demanded that Than Shwe release Suu Kyi and about 2,000 other political prisoners as a first step toward democratization in the country, which has been under military rule since 1962. Suu Kyi and the NLD demand the same thing.
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IndieWIRE - “Insects” Wins European Film Academy’s Doc Prize
by Peter Knegt (Updated 3 hours, 20 minutes ago)
The European Film Academy has announced that Peter Liechti’s “The Sound of Insects - Record of a Mummy” has been awarded the European Film Awards’ “Prix Arte” for best documentary. The Swiss film beat out Agnes Varda’s “The Beaches of Agnes,” Anders Ostergaard’s “Burma VJ,” and Yoav Shamir’s “Defamation,” among others. The award chosen by an independent jury, whose members this year were documentary filmmaker Nino Kirtadzé from France/Georgia, Austrian producer and ORF editor Franz Grabner and Russian documentary filmmaker Viktor Kossakovsky.
“Insects” hunter evokes a mysterious man’s last days. In a remote forest, the film stumbles on a make shift tent fashioned from sheets of plastic and containing the mummified remains of a corpse. A detailed journal found on site reveals the man committed suicide by self-imposed starvation. Who was this man? Why did he kill himself in such a manner?
The jury said the film was honored with the prize “for its skillful exploration of minimalist means to create an extraordinary visual story between life and death.”
The winner will be presented at the 22nd European Film Awards Ceremony on Saturday, 12 December, in Bochum/Germany.
by Peter Knegt (Updated 3 hours, 20 minutes ago)
The European Film Academy has announced that Peter Liechti’s “The Sound of Insects - Record of a Mummy” has been awarded the European Film Awards’ “Prix Arte” for best documentary. The Swiss film beat out Agnes Varda’s “The Beaches of Agnes,” Anders Ostergaard’s “Burma VJ,” and Yoav Shamir’s “Defamation,” among others. The award chosen by an independent jury, whose members this year were documentary filmmaker Nino Kirtadzé from France/Georgia, Austrian producer and ORF editor Franz Grabner and Russian documentary filmmaker Viktor Kossakovsky.
“Insects” hunter evokes a mysterious man’s last days. In a remote forest, the film stumbles on a make shift tent fashioned from sheets of plastic and containing the mummified remains of a corpse. A detailed journal found on site reveals the man committed suicide by self-imposed starvation. Who was this man? Why did he kill himself in such a manner?
The jury said the film was honored with the prize “for its skillful exploration of minimalist means to create an extraordinary visual story between life and death.”
The winner will be presented at the 22nd European Film Awards Ceremony on Saturday, 12 December, in Bochum/Germany.
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37 writers get Hellman/Hammett grants
Published: Oct. 12, 2009 at 7:45 AM
NEW YORK, Oct. 12 (UPI) -- Thirty-seven writers have received Hellman/Hammett awards recognizing their courage in the face of political persecution, a U.S. human rights group says.
Human Rights Watch said in a release Monday all 37 of them are writers and activists whose work and activities have been suppressed. The group hands out the Hellman/Hammett grants to writers around the world who have been targets of political persecution.
HRW says the grant program began in 1989 when the American playwright Lillian Hellman stipulated in her will that her estate should be used to assist writers in financial need as a result of expressing their views.
Among the writers receiving the grants are Saw Wei of Myanmar, a romantic poet and a performance artist who is currently in Mandalay prison. At the time of his arrest, he headed the "White Rainbow" poetry recital group, which raised money for AIDS orphans
Also cited was Chinese commentator and human rights activist Hu Jia, convicted of "inciting subversion of state power" and sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison; and China's Shi Tao, and poet and journalist is best known as the victim of the U.S. Internet search engine Yahoo's cooperation with Chinese police.
Published: Oct. 12, 2009 at 7:45 AM
NEW YORK, Oct. 12 (UPI) -- Thirty-seven writers have received Hellman/Hammett awards recognizing their courage in the face of political persecution, a U.S. human rights group says.
Human Rights Watch said in a release Monday all 37 of them are writers and activists whose work and activities have been suppressed. The group hands out the Hellman/Hammett grants to writers around the world who have been targets of political persecution.
HRW says the grant program began in 1989 when the American playwright Lillian Hellman stipulated in her will that her estate should be used to assist writers in financial need as a result of expressing their views.
Among the writers receiving the grants are Saw Wei of Myanmar, a romantic poet and a performance artist who is currently in Mandalay prison. At the time of his arrest, he headed the "White Rainbow" poetry recital group, which raised money for AIDS orphans
Also cited was Chinese commentator and human rights activist Hu Jia, convicted of "inciting subversion of state power" and sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison; and China's Shi Tao, and poet and journalist is best known as the victim of the U.S. Internet search engine Yahoo's cooperation with Chinese police.
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MYANMAR: New lease of life for traditional medicine
YANGON, 12 October 2009 (IRIN) - Four years after contracting rheumatic fever, Mee Naing, 28, finally beat the disease with the help of traditional medicine.
Rheumatic fever can recur if not treated with long-term antibiotics, but because Mee Naing could not afford the medicine, she suffered from a bad bout of the disease for many months.
She finally went to a traditional medicine clinic and underwent a course of pills and balms and her health gradually improved.
"Whatever ailments I have, nowadays I take traditional drugs, which I can afford," said Mee Naing, whose monthly income as a marketing assistant is less than US$40.
More than 85 percent of country's population of about 57.5 million uses traditional medicines, according to government figures, partly to supplement western medicine and partly as an alternative.
"Traditional medicine is quite affordable and accessible for people from all walks of life, which are the fundamental reasons why most people use it," Maung Nyan, president of the Myanmar Traditional Medicine Practitioners' Association, told IRIN.
Practitioners say people in rural areas - about 70 percent of Myanmar's population - rely more on traditional medicine than in urban areas, since it is more widely available and affordable than western medicine.
Traditional medicine is also 10-20 times cheaper than western medicine - a huge factor when 32.7 percent of people live below the poverty line, according to specialists.
Government promotion
Traditional medicine, in the form of pills, powders and balms, has been used in Myanmar since 600 BC, but only recently has the government moved to formalize its role in the healthcare system.
A Traditional Medicine Drug Law introduced in 1996 controls the quality, production and sale of the drugs. The government has also introduced good manufacturing practices, while the production, packaging and storage of medicines have been modernized.
These standards mean that "public trust and confidence in indigenous drugs has greatly been enhanced", notes the World Health Organization in Myanmar in its 2009 health report for the country.
"There is a progressive increase in demand for traditional medicine not only in rural areas but also in urban areas," it states.
There are 14 traditional medicine hospitals, and 237 district and township clinics and sub-centres across the country, while there are more than 10,000 practitioners, according to the Myanmar Traditional Medicine Practitioners' Association.
In 2007, the government established the first national herbal park on 81 hectares of land in the new capital, Naypyidaw, to grow plants to treat diseases such as diarrhoea, dysentery, cholera, diabetes, hypertension, malaria and tuberculosis.
A long tradition
"Traditional medicine has regained its golden age," said Aung Naing, who practises both traditional and western medicine, choosing one or the other depending on a patient's illness.
Most traditional practitioners combine traditional medicines with western equipment, such as blood pressure monitors.
"Traditional medicine is very effective in curing chronic diseases such as diabetes, rheumatic fever, rheumatoid arthritis, hypertension, stroke, paralysis, motor paralysis, malaria, and menstrual disorders," said Mya Win, 66, who has practised traditional medicine for 49 years.
While it cannot cure diseases such as cancer or HIV/AIDS, it has fewer side-effects than western medicine, said Mya Win.
Knowledge of Burmese traditional medicine has been handed down from generation to generation for centuries, and is influenced by traditions from neighbouring countries such as India and China.
Most of the medicines are of plant origin, although animal, mineral or aquatic material is also used.
In 1976, the government established the Institute of Myanmar Traditional Medicine to train traditional medicine practitioners, while the University of Myanmar Traditional Medicine was established in Mandalay in 2001. The curriculum covers traditional medicine, science and basic concepts of western medicine.
"Today, more and more young people are interested in learning traditional medicine as the role of the medicine becomes larger and larger in the country," Aung Myint, the university's rector, told IRIN.
YANGON, 12 October 2009 (IRIN) - Four years after contracting rheumatic fever, Mee Naing, 28, finally beat the disease with the help of traditional medicine.
Rheumatic fever can recur if not treated with long-term antibiotics, but because Mee Naing could not afford the medicine, she suffered from a bad bout of the disease for many months.
She finally went to a traditional medicine clinic and underwent a course of pills and balms and her health gradually improved.
"Whatever ailments I have, nowadays I take traditional drugs, which I can afford," said Mee Naing, whose monthly income as a marketing assistant is less than US$40.
More than 85 percent of country's population of about 57.5 million uses traditional medicines, according to government figures, partly to supplement western medicine and partly as an alternative.
"Traditional medicine is quite affordable and accessible for people from all walks of life, which are the fundamental reasons why most people use it," Maung Nyan, president of the Myanmar Traditional Medicine Practitioners' Association, told IRIN.
Practitioners say people in rural areas - about 70 percent of Myanmar's population - rely more on traditional medicine than in urban areas, since it is more widely available and affordable than western medicine.
Traditional medicine is also 10-20 times cheaper than western medicine - a huge factor when 32.7 percent of people live below the poverty line, according to specialists.
Government promotion
Traditional medicine, in the form of pills, powders and balms, has been used in Myanmar since 600 BC, but only recently has the government moved to formalize its role in the healthcare system.
A Traditional Medicine Drug Law introduced in 1996 controls the quality, production and sale of the drugs. The government has also introduced good manufacturing practices, while the production, packaging and storage of medicines have been modernized.
These standards mean that "public trust and confidence in indigenous drugs has greatly been enhanced", notes the World Health Organization in Myanmar in its 2009 health report for the country.
"There is a progressive increase in demand for traditional medicine not only in rural areas but also in urban areas," it states.
There are 14 traditional medicine hospitals, and 237 district and township clinics and sub-centres across the country, while there are more than 10,000 practitioners, according to the Myanmar Traditional Medicine Practitioners' Association.
In 2007, the government established the first national herbal park on 81 hectares of land in the new capital, Naypyidaw, to grow plants to treat diseases such as diarrhoea, dysentery, cholera, diabetes, hypertension, malaria and tuberculosis.
A long tradition
"Traditional medicine has regained its golden age," said Aung Naing, who practises both traditional and western medicine, choosing one or the other depending on a patient's illness.
Most traditional practitioners combine traditional medicines with western equipment, such as blood pressure monitors.
"Traditional medicine is very effective in curing chronic diseases such as diabetes, rheumatic fever, rheumatoid arthritis, hypertension, stroke, paralysis, motor paralysis, malaria, and menstrual disorders," said Mya Win, 66, who has practised traditional medicine for 49 years.
While it cannot cure diseases such as cancer or HIV/AIDS, it has fewer side-effects than western medicine, said Mya Win.
Knowledge of Burmese traditional medicine has been handed down from generation to generation for centuries, and is influenced by traditions from neighbouring countries such as India and China.
Most of the medicines are of plant origin, although animal, mineral or aquatic material is also used.
In 1976, the government established the Institute of Myanmar Traditional Medicine to train traditional medicine practitioners, while the University of Myanmar Traditional Medicine was established in Mandalay in 2001. The curriculum covers traditional medicine, science and basic concepts of western medicine.
"Today, more and more young people are interested in learning traditional medicine as the role of the medicine becomes larger and larger in the country," Aung Myint, the university's rector, told IRIN.
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Myanmar top leader meets Indian army chief in Nay Pyi Taw
www.chinaview.cn 2009-10-12 21:45:57
YANGON, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- Chairman of Myanmar State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) Senior-General Than Shwe met with visiting Indian Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor in Nay Pyi Taw Monday, the state-run Myanmar Radio and Television reported in the evening.
Earlier on the day, another meeting between Kapoor and SPDC Vice-Chairman Vice Senior-General Maung Aye had also taken place.
Maung Aye is also Myanmar Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Defense Services and Commander-in-Chief of the Army.
The report did not disclose the details about their separate meetings.
Kapoor, who is also chairman of the chiefs of staff committee of India, arrived at the new capital on Sunday on a three-day visit to Myanmar, aimed at boosting bilateral cooperation in the defense sector.
Kapoor's visit came eight months after Indian Vice-President Shri M. Hamid Ansari visited Nay Pyi Taw in February this year at the invitation of Maung Aye.
In April 2008, Maung Aye visited New Delhi, assuring Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh that Myanmar will never allow using its territory to any organization that harm neighboring countries, while acknowledging that India does not allow its territory to movement of organizations against Myanmar.
During Maung Aye's visit, three documents between the two governments were signed, of which a memorandum of understanding on intelligence exchange is to combat transnational crime including terrorism.
www.chinaview.cn 2009-10-12 21:45:57
YANGON, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- Chairman of Myanmar State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) Senior-General Than Shwe met with visiting Indian Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor in Nay Pyi Taw Monday, the state-run Myanmar Radio and Television reported in the evening.
Earlier on the day, another meeting between Kapoor and SPDC Vice-Chairman Vice Senior-General Maung Aye had also taken place.
Maung Aye is also Myanmar Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Defense Services and Commander-in-Chief of the Army.
The report did not disclose the details about their separate meetings.
Kapoor, who is also chairman of the chiefs of staff committee of India, arrived at the new capital on Sunday on a three-day visit to Myanmar, aimed at boosting bilateral cooperation in the defense sector.
Kapoor's visit came eight months after Indian Vice-President Shri M. Hamid Ansari visited Nay Pyi Taw in February this year at the invitation of Maung Aye.
In April 2008, Maung Aye visited New Delhi, assuring Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh that Myanmar will never allow using its territory to any organization that harm neighboring countries, while acknowledging that India does not allow its territory to movement of organizations against Myanmar.
During Maung Aye's visit, three documents between the two governments were signed, of which a memorandum of understanding on intelligence exchange is to combat transnational crime including terrorism.
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Myanmar to join ASEAN food and beverage trade exhibition in Japan
www.chinaview.cn 2009-10-12 12:13:52
YANGON, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- Three Myanmar foodstuff companies will attend an ASEAN food and beverage trade exhibition scheduled for this weekend in Japan, sources with the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry said on Monday.
The week-long exhibition, which lasts from Oct. 18 to 24, is aimed at boosting business cooperation between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Myanmar, the sources said.
Meanwhile, two other Myanmar companies have also planned to participate in similar ASEAN food and beverages exhibition taking place at the Convention and Exhibition Center (COEX) in South Korea's capital of Seoul from Nov 19 to 22.
The exhibition will display products of confectioneries, dried fruits, spices, fruit juices, coffee and tea, pre-cooked frozen food, sea food such as shrimps, crabs, tuna and squid, fish fillets and meals, the same sources said.
On June 26, the first Myanmar foodstuff fair was held in Yangon to boost the country's foodstuff industry and increase the competitiveness of food industry against overseas competitors and developing international market links.
www.chinaview.cn 2009-10-12 12:13:52
YANGON, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- Three Myanmar foodstuff companies will attend an ASEAN food and beverage trade exhibition scheduled for this weekend in Japan, sources with the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry said on Monday.
The week-long exhibition, which lasts from Oct. 18 to 24, is aimed at boosting business cooperation between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Myanmar, the sources said.
Meanwhile, two other Myanmar companies have also planned to participate in similar ASEAN food and beverages exhibition taking place at the Convention and Exhibition Center (COEX) in South Korea's capital of Seoul from Nov 19 to 22.
The exhibition will display products of confectioneries, dried fruits, spices, fruit juices, coffee and tea, pre-cooked frozen food, sea food such as shrimps, crabs, tuna and squid, fish fillets and meals, the same sources said.
On June 26, the first Myanmar foodstuff fair was held in Yangon to boost the country's foodstuff industry and increase the competitiveness of food industry against overseas competitors and developing international market links.
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Myanmar, Sudan to boost bilateral ties
www.chinaview.cn 2009-10-12 10:52:10
YANGON, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar and Sudan will work for boosting bilateral ties including mutually-beneficial cooperation and the existing friendly cooperation between the two countries, the official newspaper New Light of Myanmar reported Monday.
It was discussed during talks between Myanmar Deputy Foreign Minister U Maung Myint and his Sudanese counterpart Ali Ahmad Karti who visited Nay Pyi Taw over the past four days.
The two sides agreed to cement the cooperation through such international organizations as the United Nations and the Non-Aligned Movement.
During his visit, Karti also met with Myanmar Foreign Minister U Nyan Win and mutually-beneficial cooperation on investment and energy sectors were also discussed during meeting with related deputy ministers, the report said.
Moreover, Karti's delegation also met with officials of the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry in Yangon, agreeing to enhance links between business organizations of the two countries to boost economic and trade cooperation, the report added.
www.chinaview.cn 2009-10-12 10:52:10
YANGON, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar and Sudan will work for boosting bilateral ties including mutually-beneficial cooperation and the existing friendly cooperation between the two countries, the official newspaper New Light of Myanmar reported Monday.
It was discussed during talks between Myanmar Deputy Foreign Minister U Maung Myint and his Sudanese counterpart Ali Ahmad Karti who visited Nay Pyi Taw over the past four days.
The two sides agreed to cement the cooperation through such international organizations as the United Nations and the Non-Aligned Movement.
During his visit, Karti also met with Myanmar Foreign Minister U Nyan Win and mutually-beneficial cooperation on investment and energy sectors were also discussed during meeting with related deputy ministers, the report said.
Moreover, Karti's delegation also met with officials of the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry in Yangon, agreeing to enhance links between business organizations of the two countries to boost economic and trade cooperation, the report added.
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Phnom Penh Post - Myanmar official visits
Monday, 12 October 2009 15:03 Vong Sokheng
THE commander-in-chief of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, Pol Saroeun, met with Myanmar’s chief of security affairs last week in a bid to maintain the developing relations between Cambodia and Myanmar.
Meakh Sina, personal assistant to Pol Saroeun, said Sunday that the official meeting with Myanmar’s chief of security affairs, Ye Myint, was to discuss general military concerns, strengthen cooperation between the two countries and improve the standard of armed forces in the region.
“Cambodia and Myanmar have a ... similar culture, so we have to continue developing our relations,” Meakh Sina said.
Pol Saroeun also spoke with his Myanmar counterpart about Cambodia’s ongoing border conflict with Thailand at the Preah Vihear temple, as well as Thailand’s border conflicts with both Myanmar and Malaysia.
“As a member of ASEAN, why would Thailand create border conflicts with its neighboring countries?” Pol Saroeun asked Ye Myint, Meakh Sina told the Post.
Meakh Sina added that there was no principal focus to the discussion, which took place at the Army Secretary General Headquarters in Phnom Penh, Meakh Sina said.
Monday, 12 October 2009 15:03 Vong Sokheng
THE commander-in-chief of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, Pol Saroeun, met with Myanmar’s chief of security affairs last week in a bid to maintain the developing relations between Cambodia and Myanmar.
Meakh Sina, personal assistant to Pol Saroeun, said Sunday that the official meeting with Myanmar’s chief of security affairs, Ye Myint, was to discuss general military concerns, strengthen cooperation between the two countries and improve the standard of armed forces in the region.
“Cambodia and Myanmar have a ... similar culture, so we have to continue developing our relations,” Meakh Sina said.
Pol Saroeun also spoke with his Myanmar counterpart about Cambodia’s ongoing border conflict with Thailand at the Preah Vihear temple, as well as Thailand’s border conflicts with both Myanmar and Malaysia.
“As a member of ASEAN, why would Thailand create border conflicts with its neighboring countries?” Pol Saroeun asked Ye Myint, Meakh Sina told the Post.
Meakh Sina added that there was no principal focus to the discussion, which took place at the Army Secretary General Headquarters in Phnom Penh, Meakh Sina said.
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Low Intensity Quake In Myanmar-India Region
10/12/2009 2:28 AM ET
by RTT Staff Writer
(RTTNews) - A low intensity earthquake measuring 4.9 on the Richter scale occured Sunday night in the Myanmar-India border region but no casualty or damage were reported, according to the Indian Meteorological Department.
The department said the tremor, which took place at 23.56 hours IST (1826 GMT) had its epicenter at 23.5 degrees north latitude and 94.5 degrees east longitude.
India's northeast region has recently been frequently hit by earthquakes. No one was killed in these quakes, although there were reports of material and properties damages.
10/12/2009 2:28 AM ET
by RTT Staff Writer
(RTTNews) - A low intensity earthquake measuring 4.9 on the Richter scale occured Sunday night in the Myanmar-India border region but no casualty or damage were reported, according to the Indian Meteorological Department.
The department said the tremor, which took place at 23.56 hours IST (1826 GMT) had its epicenter at 23.5 degrees north latitude and 94.5 degrees east longitude.
India's northeast region has recently been frequently hit by earthquakes. No one was killed in these quakes, although there were reports of material and properties damages.
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Hindustan Times - Myanmar-Bangla border tense
Indo-Asian News Service
Dhaka, October 12, 2009
Last Updated: 22:49 IST(12/10/2009)
Bangladesh has said it is responding to threats from Myanmar, which has amassed troops on the border and readied warships and jets “in preparation for a large-scale conflict”.
The Myanmar military brought in tanks, artillery guns and 13 warships along its border with Bangladesh Sunday, The Daily Star newspaper said quoting army sources.
Bangladesh, too, is ready with 30 warships in Chittagong and Khulna ports, a Navy official said.
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Indo-Asian News Service
Dhaka, October 12, 2009
Last Updated: 22:49 IST(12/10/2009)
Bangladesh has said it is responding to threats from Myanmar, which has amassed troops on the border and readied warships and jets “in preparation for a large-scale conflict”.
The Myanmar military brought in tanks, artillery guns and 13 warships along its border with Bangladesh Sunday, The Daily Star newspaper said quoting army sources.
Bangladesh, too, is ready with 30 warships in Chittagong and Khulna ports, a Navy official said.
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MCOT - Thai minister to visit Myanmar to expand bilateral trade and investment
BANGKOK, Oct 8 (TNA) - Thailand's Deputy Commerce Minister Alongkorn Ponlaboot is scheduled to pay an official visit to Myanmar October 11 to13 to expand bilateral trade in investment between the two neighbouring countries.
Mr Alongkorn will lead representatives of Thailand’s public and private sectors in provinces bordering Myanmar to discuss with senior government officials there.
It is expected that the discussions will cover a wide range of cooperation, including border transportation, planning to hold the 5th Joint Trade Commission (JTC) meeting and the revocation of the list of 92 prohibited goods which were restricted for import-export and customs procedures.
"We will discuss possible relaxation or revocation of the four announcements that prohibit the import and export of 92 goods, the revival of the (Joint Commission) meeting as soon as possible after the last gathering was held in 2004 because (it) is a good mechanism to ease obstacles and foster bilateral trade and investment," he said.
As for the East-West Economic Corridor (EWEC) project which could facilitate the transport of goods from Southern China to the Middle East, Africa and Southern Europe, Mr Alongkorn said the conclusion should be made regarding the improvement of three routes—especially construction of the road between Kanchanaburi to Tavoy segment of the Asian Highway; from Mae Sot district of Tak to Myawaddy to Kawkareik and Moulmein (Mawlamyine); and Singkhon to Myeik.
The three routes could connect China to Thailand and Myanmar and could establish Thailand as gateway in the region, he said, adding that the 130 kilometre Kanchanaburi-Tavoy route leading to the Dawei Deep Sea Port in Myanmar would help expand trade in the Mekong subregion.
The deputy commerce minister said that he would also discuss cooperation on energy and electricity as the Provincial Electricity Authority (PEA) had projected investing in the power business in neighbouring countries.
BANGKOK, Oct 8 (TNA) - Thailand's Deputy Commerce Minister Alongkorn Ponlaboot is scheduled to pay an official visit to Myanmar October 11 to13 to expand bilateral trade in investment between the two neighbouring countries.
Mr Alongkorn will lead representatives of Thailand’s public and private sectors in provinces bordering Myanmar to discuss with senior government officials there.
It is expected that the discussions will cover a wide range of cooperation, including border transportation, planning to hold the 5th Joint Trade Commission (JTC) meeting and the revocation of the list of 92 prohibited goods which were restricted for import-export and customs procedures.
"We will discuss possible relaxation or revocation of the four announcements that prohibit the import and export of 92 goods, the revival of the (Joint Commission) meeting as soon as possible after the last gathering was held in 2004 because (it) is a good mechanism to ease obstacles and foster bilateral trade and investment," he said.
As for the East-West Economic Corridor (EWEC) project which could facilitate the transport of goods from Southern China to the Middle East, Africa and Southern Europe, Mr Alongkorn said the conclusion should be made regarding the improvement of three routes—especially construction of the road between Kanchanaburi to Tavoy segment of the Asian Highway; from Mae Sot district of Tak to Myawaddy to Kawkareik and Moulmein (Mawlamyine); and Singkhon to Myeik.
The three routes could connect China to Thailand and Myanmar and could establish Thailand as gateway in the region, he said, adding that the 130 kilometre Kanchanaburi-Tavoy route leading to the Dawei Deep Sea Port in Myanmar would help expand trade in the Mekong subregion.
The deputy commerce minister said that he would also discuss cooperation on energy and electricity as the Provincial Electricity Authority (PEA) had projected investing in the power business in neighbouring countries.
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October 08, 2009 14:56 PM
Sugar Prices In Myanmar Lower Than World Prices
YANGON, Oct 8 (Bernama) -- The current sugar prices in Myanmar market have dropped and remained steady while that in the international sugar market are reaching the highest in the past 20 years, sugar producers said on Thursday.
The sugar prices in the global market has jumped to some US$618 per tonne starting from the end of last month.
While sugar trading in the domestic market remains discouraging, causing the prices to go down with 1,000 Kyats (about U$1) per viss (1.65 kg) for white sugar while 900 Kyats (about US$0.80 cents) for brown sugar, China's Xinhua news agency reported Thursday, citing the sources as saying.
In late 2006, similar status happened when fresh sugar was introduced to the market, bringing down the prices from 1300 Kyats (over US$1) to 700 Kyats (US$0.60 cents).
According to official statistics, Myanmar produced 28,413 tonnes of sugar in the fiscal year of 2008-09 which ended in March, of which 8,700 tonnes were exported, fetching US$2.98 million.
Sugar Prices In Myanmar Lower Than World Prices
YANGON, Oct 8 (Bernama) -- The current sugar prices in Myanmar market have dropped and remained steady while that in the international sugar market are reaching the highest in the past 20 years, sugar producers said on Thursday.
The sugar prices in the global market has jumped to some US$618 per tonne starting from the end of last month.
While sugar trading in the domestic market remains discouraging, causing the prices to go down with 1,000 Kyats (about U$1) per viss (1.65 kg) for white sugar while 900 Kyats (about US$0.80 cents) for brown sugar, China's Xinhua news agency reported Thursday, citing the sources as saying.
In late 2006, similar status happened when fresh sugar was introduced to the market, bringing down the prices from 1300 Kyats (over US$1) to 700 Kyats (US$0.60 cents).
According to official statistics, Myanmar produced 28,413 tonnes of sugar in the fiscal year of 2008-09 which ended in March, of which 8,700 tonnes were exported, fetching US$2.98 million.
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The Age - Millers and Katies reject Made-in-Burma
October 12, 2009 - 4:55PM
Speciality Fashion Group, which owns Millers, Katies and four other fashion brands, will stop sourcing products from Burma.
It was among eight firms named last month in a report commissioned by Burma Campaign Australia, which says the companies are funding Burma's repressive military dictatorship.
"We made a group decision to cease trading with Burma due to the continued repression of the Burmese people and the ongoing presence of military rule," Speciality Fashion Group company secretary Howard Herman said in a statement released through Burma Campaign Australia on Monday.
The Australian company is following insurance company QBE and engineering company Downer EDI, which withdrew from Burma earlier this year.
Campaign spokeswoman Zetty Brake praised Speciality Fashion Group on its decision to withdraw, and encouraged other businesses to do the same.
"Corporate Australia needs to put people before profits and do the right thing by the people of Burma and withdraw," she said.
The campaign has previously calculated the Burmese regime could earn $US2.5 billion ($A2.76 billion) through royalties, income tax and an equity stake in a joint venture project with one Australian company alone, Twinza Oil.
They say this is enough to fund a quarter of Burma's army for a decade.
Other Australian firms named in the report as having business interests in Burma include Andaman Teak Supplies Pty Ltd, Chevron, Geckos Adventure, Jetstar Asia, Lonely Planet and Sri Asia Tourism.
Australian unions and churches have joined the campaign, pressuring the companies to wake up to the "ongoing atrocities" in Burma and withdraw all business interests.
Burma has been under military rule since 1962.
Its democracy icon, the Nobel Peace winner Aung San Suu Kyi, has spent about 14 of the past 20 years in detention since the junta refused to recognise her National League for Democracy's landslide victory in the elections in 1990.
October 12, 2009 - 4:55PM
Speciality Fashion Group, which owns Millers, Katies and four other fashion brands, will stop sourcing products from Burma.
It was among eight firms named last month in a report commissioned by Burma Campaign Australia, which says the companies are funding Burma's repressive military dictatorship.
"We made a group decision to cease trading with Burma due to the continued repression of the Burmese people and the ongoing presence of military rule," Speciality Fashion Group company secretary Howard Herman said in a statement released through Burma Campaign Australia on Monday.
The Australian company is following insurance company QBE and engineering company Downer EDI, which withdrew from Burma earlier this year.
Campaign spokeswoman Zetty Brake praised Speciality Fashion Group on its decision to withdraw, and encouraged other businesses to do the same.
"Corporate Australia needs to put people before profits and do the right thing by the people of Burma and withdraw," she said.
The campaign has previously calculated the Burmese regime could earn $US2.5 billion ($A2.76 billion) through royalties, income tax and an equity stake in a joint venture project with one Australian company alone, Twinza Oil.
They say this is enough to fund a quarter of Burma's army for a decade.
Other Australian firms named in the report as having business interests in Burma include Andaman Teak Supplies Pty Ltd, Chevron, Geckos Adventure, Jetstar Asia, Lonely Planet and Sri Asia Tourism.
Australian unions and churches have joined the campaign, pressuring the companies to wake up to the "ongoing atrocities" in Burma and withdraw all business interests.
Burma has been under military rule since 1962.
Its democracy icon, the Nobel Peace winner Aung San Suu Kyi, has spent about 14 of the past 20 years in detention since the junta refused to recognise her National League for Democracy's landslide victory in the elections in 1990.
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Crikey - Rethinking the Burmese sanctions
Despite calls for tougher sanctions on Burma’s military regime, it’s time for a more creative approach, argues Nicholas Farrelly
12 October 2009
LAST WEEK Australian trade unionists and pro-democracy activists announced a reinvigorated campaign to stop Australian companies from doing business in Burma. This is not the first time a call for tougher sanctions has drawn our attention to the brutality of the military regime: over the past two decades there have been countless attempts to marshal Western political and economic clout against the generals who run Southeast Asia’s most notorious dictatorship. So many attempts, in fact, that it seems like time to reassess their effectiveness.
Each of these attempts have been spearheaded by the United States and Britain, with countries like Australia playing a supporting role. The US government’s Burma policy has been the harshest, matched by its efforts to impose ever more punitive sanctions. Aung San Suu Kyi’s incarceration and the Burmese military’s failure to embrace democratic governance have also justified a downgraded United States diplomatic presence. During the administration of George W. Bush a portfolio of new sanctions was enforced, including a ban on imports, a ban on the export of financial services, and the freezing of assets associated with the Burmese government. Members of the European Union, and the governments of Canada and Australia have also, to varying degrees, imposed their own restrictions. These policies are imbued with a hope that international pressure will help change conditions in Burma.
Burma’s recent political history has been defined by a military dictatorship confident in its nationalist mission. Its violent approach to what it calls “peace” and “development” has led to a catalogue of human rights outrages and injustices. In their opposition to the regime, Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma’s other democrats are held up as paragons of righteous resistance. But a singular focus on the regime’s critics ignores the political realities of military rule. The military government is thoroughly entrenched; its tentacles envelope almost every part of the economy and society. These tentacles magnify the challenges for those who hope to design policies that will improve Burma’s prospects. Can anything work? Today, in Australia and around the world, there is a fresh effort to answer that question and reconsider Burma policies. The call by the Australian Council of Trade Unions and the Burma Campaign Australia to stop Jetstar, and a small number of other Australian companies, from doing business is part of this policy debate.
Australia maintains a list of over 400 Burmese government figures, and their associates, who are banned from financial dealings in Australia. These restrictions were introduced in the wake of the Burmese military’s crackdown on pro-democracy protestors in September–October 2007. When these financial sanctions were announced, foreign minister Alexander Downer described them as “the strongest financial measures available under existing Australian legislation against countries or individuals that are not subject to UN Security Council sanctions.” Thirteen of those on the list are members of the immediate family of Senior General Than Shwe, Burma’s head of state. Other members of the ruling State Peace and Development Council are also targeted. They are joined on Australia’s blacklist by subordinate military officers and other officials, and their families. There are also thirty-four Burmese civilians, from the government-aligned tycoon class, who are described as “persons who benefit from government economic policies.”
But we should not forget that disrupting the capacity of the regime and its associates to do business in countries like Australia is only one half of the puzzle. The current sanctions campaign is designed to highlight the other half: the Australian companies that continue to do business in Burma. On that list Jetstar is joined by seven Australian-registered firms: companies like Chevron, Lonely Planet and Twinza Oil. The Burma Campaign Australia describes them as members of a “dirty list.” Lonely Planet, which continues to publish a guidebook to the country, will not be surprised by its inclusion: it has been a regular target of critical jabs. Of course, the activities of natural resource extraction companies such as Chevron and Twinza Oil attract almost inevitable opprobrium. In the recent attack on the Burma operations of these businesses, ACTU president Sharan Burrow argued that “[w]e now should be part of increased sanctions, increased pressure to make sure that everything is done to bring this military rule to an end.” Her rallying cry is informed by a sense that if Australian companies are forced to withdraw then conditions inside Burma will tilt in favour of Aung San Suu Kyi and her pro-democracy movement.
The focus on the Burmese government’s misdeeds ensures that companies from countries like Australia face constant scrutiny if they do decide to continue operations there. But we ignore how little oversight their Asian counterparts face. Thai, Chinese and Singaporean businesses have led the world in their efforts to make a profit in Burma. These companies apparently have few scruples about who they deal with. The sanctions policy has, as such, failed to damage the international economic partnerships that underpin military rule. The lucrative exploitation of natural resources, particularly oil, timber and gems, has paid for the material comfort of the generals. With hydroelectric dams and other major infrastructure projects currently underway there is every chance that the military government will weather future economic storms. The generals have found no shortage of willing partners to buy their resources or build up their local capacity.
The economy is designed to replenish government coffers even while ordinary Burmese live hand-to-mouth. Calls for stricter Western sanctions surrender the Burmese economy to companies from countries where the social stigma of “blood money” carries little weight. The stern American sanctions dictate that the world’s most famous carbonated beverage cannot be made in the country. But all this means is that in the parts of the country closest to the Thai border Coca Cola is imported from Thailand; further north, it is imported across the long Sino-Burmese border. This illicit trade takes place because Coke’s major competitor, Pepsi, was once at the centre of a fierce sanctions debate. In 1991, a few years after the current crop of generals took power, a Pepsi bottling plant was opened in Burma. What followed was a vigorous international campaign to pressure the company to cease its Burma operations. By 1997 Pepsi had quietly pulled out. At the time this was trumpeted as a major victory for anti-government activists. But the end of Pepsi in Burma has, I would suggest, had a negligible impact on the Burmese military government. Today few people remember this episode or its failure to curtail the growing power of the regime.
The real impact has been felt elsewhere. Stripping Western-backed industrial capacity out of Burma has left big gaps in the local economy. It now tends towards the types of development that are least conducive to social transformation. Enclave capitalism has accompanied efforts to quarantine the wealth of the country in the hands of the cosy elite who remain complicit in military control. The highest profile members of this elite group are already targeted by Australian sanctions.
But the tens of millions of Burmese not targeted by sanctions must also be considered. In government-owned businesses, in the bureaucracy, in the military and in almost every other sphere of the economy, ordinary citizens struggle to defend their livelihoods during these years of interminable political deadlock. For many Burmese families the political situation means that their best strategy can be to cultivate economic connections to the government. These connections do not imply partisan affiliation; they are simply an acknowledgement that other economic choices are so limited. Very few of these workers, junior civil servants or soldiers will ever get rich, and they are not part of the decision-making echelon. But they do feel the trickle-down effects when Western companies are encouraged to look elsewhere in Southeast Asia for commercial opportunities. Is this a price worth paying? Will our symbolic and limited sanctions help change Burma’s future? Are we prepared to tolerate further drift towards the military’s dominance of the economy?
Such a drift is the outcome of two decades of Western pressure and disengagement. Recent reports that Russia and North Korea are working to strengthen Burma’s technical capacity, harden its military infrastructure and initiate a nuclear program are another obvious outcome. There is a lingering worry that the generals are convinced their future security can only be guaranteed by a credible deterrent against invasion. A Burmese bomb, while still only a theoretical possibility, has got chins wagging in capitals around the world. It does not help that the military leadership’s secretive and paranoid nature ensures that they send mixed, and often unhelpful, signals.
Clearly, the portfolio of sanctions implemented by the United States, Britain, Australia and others has proven ineffective for catalysing regime change in Burma. It may even have encouraged, or reinforced, some of the generals’ bad behaviour. But it does not follow that further sanctions, and even more pressure, are doomed to fail. It is impossible to know what will happen next: this is the perpetual policy conundrum for those who aspire to “fix” Burma, or any similar country. What we see is how the limited efficacy of sanctions stands in contrast to the surprising achievements of the Burmese military in managing its political affairs. The government has also shown an unheralded savvy when it comes to dealing with the rest of the world. Sanctions are inconvenient but the generals’ willingness to exploit the country’s natural assets keeps a long line of Asian investors salivating for more.
SEEKING AN ALTERNATIVE to this stagnant policy matrix, the Obama administration in the United States is tentatively charting a new course. For the moment they have announced a desire to maintain sanctions but also to seek fresh opportunities for dialogue and “engagement.” These moves, which have already seen high-level meetings between the governments, threaten to wrong-foot those who consider sanctions alone will lead to progress. The recent visit to Burma by Democrat Senator Jim Webb was pivotal in this respect. His meetings with Senior General Than Shwe and leader Aung San Suu Kyi point to a newfound willingness to take policy risks.
On the one hand any such change in United States policy will be greeted as a victory by the generals. The senior leadership rejoices in its survival and in the combative instincts that have seen it weather years of critical international opinion and bad press. As self-proclaimed custodians of Burma’s independence they are prepared to wear a damaged reputation if the country remains united. It is, after all, a nationalist mission that defines their esprit de corps. On the other hand we should not assume that a shift away from sanctions-led policies means that all international pressure will evaporate. A well-crafted strategy for re-engaging with key parts of Burmese society, including the military and bureaucracy, is likely to increase pressures in ways that make the generals uncomfortable.
Their current discomfort does not come from Western sanctions but rather from the ethnic armies that continue to retain their weapons. It is notable that the current debate about sanctions in Australia is happening at a time when the Burmese military is moving to neutralise some of these ethnic armies before the planned 2010 elections. All of the ceasefires are now under tremendous strain and some have already been broken. Fighting in the northern Shan State has seen a major Burmese army attack on a former ceasefire ally. The ceasefire forces, unprepared for a full-frontal assault, have scattered. Understandably, ongoing negotiations about the future of the other ethnic armies have become even more fragile. A spark from any direction could ignite new conflagrations. Renewed war with the Kachin Independence Army and the United Wa State Army, both forces with thousands of well-trained and provisioned troops, are now on the agenda for the first time in a generation.
The debate in Australia about Burma policy cannot be divorced from this political and ethnic situation. So while the sanctions debate preoccupies international coverage of conditions in the country, it is the generals’ plans for the upcoming elections and their efforts to sideline potential opponents that are testing their resolve. They have proven impervious to activist criticism and remain unmoved by Western sanctions. Any change will take time and great effort. And good policies will necessitate new levels of dialogue with the Burmese government. Encouraging Australian companies and the Australian government to play a more active role in those new conversations could be one way of breaking the Burma policy stalemate. •
Nicholas Farrelly is a Southeast Asia specialist in the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. In 2006 he co-founded New Mandala, a website on mainland Southeast Asian affairs.
Despite calls for tougher sanctions on Burma’s military regime, it’s time for a more creative approach, argues Nicholas Farrelly
12 October 2009
LAST WEEK Australian trade unionists and pro-democracy activists announced a reinvigorated campaign to stop Australian companies from doing business in Burma. This is not the first time a call for tougher sanctions has drawn our attention to the brutality of the military regime: over the past two decades there have been countless attempts to marshal Western political and economic clout against the generals who run Southeast Asia’s most notorious dictatorship. So many attempts, in fact, that it seems like time to reassess their effectiveness.
Each of these attempts have been spearheaded by the United States and Britain, with countries like Australia playing a supporting role. The US government’s Burma policy has been the harshest, matched by its efforts to impose ever more punitive sanctions. Aung San Suu Kyi’s incarceration and the Burmese military’s failure to embrace democratic governance have also justified a downgraded United States diplomatic presence. During the administration of George W. Bush a portfolio of new sanctions was enforced, including a ban on imports, a ban on the export of financial services, and the freezing of assets associated with the Burmese government. Members of the European Union, and the governments of Canada and Australia have also, to varying degrees, imposed their own restrictions. These policies are imbued with a hope that international pressure will help change conditions in Burma.
Burma’s recent political history has been defined by a military dictatorship confident in its nationalist mission. Its violent approach to what it calls “peace” and “development” has led to a catalogue of human rights outrages and injustices. In their opposition to the regime, Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma’s other democrats are held up as paragons of righteous resistance. But a singular focus on the regime’s critics ignores the political realities of military rule. The military government is thoroughly entrenched; its tentacles envelope almost every part of the economy and society. These tentacles magnify the challenges for those who hope to design policies that will improve Burma’s prospects. Can anything work? Today, in Australia and around the world, there is a fresh effort to answer that question and reconsider Burma policies. The call by the Australian Council of Trade Unions and the Burma Campaign Australia to stop Jetstar, and a small number of other Australian companies, from doing business is part of this policy debate.
Australia maintains a list of over 400 Burmese government figures, and their associates, who are banned from financial dealings in Australia. These restrictions were introduced in the wake of the Burmese military’s crackdown on pro-democracy protestors in September–October 2007. When these financial sanctions were announced, foreign minister Alexander Downer described them as “the strongest financial measures available under existing Australian legislation against countries or individuals that are not subject to UN Security Council sanctions.” Thirteen of those on the list are members of the immediate family of Senior General Than Shwe, Burma’s head of state. Other members of the ruling State Peace and Development Council are also targeted. They are joined on Australia’s blacklist by subordinate military officers and other officials, and their families. There are also thirty-four Burmese civilians, from the government-aligned tycoon class, who are described as “persons who benefit from government economic policies.”
But we should not forget that disrupting the capacity of the regime and its associates to do business in countries like Australia is only one half of the puzzle. The current sanctions campaign is designed to highlight the other half: the Australian companies that continue to do business in Burma. On that list Jetstar is joined by seven Australian-registered firms: companies like Chevron, Lonely Planet and Twinza Oil. The Burma Campaign Australia describes them as members of a “dirty list.” Lonely Planet, which continues to publish a guidebook to the country, will not be surprised by its inclusion: it has been a regular target of critical jabs. Of course, the activities of natural resource extraction companies such as Chevron and Twinza Oil attract almost inevitable opprobrium. In the recent attack on the Burma operations of these businesses, ACTU president Sharan Burrow argued that “[w]e now should be part of increased sanctions, increased pressure to make sure that everything is done to bring this military rule to an end.” Her rallying cry is informed by a sense that if Australian companies are forced to withdraw then conditions inside Burma will tilt in favour of Aung San Suu Kyi and her pro-democracy movement.
The focus on the Burmese government’s misdeeds ensures that companies from countries like Australia face constant scrutiny if they do decide to continue operations there. But we ignore how little oversight their Asian counterparts face. Thai, Chinese and Singaporean businesses have led the world in their efforts to make a profit in Burma. These companies apparently have few scruples about who they deal with. The sanctions policy has, as such, failed to damage the international economic partnerships that underpin military rule. The lucrative exploitation of natural resources, particularly oil, timber and gems, has paid for the material comfort of the generals. With hydroelectric dams and other major infrastructure projects currently underway there is every chance that the military government will weather future economic storms. The generals have found no shortage of willing partners to buy their resources or build up their local capacity.
The economy is designed to replenish government coffers even while ordinary Burmese live hand-to-mouth. Calls for stricter Western sanctions surrender the Burmese economy to companies from countries where the social stigma of “blood money” carries little weight. The stern American sanctions dictate that the world’s most famous carbonated beverage cannot be made in the country. But all this means is that in the parts of the country closest to the Thai border Coca Cola is imported from Thailand; further north, it is imported across the long Sino-Burmese border. This illicit trade takes place because Coke’s major competitor, Pepsi, was once at the centre of a fierce sanctions debate. In 1991, a few years after the current crop of generals took power, a Pepsi bottling plant was opened in Burma. What followed was a vigorous international campaign to pressure the company to cease its Burma operations. By 1997 Pepsi had quietly pulled out. At the time this was trumpeted as a major victory for anti-government activists. But the end of Pepsi in Burma has, I would suggest, had a negligible impact on the Burmese military government. Today few people remember this episode or its failure to curtail the growing power of the regime.
The real impact has been felt elsewhere. Stripping Western-backed industrial capacity out of Burma has left big gaps in the local economy. It now tends towards the types of development that are least conducive to social transformation. Enclave capitalism has accompanied efforts to quarantine the wealth of the country in the hands of the cosy elite who remain complicit in military control. The highest profile members of this elite group are already targeted by Australian sanctions.
But the tens of millions of Burmese not targeted by sanctions must also be considered. In government-owned businesses, in the bureaucracy, in the military and in almost every other sphere of the economy, ordinary citizens struggle to defend their livelihoods during these years of interminable political deadlock. For many Burmese families the political situation means that their best strategy can be to cultivate economic connections to the government. These connections do not imply partisan affiliation; they are simply an acknowledgement that other economic choices are so limited. Very few of these workers, junior civil servants or soldiers will ever get rich, and they are not part of the decision-making echelon. But they do feel the trickle-down effects when Western companies are encouraged to look elsewhere in Southeast Asia for commercial opportunities. Is this a price worth paying? Will our symbolic and limited sanctions help change Burma’s future? Are we prepared to tolerate further drift towards the military’s dominance of the economy?
Such a drift is the outcome of two decades of Western pressure and disengagement. Recent reports that Russia and North Korea are working to strengthen Burma’s technical capacity, harden its military infrastructure and initiate a nuclear program are another obvious outcome. There is a lingering worry that the generals are convinced their future security can only be guaranteed by a credible deterrent against invasion. A Burmese bomb, while still only a theoretical possibility, has got chins wagging in capitals around the world. It does not help that the military leadership’s secretive and paranoid nature ensures that they send mixed, and often unhelpful, signals.
Clearly, the portfolio of sanctions implemented by the United States, Britain, Australia and others has proven ineffective for catalysing regime change in Burma. It may even have encouraged, or reinforced, some of the generals’ bad behaviour. But it does not follow that further sanctions, and even more pressure, are doomed to fail. It is impossible to know what will happen next: this is the perpetual policy conundrum for those who aspire to “fix” Burma, or any similar country. What we see is how the limited efficacy of sanctions stands in contrast to the surprising achievements of the Burmese military in managing its political affairs. The government has also shown an unheralded savvy when it comes to dealing with the rest of the world. Sanctions are inconvenient but the generals’ willingness to exploit the country’s natural assets keeps a long line of Asian investors salivating for more.
SEEKING AN ALTERNATIVE to this stagnant policy matrix, the Obama administration in the United States is tentatively charting a new course. For the moment they have announced a desire to maintain sanctions but also to seek fresh opportunities for dialogue and “engagement.” These moves, which have already seen high-level meetings between the governments, threaten to wrong-foot those who consider sanctions alone will lead to progress. The recent visit to Burma by Democrat Senator Jim Webb was pivotal in this respect. His meetings with Senior General Than Shwe and leader Aung San Suu Kyi point to a newfound willingness to take policy risks.
On the one hand any such change in United States policy will be greeted as a victory by the generals. The senior leadership rejoices in its survival and in the combative instincts that have seen it weather years of critical international opinion and bad press. As self-proclaimed custodians of Burma’s independence they are prepared to wear a damaged reputation if the country remains united. It is, after all, a nationalist mission that defines their esprit de corps. On the other hand we should not assume that a shift away from sanctions-led policies means that all international pressure will evaporate. A well-crafted strategy for re-engaging with key parts of Burmese society, including the military and bureaucracy, is likely to increase pressures in ways that make the generals uncomfortable.
Their current discomfort does not come from Western sanctions but rather from the ethnic armies that continue to retain their weapons. It is notable that the current debate about sanctions in Australia is happening at a time when the Burmese military is moving to neutralise some of these ethnic armies before the planned 2010 elections. All of the ceasefires are now under tremendous strain and some have already been broken. Fighting in the northern Shan State has seen a major Burmese army attack on a former ceasefire ally. The ceasefire forces, unprepared for a full-frontal assault, have scattered. Understandably, ongoing negotiations about the future of the other ethnic armies have become even more fragile. A spark from any direction could ignite new conflagrations. Renewed war with the Kachin Independence Army and the United Wa State Army, both forces with thousands of well-trained and provisioned troops, are now on the agenda for the first time in a generation.
The debate in Australia about Burma policy cannot be divorced from this political and ethnic situation. So while the sanctions debate preoccupies international coverage of conditions in the country, it is the generals’ plans for the upcoming elections and their efforts to sideline potential opponents that are testing their resolve. They have proven impervious to activist criticism and remain unmoved by Western sanctions. Any change will take time and great effort. And good policies will necessitate new levels of dialogue with the Burmese government. Encouraging Australian companies and the Australian government to play a more active role in those new conversations could be one way of breaking the Burma policy stalemate. •
Nicholas Farrelly is a Southeast Asia specialist in the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. In 2006 he co-founded New Mandala, a website on mainland Southeast Asian affairs.
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ReliefWeb - Asian civil society mobilizes in support of refugee rights
Source: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
Date: 12 Oct 2009
BANGKOK, Thailand, October 12 (UNHCR) – With more refugees on the move but few Asian countries giving them a warm welcome, representatives of civil society and non-governmental organizations from 19 Asian and Pacific countries have met in Thailand to strategize on how to press for greater refugee rights.
The second meeting of the UNHCR-backed Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN), which wrapped up last Saturday, brought together more than 100 individuals representing advocacy groups from a broad region where protection of refugees often depends on political discretion rather than written laws.
"Much of Asia is a vacuum in terms of asylum law and institutions," Raymond Hall, UNHCR's regional representative and regional coordinator for Southeast Asia, told the opening session. "Our strategy should be to encourage governments to change this and to take a greater degree of ownership over refugee protection.
"With large-scale irregular migration and increasing numbers of people seeking asylum, the day may come when governments close down the fragile protection space that does exist," he warned.
Groups within the APRRN campaign for an end to detention of refugees – a major problem in many Asian countries – and try to improve refugees' access to basic services, such as health care. They also fight to ensure refugees' access to legal aid, and look out for the rights of girls and women.
Eileen Pittaway, director of the Centre for Refugee Research in Australia, advised refugee advocates to be cautious in how they represent refugees: "We can assist them in making their voices heard, not speak for them."
Tom Vargas, UNHCR's Bangkok-based senior regional protection officer, said he was pleased with the growth of the network since its establishment a year ago in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur. "We are very enthusiastic about working with them," he stressed. "They can add new impetus to advocacy for asylum-seekers at the national and regional level."
Vargas said the big change "is that NGOs have usually focused on the rights of their own nationals, but now they are fighting more for the rights of non-nationals, for refugees."
In a dialogue with UNHCR, representatives of the NGOs and civil society groups expressed concern that many refugees in Asia have trouble getting identity cards and are subject to arbitrary arrest and detention.
"We are functioning in a region," Hall agreed, "where asylum-seekers and refugees have little legal protection, and where an asylum-seeker is almost by definition an illegal immigrant in the eyes of the law."
By Kitty McKinsey
In Bangkok, Thailand
Source: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
Date: 12 Oct 2009
BANGKOK, Thailand, October 12 (UNHCR) – With more refugees on the move but few Asian countries giving them a warm welcome, representatives of civil society and non-governmental organizations from 19 Asian and Pacific countries have met in Thailand to strategize on how to press for greater refugee rights.
The second meeting of the UNHCR-backed Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN), which wrapped up last Saturday, brought together more than 100 individuals representing advocacy groups from a broad region where protection of refugees often depends on political discretion rather than written laws.
"Much of Asia is a vacuum in terms of asylum law and institutions," Raymond Hall, UNHCR's regional representative and regional coordinator for Southeast Asia, told the opening session. "Our strategy should be to encourage governments to change this and to take a greater degree of ownership over refugee protection.
"With large-scale irregular migration and increasing numbers of people seeking asylum, the day may come when governments close down the fragile protection space that does exist," he warned.
Groups within the APRRN campaign for an end to detention of refugees – a major problem in many Asian countries – and try to improve refugees' access to basic services, such as health care. They also fight to ensure refugees' access to legal aid, and look out for the rights of girls and women.
Eileen Pittaway, director of the Centre for Refugee Research in Australia, advised refugee advocates to be cautious in how they represent refugees: "We can assist them in making their voices heard, not speak for them."
Tom Vargas, UNHCR's Bangkok-based senior regional protection officer, said he was pleased with the growth of the network since its establishment a year ago in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur. "We are very enthusiastic about working with them," he stressed. "They can add new impetus to advocacy for asylum-seekers at the national and regional level."
Vargas said the big change "is that NGOs have usually focused on the rights of their own nationals, but now they are fighting more for the rights of non-nationals, for refugees."
In a dialogue with UNHCR, representatives of the NGOs and civil society groups expressed concern that many refugees in Asia have trouble getting identity cards and are subject to arbitrary arrest and detention.
"We are functioning in a region," Hall agreed, "where asylum-seekers and refugees have little legal protection, and where an asylum-seeker is almost by definition an illegal immigrant in the eyes of the law."
By Kitty McKinsey
In Bangkok, Thailand
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Bangkok Post - Beijing and Burma no longer the best of friends
A flood of refugees across the Chinese border after armed clashes have set the alarm bells ringing as the junta moves closer to the West
Published: 11/10/2009 at 12:00 AM
Newspaper section: Spectrum
Writer: Larry Jagan
Burma is increasingly disillusioned with China as an ally and may be looking to the West to balance its dependence on Beijing. There are increasing signs there is a growing rift between the two neighbours, especially over problems along the border. The junta has snubbed China publicly on several occasions recently, while Beijing has also shown signs of their dissatisfaction with their ally.
China has also reacted with a diplomatic flurry of activity - in Beijing, Naypyidaw and New York. The Chinese are so concerned about the clouds over the relationship, that they dispatched one of their most seasoned negotiators - the vice-minister for foreign affairs, Wu Dawei, who is responsible for boundary and ocean affairs and external security matters - to Burma on a secret mission in the past two weeks, according to senior Burmese officials.
No details are available of who he met and what was discussed during the visit. But diplomats in Beijing believe it was a significant step by the Chinese to pacify their increasingly petulant ally. Apart from the problems along their common border, the issue of the US's future involvement in Burma and the south-east Asian region will have figured prominently, they believe.
AUGUST OFFENSIVE
The first signs of the cracks in the relationship began to appear when the Burmese army launched an offensive in August against the Kokang ethnic rebels, who have had a truce with the regime for 20 years. Thousands of refugees fled across the border, raising fears of a fresh civil war along Burma's northern border and alarming China. The Burmese home minister has recently been to China and apologised for the incident. He promised the Chinese government that it would not happen again, according to Burmese government sources.
"Beijing has been taken aback by the Burmese junta's cavalier approach to their normally strong relationship," said Win Min, a Burmese academic based at Chiang Mai University. "But it is likely to prove to be a hic-cup, rather than a major shift in relations."
China has several major concerns, including their massive economic investment in the country, especially the planned oil pipeline, which will carry oil from the Arakan Sea off the west coast of Burma into China's southern province of Yunnan. But Beijing is also concerned about the growing unrest along the border, and the safety of the Chinese living in Burma. About a quarter of a million Chinese have crossed the border and sought work and economic opportunities in northern Burma in the last 10 years.
Concerns are now mounting for their safety. More than a week ago a government-controlled provincial television channel, which is based in Kunming - the capital of Yunnan - broadcast a Chinese government announcement advising all Chinese citizens in eastern Burma to return home quickly.
This followed a formal complaint from China to Burma days earlier over the way Chinese citizens living in a border region had been treated during the clashes between the Burmese army and the ethnic Kokang militia last month.
Chinese local officials have also asked the Burmese regime for compensation, to cover the damage and personal losses incurred by Chinese-owned businesses in the Kokang capital Laogai during the conflict. Local authorities in Lincang, in south-western China, have demanded 280 million yuan (1.3 billion baht) in compensation from the junta.
Burma insists that peace has been restored to the area in question, and most of the refugees who fled to China have returned. Burma's ambassador to China, Thein Lwin, recently told the official China News Service that the Kokang area was now peaceful again, and that he had "sympathy" for residents' losses. He said he was "deeply grieved" at the death of two Chinese during the unrest.
But there are still thousands seeking refuge across the border, not only from Kokang, according to residents living in China near the Burmese border. Nearly 40,000 refugees, many of them Chinese businessmen fled to China when the fighting erupted. They were housed in makeshift camps provided by the Chinese authorities. Officially these refugees have since been dispersed, and returned to Burma.
"The Kokang capital Laogai remains a ghost town," a recent foreign visitor there told Spectrum. Most of the main cities and towns are also empty, including the main border city of Mongla in the east of Shan state, he added.
CEASEFIRE THREATENED
From the Kachin areas in the west to the Shan areas in the east, people have fled into China fearing renewed fighting between other ethnic rebel groups, especially the Kachin and the Wa, and the Burmese army, according to Indian entrepreneurs who travel along this area doing business.
"Everyone fears that the 20-year-old ceasefire agreements have been torn up by the Burmese generals, and a return to fighting is imminent," said a Kachin student living in the Chinese border town of Ruili.
The Chinese authorities have started building three camps along the Yunnan border, opposite Pang Sang, the Wa capital, to provide temporary shelter for refugees in the event of any Burmese army incursion into the Wa region, according to western intelligence sources monitoring the area.
"At the moment it does not look as though the Burmese army is about to attack any of the other ethnic rebel groups that have ceasefire agreements, though there is a lot of posturing going on," said Win Min.
"There is no doubt that the regime means to have all the ethnic rebel armies disarm before next year's elections and become part of the border guards under the control of the Burmese army."
The ceasefire groups say they have until the end of October to comply with the government order to disarm, and join the Border Police Guard under the control of the Burmese military, and take part in next year's planned elections.
Earlier this year the junta sought the assistance of the former intelligence chief and prime minister, General Khin Nyunt - who was deposed in October 2004 and is now under house arrest in Rangoon - to help negotiate with the rebels groups, especially the Wa.
Khun Nyunt master-minded these ceasefire agreements and is still trusted by many of the ethnic leaders. He agreed on condition that his men - some 300 military intelligence officers who were jailed in the aftermath of his fall - be freed.
The government refused his condition and turned to the Chinese _ who have close relations with the Kachin, Kokang and the Wa. But China's reluctance to get involved angered the junta's leaders.
The ethnic leaders are certainly preparing for war, though the plan is not to provoke the junta, but to fight if attacked, a senior Kachin leader told Spectrum. The Kachin, Wa and Shan recently held a meeting at which they vowed to resist the authorities and promised to band together in the event of a Burmese army attack, he said.
Several of the groups are looking to secure more sophisticated weapons for their guerrillas, according to Thai intelligence officers in the region. The Wa have already put out feelers to former arms dealers they have done business with in the past, said the Thai army officer, on condition of anonymity.
ALLEGIANCE TESTED
Ethnic groups _ especially the Kachin, Kokang and Wa _ have traditionally had close ties with the Chinese authorities. Economically and culturally the area is certainly closer to China than the Burmese regime.
Many of these ethnic leaders go to Chinese hospitals for treatment and send their children to schools in China. The Chinese language and even the Chinese currency, the Renminbi, is used throughout the Kokang and Wa areas in northern Shan state.
The junta has become a key Chinese ally and strategic partner in southeast Asia in the past few years. The apparent overtures from Washington to Burma have dismayed the Chinese leaders, who remain suspicious of US interest in re-engaging with the region and its increasing role. They also fear Washington may be returning to the old US strategy of containing China. Southeast Asia is seen by Beijing as its backyard, and any competition for influence is far from welcomed.
China fears that its influence in the region is waning. Vietnam has never been a strong supporter, and as far as Beijing is concerned, for some time Hanoi's main interest has been cosying up to Washington. Vietnam has been actively trying to shift Burma away from China _ spreading rumours about Chinese territorial ambitions, according to western diplomats in Bangkok. Recently, Cambodia and Thailand have strengthened their ties with the US, increasing China's strategic concerns.
A recent joint meeting in July between the US and the Mekong countries _ Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam _ set alarm bells ringing in Beijing.
Now China is upset that its rock-solid ally has also begun to flirt with improving relations with Washington. ''China will react with measured nervousness to this unwelcomed encroachment into Burma,'' said Justin Wintle, a British expert on Burma and biographer of Aung San Suu Kyi.
Beijing's current concerns stem from the unstable basis of their bilateral relationship. The Chinese government remains suspicious of the Burmese military junta. ''When we meet the Thais, they look Chinese and speak Chinese, but when we see the Burmese leaders, they don't speak Chinese and they look South Asian,'' said a senior Chinese government official.
''Burma and China are not 'real' friends _ as with Thailand, for example,'' he said. ''It's a relationship of mutual benefit _ we are in it for what we can get out of it, as they are.''
ECONOMIC TIES
But Win Min said the situation is unlikely to become antagonistic ''anytime soon''. ''Burma is far too economically dependent on China for the government to really consider ditching Beijing as its main ally.''
More than 90% of direct foreign investment in Burma last year was Chinese, according to Burmese government figures. It has jumped by more than 25% over the past 12 months to more than $1 billion. More than 80% of that investment was in the mining sector, oil industry and numerous hydro-electric schemes in Burma.
Bilateral trade between Burma and China was also up by more than 25% last year to nearly $3 billion in 2008.
While the western-led sanctions remain in place, this pattern of trade and investment is unlikely to change. Sanctions of course now more than ever rankle with the regime.
''Sanctions are being employed as a political tool against Myanmar and we consider them unjust,'' the Burmese prime minister, General Thein Sein, told the UN's annual General Assembly meeting in New York last month.
Undoubtedly Burma's interest in a dialogue with the US is motivated by the regime's main concerns, to have sanctions lifted, for international humanitarian and development assistance to flow into the country, and to attract foreign investment. ''Though generals are certainly unhappy about being too dependent on one supporter, and will be trying to balance Chinese influence with better relations with the US as well as other countries _ like ASEAN and India _ they will not be looking to cut the umbilical cord with China in the near future,'' said Win Min.
But there is no escaping the fact that Burma's military leaders are upset with Beijing. The Chinese embassy put on a lavish reception for the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Peoples' Republic of China. The coverage in the official New Light of Myanmar the next day paid scant notice to the importance of the occasion or the ambassador's address. Instead, it noticeably focused on Secretary One's attendance.
This comes after the Myanmar Times recently was allowed to refer to the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, when he visited Taiwan last month.
But things may already be on the mend after the Chinese envoy's secret mission to see Than Shwe. China is desperately trying to mend fences with the junta. One example of this is the diplomatic initiative China took at the UN Security Council to make sure Burma is not on its agenda _ at least this month. But the Chinese did support the resolution at the UN Human Rights Council last week that called for the immediate release of political prisoners in Burma, including Aung San Suu Kyi.
So far it seems to have been a spat between two close partners.
But in the end it is Burma that may hold the upper hand. China's economic, trade and military involvement in Burma gives the junta the upper hand rather than making them subservient to Beijing.
The issue now is how far will the junta go in flexing its muscles.
A flood of refugees across the Chinese border after armed clashes have set the alarm bells ringing as the junta moves closer to the West
Published: 11/10/2009 at 12:00 AM
Newspaper section: Spectrum
Writer: Larry Jagan
Burma is increasingly disillusioned with China as an ally and may be looking to the West to balance its dependence on Beijing. There are increasing signs there is a growing rift between the two neighbours, especially over problems along the border. The junta has snubbed China publicly on several occasions recently, while Beijing has also shown signs of their dissatisfaction with their ally.
China has also reacted with a diplomatic flurry of activity - in Beijing, Naypyidaw and New York. The Chinese are so concerned about the clouds over the relationship, that they dispatched one of their most seasoned negotiators - the vice-minister for foreign affairs, Wu Dawei, who is responsible for boundary and ocean affairs and external security matters - to Burma on a secret mission in the past two weeks, according to senior Burmese officials.
No details are available of who he met and what was discussed during the visit. But diplomats in Beijing believe it was a significant step by the Chinese to pacify their increasingly petulant ally. Apart from the problems along their common border, the issue of the US's future involvement in Burma and the south-east Asian region will have figured prominently, they believe.
AUGUST OFFENSIVE
The first signs of the cracks in the relationship began to appear when the Burmese army launched an offensive in August against the Kokang ethnic rebels, who have had a truce with the regime for 20 years. Thousands of refugees fled across the border, raising fears of a fresh civil war along Burma's northern border and alarming China. The Burmese home minister has recently been to China and apologised for the incident. He promised the Chinese government that it would not happen again, according to Burmese government sources.
"Beijing has been taken aback by the Burmese junta's cavalier approach to their normally strong relationship," said Win Min, a Burmese academic based at Chiang Mai University. "But it is likely to prove to be a hic-cup, rather than a major shift in relations."
China has several major concerns, including their massive economic investment in the country, especially the planned oil pipeline, which will carry oil from the Arakan Sea off the west coast of Burma into China's southern province of Yunnan. But Beijing is also concerned about the growing unrest along the border, and the safety of the Chinese living in Burma. About a quarter of a million Chinese have crossed the border and sought work and economic opportunities in northern Burma in the last 10 years.
Concerns are now mounting for their safety. More than a week ago a government-controlled provincial television channel, which is based in Kunming - the capital of Yunnan - broadcast a Chinese government announcement advising all Chinese citizens in eastern Burma to return home quickly.
This followed a formal complaint from China to Burma days earlier over the way Chinese citizens living in a border region had been treated during the clashes between the Burmese army and the ethnic Kokang militia last month.
Chinese local officials have also asked the Burmese regime for compensation, to cover the damage and personal losses incurred by Chinese-owned businesses in the Kokang capital Laogai during the conflict. Local authorities in Lincang, in south-western China, have demanded 280 million yuan (1.3 billion baht) in compensation from the junta.
Burma insists that peace has been restored to the area in question, and most of the refugees who fled to China have returned. Burma's ambassador to China, Thein Lwin, recently told the official China News Service that the Kokang area was now peaceful again, and that he had "sympathy" for residents' losses. He said he was "deeply grieved" at the death of two Chinese during the unrest.
But there are still thousands seeking refuge across the border, not only from Kokang, according to residents living in China near the Burmese border. Nearly 40,000 refugees, many of them Chinese businessmen fled to China when the fighting erupted. They were housed in makeshift camps provided by the Chinese authorities. Officially these refugees have since been dispersed, and returned to Burma.
"The Kokang capital Laogai remains a ghost town," a recent foreign visitor there told Spectrum. Most of the main cities and towns are also empty, including the main border city of Mongla in the east of Shan state, he added.
CEASEFIRE THREATENED
From the Kachin areas in the west to the Shan areas in the east, people have fled into China fearing renewed fighting between other ethnic rebel groups, especially the Kachin and the Wa, and the Burmese army, according to Indian entrepreneurs who travel along this area doing business.
"Everyone fears that the 20-year-old ceasefire agreements have been torn up by the Burmese generals, and a return to fighting is imminent," said a Kachin student living in the Chinese border town of Ruili.
The Chinese authorities have started building three camps along the Yunnan border, opposite Pang Sang, the Wa capital, to provide temporary shelter for refugees in the event of any Burmese army incursion into the Wa region, according to western intelligence sources monitoring the area.
"At the moment it does not look as though the Burmese army is about to attack any of the other ethnic rebel groups that have ceasefire agreements, though there is a lot of posturing going on," said Win Min.
"There is no doubt that the regime means to have all the ethnic rebel armies disarm before next year's elections and become part of the border guards under the control of the Burmese army."
The ceasefire groups say they have until the end of October to comply with the government order to disarm, and join the Border Police Guard under the control of the Burmese military, and take part in next year's planned elections.
Earlier this year the junta sought the assistance of the former intelligence chief and prime minister, General Khin Nyunt - who was deposed in October 2004 and is now under house arrest in Rangoon - to help negotiate with the rebels groups, especially the Wa.
Khun Nyunt master-minded these ceasefire agreements and is still trusted by many of the ethnic leaders. He agreed on condition that his men - some 300 military intelligence officers who were jailed in the aftermath of his fall - be freed.
The government refused his condition and turned to the Chinese _ who have close relations with the Kachin, Kokang and the Wa. But China's reluctance to get involved angered the junta's leaders.
The ethnic leaders are certainly preparing for war, though the plan is not to provoke the junta, but to fight if attacked, a senior Kachin leader told Spectrum. The Kachin, Wa and Shan recently held a meeting at which they vowed to resist the authorities and promised to band together in the event of a Burmese army attack, he said.
Several of the groups are looking to secure more sophisticated weapons for their guerrillas, according to Thai intelligence officers in the region. The Wa have already put out feelers to former arms dealers they have done business with in the past, said the Thai army officer, on condition of anonymity.
ALLEGIANCE TESTED
Ethnic groups _ especially the Kachin, Kokang and Wa _ have traditionally had close ties with the Chinese authorities. Economically and culturally the area is certainly closer to China than the Burmese regime.
Many of these ethnic leaders go to Chinese hospitals for treatment and send their children to schools in China. The Chinese language and even the Chinese currency, the Renminbi, is used throughout the Kokang and Wa areas in northern Shan state.
The junta has become a key Chinese ally and strategic partner in southeast Asia in the past few years. The apparent overtures from Washington to Burma have dismayed the Chinese leaders, who remain suspicious of US interest in re-engaging with the region and its increasing role. They also fear Washington may be returning to the old US strategy of containing China. Southeast Asia is seen by Beijing as its backyard, and any competition for influence is far from welcomed.
China fears that its influence in the region is waning. Vietnam has never been a strong supporter, and as far as Beijing is concerned, for some time Hanoi's main interest has been cosying up to Washington. Vietnam has been actively trying to shift Burma away from China _ spreading rumours about Chinese territorial ambitions, according to western diplomats in Bangkok. Recently, Cambodia and Thailand have strengthened their ties with the US, increasing China's strategic concerns.
A recent joint meeting in July between the US and the Mekong countries _ Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam _ set alarm bells ringing in Beijing.
Now China is upset that its rock-solid ally has also begun to flirt with improving relations with Washington. ''China will react with measured nervousness to this unwelcomed encroachment into Burma,'' said Justin Wintle, a British expert on Burma and biographer of Aung San Suu Kyi.
Beijing's current concerns stem from the unstable basis of their bilateral relationship. The Chinese government remains suspicious of the Burmese military junta. ''When we meet the Thais, they look Chinese and speak Chinese, but when we see the Burmese leaders, they don't speak Chinese and they look South Asian,'' said a senior Chinese government official.
''Burma and China are not 'real' friends _ as with Thailand, for example,'' he said. ''It's a relationship of mutual benefit _ we are in it for what we can get out of it, as they are.''
ECONOMIC TIES
But Win Min said the situation is unlikely to become antagonistic ''anytime soon''. ''Burma is far too economically dependent on China for the government to really consider ditching Beijing as its main ally.''
More than 90% of direct foreign investment in Burma last year was Chinese, according to Burmese government figures. It has jumped by more than 25% over the past 12 months to more than $1 billion. More than 80% of that investment was in the mining sector, oil industry and numerous hydro-electric schemes in Burma.
Bilateral trade between Burma and China was also up by more than 25% last year to nearly $3 billion in 2008.
While the western-led sanctions remain in place, this pattern of trade and investment is unlikely to change. Sanctions of course now more than ever rankle with the regime.
''Sanctions are being employed as a political tool against Myanmar and we consider them unjust,'' the Burmese prime minister, General Thein Sein, told the UN's annual General Assembly meeting in New York last month.
Undoubtedly Burma's interest in a dialogue with the US is motivated by the regime's main concerns, to have sanctions lifted, for international humanitarian and development assistance to flow into the country, and to attract foreign investment. ''Though generals are certainly unhappy about being too dependent on one supporter, and will be trying to balance Chinese influence with better relations with the US as well as other countries _ like ASEAN and India _ they will not be looking to cut the umbilical cord with China in the near future,'' said Win Min.
But there is no escaping the fact that Burma's military leaders are upset with Beijing. The Chinese embassy put on a lavish reception for the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Peoples' Republic of China. The coverage in the official New Light of Myanmar the next day paid scant notice to the importance of the occasion or the ambassador's address. Instead, it noticeably focused on Secretary One's attendance.
This comes after the Myanmar Times recently was allowed to refer to the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, when he visited Taiwan last month.
But things may already be on the mend after the Chinese envoy's secret mission to see Than Shwe. China is desperately trying to mend fences with the junta. One example of this is the diplomatic initiative China took at the UN Security Council to make sure Burma is not on its agenda _ at least this month. But the Chinese did support the resolution at the UN Human Rights Council last week that called for the immediate release of political prisoners in Burma, including Aung San Suu Kyi.
So far it seems to have been a spat between two close partners.
But in the end it is Burma that may hold the upper hand. China's economic, trade and military involvement in Burma gives the junta the upper hand rather than making them subservient to Beijing.
The issue now is how far will the junta go in flexing its muscles.
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Mizzima News - Junta said to be supplying chemical mortars to army
by Mungpi
Friday, 09 October 2009 21:48
New Delhi (Mizzima) - In what seems to be a sinister design, the Burmese military junta, while reinforcing its troops in Shan state for a massive offensive against ethnic ceasefire groups, is supplying its army with mortars laced with chemical ingredients, sources said.
According to the Thailand-based ethnic Kachin News Group (KNG), the junta’s troops since last month have been stockpiling a strange type of mortar shell, marked with red, yellow and green colours.
“We have our source in the army. Our source tells us that the army is bringing in these mortars, which are made of chemicals. But they have been strictly told not to use it without orders from higher ups,” said Naw Din, Editor of the KNG, quoting a military source.
Naw Din said, the mortars, according to an insider, were imported from North Korea and have a deadly chemical impact, once fired.
“When the mortars are fired, it contaminates the air and causes people to faint, results in bleeding of the nose, causes breathing difficulties and blurs the eye sight,” Naw Din said.
He added the army source told him that at least two military trucks carrying these mortars were sent to the Burmese Army’s No.1 Nyaung Pin military base on the mountain top near Mongkoe in Northeast Shan State, in early September.
While the supply and possible use of chemical mortars by the junta’s troops cannot be independently verified, sources on the Sino-Burma border said Burmese troops are being heavily reinforced.
Following the Kokang incident in late August, the Burmese junta has been directing its army to borders of the territory of the United Wa State Army (UWSA), the strongest armed faction among the ceasefire groups, and Mongla areas, where the National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA) is based.
Sein Kyi, Assistant Editor of the Thailand-based Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN), said the junta while increasingly pressurizing the ethnic ceasefire groups to accept its proposal of transforming to the ‘Border Guard Force’ through negotiations and meetings, is also increasing its military presence in northern and eastern Shan state.
“In recent weeks, the Burmese military commanders have proposed meeting lower ranking officials of the UWSA, in order to split the group. But UWSA officials rejected the plan saying they should contact their headquarters,” Sein Kyi said.
In the meantime, Sein Kyi said, the junta is also reinforcing its bases with more troops, and stockpiling supplies, in what looks like a preparation for a massive offensive.
“I don’t have any updates on the possibilities of stockpiling chemical mortars, but earlier about a year or two ago, I had been told by our sources inside the military that they have chemical mortars made in North Korea,” Sein Kyi added.
While he said he did not know of the recent supplies of chemical mortars, he did not rule out the possibility.
“It would be very deadly if these mortars are used. It would impact not only soldiers but all the people, villagers and civilians alike,” he added.
With the Burmese military junta setting the deadline for ethnic ceasefire groups to respond to their proposal of transforming into Border Guard Force to October, sources said, fighting is likely to break out soon.
But with about a 20,000 armed force, the UWSA is unlikely to submit to the junta and a clash between the two could end in a bloodbath.
“The junta will attack the UWSA and other groups sooner or later, but we don’t know how and whether they will launch a direct military campaign or not. They might also rely on other tactics as they did in the Kokang incident,” Sein Kyi said.
But sources said, the junta is likely to look for Chinese signals and it would largely depend on China whether the junta would launch a direct military campaign because the Wa are largely seen as being backed by the Chinese.
by Mungpi
Friday, 09 October 2009 21:48
New Delhi (Mizzima) - In what seems to be a sinister design, the Burmese military junta, while reinforcing its troops in Shan state for a massive offensive against ethnic ceasefire groups, is supplying its army with mortars laced with chemical ingredients, sources said.
According to the Thailand-based ethnic Kachin News Group (KNG), the junta’s troops since last month have been stockpiling a strange type of mortar shell, marked with red, yellow and green colours.
“We have our source in the army. Our source tells us that the army is bringing in these mortars, which are made of chemicals. But they have been strictly told not to use it without orders from higher ups,” said Naw Din, Editor of the KNG, quoting a military source.
Naw Din said, the mortars, according to an insider, were imported from North Korea and have a deadly chemical impact, once fired.
“When the mortars are fired, it contaminates the air and causes people to faint, results in bleeding of the nose, causes breathing difficulties and blurs the eye sight,” Naw Din said.
He added the army source told him that at least two military trucks carrying these mortars were sent to the Burmese Army’s No.1 Nyaung Pin military base on the mountain top near Mongkoe in Northeast Shan State, in early September.
While the supply and possible use of chemical mortars by the junta’s troops cannot be independently verified, sources on the Sino-Burma border said Burmese troops are being heavily reinforced.
Following the Kokang incident in late August, the Burmese junta has been directing its army to borders of the territory of the United Wa State Army (UWSA), the strongest armed faction among the ceasefire groups, and Mongla areas, where the National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA) is based.
Sein Kyi, Assistant Editor of the Thailand-based Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN), said the junta while increasingly pressurizing the ethnic ceasefire groups to accept its proposal of transforming to the ‘Border Guard Force’ through negotiations and meetings, is also increasing its military presence in northern and eastern Shan state.
“In recent weeks, the Burmese military commanders have proposed meeting lower ranking officials of the UWSA, in order to split the group. But UWSA officials rejected the plan saying they should contact their headquarters,” Sein Kyi said.
In the meantime, Sein Kyi said, the junta is also reinforcing its bases with more troops, and stockpiling supplies, in what looks like a preparation for a massive offensive.
“I don’t have any updates on the possibilities of stockpiling chemical mortars, but earlier about a year or two ago, I had been told by our sources inside the military that they have chemical mortars made in North Korea,” Sein Kyi added.
While he said he did not know of the recent supplies of chemical mortars, he did not rule out the possibility.
“It would be very deadly if these mortars are used. It would impact not only soldiers but all the people, villagers and civilians alike,” he added.
With the Burmese military junta setting the deadline for ethnic ceasefire groups to respond to their proposal of transforming into Border Guard Force to October, sources said, fighting is likely to break out soon.
But with about a 20,000 armed force, the UWSA is unlikely to submit to the junta and a clash between the two could end in a bloodbath.
“The junta will attack the UWSA and other groups sooner or later, but we don’t know how and whether they will launch a direct military campaign or not. They might also rely on other tactics as they did in the Kokang incident,” Sein Kyi said.
But sources said, the junta is likely to look for Chinese signals and it would largely depend on China whether the junta would launch a direct military campaign because the Wa are largely seen as being backed by the Chinese.
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Burma constitution ‘provides impunity’ for abusesOct 9, 2009 (DVB)–Burma’s redrafted 2008 constitution provides impunity for human rights abuses and should not be the bedrock for elections next year, a damning report has claimed.
Many of the provisions of the constitution suggest that “instead of being a true catalyst for lasting change, it further entrenches the military within the government and the associated culture of impunity,” the International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) said.
Its report, Impunity Prolonged: Burma and its Constitution, says that within the constitution, the regime has granted itself impunity for sexual violence, forced labor and the recruitment of child soldiers.
Burma, it says, is “one of the most difficult challenges in the world in relation to making progress toward combating impunity.”
Khin Omar, coordinator of the Thailand-based Burma Partnership, said the constitution will “force military rule on Burma forever”.
“[It is] the most problematic element as to whether we move further toward being a failed state or whether we move towards national reconciliation,” she said.
The report says that “officers and troops systematically use rape and other forms of sexual abuse as a strategy of war.”
It then cites a clause within the constitution stating that: “No proceeding shall be instituted against the said Councils (the military) or any member thereof or any member of the Government, in respect to any act done in the execution of their respective duties.”
Burma expert Robert H Taylor told DVB however that “No one has proven that [rape] is public policy,” adding that “we don’t know how the military deals with instances of rape”.
He cited anonymous sources that claim the government has action against people accused of assault and rape, but added that the constitution “has its problems, but which doesn’t?”
In a sign that the regime responds to international pressure, the report cited an agreement between the junta and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to address forced labour and child soldiers.
The 2008 constitution was ratified in the weeks following cyclone Nargis last May, in which 140,000 people were killed and millions of acres of land destroyed. Despite the cyclone, the government claimed a 99 percent turnout, with 92.4 percent voting in favour.
A report released last year by Hong Kong-based constitutional expert, Professor Yash Ghai, said that “the cynicism with which the regime held the referendum and
manipulated the results was on a par with the cynicism and coercion by which the draft was prepared”.
The ICTJ have called on the international community to withhold support for elections in Burma next year. Khin Omar echoed the calls, and said that a constitutional review must take place before the elections do.
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