Bomb kills six on restive Myanmar border
1 hr 28 mins ago
YANGON (AFP) – Six people have been killed and 12 injured when a time bomb exploded in Myanmar's restive Karen state on Wednesday night, an official told AFP Thursday.
He said the bomb was detonated at 9pm (1430 GMT) on Wednesday as the ethnic Karen celebrated their New Year in the southeastern state bordering Thailand.
"Altogether six people were killed and another 12 were injured when a timed-bomb exploded," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"One injured person is in a critical condition. It happened as they celebrated their New Year's Day party," he said.
The bomb exploded in Phapun town in northeastern Karen State, about 120 miles (192 kilometres) from the economic hub, Yangon, he said.
Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported that the bomb went off in the middle of market stalls where a new year festival was being held.
It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the bomb, but the town is close to the area where separatists have been fighting a decades-long insurgency.
The Karen National Union has been fighting the Myanmar government for autonomy for more than five decades. Myanmar has been ruled by the military since 1962.
Altogether 17 armed groups and some 40 small ethnic groups have signed ceasefire agreements with the current military junta since it took power in 1988.
1 hr 28 mins ago
YANGON (AFP) – Six people have been killed and 12 injured when a time bomb exploded in Myanmar's restive Karen state on Wednesday night, an official told AFP Thursday.
He said the bomb was detonated at 9pm (1430 GMT) on Wednesday as the ethnic Karen celebrated their New Year in the southeastern state bordering Thailand.
"Altogether six people were killed and another 12 were injured when a timed-bomb exploded," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"One injured person is in a critical condition. It happened as they celebrated their New Year's Day party," he said.
The bomb exploded in Phapun town in northeastern Karen State, about 120 miles (192 kilometres) from the economic hub, Yangon, he said.
Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported that the bomb went off in the middle of market stalls where a new year festival was being held.
It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the bomb, but the town is close to the area where separatists have been fighting a decades-long insurgency.
The Karen National Union has been fighting the Myanmar government for autonomy for more than five decades. Myanmar has been ruled by the military since 1962.
Altogether 17 armed groups and some 40 small ethnic groups have signed ceasefire agreements with the current military junta since it took power in 1988.
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Myanmar's Suu Kyi in rare talks with party elders
by Hla Hla Htay – Wed Dec 16, 3:08 am ET
YANGON (AFP) – Myanmar's junta allowed detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to meet with three elderly senior members of her party Wednesday in a rare concession by the military regime.
The democracy icon was taken to a state guesthouse in Yangon for the talks with 92-year-old party chairman Aung Shwe, secretary Lwin, 85, and executive committee member Lun Tin, 89, all of whom are in poor health.
"The authorities allowed us to meet Aung San Suu Kyi privately at the guesthouse. She paid her respects to us and gave presents and fruit baskets," said Lwin after the meeting, which lasted about 45 minutes.
"I had not met her since 2003," he told reporters.
"Aung San Suu Kyi asked us to allow her to reorganise the central executive committee. We accepted her request," he added. Most of the party's current 11-member committee are very old.
In a letter to Myanmar's military strongman Than Shwe last month, Suu Kyi requested she be allowed to visit the three men.
"Daw Suu accepted the authorities' suggestion to meet them all in one place for security reasons," her lawyer and NLD spokesman Nyan Win told reporters on Tuesday. Daw is a term of respect in Myanmar.
The visit followed a meeting between Suu Kyi and junta liaison officer Aung Kyi last Wednesday -- their third since the beginning of October -- where they discussed her letter to Than Shwe, Nyan Win said.
In the correspondence, she also asked to meet with the junta chief himself and said she wanted to cooperate with the government to get sanctions against Myanmar lifted for the benefit of the country.
"Daw Suu is also expecting the rest of her requests to be fulfilled. She's optimistic about her letter," Nyan Win said.
Suu Kyi has been locked up for 14 of the past 20 years and was ordered in August to spend another 18 months in detention after being convicted over an incident in which an American man swam to her house.
The country's supreme court has agreed to hear a final appeal against the 64-year-old's house arrest next Monday, after a lower court rejected an initial appeal in October.
The extension of her detention after a trial at Yangon's notorious Insein Prison sparked international outrage as it effectively keeps her off the stage for elections promised by
the regime some time in 2010.
If the polls go ahead they will be the first since 1990, when the junta refused to recognise the NLD's landslide victory.
In another letter to Than Shwe in September, Suu Kyi offered suggestions for getting Western sanctions lifted and requested a meeting with senior Western diplomats in Yangon, which she was also granted.
In recent months the United States, followed by the European Union, has shifted towards a policy of greater engagement with Myanmar -- which has been under military rule since 1962 -- with sanctions failing to bear fruit.
In November the regime allowed Suu Kyi to make a rare appearance in front of the media after she held talks with US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, the most senior US official to visit Myanmar in 14 years.
Despite an apparent shift in relations between Suu Kyi and the junta, state media last week accused her of being "insincere" and "dishonest" in sending letters to Than Shwe and accused her of leaking them to foreign media.
The New Light of Myanmar newspaper said her change of tack after years of favouring sanctions was "highly questionable".
by Hla Hla Htay – Wed Dec 16, 3:08 am ET
YANGON (AFP) – Myanmar's junta allowed detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to meet with three elderly senior members of her party Wednesday in a rare concession by the military regime.
The democracy icon was taken to a state guesthouse in Yangon for the talks with 92-year-old party chairman Aung Shwe, secretary Lwin, 85, and executive committee member Lun Tin, 89, all of whom are in poor health.
"The authorities allowed us to meet Aung San Suu Kyi privately at the guesthouse. She paid her respects to us and gave presents and fruit baskets," said Lwin after the meeting, which lasted about 45 minutes.
"I had not met her since 2003," he told reporters.
"Aung San Suu Kyi asked us to allow her to reorganise the central executive committee. We accepted her request," he added. Most of the party's current 11-member committee are very old.
In a letter to Myanmar's military strongman Than Shwe last month, Suu Kyi requested she be allowed to visit the three men.
"Daw Suu accepted the authorities' suggestion to meet them all in one place for security reasons," her lawyer and NLD spokesman Nyan Win told reporters on Tuesday. Daw is a term of respect in Myanmar.
The visit followed a meeting between Suu Kyi and junta liaison officer Aung Kyi last Wednesday -- their third since the beginning of October -- where they discussed her letter to Than Shwe, Nyan Win said.
In the correspondence, she also asked to meet with the junta chief himself and said she wanted to cooperate with the government to get sanctions against Myanmar lifted for the benefit of the country.
"Daw Suu is also expecting the rest of her requests to be fulfilled. She's optimistic about her letter," Nyan Win said.
Suu Kyi has been locked up for 14 of the past 20 years and was ordered in August to spend another 18 months in detention after being convicted over an incident in which an American man swam to her house.
The country's supreme court has agreed to hear a final appeal against the 64-year-old's house arrest next Monday, after a lower court rejected an initial appeal in October.
The extension of her detention after a trial at Yangon's notorious Insein Prison sparked international outrage as it effectively keeps her off the stage for elections promised by
the regime some time in 2010.
If the polls go ahead they will be the first since 1990, when the junta refused to recognise the NLD's landslide victory.
In another letter to Than Shwe in September, Suu Kyi offered suggestions for getting Western sanctions lifted and requested a meeting with senior Western diplomats in Yangon, which she was also granted.
In recent months the United States, followed by the European Union, has shifted towards a policy of greater engagement with Myanmar -- which has been under military rule since 1962 -- with sanctions failing to bear fruit.
In November the regime allowed Suu Kyi to make a rare appearance in front of the media after she held talks with US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, the most senior US official to visit Myanmar in 14 years.
Despite an apparent shift in relations between Suu Kyi and the junta, state media last week accused her of being "insincere" and "dishonest" in sending letters to Than Shwe and accused her of leaking them to foreign media.
The New Light of Myanmar newspaper said her change of tack after years of favouring sanctions was "highly questionable".
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Over $1.6 bln in barred Credit Suisse transctions
Wed Dec 16, 2009 12:38pm EST
WASHINGTON, Dec 16 (Reuters) - U.S. court documents in the Credit Suisse (CSGN.VX) case show a total value of all prohibited transactions with Iran, Sudan, Myanmar, Cuba and Libya exceeded $1.6 billion.
The documents, filed on Wednesday in federal court in Washington, said the Swiss bank may have begun evading U.S. sanctions as early as 1986, when sanctions on Libyan were first implemented.
The bank was specifically charged with "knowingly and willfully" attempting to violate regulations issued under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act from mid-1995 through about 2006, according to the documents, filed by the U.S. Justice Department.
Wed Dec 16, 2009 12:38pm EST
WASHINGTON, Dec 16 (Reuters) - U.S. court documents in the Credit Suisse (CSGN.VX) case show a total value of all prohibited transactions with Iran, Sudan, Myanmar, Cuba and Libya exceeded $1.6 billion.
The documents, filed on Wednesday in federal court in Washington, said the Swiss bank may have begun evading U.S. sanctions as early as 1986, when sanctions on Libyan were first implemented.
The bank was specifically charged with "knowingly and willfully" attempting to violate regulations issued under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act from mid-1995 through about 2006, according to the documents, filed by the U.S. Justice Department.
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Border stability to top China-Myanmar talks
By Ben Blanchard and Aung Hla Tun – Tue Dec 15, 10:36 pm ET
BEIJING/YANGON (Reuters) – Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping arrives this week in Myanmar where he is expected to meet the regime's reclusive top leader and press for assurances there will be no more unrest on their shared border.
The military-ruled former Burma has few foreign friends due to its human rights record and detention of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi ahead of an election next year. That gives extra significance to a visit by Xi, seen as a frontrunner to succeed President Hu Jintao.
China is one of Myanmar's rare diplomatic backers, often coming to the rescue when it is pressed by Western governments over issues such as the 2007 crackdown on pro-democracy protests led by Buddhist monks.
But relations have been strained of late.
In August, Myanmar's army overran Kokang, which lies along the border with the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan and was controlled for years by an ethnic Chinese militia. The action pushed thousands of refugees into China and angering Beijing.
A second, 20,000-strong ethnic Chinese militia, the United Wa State Army (UWSA), denounced as a narcotics cartel by the United States, has refused to disarm and is preparing for an imminent attack by the Myanmar army, activists and local media say.
"If there was renewed fighting with some of the other groups, the potential refugee flows would be much greater," said David Mathieson, Myanmar researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch.
"I think they would also be concerned about increased drug shipments coming from that part of Burma into China, because a lot of these groups have just been liquidating their inventory to try and get money to prepare for fighting, and some of it does go through China."
RARE MEETING WITH TOP GENERAL
China's Foreign Ministry has given few details of the visit set for Saturday and Sunday. But a Myanmar government official told Reuters that Xi was scheduled to meet General Than Shwe, the leader of the junta, who rarely receives foreign dignitaries.
Problems along the border, where Myanmar is trying to coax ethnic militias to end decades of fighting and form a border guard force under government jurisdiction, will likely top issues to be discussed with Xi as will next year's election.
"Matters concerning the transformation of ethnic armed groups like the UWSA and the upcoming elections could be on the top the agenda," the official said on condition of anonymity.
The election, already roundly dismissed by rights activists as a sham, are the last stop on Myanmar's "road map" to democracy, but it remains unclear what civilian rule would look like after almost 50 years of army-led government.
The visit will also give Xi a chance to get to know the leaders of a country which China sees as a vital strategic partner ahead of his own expected ascendancy to the presidency.
"He is expected to succeed President Hu in 2012 and I think the upcoming visit of his to Myanmar is very important for cementing existing ties," one Yangon-based Asian diplomat told Reuters.
The neighbors have significant business ties. Bilateral trade grew more than one-quarter last year to about $2.63 billion.
In late October, China's CNPC started building a crude oil port in Myanmar, part of a pipeline project aimed at cutting out the long detour oil cargoes take through the congested and strategically vulnerable Malacca Strait.
China's overriding concern is a stable Myanmar to give its landlocked southwestern provinces access to the Indian Ocean as well as natural resources like oil, gas and timber.
"The way political reform is going in Burma does suit China's interests, because basically it's going to be a civilian-front parliament for continued military rule," said Mathieson.
By Ben Blanchard and Aung Hla Tun – Tue Dec 15, 10:36 pm ET
BEIJING/YANGON (Reuters) – Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping arrives this week in Myanmar where he is expected to meet the regime's reclusive top leader and press for assurances there will be no more unrest on their shared border.
The military-ruled former Burma has few foreign friends due to its human rights record and detention of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi ahead of an election next year. That gives extra significance to a visit by Xi, seen as a frontrunner to succeed President Hu Jintao.
China is one of Myanmar's rare diplomatic backers, often coming to the rescue when it is pressed by Western governments over issues such as the 2007 crackdown on pro-democracy protests led by Buddhist monks.
But relations have been strained of late.
In August, Myanmar's army overran Kokang, which lies along the border with the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan and was controlled for years by an ethnic Chinese militia. The action pushed thousands of refugees into China and angering Beijing.
A second, 20,000-strong ethnic Chinese militia, the United Wa State Army (UWSA), denounced as a narcotics cartel by the United States, has refused to disarm and is preparing for an imminent attack by the Myanmar army, activists and local media say.
"If there was renewed fighting with some of the other groups, the potential refugee flows would be much greater," said David Mathieson, Myanmar researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch.
"I think they would also be concerned about increased drug shipments coming from that part of Burma into China, because a lot of these groups have just been liquidating their inventory to try and get money to prepare for fighting, and some of it does go through China."
RARE MEETING WITH TOP GENERAL
China's Foreign Ministry has given few details of the visit set for Saturday and Sunday. But a Myanmar government official told Reuters that Xi was scheduled to meet General Than Shwe, the leader of the junta, who rarely receives foreign dignitaries.
Problems along the border, where Myanmar is trying to coax ethnic militias to end decades of fighting and form a border guard force under government jurisdiction, will likely top issues to be discussed with Xi as will next year's election.
"Matters concerning the transformation of ethnic armed groups like the UWSA and the upcoming elections could be on the top the agenda," the official said on condition of anonymity.
The election, already roundly dismissed by rights activists as a sham, are the last stop on Myanmar's "road map" to democracy, but it remains unclear what civilian rule would look like after almost 50 years of army-led government.
The visit will also give Xi a chance to get to know the leaders of a country which China sees as a vital strategic partner ahead of his own expected ascendancy to the presidency.
"He is expected to succeed President Hu in 2012 and I think the upcoming visit of his to Myanmar is very important for cementing existing ties," one Yangon-based Asian diplomat told Reuters.
The neighbors have significant business ties. Bilateral trade grew more than one-quarter last year to about $2.63 billion.
In late October, China's CNPC started building a crude oil port in Myanmar, part of a pipeline project aimed at cutting out the long detour oil cargoes take through the congested and strategically vulnerable Malacca Strait.
China's overriding concern is a stable Myanmar to give its landlocked southwestern provinces access to the Indian Ocean as well as natural resources like oil, gas and timber.
"The way political reform is going in Burma does suit China's interests, because basically it's going to be a civilian-front parliament for continued military rule," said Mathieson.
******************************************************************
FACTBOX-Five facts about China-Myanmar relations
Wed Dec 16, 2009 3:16am GMT
Dec 16 (Reuters) - Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, seen as frontrunner to succeed President Hu Jintao, arrives in Myanmar on Saturday for a two-day visit and is expected to meet the regime's reclusive top leader.
Here are five facts about relations between the two countries:
* Burma, as the country was then known, was one of the first countries to recognise the People's Republic of China in 1949. But relations soured in the 1960s following anti-Chinese riots in Rangoon (now called Yangon).
* Following a crackdown on pro-democracy protestors across the country in 1988, the West imposed broad sanctions on Myanmar. China stepped into the void, providing aid and weapons and ramping up trade. China has continued to provide broad diplomatic support for Myanmar's military government.
* China has invested more than $1 billion in Myanmar, primarily in the mining sector, and is the country's fourth largest foreign investor, state media say. Bilateral trade grew more than one-quarter last year to about $2.63 billion. Chinese firms are also heavily involved in logging in Myanmar.
* Myanmar gives China access to the Indian Ocean, not only for imports of oil and gas and exports from landlocked southwestern Chinese provinces, but also potentially for military bases or listening posts.
In October, China's CNPC started building a crude oil port in Myanmar, part of a pipeline project aimed at cutting out the long detour oil cargoes take through the congested and strategically vulnerable Malacca Strait. [ID:nPEK34572]
* The friendship has had rocky patches. In August, refugees flooded across into China following fighting on the Myanmar side of the border, angering Beijing.
In 2007, China's Foreign Ministry published an unflattering account of Myanmar's new jungle capital Naypyidaw, expressing surprise that the poor country would consider such an expensive move without even first telling its supposed Chinese friends.
Wed Dec 16, 2009 3:16am GMT
Dec 16 (Reuters) - Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, seen as frontrunner to succeed President Hu Jintao, arrives in Myanmar on Saturday for a two-day visit and is expected to meet the regime's reclusive top leader.
Here are five facts about relations between the two countries:
* Burma, as the country was then known, was one of the first countries to recognise the People's Republic of China in 1949. But relations soured in the 1960s following anti-Chinese riots in Rangoon (now called Yangon).
* Following a crackdown on pro-democracy protestors across the country in 1988, the West imposed broad sanctions on Myanmar. China stepped into the void, providing aid and weapons and ramping up trade. China has continued to provide broad diplomatic support for Myanmar's military government.
* China has invested more than $1 billion in Myanmar, primarily in the mining sector, and is the country's fourth largest foreign investor, state media say. Bilateral trade grew more than one-quarter last year to about $2.63 billion. Chinese firms are also heavily involved in logging in Myanmar.
* Myanmar gives China access to the Indian Ocean, not only for imports of oil and gas and exports from landlocked southwestern Chinese provinces, but also potentially for military bases or listening posts.
In October, China's CNPC started building a crude oil port in Myanmar, part of a pipeline project aimed at cutting out the long detour oil cargoes take through the congested and strategically vulnerable Malacca Strait. [ID:nPEK34572]
* The friendship has had rocky patches. In August, refugees flooded across into China following fighting on the Myanmar side of the border, angering Beijing.
In 2007, China's Foreign Ministry published an unflattering account of Myanmar's new jungle capital Naypyidaw, expressing surprise that the poor country would consider such an expensive move without even first telling its supposed Chinese friends.
******************************************************************
Thais: US tip led to seizure of arms from NKorea
2 hrs 4 mins ago
BANGKOK (AP) – Thai authorities were acting on a tip from the United States when they seized tons of illicit weapons from a plane from North Korea, a senior official said Thursday.
The Ilyushin Il-76 transport plane was impounded Saturday in Bangkok during what officials said was a scheduled refueling stop. Thai authorities found a reported 35 tons of weaponry aboard it, all exported from North Korea in defiance of U.N. sanctions.
Speaking at a news conference, National Security Council chief Thawil Pliensri confirmed media reports that there had been U.S. assistance in the seizure, but gave no details.
He said that Thailand was waiting for advice from the United Nations on whether the weapons should be destroyed.
The U.N. sanctions — which ban North Korea from exporting any arms — were imposed in June after the reclusive communist regime conducted a nuclear test and test-fired missiles. They are aimed at derailing North Korea's nuclear weapons program, but also ban it from selling any conventional arms.
Thawil revealed little else new at his news conference, which seemed aimed at quashing some rumors. He denied that Thailand would receive a reward or bounty for the seizure, or that it was pressured to act, saying it took action "as a member of the world community."
He added, however, that Thailand would like to be compensated if possible by the U.N. for the cost of transporting the weapons, which were taken to an Air Force base in the nearby province of Nakhon Sawan.
It is still not known where the weapons — said to include explosives, rocket-propelled grenades, components for surface-to-air missiles and other armaments — were to be delivered. The plane's papers, which described its cargo as oil-drilling machinery, said the shipment was to be delivered to Sri Lanka.
Arms trade experts have speculated that the cargo may have been destined for conflict zones in Africa, Iran or Myanmar.
U.S. Treasury Department records show that the plane had previously been registered with firms controlled by suspected arms trafficker Russian Viktor Bout, who is currently being held in Thailand. The U.S. is trying to extradite him on terrorism charges. On Wednesday, he denied any involvement with the plane, according to Russian news agency ITAR-Tass, accusing the media of trying to influence the decision in his extradition hearing.
The crew — four from Kazakhstan and one from Belarus — have been jailed on illegal arms possession charges.
The wife of Mikail Petukhov — the Belarussian identified in Thai court documents — said he had served in the Soviet military and afterward took whatever job he could find. Vera Petukhova said her husband never knows who he'll be working with before going out on a job. A friend of Petukhov, 54, added that he also never knows what he'll be transporting.
"All the containers are sealed, and the captain only gets the printout of what is supposed to be inside them. But what's inside, that's a question for the people who load it onto the plane at the pick-up point," said Vladimir Migol, who also served in the Soviet air force and noted that many ex-service men struggled to find work after being discharged.
Migol said while crew members such as Petukhov would never knowingly transport weapons, they are all aware of the risk but are usually desperate for jobs.
The plane was registered to Air West, a cargo transport company in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry said this week that the plane was leased to New Zealand company SP Trading Ltd.
Authorities in New Zealand are investigating, a spokesman for its Foreign Ministry, James Funnell said Thursday.
"We have always been staunch supporters of the sanctions regime imposed against North Korea," Funnell told The Associated Press. "So we're very concerned by these allegations and are inquiring into them."
SP Trading is listed in the government's register of companies as having offices in Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, which names Lu Zhang as its director. The company's shares are held by nominee company VICAM (Auckland) Ltd. Listed phone numbers rang unanswered on Thursday.
Impoverished North Korea is believed to earn hundreds of millions of dollars every year by selling missiles, missile parts and other weapons to countries such as Iran, Syria and Myanmar.
2 hrs 4 mins ago
BANGKOK (AP) – Thai authorities were acting on a tip from the United States when they seized tons of illicit weapons from a plane from North Korea, a senior official said Thursday.
The Ilyushin Il-76 transport plane was impounded Saturday in Bangkok during what officials said was a scheduled refueling stop. Thai authorities found a reported 35 tons of weaponry aboard it, all exported from North Korea in defiance of U.N. sanctions.
Speaking at a news conference, National Security Council chief Thawil Pliensri confirmed media reports that there had been U.S. assistance in the seizure, but gave no details.
He said that Thailand was waiting for advice from the United Nations on whether the weapons should be destroyed.
The U.N. sanctions — which ban North Korea from exporting any arms — were imposed in June after the reclusive communist regime conducted a nuclear test and test-fired missiles. They are aimed at derailing North Korea's nuclear weapons program, but also ban it from selling any conventional arms.
Thawil revealed little else new at his news conference, which seemed aimed at quashing some rumors. He denied that Thailand would receive a reward or bounty for the seizure, or that it was pressured to act, saying it took action "as a member of the world community."
He added, however, that Thailand would like to be compensated if possible by the U.N. for the cost of transporting the weapons, which were taken to an Air Force base in the nearby province of Nakhon Sawan.
It is still not known where the weapons — said to include explosives, rocket-propelled grenades, components for surface-to-air missiles and other armaments — were to be delivered. The plane's papers, which described its cargo as oil-drilling machinery, said the shipment was to be delivered to Sri Lanka.
Arms trade experts have speculated that the cargo may have been destined for conflict zones in Africa, Iran or Myanmar.
U.S. Treasury Department records show that the plane had previously been registered with firms controlled by suspected arms trafficker Russian Viktor Bout, who is currently being held in Thailand. The U.S. is trying to extradite him on terrorism charges. On Wednesday, he denied any involvement with the plane, according to Russian news agency ITAR-Tass, accusing the media of trying to influence the decision in his extradition hearing.
The crew — four from Kazakhstan and one from Belarus — have been jailed on illegal arms possession charges.
The wife of Mikail Petukhov — the Belarussian identified in Thai court documents — said he had served in the Soviet military and afterward took whatever job he could find. Vera Petukhova said her husband never knows who he'll be working with before going out on a job. A friend of Petukhov, 54, added that he also never knows what he'll be transporting.
"All the containers are sealed, and the captain only gets the printout of what is supposed to be inside them. But what's inside, that's a question for the people who load it onto the plane at the pick-up point," said Vladimir Migol, who also served in the Soviet air force and noted that many ex-service men struggled to find work after being discharged.
Migol said while crew members such as Petukhov would never knowingly transport weapons, they are all aware of the risk but are usually desperate for jobs.
The plane was registered to Air West, a cargo transport company in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry said this week that the plane was leased to New Zealand company SP Trading Ltd.
Authorities in New Zealand are investigating, a spokesman for its Foreign Ministry, James Funnell said Thursday.
"We have always been staunch supporters of the sanctions regime imposed against North Korea," Funnell told The Associated Press. "So we're very concerned by these allegations and are inquiring into them."
SP Trading is listed in the government's register of companies as having offices in Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, which names Lu Zhang as its director. The company's shares are held by nominee company VICAM (Auckland) Ltd. Listed phone numbers rang unanswered on Thursday.
Impoverished North Korea is believed to earn hundreds of millions of dollars every year by selling missiles, missile parts and other weapons to countries such as Iran, Syria and Myanmar.
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Credit Suisse Group to pay $536M in Iran case
By DEVLIN BARRETT and MARCY GORDON, Associated Press Writers – Wed Dec 16, 8:20 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AP) – Credit Suisse Group has agreed to pay $536 million to settle a Justice Department probe and admit to violating U.S. economic sanctions by hiding the booming illegal business it was doing for Iranian banks.
The Justice Department announced the settlement Wednesday, saying it was the biggest forfeiture ever against a company for violations of that type.
"Credit Suisse's decades-long scheme to flout the rules that govern our financial institutions robbed our system of the legitimacy that is fundamental to its success," Attorney General Eric Holder said at a news conference at department headquarters. "We cannot let this stand, and today's settlement sends a strong message that we will not let it stand."
The $536 million that Credit Suisse is forfeiting will be split between the U.S. government and the district attorney's office in Manhattan, which also participated in the settlement talks with the bank along with the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department.
The U.S. officials said the government is continuing to investigate the handling of Iranian funds by big banks in the West. All payments made in dollars must be processed through banks or bank offices in the U.S., subjecting the transactions to U.S. laws even if the parties are abroad.
Altogether, about $1.6 billion in transactions flowing from Iran were involved, the officials said. They said there was no evidence of any of the money going to missile development programs or terrorist organizations. But the Manhattan prosecutors said a handful of the entities involved subsequently made the U.S. government's list of contributors to weapons proliferation, after the bank had decided to stop its sanctions-skirting business.
"If they're doing business with a country like Iran and hiding Iran in their transactions, they're running a tremendous risk that either now or in the future, their transactions are going to link into something bad," said Adam Kaufmann, a Manhattan assistant district attorney.
Lanny Breuer, the assistant attorney general who heads the Justice Department's criminal division, said the government's action sends a message to banks that they should come forward to the authorities if misconduct is being committed — "before we come knocking on your door."
"I hope that other financial institutions are watching and learning from Credit Suisse's experience," he said at the Washington news conference.
Zurich-based Credit Suisse swiftly cooperated with the authorities, the U.S. officials said, and therefore the Justice Department is recommending the termination of the enforcement action in two years if the bank complies with the settlement terms.
The bank, one of Switzerland's largest, has been under criminal investigation for years over business it did with countries subject to U.S. economic sanctions.
The settlement papers maintain that the bank had a long-running practice of helping Iranian banks evade the sanctions by hiding the identity of their Iranian customers in international money transactions.
"Credit Suisse's internal communications showed a continuous dialogue about evading U.S. sanctions spanning approximately a decade," the government's papers say.
Earlier this year, Lloyds TSB Bank PLC agreed to forfeit $350 million for helping customers skirt U.S. sanctions on business transactions with Sudan, Iran and Libya.
The court papers filed Wednesday say that when Lloyds decided in 2003 to stop doing such business, the Iranian banks moved their business over to Credit Suisse.
As a result, Credit Suisse quadrupled the number of Iranian transactions in U.S. dollars between the years 2002 and 2005, from about 50,000 to about 200,000.
U.S. authorities also said Credit Suisse handled a far smaller number of transactions involving other countries facing sanctions, including Libya, Sudan, and Burma.
The bank began winding down their sanction-evading business in 2006, the government said.
"Credit Suisse is committed to the highest standards of integrity and regulatory compliance in all its businesses and takes this matter extremely seriously," the bank said in a statement Wednesday.
It said it had undertaken a review of some U.S. dollar payments that involved countries, people or entities subject to sanctions.
The Manhattan prosecutors, at a separate news conference, said Credit Suisse stripped out references to Iran from electronic messages directing payments. Credit Suisse sometimes substituted abbreviations or the phrase "one of our customers" for Iranian clients' names, they said. The changes were designed to slip the payments past filters U.S. banks use to block Iran-related transactions.
The bank is said to have used such tactics from the 1990s through 2006, processing more than $700 million in payments that violated U.S. sanctions.
By DEVLIN BARRETT and MARCY GORDON, Associated Press Writers – Wed Dec 16, 8:20 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AP) – Credit Suisse Group has agreed to pay $536 million to settle a Justice Department probe and admit to violating U.S. economic sanctions by hiding the booming illegal business it was doing for Iranian banks.
The Justice Department announced the settlement Wednesday, saying it was the biggest forfeiture ever against a company for violations of that type.
"Credit Suisse's decades-long scheme to flout the rules that govern our financial institutions robbed our system of the legitimacy that is fundamental to its success," Attorney General Eric Holder said at a news conference at department headquarters. "We cannot let this stand, and today's settlement sends a strong message that we will not let it stand."
The $536 million that Credit Suisse is forfeiting will be split between the U.S. government and the district attorney's office in Manhattan, which also participated in the settlement talks with the bank along with the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department.
The U.S. officials said the government is continuing to investigate the handling of Iranian funds by big banks in the West. All payments made in dollars must be processed through banks or bank offices in the U.S., subjecting the transactions to U.S. laws even if the parties are abroad.
Altogether, about $1.6 billion in transactions flowing from Iran were involved, the officials said. They said there was no evidence of any of the money going to missile development programs or terrorist organizations. But the Manhattan prosecutors said a handful of the entities involved subsequently made the U.S. government's list of contributors to weapons proliferation, after the bank had decided to stop its sanctions-skirting business.
"If they're doing business with a country like Iran and hiding Iran in their transactions, they're running a tremendous risk that either now or in the future, their transactions are going to link into something bad," said Adam Kaufmann, a Manhattan assistant district attorney.
Lanny Breuer, the assistant attorney general who heads the Justice Department's criminal division, said the government's action sends a message to banks that they should come forward to the authorities if misconduct is being committed — "before we come knocking on your door."
"I hope that other financial institutions are watching and learning from Credit Suisse's experience," he said at the Washington news conference.
Zurich-based Credit Suisse swiftly cooperated with the authorities, the U.S. officials said, and therefore the Justice Department is recommending the termination of the enforcement action in two years if the bank complies with the settlement terms.
The bank, one of Switzerland's largest, has been under criminal investigation for years over business it did with countries subject to U.S. economic sanctions.
The settlement papers maintain that the bank had a long-running practice of helping Iranian banks evade the sanctions by hiding the identity of their Iranian customers in international money transactions.
"Credit Suisse's internal communications showed a continuous dialogue about evading U.S. sanctions spanning approximately a decade," the government's papers say.
Earlier this year, Lloyds TSB Bank PLC agreed to forfeit $350 million for helping customers skirt U.S. sanctions on business transactions with Sudan, Iran and Libya.
The court papers filed Wednesday say that when Lloyds decided in 2003 to stop doing such business, the Iranian banks moved their business over to Credit Suisse.
As a result, Credit Suisse quadrupled the number of Iranian transactions in U.S. dollars between the years 2002 and 2005, from about 50,000 to about 200,000.
U.S. authorities also said Credit Suisse handled a far smaller number of transactions involving other countries facing sanctions, including Libya, Sudan, and Burma.
The bank began winding down their sanction-evading business in 2006, the government said.
"Credit Suisse is committed to the highest standards of integrity and regulatory compliance in all its businesses and takes this matter extremely seriously," the bank said in a statement Wednesday.
It said it had undertaken a review of some U.S. dollar payments that involved countries, people or entities subject to sanctions.
The Manhattan prosecutors, at a separate news conference, said Credit Suisse stripped out references to Iran from electronic messages directing payments. Credit Suisse sometimes substituted abbreviations or the phrase "one of our customers" for Iranian clients' names, they said. The changes were designed to slip the payments past filters U.S. banks use to block Iran-related transactions.
The bank is said to have used such tactics from the 1990s through 2006, processing more than $700 million in payments that violated U.S. sanctions.
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Myanmar Should Let Suu Kyi Hold More Political Talks, U.S. Says
By Daniel Ten Kate and Viola Gienger
Dec. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s meeting with three senior members of her political party should pave the way for her to be allowed discussions with all the group’s leaders, the U.S. said.
“We welcome the decision by Burmese authorities to allow Aung San Suu Kyi to pay her respects to three senior members of the central executive committee of her party,” State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said, using the country’s former name.
“We hope this is a step towards a meeting between Aung San Suu Kyi and the entire central executive committee of the National League for Democracy,” Kelly told reporters in Washington.
Suu Kyi, who has spent most of the past 20 years under house arrest, met with her three compatriots today to discuss participation in elections set for next year, an exiled party member said.
“They have to discuss the current leadership of the political party and positions for the coming elections,” said Moe Zaw Oo, a Thailand-based spokesman for the exiled wing of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, which won the country’s last elections in 1990.
The junta allowed Suu Kyi to meet with three members of party’s 11-strong executive committee after she requested talks with the whole group, Moe Zaw Oo said. The Nobel laureate met for about 45 minutes with party chairman Aung Shwe, 92, secretary U Lwin, 85, and Lun Tin, 89, all of whom are in poor health, Agence France-Presse reported, citing Lwin.
U.S. Engagement
The meeting comes a month after U.S. State Department official Kurt Campbell visited Myanmar as part of President Barack Obama’s policy to engage with the generals while maintaining sanctions. Campbell urged the junta to release political prisoners and allow Suu Kyi to meet party colleagues to show a genuine commitment to democracy.
Suu Kyi has spent more than 14 of the past 20 years in detention, with her latest stint starting in May 2003. The junta extended her house arrest for 18 months in August after a court found her guilty of violating her detention terms, potentially excluding her from next year’s elections.
Myanmar’s Supreme Court may decide Dec. 21 whether to hear an appeal of the guilty verdict that triggered the extension of her house arrest, AFP reported.
By Daniel Ten Kate and Viola Gienger
Dec. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s meeting with three senior members of her political party should pave the way for her to be allowed discussions with all the group’s leaders, the U.S. said.
“We welcome the decision by Burmese authorities to allow Aung San Suu Kyi to pay her respects to three senior members of the central executive committee of her party,” State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said, using the country’s former name.
“We hope this is a step towards a meeting between Aung San Suu Kyi and the entire central executive committee of the National League for Democracy,” Kelly told reporters in Washington.
Suu Kyi, who has spent most of the past 20 years under house arrest, met with her three compatriots today to discuss participation in elections set for next year, an exiled party member said.
“They have to discuss the current leadership of the political party and positions for the coming elections,” said Moe Zaw Oo, a Thailand-based spokesman for the exiled wing of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, which won the country’s last elections in 1990.
The junta allowed Suu Kyi to meet with three members of party’s 11-strong executive committee after she requested talks with the whole group, Moe Zaw Oo said. The Nobel laureate met for about 45 minutes with party chairman Aung Shwe, 92, secretary U Lwin, 85, and Lun Tin, 89, all of whom are in poor health, Agence France-Presse reported, citing Lwin.
U.S. Engagement
The meeting comes a month after U.S. State Department official Kurt Campbell visited Myanmar as part of President Barack Obama’s policy to engage with the generals while maintaining sanctions. Campbell urged the junta to release political prisoners and allow Suu Kyi to meet party colleagues to show a genuine commitment to democracy.
Suu Kyi has spent more than 14 of the past 20 years in detention, with her latest stint starting in May 2003. The junta extended her house arrest for 18 months in August after a court found her guilty of violating her detention terms, potentially excluding her from next year’s elections.
Myanmar’s Supreme Court may decide Dec. 21 whether to hear an appeal of the guilty verdict that triggered the extension of her house arrest, AFP reported.
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Golden Triangle Warlords Swap Guns, Drugs for Tourism: Review
Review by William Mellor
Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- The jungle-swathed ridges of Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle divide two worlds.
On one side, in Thailand, well-heeled tourists savor the luxuries of Anantara and Four Seasons resorts. On the other, in Myanmar, mule caravans laden with opium, gemstones and jade still ply hidden mountain trails. Much remains concealed from even the most adventurous traveler in this opium-growing region where the borders of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos converge.
Yet one secret it has given up is that of the so-called Lost Army, Chinese soldiers abandoned in 1949 by their leader Chiang Kai-shek who fled to Taiwan after being defeated by his Communist nemesis Mao Zedong on mainland China.
Trapped in the southwestern Yunnan province, the troops of Chiang’s 93rd Division staged a fighting retreat into the adjoining Golden Triangle, from where they launched futile attempts to re-invade their Chinese homeland. Finally, the survivors struck a deal with the Thais: they were allowed to set up an autonomous mini-state in return for defending Thailand’s northern borders from local communist insurgents.
The site they chose was a mountain top called Mae Salong, 15 kilometers from the Burmese border, where the slopes were carpeted with red-and-white opium poppies.
General Lei Yutian, the last surviving commander of the Lost Army, reflects on the Golden Triangle’s transformation from drug fiefdom to tourist destination.
Guns to Calculators
“First we came with guns,” said Lei, 93, as he sipped tea in a manicured flower garden that was once the parade ground where he drilled a 20,000-strong private army. “Then we became farmers. Now we use calculators.”
Those calculators have been busy of late counting the benefits of tourism as resort operators like Anantara build hotels to accommodate wealthy tourists venturing deeper into the mist-shrouded mountains of the triangle, a once-lawless frontier where the borders of Thailand, Myanmar and Laos converge.
The 77-room Anantara offers spa treatments, Thai banquets and $400-a-night rooms with balconies overlooking the Mekong River at the exact spot where the three countries meet. Nearby, the Four Seasons hotel chain has created a five-star jungle encampment, each $2,000-a-night tent equipped with its own copper bathtub.
Both resorts offer guests the chance to commune with a herd of elephants and train to become a mahout. Nearby, a Hall of Opium tells the colorful and violent story of the Golden triangle’s drug trade.
“The attraction here is partly nature,” said Bodo Klingenberg, the Anantara’s German-born general manager as we dined al fresco beside a riverside rice paddy, watched by a white water buffalo and her doe-eyed calf. “But it’s also the mystique of the Golden Triangle.”
China in Thailand
The Lost Army’s then leader, General Duan Shiwen, became a drug warlord, according to Alfred W. McCoy’s 1972 book “The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia,” and recreated a piece of pre-revolutionary China inside Thailand -- temples and houses with distinctive curved Chinese roofs, restaurants serving fine Yunnanese cuisine and a population that, despite intermarrying with local hill tribes and Thais, continued to speak Mandarin Chinese and various Yunnan dialects.
Duan died in 1980. His successor, General Lei, denies any subsequent involvement in the drug trade, but kept up the Lost Army’s war against communist insurgents.
As a reward, the Thais granted Lei and his men citizenship. Mae Salong was renamed Santikhiri, meaning Hill of Peace, although most still use the original name. The government built an all-weather road linking it with Chiang Rai, capital of Thailand’s northernmost province. The Lost Army had come in from the cold.
Growing Tea
Under Lei, the old soldiers and their descendants have taken up licit business activities. Chamroen Cheewinchalermchot, 52, son of a colonel, has embraced both tourism and tea-growing. He runs Mae Salong Villa, a clean, comfortable hostelry with $30-a-night rooms overlooking plantations producing high-grade oolong tea.
The triangle has long been on the itinerary of backpackers and trekkers escaping Thailand’s steamy southern resorts for the cooler northern mountain air, especially during the dry season between October and the mid-April Thai New Year water festival, called Songkran.
Now, travelers demanding luxury and accessibility as well as adventure are discovering they can find all these things by taking a one-hour flight from Bangkok to Chiang Rai.
Once there, the Anantara and Four Seasons resorts, and tourist attractions such as Mae Salong can be reached inside 90 minutes by road.
Long Tailed Boat
I chose to arrive in more dramatic fashion. At Chiang Saen, a history-rich river port that was once the capital of an ancient kingdom, I boarded a hang yao, or sleek Thai-style long tailed boat, which aquaplaned up the Mekong, veering between the Thai and Lao sides to dodge sand banks, before depositing me at a jungle jetty.
There, a lumbering elephant emerged from the undergrowth to provide transportation on the final leg to Anantara resort.
Plodding through the silent teak forest, the Golden Triangle didn’t seem much different from when the Lost Army first sought refuge. Except that, back then, there weren’t spas or copper bath tubs to recline in at the end of the journey. And the warlords of those days carried guns, not calculators.
Review by William Mellor
Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- The jungle-swathed ridges of Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle divide two worlds.
On one side, in Thailand, well-heeled tourists savor the luxuries of Anantara and Four Seasons resorts. On the other, in Myanmar, mule caravans laden with opium, gemstones and jade still ply hidden mountain trails. Much remains concealed from even the most adventurous traveler in this opium-growing region where the borders of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos converge.
Yet one secret it has given up is that of the so-called Lost Army, Chinese soldiers abandoned in 1949 by their leader Chiang Kai-shek who fled to Taiwan after being defeated by his Communist nemesis Mao Zedong on mainland China.
Trapped in the southwestern Yunnan province, the troops of Chiang’s 93rd Division staged a fighting retreat into the adjoining Golden Triangle, from where they launched futile attempts to re-invade their Chinese homeland. Finally, the survivors struck a deal with the Thais: they were allowed to set up an autonomous mini-state in return for defending Thailand’s northern borders from local communist insurgents.
The site they chose was a mountain top called Mae Salong, 15 kilometers from the Burmese border, where the slopes were carpeted with red-and-white opium poppies.
General Lei Yutian, the last surviving commander of the Lost Army, reflects on the Golden Triangle’s transformation from drug fiefdom to tourist destination.
Guns to Calculators
“First we came with guns,” said Lei, 93, as he sipped tea in a manicured flower garden that was once the parade ground where he drilled a 20,000-strong private army. “Then we became farmers. Now we use calculators.”
Those calculators have been busy of late counting the benefits of tourism as resort operators like Anantara build hotels to accommodate wealthy tourists venturing deeper into the mist-shrouded mountains of the triangle, a once-lawless frontier where the borders of Thailand, Myanmar and Laos converge.
The 77-room Anantara offers spa treatments, Thai banquets and $400-a-night rooms with balconies overlooking the Mekong River at the exact spot where the three countries meet. Nearby, the Four Seasons hotel chain has created a five-star jungle encampment, each $2,000-a-night tent equipped with its own copper bathtub.
Both resorts offer guests the chance to commune with a herd of elephants and train to become a mahout. Nearby, a Hall of Opium tells the colorful and violent story of the Golden triangle’s drug trade.
“The attraction here is partly nature,” said Bodo Klingenberg, the Anantara’s German-born general manager as we dined al fresco beside a riverside rice paddy, watched by a white water buffalo and her doe-eyed calf. “But it’s also the mystique of the Golden Triangle.”
China in Thailand
The Lost Army’s then leader, General Duan Shiwen, became a drug warlord, according to Alfred W. McCoy’s 1972 book “The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia,” and recreated a piece of pre-revolutionary China inside Thailand -- temples and houses with distinctive curved Chinese roofs, restaurants serving fine Yunnanese cuisine and a population that, despite intermarrying with local hill tribes and Thais, continued to speak Mandarin Chinese and various Yunnan dialects.
Duan died in 1980. His successor, General Lei, denies any subsequent involvement in the drug trade, but kept up the Lost Army’s war against communist insurgents.
As a reward, the Thais granted Lei and his men citizenship. Mae Salong was renamed Santikhiri, meaning Hill of Peace, although most still use the original name. The government built an all-weather road linking it with Chiang Rai, capital of Thailand’s northernmost province. The Lost Army had come in from the cold.
Growing Tea
Under Lei, the old soldiers and their descendants have taken up licit business activities. Chamroen Cheewinchalermchot, 52, son of a colonel, has embraced both tourism and tea-growing. He runs Mae Salong Villa, a clean, comfortable hostelry with $30-a-night rooms overlooking plantations producing high-grade oolong tea.
The triangle has long been on the itinerary of backpackers and trekkers escaping Thailand’s steamy southern resorts for the cooler northern mountain air, especially during the dry season between October and the mid-April Thai New Year water festival, called Songkran.
Now, travelers demanding luxury and accessibility as well as adventure are discovering they can find all these things by taking a one-hour flight from Bangkok to Chiang Rai.
Once there, the Anantara and Four Seasons resorts, and tourist attractions such as Mae Salong can be reached inside 90 minutes by road.
Long Tailed Boat
I chose to arrive in more dramatic fashion. At Chiang Saen, a history-rich river port that was once the capital of an ancient kingdom, I boarded a hang yao, or sleek Thai-style long tailed boat, which aquaplaned up the Mekong, veering between the Thai and Lao sides to dodge sand banks, before depositing me at a jungle jetty.
There, a lumbering elephant emerged from the undergrowth to provide transportation on the final leg to Anantara resort.
Plodding through the silent teak forest, the Golden Triangle didn’t seem much different from when the Lost Army first sought refuge. Except that, back then, there weren’t spas or copper bath tubs to recline in at the end of the journey. And the warlords of those days carried guns, not calculators.
******************************************************************
International Herald Tribune - Dams and Development Threaten the Mekong
By THOMAS FULLER
Published: December 17, 2009
SOP RUAK, Thailand — Basket loads of fish, villagers bathing along the banks of the river, a farmer’s market selling jungle delicacies — these are Pornlert Prompanya’s boyhood memories of a wild and pristine Mekong River.
Mr. Pornlert — now 32 and the owner of a company that organizes speedboat outings for tourists in this village in northern Thailand, where Myanmar and Laos converge — peers across the Mekong today at a more modern picture: a newly constructed, gold-domed casino where high-rollers are chauffeured along the riverbanks in a Bentley and a stretch Cadillac limousine.
The Mekong has long held a mystique for outsiders, whether American G.I.’s in the Delta during the Vietnam War or ill-starred 19th-century French explorers who searched for the river’s source in Tibet. The earliest visitors realized the hard way that the river was untamed and treacherous, its waterfalls and rapids ensuring it would never become Southeast Asia’s Mississippi or Rhine.
But today the river, which courses 3,032 miles through portions of China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam before emptying into the South China Sea, is rapidly being transformed by a rising tide of economic development, the region’s thirst for electricity and the desire to use the river as a cargo thoroughfare. The Mekong has been spared the pollution that blackens many of Asia’s great rivers, but it is no longer the backwater of centuries past.
China has built three hydroelectric dams on the Mekong (known as the Lancang in Chinese) and is halfway through a fourth at Xiaowan, which when completed will be the world’s tallest dam, according to the United Nations Environment Program.
Laos is planning so many dams on the Mekong and its tributaries — 7 of about 70 have been completed — that government officials have said that their ambition is to turn the country into “the battery of Asia.” Cambodia is planning two dams.
At the same time, the dashed dreams of French colonizers to use the river as a southern gateway to China are being partly realized: After Chinese engineers dynamited a series of rapids and rocks in the early part of this decade, trade by riverboat between China and Thailand increased by close to 50 percent.
The cargo passes through increasingly populated areas, erstwhile sleepy cities in Laos that are now teeming with tourists and defying the economic downturn with swinging construction cranes. Many parts of the Mekong were once a star-gazer’s dream; now nights on the river are increasingly aglare with electric lights.
Environmentalists worry that the rush to develop the Mekong, particularly the dams, is not only changing the panorama of the river but could also destroy the livelihoods of people who have depended on it for centuries. One of the world’s most bountiful rivers is under threat, warns a series of reports by the United Nations, environmental groups and academics.
The most controversial aspects of the dams are their effects on migrating fish and on the rice-growing Mekong Delta in Vietnam, where half of that country’s food is grown. The delta depends on mineral-rich silt, which the Chinese dams are partially blocking.
Experts say the new crop of dams will block even more sediment and the many types of fish that travel great distances to spawn, damaging the $2 billion Mekong fishing industry, according to the Mekong River Commission, an advisory body set up in 1995 by the governments of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. Of the hundreds of fish species in the river, 87 percent are migratory, according to a 2006 study.
“The fish will have nowhere to go,” said Kaew Suanpad, a 78-year-old farmer and fisherman in the village of Nagrasang, Laos, which sits above the river’s great Khone Falls.
“The dams are a very big issue for the 60 million people in the Mekong basin,” said Milton Osborne, visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney and the author of several books on the Mekong. “People depend in very substantial ways on the bounty of the Mekong.”
Some analysts see the seeds of international conflict in the rush to dam the river. Civic groups in Thailand say they are frustrated that China does not seem to care how its dams affect the lives of people downstream.
In August, the Vietnamese province of An Giang began a “Save the Mekong” campaign that opposes the construction of the dams in the lower part of the river, according to Carl Middleton, the head of the Mekong program at International Rivers, an organization campaigning against the Mekong dams.
Neither China nor military-ruled Myanmar, the two northernmost countries through which the river passes, are members of the Mekong River Commission, freeing them from the obligation to consult other countries on issues such as building dams and sharing water.
And yet, for now, the dams are not national preoccupations in any of the countries along the river.
“Most of the voices that are shouting in the wilderness about these dams are still very little heard outside of academic circles,” Mr. Osbourne said.
There have been no major protests and for many people in the region the dams are the symbol of progress and avenues to greater prosperity. The development of the Mekong is also an affirmation of a new Asia that is no longer hidebound by ideological conflict.
Jeremy Bird, the chief executive officer of the Mekong River Commission, says the dams are likely to even out the flow of the river, mitigating flooding and making the river even more navigable.
“You could have launches like you have on the Rhine,” Mr. Bird said. He added: “With dams there are always negatives and positives.”
For Mr. Pornlert, whose boyhood village of Sop Ruak has now grown into a town with five-star resorts and restaurants catering to tourists, the negatives seem to outweigh the good.
He says the river behaves unpredictably, it is more difficult to catch fish, and he is uneasy about swimming in the river because there is “too much trash and pollution.”
“The water level used to depend on the seasons,” Mr. Pornlert said. “Now it depends on how much water China wants and needs.”
By THOMAS FULLER
Published: December 17, 2009
SOP RUAK, Thailand — Basket loads of fish, villagers bathing along the banks of the river, a farmer’s market selling jungle delicacies — these are Pornlert Prompanya’s boyhood memories of a wild and pristine Mekong River.
Mr. Pornlert — now 32 and the owner of a company that organizes speedboat outings for tourists in this village in northern Thailand, where Myanmar and Laos converge — peers across the Mekong today at a more modern picture: a newly constructed, gold-domed casino where high-rollers are chauffeured along the riverbanks in a Bentley and a stretch Cadillac limousine.
The Mekong has long held a mystique for outsiders, whether American G.I.’s in the Delta during the Vietnam War or ill-starred 19th-century French explorers who searched for the river’s source in Tibet. The earliest visitors realized the hard way that the river was untamed and treacherous, its waterfalls and rapids ensuring it would never become Southeast Asia’s Mississippi or Rhine.
But today the river, which courses 3,032 miles through portions of China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam before emptying into the South China Sea, is rapidly being transformed by a rising tide of economic development, the region’s thirst for electricity and the desire to use the river as a cargo thoroughfare. The Mekong has been spared the pollution that blackens many of Asia’s great rivers, but it is no longer the backwater of centuries past.
China has built three hydroelectric dams on the Mekong (known as the Lancang in Chinese) and is halfway through a fourth at Xiaowan, which when completed will be the world’s tallest dam, according to the United Nations Environment Program.
Laos is planning so many dams on the Mekong and its tributaries — 7 of about 70 have been completed — that government officials have said that their ambition is to turn the country into “the battery of Asia.” Cambodia is planning two dams.
At the same time, the dashed dreams of French colonizers to use the river as a southern gateway to China are being partly realized: After Chinese engineers dynamited a series of rapids and rocks in the early part of this decade, trade by riverboat between China and Thailand increased by close to 50 percent.
The cargo passes through increasingly populated areas, erstwhile sleepy cities in Laos that are now teeming with tourists and defying the economic downturn with swinging construction cranes. Many parts of the Mekong were once a star-gazer’s dream; now nights on the river are increasingly aglare with electric lights.
Environmentalists worry that the rush to develop the Mekong, particularly the dams, is not only changing the panorama of the river but could also destroy the livelihoods of people who have depended on it for centuries. One of the world’s most bountiful rivers is under threat, warns a series of reports by the United Nations, environmental groups and academics.
The most controversial aspects of the dams are their effects on migrating fish and on the rice-growing Mekong Delta in Vietnam, where half of that country’s food is grown. The delta depends on mineral-rich silt, which the Chinese dams are partially blocking.
Experts say the new crop of dams will block even more sediment and the many types of fish that travel great distances to spawn, damaging the $2 billion Mekong fishing industry, according to the Mekong River Commission, an advisory body set up in 1995 by the governments of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. Of the hundreds of fish species in the river, 87 percent are migratory, according to a 2006 study.
“The fish will have nowhere to go,” said Kaew Suanpad, a 78-year-old farmer and fisherman in the village of Nagrasang, Laos, which sits above the river’s great Khone Falls.
“The dams are a very big issue for the 60 million people in the Mekong basin,” said Milton Osborne, visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney and the author of several books on the Mekong. “People depend in very substantial ways on the bounty of the Mekong.”
Some analysts see the seeds of international conflict in the rush to dam the river. Civic groups in Thailand say they are frustrated that China does not seem to care how its dams affect the lives of people downstream.
In August, the Vietnamese province of An Giang began a “Save the Mekong” campaign that opposes the construction of the dams in the lower part of the river, according to Carl Middleton, the head of the Mekong program at International Rivers, an organization campaigning against the Mekong dams.
Neither China nor military-ruled Myanmar, the two northernmost countries through which the river passes, are members of the Mekong River Commission, freeing them from the obligation to consult other countries on issues such as building dams and sharing water.
And yet, for now, the dams are not national preoccupations in any of the countries along the river.
“Most of the voices that are shouting in the wilderness about these dams are still very little heard outside of academic circles,” Mr. Osbourne said.
There have been no major protests and for many people in the region the dams are the symbol of progress and avenues to greater prosperity. The development of the Mekong is also an affirmation of a new Asia that is no longer hidebound by ideological conflict.
Jeremy Bird, the chief executive officer of the Mekong River Commission, says the dams are likely to even out the flow of the river, mitigating flooding and making the river even more navigable.
“You could have launches like you have on the Rhine,” Mr. Bird said. He added: “With dams there are always negatives and positives.”
For Mr. Pornlert, whose boyhood village of Sop Ruak has now grown into a town with five-star resorts and restaurants catering to tourists, the negatives seem to outweigh the good.
He says the river behaves unpredictably, it is more difficult to catch fish, and he is uneasy about swimming in the river because there is “too much trash and pollution.”
“The water level used to depend on the seasons,” Mr. Pornlert said. “Now it depends on how much water China wants and needs.”
******************************************************************
Op-Ed Contributor
New York Times - Where Impunity Reigns
By BENEDICT ROGERS
Published: December 17, 2009
The world needs to be reminded, again and again, that the military regime in Burma (Myanmar) continues to perpetrate every conceivable human rights violation.
Any Burmese showing any dissent is brutally suppressed, as the world witnessed two years ago when peaceful Buddhist monks demonstrated. Many monks were killed or have disappeared; several hundred remain in prison.
Beyond that, more than 2,000 political activists are in Burmese prisons today, subjected to torture, denial of medical treatment and ludicrous sentences.
Student leader Bo Min Yu Ko is serving a 104-year prison term; Shan ethnic leader Hkun Htun Oo has been imprisoned for 93 years; democracy activist Min Ko Naing for 65 years. The most famous human rights activist, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been under house arrest for almost 14 years, and the term was extended for a further 18 months after a sham trial.
Many of these activists are in prisons thousands of miles from their families, and several are critically ill.
One category of victims of the military dictatorship that gets far less attention is Burma’s ethnic minorities.
In eastern Burma, the regime has been conducting a brutal military campaign against people of the Karen, Karenni and Shan groups. Since 1996, more than 3,300 villages have been destroyed and more than a million people internally displaced. A Karenni friend of mine has described it as “Pol Pot in slow motion.”
The catalogue of terror includes the widespread, systematic use of rape as a weapon, forced labor, the use of human minesweepers and the forcible conscription of child soldiers.
In northern and western Burma, the predominantly Christian Chin and Kachin peoples also face systematic religious persecution.
The Muslim Rohingyas, targeted for their faith and ethnicity, are denied citizenship, despite living in Burma for generations. Thousands have escaped to miserable conditions in Bangladesh.
I have travelled more than 30 times to Burma and its borderlands. I have met former child soldiers, women who have been gang-raped, and many people who have been forced to flee from their burned villages.
Earlier this year, I met a man who had lost both his legs following an attack on his village.
When the Burmese Army came, he fled, but after the troops had moved on, he returned to his smoldering village to see if he could salvage any remaining belongings. Where his house had stood, he found nothing except ashes — hidden in which was a landmine laid by the troops. He stepped on the mine, and lost both legs.
He was carried for an entire day for basic medical treatment and then, a few weeks later, he walked on crutches through the jungle for two days to escape. He fled to a camp for internally displaced people near the Thai border. Four months later, that camp was attacked and he had to flee again.
An eyewitness once told me that in a prison camp in Chin State, prisoners who tried to escape were repeatedly stabbed, forced into a tub of salt water, and then roasted over a fire. A woman in Karen State described to me how her husband was hung upside down from a tree, his eyes gouged out, and then drowned.
The United Nations has documented these atrocities. For years, General Assembly resolutions have condemned the abuses. Previous special rapporteurs have described the violations as “the result of policy at the highest level, entailing political and legal responsibility.” A recent General Assembly resolution urged the regime to “put an end to violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.”
The U.N. has placed Burma on a monitoring list for genocide, the Genocide Risk Indices lists Burma as one of the two top “red alert” countries for genocide, along with Sudan, while the Minority Rights Group ranks Burma as one of the top five countries where ethnic minorities are under threat. Freedom House describes Burma as “the worst of the worst.”
This year, the United States reviewed its Burma policy and adopted a new approach of engagement while maintaining existing sanctions.
While this is the right approach in principle, and one advocated by the democracy movement, the danger is that the message has been misinterpreted, both by the regime and countries in the region.
Even though President Obama and senior U.S. officials have consistently emphasized that sanctions will not be lifted until there is substantial and irreversible progress in Burma, including the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and all political prisoners and a meaningful dialogue between the regime, the democracy movement and the ethnic nationalities, the impression created in the region is that the U.S. is going soft.
This is unfortunate, as it has let Burma’s neighbors off the hook just when they were showing tentative signs of toughening up their approach. Trying to talk to the generals is right, but it needs to be accompanied by strong and unambiguous pressure.
In short, little action has been taken by the international community. Countries continue to sell the regime arms, impunity prevails.
The violations perpetrated by the regime amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Harvard Law School’s report, “Crimes in Burma,” commissioned by five of the world’s leading jurists, concludes that there is “a prima facie case of international criminal law violations occurring that demands U.N. Security Council action to establish a Commission of Inquiry to investigate these grave breaches.”
Last week marked the 61st anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. If that is to mean anything in Burma, the time has come for the U.N. to impose a universal arms embargo on the regime, to invoke the much-flaunted “Responsibility to Protect” mechanism, and to investigate the regime’s crimes. The time to end the system of impunity in Burma is long overdue.
Benedict Rogers is East Asia Team Leader with the human rights organization Christian Solidarity Worldwide, and author of several books on Burma, including “Than Shwe: Unmasking Burma’s Tyrant.”
New York Times - Where Impunity Reigns
By BENEDICT ROGERS
Published: December 17, 2009
The world needs to be reminded, again and again, that the military regime in Burma (Myanmar) continues to perpetrate every conceivable human rights violation.
Any Burmese showing any dissent is brutally suppressed, as the world witnessed two years ago when peaceful Buddhist monks demonstrated. Many monks were killed or have disappeared; several hundred remain in prison.
Beyond that, more than 2,000 political activists are in Burmese prisons today, subjected to torture, denial of medical treatment and ludicrous sentences.
Student leader Bo Min Yu Ko is serving a 104-year prison term; Shan ethnic leader Hkun Htun Oo has been imprisoned for 93 years; democracy activist Min Ko Naing for 65 years. The most famous human rights activist, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been under house arrest for almost 14 years, and the term was extended for a further 18 months after a sham trial.
Many of these activists are in prisons thousands of miles from their families, and several are critically ill.
One category of victims of the military dictatorship that gets far less attention is Burma’s ethnic minorities.
In eastern Burma, the regime has been conducting a brutal military campaign against people of the Karen, Karenni and Shan groups. Since 1996, more than 3,300 villages have been destroyed and more than a million people internally displaced. A Karenni friend of mine has described it as “Pol Pot in slow motion.”
The catalogue of terror includes the widespread, systematic use of rape as a weapon, forced labor, the use of human minesweepers and the forcible conscription of child soldiers.
In northern and western Burma, the predominantly Christian Chin and Kachin peoples also face systematic religious persecution.
The Muslim Rohingyas, targeted for their faith and ethnicity, are denied citizenship, despite living in Burma for generations. Thousands have escaped to miserable conditions in Bangladesh.
I have travelled more than 30 times to Burma and its borderlands. I have met former child soldiers, women who have been gang-raped, and many people who have been forced to flee from their burned villages.
Earlier this year, I met a man who had lost both his legs following an attack on his village.
When the Burmese Army came, he fled, but after the troops had moved on, he returned to his smoldering village to see if he could salvage any remaining belongings. Where his house had stood, he found nothing except ashes — hidden in which was a landmine laid by the troops. He stepped on the mine, and lost both legs.
He was carried for an entire day for basic medical treatment and then, a few weeks later, he walked on crutches through the jungle for two days to escape. He fled to a camp for internally displaced people near the Thai border. Four months later, that camp was attacked and he had to flee again.
An eyewitness once told me that in a prison camp in Chin State, prisoners who tried to escape were repeatedly stabbed, forced into a tub of salt water, and then roasted over a fire. A woman in Karen State described to me how her husband was hung upside down from a tree, his eyes gouged out, and then drowned.
The United Nations has documented these atrocities. For years, General Assembly resolutions have condemned the abuses. Previous special rapporteurs have described the violations as “the result of policy at the highest level, entailing political and legal responsibility.” A recent General Assembly resolution urged the regime to “put an end to violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.”
The U.N. has placed Burma on a monitoring list for genocide, the Genocide Risk Indices lists Burma as one of the two top “red alert” countries for genocide, along with Sudan, while the Minority Rights Group ranks Burma as one of the top five countries where ethnic minorities are under threat. Freedom House describes Burma as “the worst of the worst.”
This year, the United States reviewed its Burma policy and adopted a new approach of engagement while maintaining existing sanctions.
While this is the right approach in principle, and one advocated by the democracy movement, the danger is that the message has been misinterpreted, both by the regime and countries in the region.
Even though President Obama and senior U.S. officials have consistently emphasized that sanctions will not be lifted until there is substantial and irreversible progress in Burma, including the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and all political prisoners and a meaningful dialogue between the regime, the democracy movement and the ethnic nationalities, the impression created in the region is that the U.S. is going soft.
This is unfortunate, as it has let Burma’s neighbors off the hook just when they were showing tentative signs of toughening up their approach. Trying to talk to the generals is right, but it needs to be accompanied by strong and unambiguous pressure.
In short, little action has been taken by the international community. Countries continue to sell the regime arms, impunity prevails.
The violations perpetrated by the regime amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Harvard Law School’s report, “Crimes in Burma,” commissioned by five of the world’s leading jurists, concludes that there is “a prima facie case of international criminal law violations occurring that demands U.N. Security Council action to establish a Commission of Inquiry to investigate these grave breaches.”
Last week marked the 61st anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. If that is to mean anything in Burma, the time has come for the U.N. to impose a universal arms embargo on the regime, to invoke the much-flaunted “Responsibility to Protect” mechanism, and to investigate the regime’s crimes. The time to end the system of impunity in Burma is long overdue.
Benedict Rogers is East Asia Team Leader with the human rights organization Christian Solidarity Worldwide, and author of several books on Burma, including “Than Shwe: Unmasking Burma’s Tyrant.”
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Christian News Wire - Gospel for Asia Missionaries Working with Famine Victims in Myanmar
Contact: Taun Cortado, Gospel for Asia, 972-300-3379
CARROLLTON, Texas, Dec. 16 /Christian Newswire/ -- A natural phenomenon is causing a plague of rats in Myanmar, leading to starvation in the country's poverty-stricken Chin state and hampering the recovery from Cyclone Nargis in the Irrawaddy Delta area.
The heart-wrenching crisis is rooted in what the Asian people called the mautam. Mau is the Burmese word for bamboo, and tam means famine. About every 50 years a certain species of bamboo plants produces a bloom that, when eaten by the rats, increases their fertility and causes an explosion in the rat population. The latest mautam began in 2006.
The rats strip the bamboo plants of their fruit and seeds and plow their way through other crops as well, devouring grain, corn and rice. They even dig up and eat the seeds farmers planted in the ground.
"Can you imagine having to forage for leaves and bark for your family's next meal?" asked Gospel for Asia President K.P. Yohannan. "For the people of Myanmar, this is not just a nightmare or a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie; it is their real life!"
The plague of rats has ravaged Myanmar's already impoverished Chin state for two years now, wiping out 75 percent of its crops, according to some estimates. Families are being forced to scavenge for food as their rice harvest and other staples are being devoured by rats.
"I have never seen such a huge number of rats," a Burmese farmer told Asia Times Online. "I had thought we could easily drive out the rats and protect our crops. But just before the rice was ready to be harvested, the rats came and ate all the rice in the fields in just one night. We lost all our rice."
According to a report published by the Chin Human Rights Organization, 54 people have reportedly died from health problems related to the food crisis.
Gospel for Asia missionary Zaw Dara works in Chin, Myanmar and said a village where he serves is a sad example of the effects of the mautam. The 50 families in this village are facing severe famine and a host of related illnesses since the ravenous rats tore through their crops, their stored grain, seeds and even the bamboo furniture in their meager homes.
Dara is reaching out to offer comfort, a listening ear and words of hope from the Scriptures to these people who are suffering so much. He is also working with Gospel for Asia's Compassion Services ministry to bring food and other immediate needs to the people of Chin.
Making matters worse, Myanmar's repressive military junta is denying access to international aid organizations who may want to bring in assistance, even in the face of such widespread suffering. But GFA--supported national missionaries, who were already in the country before the rat plague hit, are committed to reaching out in whatever ways they can, offering hope and comfort to these people who are hurting so much.
"Since our missionaries are already serving among the people, they are aware of their every need. We are doing all we can to take care of them," Yohannan explained.
In another part of Burma, the rat plague is wiping out much of the progress made in the recovery from Cyclone Nargis. The devastating storm hit the Irrawaddy Delta area of Myanmar May 3, 2008. The storm killed an estimated 140,000 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless. Farmland, animals, fishing boats and businesses were also destroyed by the storm, crippling commerce in the country, which relies on agriculture and rice exports for much of its national income.
When the mautam hit the Irrawaddy area, another problem became clear--the cyclone had destroyed many of the rat's natural enemies. The rats were reproducing at a much faster rate than the cats, dogs and snakes according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Efforts. This is making the current mautam last longer than those of past centuries, with more devastating results.
Farmers in the Irrawaddy Delta area have been ordered by the government to kill 15 rats a day and then turn their tails in as proof of their efforts. The UN reports that despite these extermination efforts, the rat population in the area is easily three to four times its normal level.
Gospel for Asia missionaries worked tirelessly in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis and they will continue serving the people of Myanmar through this time of famine.
"No matter what the situation, our Compassion Services Teams are committed to continue serving the people of Myanmar by meeting their physical needs and sharing the love of Christ with them," Yohannan said. "And as they have humbly requested, we should continue to uphold these precious people in prayer."
Gospel for Asia is an evangelical mission organization based in Carrollton involved in sharing the love of Jesus across South Asia.
Contact: Taun Cortado, Gospel for Asia, 972-300-3379
CARROLLTON, Texas, Dec. 16 /Christian Newswire/ -- A natural phenomenon is causing a plague of rats in Myanmar, leading to starvation in the country's poverty-stricken Chin state and hampering the recovery from Cyclone Nargis in the Irrawaddy Delta area.
The heart-wrenching crisis is rooted in what the Asian people called the mautam. Mau is the Burmese word for bamboo, and tam means famine. About every 50 years a certain species of bamboo plants produces a bloom that, when eaten by the rats, increases their fertility and causes an explosion in the rat population. The latest mautam began in 2006.
The rats strip the bamboo plants of their fruit and seeds and plow their way through other crops as well, devouring grain, corn and rice. They even dig up and eat the seeds farmers planted in the ground.
"Can you imagine having to forage for leaves and bark for your family's next meal?" asked Gospel for Asia President K.P. Yohannan. "For the people of Myanmar, this is not just a nightmare or a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie; it is their real life!"
The plague of rats has ravaged Myanmar's already impoverished Chin state for two years now, wiping out 75 percent of its crops, according to some estimates. Families are being forced to scavenge for food as their rice harvest and other staples are being devoured by rats.
"I have never seen such a huge number of rats," a Burmese farmer told Asia Times Online. "I had thought we could easily drive out the rats and protect our crops. But just before the rice was ready to be harvested, the rats came and ate all the rice in the fields in just one night. We lost all our rice."
According to a report published by the Chin Human Rights Organization, 54 people have reportedly died from health problems related to the food crisis.
Gospel for Asia missionary Zaw Dara works in Chin, Myanmar and said a village where he serves is a sad example of the effects of the mautam. The 50 families in this village are facing severe famine and a host of related illnesses since the ravenous rats tore through their crops, their stored grain, seeds and even the bamboo furniture in their meager homes.
Dara is reaching out to offer comfort, a listening ear and words of hope from the Scriptures to these people who are suffering so much. He is also working with Gospel for Asia's Compassion Services ministry to bring food and other immediate needs to the people of Chin.
Making matters worse, Myanmar's repressive military junta is denying access to international aid organizations who may want to bring in assistance, even in the face of such widespread suffering. But GFA--supported national missionaries, who were already in the country before the rat plague hit, are committed to reaching out in whatever ways they can, offering hope and comfort to these people who are hurting so much.
"Since our missionaries are already serving among the people, they are aware of their every need. We are doing all we can to take care of them," Yohannan explained.
In another part of Burma, the rat plague is wiping out much of the progress made in the recovery from Cyclone Nargis. The devastating storm hit the Irrawaddy Delta area of Myanmar May 3, 2008. The storm killed an estimated 140,000 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless. Farmland, animals, fishing boats and businesses were also destroyed by the storm, crippling commerce in the country, which relies on agriculture and rice exports for much of its national income.
When the mautam hit the Irrawaddy area, another problem became clear--the cyclone had destroyed many of the rat's natural enemies. The rats were reproducing at a much faster rate than the cats, dogs and snakes according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Efforts. This is making the current mautam last longer than those of past centuries, with more devastating results.
Farmers in the Irrawaddy Delta area have been ordered by the government to kill 15 rats a day and then turn their tails in as proof of their efforts. The UN reports that despite these extermination efforts, the rat population in the area is easily three to four times its normal level.
Gospel for Asia missionaries worked tirelessly in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis and they will continue serving the people of Myanmar through this time of famine.
"No matter what the situation, our Compassion Services Teams are committed to continue serving the people of Myanmar by meeting their physical needs and sharing the love of Christ with them," Yohannan said. "And as they have humbly requested, we should continue to uphold these precious people in prayer."
Gospel for Asia is an evangelical mission organization based in Carrollton involved in sharing the love of Jesus across South Asia.
******************************************************************
EarthTimes - Nobel laureate economist advises Myanmar junta on agriculture
Posted : Wed, 16 Dec 2009 04:39:57 GMT
Yangon - Nobel laureate and former chief economist at the World Bank Joseph Stiglitz has warned Myanmar's junta that economics and politics cannot be separated if the country wishes boost agricultural yields again, United Nations sources said Wednesday. Stiglitz on Tuesday attended a seminar in Naypyitaw, the military's new capital, to discuss ways to boost Myanmar's agricultural sector "to help it reclaim its status as the rice bowl of Asia," the UN information service said in a statement.
Myanmar, also called Burma, was Asia's leading exporter of rice before 1962, when a coup installed military rule under strongman General Ne Win and launched the once affluent South-East Asian nation along its disastrous "Burmese Way to Socialism."
Thailand quickly claimed Myanmar's spot as the world's top rice exporter, a rank it has kept over the past four decades.
In his presentation Stiglitz urged the government promote access to agricultural financing, take measures to boost access to seeds and fertilizers, dramatically boost spending on health and education, and create well-paid jobs in construction of rural infrastructure in order to stimulate development and raise incomes and spending.
"Economics and politics cannot be separated," Stiglitz said.
"For Myanmar to take a role on the world stage and to achieve true stability and security there must be widespread participation and inclusive processes. This is the only way forward for Myanmar," he added, according to a UN press release.
Stiglitz was in Myanmar at the invitation of UN Economic and Social Commission for the Asia Pacific (ESCAP) Executive Secretary Noeleen Heyzer.
Myanmar is ranked by the UN as a least developed developing nation.
The country has been the target of economic sanctions by Western democracies since a brutal army crackdown on anti-military demonstrations in 1988 that left an estimated 3,000 people dead.
Sanctions are likely to remain in place until the regime frees opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and some 2,100 other political prisoners and introduces genuine democratic reforms.
Stiglitz won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001. As chief economist of the World Bank from 1997 to 2000, heplayed a key role in the publication Rethinking the Asian Miracle, which examined the reasons behind the dramatic growth of eight Asian economies.
Posted : Wed, 16 Dec 2009 04:39:57 GMT
Yangon - Nobel laureate and former chief economist at the World Bank Joseph Stiglitz has warned Myanmar's junta that economics and politics cannot be separated if the country wishes boost agricultural yields again, United Nations sources said Wednesday. Stiglitz on Tuesday attended a seminar in Naypyitaw, the military's new capital, to discuss ways to boost Myanmar's agricultural sector "to help it reclaim its status as the rice bowl of Asia," the UN information service said in a statement.
Myanmar, also called Burma, was Asia's leading exporter of rice before 1962, when a coup installed military rule under strongman General Ne Win and launched the once affluent South-East Asian nation along its disastrous "Burmese Way to Socialism."
Thailand quickly claimed Myanmar's spot as the world's top rice exporter, a rank it has kept over the past four decades.
In his presentation Stiglitz urged the government promote access to agricultural financing, take measures to boost access to seeds and fertilizers, dramatically boost spending on health and education, and create well-paid jobs in construction of rural infrastructure in order to stimulate development and raise incomes and spending.
"Economics and politics cannot be separated," Stiglitz said.
"For Myanmar to take a role on the world stage and to achieve true stability and security there must be widespread participation and inclusive processes. This is the only way forward for Myanmar," he added, according to a UN press release.
Stiglitz was in Myanmar at the invitation of UN Economic and Social Commission for the Asia Pacific (ESCAP) Executive Secretary Noeleen Heyzer.
Myanmar is ranked by the UN as a least developed developing nation.
The country has been the target of economic sanctions by Western democracies since a brutal army crackdown on anti-military demonstrations in 1988 that left an estimated 3,000 people dead.
Sanctions are likely to remain in place until the regime frees opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and some 2,100 other political prisoners and introduces genuine democratic reforms.
Stiglitz won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001. As chief economist of the World Bank from 1997 to 2000, heplayed a key role in the publication Rethinking the Asian Miracle, which examined the reasons behind the dramatic growth of eight Asian economies.
******************************************************************
ASEAN envoys optimistic on solution over Myanmar democracy problem
www.chinaview.cn 2009-12-16 15:47:55
JAKARTA, Dec. 16 (Xinhua) -- The envoys of the Association of the Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) said on Wednesday that they are optimistic Myanmar could find solution to solve democracy issue.
"It's just a matter of time," the Chairman of the Eminent Persons Group on the ASEAN Charter Tun Musa Hitam told the press after the second ASEAN Secretariat Policy Forum at the ASEAN secretariat here.
He said that Myanmar delegations are very active in the Eminent Group and always send participants to various occasions it holds.
"They are very constructive," he said.
The Chairperson on the High-Level Task Force on the Drafting of the ASEAN Charter Ambassador Rosario G. Manalo, said that although the ASEAN has a policy of not interfering domestic affairs, it does not mean that the association does nothing.
"Our foreign ministers actively talk to Myanmar, offering steps," he said.
Manalo added that the Myanmar issue is the top priority of Human Right Commission's program in the association.
The Chairman of the Eminent Persons Group on the ASEAN Charter Tun Musa Hitam said that the association would not teach the country about democracy.
"We don't want to teach them or to provide aid and training for democracy. We are not like that but we always talk with Myanmar to find the solution," said Tun Musa.
According to Tun Musa, the ASEAN does not expect a rapid development in Myanmar related to the issue.
"The progress report shows no drastic increase, but moderate one. However, it is still a progress," he said.
The ASEAN on Wednesday commemorated the first anniversary of ASEAN Charter by hosting the second ASEAN Secretariat Policy Forum titled "The ASEAN Charter: One Year On".
www.chinaview.cn 2009-12-16 15:47:55
JAKARTA, Dec. 16 (Xinhua) -- The envoys of the Association of the Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) said on Wednesday that they are optimistic Myanmar could find solution to solve democracy issue.
"It's just a matter of time," the Chairman of the Eminent Persons Group on the ASEAN Charter Tun Musa Hitam told the press after the second ASEAN Secretariat Policy Forum at the ASEAN secretariat here.
He said that Myanmar delegations are very active in the Eminent Group and always send participants to various occasions it holds.
"They are very constructive," he said.
The Chairperson on the High-Level Task Force on the Drafting of the ASEAN Charter Ambassador Rosario G. Manalo, said that although the ASEAN has a policy of not interfering domestic affairs, it does not mean that the association does nothing.
"Our foreign ministers actively talk to Myanmar, offering steps," he said.
Manalo added that the Myanmar issue is the top priority of Human Right Commission's program in the association.
The Chairman of the Eminent Persons Group on the ASEAN Charter Tun Musa Hitam said that the association would not teach the country about democracy.
"We don't want to teach them or to provide aid and training for democracy. We are not like that but we always talk with Myanmar to find the solution," said Tun Musa.
According to Tun Musa, the ASEAN does not expect a rapid development in Myanmar related to the issue.
"The progress report shows no drastic increase, but moderate one. However, it is still a progress," he said.
The ASEAN on Wednesday commemorated the first anniversary of ASEAN Charter by hosting the second ASEAN Secretariat Policy Forum titled "The ASEAN Charter: One Year On".
******************************************************************
UN News Centre - UN development partnership seeks to boost agricultural sector in Myanmar
15 December 2009 – United Nations development officials held talks with Government ministers in Myanmar today aimed at boosting the impoverished country’s agricultural sector to help it reclaim its status as the rice bowl of Asia.
“It is my hope these ideas and analysis will open a new space for policy discussion and a further deepening of our development partnership,” UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) Executive Secretary Noeleen Heyzer said at the event held in Myanmar’s capital, Nay Pyi Taw.
This development partnership, requested by the Government, provides a unique platform for eminent international scholars and local researchers to exchange experiences and ideas with government agencies and civil society, she added of this the second in a series of events being organized by ESCAP with the country’s Ministries of Agriculture and Irrigation, and National Planning and Economic Development.
At ESCAP’s invitation, Nobel Prize-winning economist Professor Joseph Stiglitz and other eminent experts discussed various strategies for Myanmar to reduce poverty in light of Asia’s regional and sub-regional experiences. Mr. Stiglitz noted that Myanmar was well-positioned to learn from other countries in the region that have developed economically on the back of gains in agriculture.
There are large opportunities for improvement and Myanmar should take a comprehensive approach, he said, urging the Government to promote access to appropriate agricultural financing and boost access to seeds and fertilizers. The country should also dramatically boost spending on health and education, and create well-paid jobs in construction of rural infrastructure to stimulate development and raise incomes and spending.
Mr. Stiglitz also noted that well-functioning institutions were critical to success, stressing that revenues from oil and gas can open up a new era, if used well. If not, then valuable opportunities will be squandered, he warned said, adding that economics and politics cannot be separated.
For Myanmar to take a role on the world stage and to achieve true stability and security, there must be widespread participation and inclusive processes, he said.
Myanmar’s Agriculture and Irrigation Minister U Htay Oo welcomed the continued close cooperation with ESCAP in the development partnership series. “I look forward to the joint activities to come in 2010, in particular the regional development programme for sustainable agriculture towards inclusive rural economy development,” he said.
15 December 2009 – United Nations development officials held talks with Government ministers in Myanmar today aimed at boosting the impoverished country’s agricultural sector to help it reclaim its status as the rice bowl of Asia.
“It is my hope these ideas and analysis will open a new space for policy discussion and a further deepening of our development partnership,” UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) Executive Secretary Noeleen Heyzer said at the event held in Myanmar’s capital, Nay Pyi Taw.
This development partnership, requested by the Government, provides a unique platform for eminent international scholars and local researchers to exchange experiences and ideas with government agencies and civil society, she added of this the second in a series of events being organized by ESCAP with the country’s Ministries of Agriculture and Irrigation, and National Planning and Economic Development.
At ESCAP’s invitation, Nobel Prize-winning economist Professor Joseph Stiglitz and other eminent experts discussed various strategies for Myanmar to reduce poverty in light of Asia’s regional and sub-regional experiences. Mr. Stiglitz noted that Myanmar was well-positioned to learn from other countries in the region that have developed economically on the back of gains in agriculture.
There are large opportunities for improvement and Myanmar should take a comprehensive approach, he said, urging the Government to promote access to appropriate agricultural financing and boost access to seeds and fertilizers. The country should also dramatically boost spending on health and education, and create well-paid jobs in construction of rural infrastructure to stimulate development and raise incomes and spending.
Mr. Stiglitz also noted that well-functioning institutions were critical to success, stressing that revenues from oil and gas can open up a new era, if used well. If not, then valuable opportunities will be squandered, he warned said, adding that economics and politics cannot be separated.
For Myanmar to take a role on the world stage and to achieve true stability and security, there must be widespread participation and inclusive processes, he said.
Myanmar’s Agriculture and Irrigation Minister U Htay Oo welcomed the continued close cooperation with ESCAP in the development partnership series. “I look forward to the joint activities to come in 2010, in particular the regional development programme for sustainable agriculture towards inclusive rural economy development,” he said.
******************************************************************
BURMA: A Celebration of Life through the Arts under the Junta
Analysis by Marwaan Macan-Markar
CHIANG MAI, Thailand, Dec 17 (IPS) - The Burmese military spares nothing with its iron grip on power – not even art.
So what happens when the vibrant artistic community in the country seeks to express itself through such contemporary forms as performance art is common. Expect a visit from the censors to check content. In August, one show in Rangoon, the former capital, had such a visit.
The officials from the ministry of information’s censorship board frown on topics like politics and anti-junta sentiments in the military-ruled country – and sex. The August show had little such content. The nine artists performed hours before the show formally opened and the censors moved on.
Such limits in the South-east Asian nation have compelled the spreading crop of contemporary painters to look elsewhere for inspiration and to respond to their times. Instead of anger and political rage, canvases tend to celebrate the vibrant colour, distinct motifs and modern interpretations of Burma.
Nay Myo Say’s solo exhibition that opened early this month in the northern Thai city offers a window into such artistic sensibilities. The universal image of pain and suffering that the world has come to identify with Burma – thanks to the international media and the country’s pro-democracy movement – is nowhere in sight in the 21 canvases that adorn the walls at the Suvannabhumi Art Gallery, the only one in Thailand dedicated to Burmese art.
The 42-year-old Burma-based painter has returned to the female form, a favourite of his, for this third solo exhibition at the Chiang Mai gallery that runs from Dec. 4 to 25. His oils explore women from the past. Their faces convey serenity and grace.
The larger canvases are a modern-day meditation of aristocratic ladies from "ancient days." Their gentle black brushstrokes and fluid outlines highlight details against a splash of bright yellows and orange.
On the smaller canvases, the former medical doctor’s depiction of virgins is distinct by the gold combs on their head and hairstyles shaped like a bird’s tail behind the ears.
The canvases resonate with Nay Myo Say’s interpretation of his country’s rich Buddhist traditions. The first painting in this series, ‘Women of the Ancient Day’, has such a detail in gold that adorns the top of the canvas. They hark to the Burmese practice of pasting gold leaf paper on the Buddha statues in the country’s main temples.
Elsewhere, horizontal slabs of gold etched with ancient Buddhist religious text in deep red contrast against the images of his female subjects. This style of highlighting certain corners of his canvas, which Nay Myo Say has done before, conveys, at times, a secular touch. A painting of a woman blending into deep blue and green tropical floral motifs with gold patches of colour seeping through reflects that touch.
Nay Myo Say’s choice of non-political themes is in itself a reflection of a little-explored side of Burma.
Since the mid-1990s, which marked his arrival as an artist, the trends and stark contradictions that have unfolded in Burma were characterised, on one hand, by political themes dominating the arts and mass media, focusing on a junta spreading its stranglehold on power, crushing the fledgling pro- democracy movement led by Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace laureate who has spent over 14 of the last 20 years in detention.
On the other side is the country’s image of "opening up" the economy – albeit still a myth to many – in the 1990s after decades of isolationism and stringent socialist policies since the military grabbed power in a 1962 coup.
It is this apparent change of scene after the drab decades of Burmese socialism that Nay Myo Say, one of the highly acclaimed artists of the country’s "third wave" of painters, has rooted himself in.
The artist and his contemporaries belong to a movement that is described "not as angry rebellion; it is a celebration of opportunity," writes Andrew Ranard, who has lived in Burma, in his book ‘Burmese Painting’. "(Their art is) full of joyful, colourful outbursts."
Such celebration of Burmese themes was conveyed a year ago during Nay Myo Say’s second solo exhibition at the Suvannabhumi gallery. Then he chose to interpret a form of traditional Burmese theatre called ‘Anyein’ (translated as ‘tenderness’ in Burmese). That exhibition displayed male and female dancers painted in black lines, reminiscent of the expressionists, set against mural backdrops.
"There is no clue or message in my paintings," Nay Myo Say said at the time to ‘The Irrawaddy’, a current affairs magazine published by Burmese journalists living in this northern Thai city. "I want to convey serenity and peace, something of the feeling I experience when I enter the old temples and pagodas in Pagan," a major historical site in Burma, otherwise known as Myanmar.
It is a sentiment – serenity and peace – that has been marked in his other paintings, ranging from his landscapes to watercolours, still a popular medium of art in the country.
"This is a side of Burma artists inside the country want to show the world, now that they have more opportunity to exhibit in foreign countries," says Burmese gallery owner Mar Mar. "We have at least seven exhibitions a year."
Little wonder why one Burmese art critic has remarked that the modern paintings of Burma’s third generation of artists like Nay Myo Say ensures the country’s greater presence in the international art world – amid censorship and the junta’s diktats.
Analysis by Marwaan Macan-Markar
CHIANG MAI, Thailand, Dec 17 (IPS) - The Burmese military spares nothing with its iron grip on power – not even art.
So what happens when the vibrant artistic community in the country seeks to express itself through such contemporary forms as performance art is common. Expect a visit from the censors to check content. In August, one show in Rangoon, the former capital, had such a visit.
The officials from the ministry of information’s censorship board frown on topics like politics and anti-junta sentiments in the military-ruled country – and sex. The August show had little such content. The nine artists performed hours before the show formally opened and the censors moved on.
Such limits in the South-east Asian nation have compelled the spreading crop of contemporary painters to look elsewhere for inspiration and to respond to their times. Instead of anger and political rage, canvases tend to celebrate the vibrant colour, distinct motifs and modern interpretations of Burma.
Nay Myo Say’s solo exhibition that opened early this month in the northern Thai city offers a window into such artistic sensibilities. The universal image of pain and suffering that the world has come to identify with Burma – thanks to the international media and the country’s pro-democracy movement – is nowhere in sight in the 21 canvases that adorn the walls at the Suvannabhumi Art Gallery, the only one in Thailand dedicated to Burmese art.
The 42-year-old Burma-based painter has returned to the female form, a favourite of his, for this third solo exhibition at the Chiang Mai gallery that runs from Dec. 4 to 25. His oils explore women from the past. Their faces convey serenity and grace.
The larger canvases are a modern-day meditation of aristocratic ladies from "ancient days." Their gentle black brushstrokes and fluid outlines highlight details against a splash of bright yellows and orange.
On the smaller canvases, the former medical doctor’s depiction of virgins is distinct by the gold combs on their head and hairstyles shaped like a bird’s tail behind the ears.
The canvases resonate with Nay Myo Say’s interpretation of his country’s rich Buddhist traditions. The first painting in this series, ‘Women of the Ancient Day’, has such a detail in gold that adorns the top of the canvas. They hark to the Burmese practice of pasting gold leaf paper on the Buddha statues in the country’s main temples.
Elsewhere, horizontal slabs of gold etched with ancient Buddhist religious text in deep red contrast against the images of his female subjects. This style of highlighting certain corners of his canvas, which Nay Myo Say has done before, conveys, at times, a secular touch. A painting of a woman blending into deep blue and green tropical floral motifs with gold patches of colour seeping through reflects that touch.
Nay Myo Say’s choice of non-political themes is in itself a reflection of a little-explored side of Burma.
Since the mid-1990s, which marked his arrival as an artist, the trends and stark contradictions that have unfolded in Burma were characterised, on one hand, by political themes dominating the arts and mass media, focusing on a junta spreading its stranglehold on power, crushing the fledgling pro- democracy movement led by Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace laureate who has spent over 14 of the last 20 years in detention.
On the other side is the country’s image of "opening up" the economy – albeit still a myth to many – in the 1990s after decades of isolationism and stringent socialist policies since the military grabbed power in a 1962 coup.
It is this apparent change of scene after the drab decades of Burmese socialism that Nay Myo Say, one of the highly acclaimed artists of the country’s "third wave" of painters, has rooted himself in.
The artist and his contemporaries belong to a movement that is described "not as angry rebellion; it is a celebration of opportunity," writes Andrew Ranard, who has lived in Burma, in his book ‘Burmese Painting’. "(Their art is) full of joyful, colourful outbursts."
Such celebration of Burmese themes was conveyed a year ago during Nay Myo Say’s second solo exhibition at the Suvannabhumi gallery. Then he chose to interpret a form of traditional Burmese theatre called ‘Anyein’ (translated as ‘tenderness’ in Burmese). That exhibition displayed male and female dancers painted in black lines, reminiscent of the expressionists, set against mural backdrops.
"There is no clue or message in my paintings," Nay Myo Say said at the time to ‘The Irrawaddy’, a current affairs magazine published by Burmese journalists living in this northern Thai city. "I want to convey serenity and peace, something of the feeling I experience when I enter the old temples and pagodas in Pagan," a major historical site in Burma, otherwise known as Myanmar.
It is a sentiment – serenity and peace – that has been marked in his other paintings, ranging from his landscapes to watercolours, still a popular medium of art in the country.
"This is a side of Burma artists inside the country want to show the world, now that they have more opportunity to exhibit in foreign countries," says Burmese gallery owner Mar Mar. "We have at least seven exhibitions a year."
Little wonder why one Burmese art critic has remarked that the modern paintings of Burma’s third generation of artists like Nay Myo Say ensures the country’s greater presence in the international art world – amid censorship and the junta’s diktats.
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ITLOS: PROCEEDINGS INSTITUTED IN THE DISPUTE CONCERNING THE MARITIME BOUNDARY BETWEEN BANGLADESH AND MYANMAR IN THE BAY OF BENGAL
2009-12-16 | INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNAL FOR THE LAW OF THE SEA
Press Release
On 14 December 2009, proceedings were instituted before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in the dispute relating to the delimitation of the maritime boundary in the Bay of Bengal between the People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Union of Myanmar.
It may be recalled that the dispute between the two countries had initially been submitted to an arbitral tribunal to be constituted under Annex VII of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea ("the Convention"), through a notification dated 8 October 2009, made by the People's Republic of Bangladesh to the Union of Myanmar.
In a letter dated 13 December 2009 addressed to the President of the Tribunal, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of Bangladesh referred to the declaration issued by the Union of Myanmar on 4 November 2009 by which the Union of Myanmar "accepts the jurisdiction of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea for the settlement of dispute between the Union of Myanmar and the People's Republic of Bangladesh relating to the delimitation of maritime boundary between the two countries in the Bay of Bengal" and transmitted to the Tribunal a declaration by Bangladesh dated 12 December 2009 by which Bangladesh "accepts the jurisdiction of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea for the settlement of the dispute between the People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Union of Myanmar relating to the delimitation of their maritime boundary in the Bay of Bengal".
Based on these declarations, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bangladesh, in her letter dated 13 December 2009, stated that "[g]iven Bangladesh's and Myanmar's mutual consent to the jurisdiction of ITLOS, and in accordance with the provisions of UNCLOS Article 287 (4), Bangladesh considers that your distinguished Tribunal is now the only forum for the resolution of the parties' dispute". In her letter, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bangladesh further stated that "Bangladesh respectfully invites ITLOS to exercise jurisdiction over the maritime boundary dispute between Bangladesh and Myanmar, which is the subject of Bangladesh's 08 October 2009 statement of claim".
In light of the agreement of the parties, as expressed through their respective declarations, to submit to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea their dispute relating to the delimitation of their maritime boundary in the Bay of Bengal, and taking into account the invitation addressed to the Tribunal by Bangladesh "to exercise jurisdiction" over said dispute, the case has been entered in the List of cases of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea as Case No.16.
2009-12-16 | INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNAL FOR THE LAW OF THE SEA
Press Release
On 14 December 2009, proceedings were instituted before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in the dispute relating to the delimitation of the maritime boundary in the Bay of Bengal between the People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Union of Myanmar.
It may be recalled that the dispute between the two countries had initially been submitted to an arbitral tribunal to be constituted under Annex VII of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea ("the Convention"), through a notification dated 8 October 2009, made by the People's Republic of Bangladesh to the Union of Myanmar.
In a letter dated 13 December 2009 addressed to the President of the Tribunal, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of Bangladesh referred to the declaration issued by the Union of Myanmar on 4 November 2009 by which the Union of Myanmar "accepts the jurisdiction of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea for the settlement of dispute between the Union of Myanmar and the People's Republic of Bangladesh relating to the delimitation of maritime boundary between the two countries in the Bay of Bengal" and transmitted to the Tribunal a declaration by Bangladesh dated 12 December 2009 by which Bangladesh "accepts the jurisdiction of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea for the settlement of the dispute between the People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Union of Myanmar relating to the delimitation of their maritime boundary in the Bay of Bengal".
Based on these declarations, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bangladesh, in her letter dated 13 December 2009, stated that "[g]iven Bangladesh's and Myanmar's mutual consent to the jurisdiction of ITLOS, and in accordance with the provisions of UNCLOS Article 287 (4), Bangladesh considers that your distinguished Tribunal is now the only forum for the resolution of the parties' dispute". In her letter, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bangladesh further stated that "Bangladesh respectfully invites ITLOS to exercise jurisdiction over the maritime boundary dispute between Bangladesh and Myanmar, which is the subject of Bangladesh's 08 October 2009 statement of claim".
In light of the agreement of the parties, as expressed through their respective declarations, to submit to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea their dispute relating to the delimitation of their maritime boundary in the Bay of Bengal, and taking into account the invitation addressed to the Tribunal by Bangladesh "to exercise jurisdiction" over said dispute, the case has been entered in the List of cases of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea as Case No.16.
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Letters to Editor
The Nation - Burma: a man-made disaster zone
Published on December 16, 2009
Re: "Eastern Burma: the Darfur of SE Asia", Opinion, December 8.
The Thailand Burma Border Consortium, headed by Jack Dunford, continues to do a great job for refugees from Burma. It is not too much to term this organisation an oasis or sanctuary for all people fleeing the Burmese army's oppression and notorious "Four Cuts" policy to stifle food supply, funds, information, and what it considers to be support for the ethnic resistance armies. In reality, the thousands of refugees stranded in Thailand and other neighbouring countries, and the many more thousands of internally displaced persons (IDP), especially in the eastern part of Burma, is a man-made disaster. To be exact, all this has happened because of the Burmese junta's violence.
The junta's goal has been first and foremost to continue military rule, in effect since the 1962 coup. The non-Burman resistance has come into being due to unfulfilled rights of self-determination, equality and democracy. The junta's institutionalised cultural assimilation scheme, coupled with the occupation of the ethnic areas, has worsened the situation and led to the Darfur-like condition.
This man-made disaster could be easily reversed if the junta showed the will and altruism to lift the country out of its misery. The junta must to release all political prisoners, call for a nationwide ceasefire, amend its 2008 constitution (which guarantees future military supremacy), and conduct a free, fair and transparent election.
If such reconciliation and democratisation is implemented, the junta's man-made disaster will be rolled back swiftly with a speed one could only imagine.
SAI WANSAI
BANGKOK
The Nation - Burma: a man-made disaster zone
Published on December 16, 2009
Re: "Eastern Burma: the Darfur of SE Asia", Opinion, December 8.
The Thailand Burma Border Consortium, headed by Jack Dunford, continues to do a great job for refugees from Burma. It is not too much to term this organisation an oasis or sanctuary for all people fleeing the Burmese army's oppression and notorious "Four Cuts" policy to stifle food supply, funds, information, and what it considers to be support for the ethnic resistance armies. In reality, the thousands of refugees stranded in Thailand and other neighbouring countries, and the many more thousands of internally displaced persons (IDP), especially in the eastern part of Burma, is a man-made disaster. To be exact, all this has happened because of the Burmese junta's violence.
The junta's goal has been first and foremost to continue military rule, in effect since the 1962 coup. The non-Burman resistance has come into being due to unfulfilled rights of self-determination, equality and democracy. The junta's institutionalised cultural assimilation scheme, coupled with the occupation of the ethnic areas, has worsened the situation and led to the Darfur-like condition.
This man-made disaster could be easily reversed if the junta showed the will and altruism to lift the country out of its misery. The junta must to release all political prisoners, call for a nationwide ceasefire, amend its 2008 constitution (which guarantees future military supremacy), and conduct a free, fair and transparent election.
If such reconciliation and democratisation is implemented, the junta's man-made disaster will be rolled back swiftly with a speed one could only imagine.
SAI WANSAI
BANGKOK
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December 17, 2009 21:00 PM
New Mother Among Four Charged With Drug Trafficking
KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 17 (Bernama) -- With her newborn baby snuggled in her cuffed hands, a Myanmar woman cut a forlorn figure at the High Court here on Thursday.
Ambiga Mohamad was waiting for the court proceedings to begin when the two-week-old became hungry and cried, breaking the monotony of the court's ambience.
A policeman opened the handcuffs to enable the 37-year-old mother to feed the baby with bottled milk.
Whether Ambiga will get to spend the rest of her life with the child, will depend on the long arm of the law.
She faces the mandatory death penalty under Section 39B of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952, if convicted of trafficking in 3.15 kg of heroin.
Ambiga was said to have committed the offence at a car park in Jalan Manis 6, opposite the Maybank branch in Taman Segar, Cheras about 5pm on April 3.
Jointly charged with the Myanmar woman were her Malaysian husband Lim Siau Seng, 29, K. Vigneswaran, 23 and another Myanmar woman, Arafah Abu, 30.
All claimed trial to the charge.
Ambiga was pregnant with the baby when she was arrested in April, this year.
The baby was born at the Kajang Prison in Selangor.
Judicial Commissioner Zainal Azman Abdul Aziz fixed Jan 15 for re-mention of the case, pending the chemistry report on the drug.
Deputy public prosecutor Mazelan Jamaludin appeared for the prosecution while the accused were represented by Nagarajan Peri.
New Mother Among Four Charged With Drug Trafficking
KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 17 (Bernama) -- With her newborn baby snuggled in her cuffed hands, a Myanmar woman cut a forlorn figure at the High Court here on Thursday.
Ambiga Mohamad was waiting for the court proceedings to begin when the two-week-old became hungry and cried, breaking the monotony of the court's ambience.
A policeman opened the handcuffs to enable the 37-year-old mother to feed the baby with bottled milk.
Whether Ambiga will get to spend the rest of her life with the child, will depend on the long arm of the law.
She faces the mandatory death penalty under Section 39B of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952, if convicted of trafficking in 3.15 kg of heroin.
Ambiga was said to have committed the offence at a car park in Jalan Manis 6, opposite the Maybank branch in Taman Segar, Cheras about 5pm on April 3.
Jointly charged with the Myanmar woman were her Malaysian husband Lim Siau Seng, 29, K. Vigneswaran, 23 and another Myanmar woman, Arafah Abu, 30.
All claimed trial to the charge.
Ambiga was pregnant with the baby when she was arrested in April, this year.
The baby was born at the Kajang Prison in Selangor.
Judicial Commissioner Zainal Azman Abdul Aziz fixed Jan 15 for re-mention of the case, pending the chemistry report on the drug.
Deputy public prosecutor Mazelan Jamaludin appeared for the prosecution while the accused were represented by Nagarajan Peri.
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Dec 16, 2009
The Straits Times - Woman hit maid
By Khushwant Singh
ANGRY at her maid for cutting broccoli wrongly, a housewife slammed a kettle against the Myanmar woman's arm, splashing warm water on her face. The maid told her agent, who reported it to the police the next day.
Investigations then revealed 14 other occasions when Peck Choon Khim, 41, ill-treated Ms Moe Thandar Lin. Peck pleaded guilty on Wednesday and will be sentenced on Jan 14.
A district court heard that Peck had been abusing Ms Lin, 24, since Nov 15 last year. On that evening, she hit the maid's palm with a spatula for taking too long to find it.
The abuse then grew worse.
On Feb 20, Peck used a cane to hit Ms Lin's ankle for not wiping spilled water off the baby's dining table. Four days later, she punched her arm for warming up the wrong curry for dinner.
Peck, whose children are 16 months and three years, could be jailed up to three years and fined up to $7,500 on each of the four charges.
The Straits Times - Woman hit maid
By Khushwant Singh
ANGRY at her maid for cutting broccoli wrongly, a housewife slammed a kettle against the Myanmar woman's arm, splashing warm water on her face. The maid told her agent, who reported it to the police the next day.
Investigations then revealed 14 other occasions when Peck Choon Khim, 41, ill-treated Ms Moe Thandar Lin. Peck pleaded guilty on Wednesday and will be sentenced on Jan 14.
A district court heard that Peck had been abusing Ms Lin, 24, since Nov 15 last year. On that evening, she hit the maid's palm with a spatula for taking too long to find it.
The abuse then grew worse.
On Feb 20, Peck used a cane to hit Ms Lin's ankle for not wiping spilled water off the baby's dining table. Four days later, she punched her arm for warming up the wrong curry for dinner.
Peck, whose children are 16 months and three years, could be jailed up to three years and fined up to $7,500 on each of the four charges.
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The Irrawaddy - North Korean Weapons Mystery: Is Burma the Missing Link?
By SIMON ROUGHNEEN - Wednesday, December 16, 2009
The North Korean arms cargo interdicted in Bangkok seems unlikely to be bound for Burma, despite ties between Pyongyang and the Naypyidaw military junta. Burmese junta strongman Snr-Gen Than Shwe visited Sri Lanka in November, reciprocating a visit made by Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa in June this year.
The final destination of the cache remains unclear. The crew claim that the airplane was to land in Sri Lanka to refuel, with the Ukraine as a final destination, apparently after the cargo had been dropped off elsewhere. Sri Lankan officials denied any knowledge that the embargo-breaking flight was going to land in that country.
Thai government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn said the plane was going to “a destination in the Middle East” to unload the weapons. Earlier this year, authorities in the United Arab Emirates seized 10 containers of North Korean arms on board a Bahamian-flagged ship. Like the Ilyushin-76 flight cargo, the manifest was listed as “oil drilling equipment.” The consignment was supposedly destined for Iran.
Other speculation surrounds a possible African destination. Sudan is also under a UN arms embargo, but acquires weapons from China and Russia among others, and has become increasingly close to states such as Iran and Burma in recent years. The latter two are thought to be key buyers in North Korea's US $1bn per annum illicit arms bazaar, prompting speculation that a bevy of human rights violators are collaborating in an underground weapons trade.
Sudan's deputy foreign minister visited Burma in October 2009 to discuss “beneficial cooperation on investment and energy sectors,” according to The New Light of Myanmar, a junta-backed publication based in Rangoon. Both Sudan and Burma are important sources of energy supply to China, which has fostered these links while Western competitors remain largely absent, due to international sanctions on both Khartoum and Naypyidaw. Sudan, like Burma, will stage controversial elections next year, amid speculation that oil-rich southern Sudan will later secede, a move that Khartoum is likely to resist with military force.
Another possible destination is Eritrea―a closed, autocratic regime akin to Kim Jong-il's dictatorship in North Korea. Eritrea has unresolved border problems with Ethiopia, and is also supporting some Islamist factions in Somalia.
The US reportedly tipped off Thai authorities about the illicit cargo, according to Thai media reports that the government and Americans have not commented on. However it is not clear why the crew landed at Bangkok's Don Mueang Airport. If carrying illicit weaponry from Pyongyang, this move would appear foolhardy in extreme, given the close military and intelligence links between Thailand and the US.
US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton lauded the seizure, stating that it "shows that sanctions can prevent the proliferation of weapons and it shows that the international community when it stands together can make a very strong statement."
Experts at Swedish-based SIPRI, an arms monitoring organization, traced the jet to an arms trader linked to Victor Bout, who is now in prison in Bangkok. It appears the airplane was most recently registered under a company called Beibars, linked to Serbian arms dealer Tomislav Dmanjanovic. According to SIPRI and the UN, past owners of the aircraft have trafficked arms to Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Sudan and Chad. It had previously been registered with three companies identified by the US Department of the Treasury as firms controlled by Mr Bout, labeled the “Merchant of Death” for his role in supplying arms to an array of terrorist groups and insurgents around the world.
The US is trying to extradite Bout, who was arrested in Thailand in March last year, and later indicted on four terrorism charges in New York.
Earlier in 2009, the US navy shadowed a North Korean ship suspected of carrying arms to Burma, forcing it to turn back. North Korea is helping the Burmese junta with conventional weaponry, and there is some speculation that the nuclear-armed Communist regime in Pyongyang is sharing this technology with Naypyidaw.
However, Victor Cha, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, says that Burma is now wary of receiving arms transfers from North Korea.
The Burmese junta is not under an international arms embargo, despite calls for one to be applied, and therefore does not have to rely on the underground arms trade to equip its military, which is believed to be the largest in Southeast Asia.
Cha acknowledged that precise analysis of what and how North Korea is selling, and to who, remains impossible. The Thai seizure is likely a drop in the ocean of what is estimated at a $1 billion annual trade. Cha cited a recent visit by China’s Premier Wen Jiabao to North Korea, followed by Beijing’s defense minister, as fueling fears that North Korea may on occasion be able to send arms through China, which shares a land border with Burma. China is thought to fear instability or economic collapse in North Korea, and Pyongyang relies on its illicit arms trade for foreign currency.
By SIMON ROUGHNEEN - Wednesday, December 16, 2009
The North Korean arms cargo interdicted in Bangkok seems unlikely to be bound for Burma, despite ties between Pyongyang and the Naypyidaw military junta. Burmese junta strongman Snr-Gen Than Shwe visited Sri Lanka in November, reciprocating a visit made by Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa in June this year.
The final destination of the cache remains unclear. The crew claim that the airplane was to land in Sri Lanka to refuel, with the Ukraine as a final destination, apparently after the cargo had been dropped off elsewhere. Sri Lankan officials denied any knowledge that the embargo-breaking flight was going to land in that country.
Thai government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn said the plane was going to “a destination in the Middle East” to unload the weapons. Earlier this year, authorities in the United Arab Emirates seized 10 containers of North Korean arms on board a Bahamian-flagged ship. Like the Ilyushin-76 flight cargo, the manifest was listed as “oil drilling equipment.” The consignment was supposedly destined for Iran.
Other speculation surrounds a possible African destination. Sudan is also under a UN arms embargo, but acquires weapons from China and Russia among others, and has become increasingly close to states such as Iran and Burma in recent years. The latter two are thought to be key buyers in North Korea's US $1bn per annum illicit arms bazaar, prompting speculation that a bevy of human rights violators are collaborating in an underground weapons trade.
Sudan's deputy foreign minister visited Burma in October 2009 to discuss “beneficial cooperation on investment and energy sectors,” according to The New Light of Myanmar, a junta-backed publication based in Rangoon. Both Sudan and Burma are important sources of energy supply to China, which has fostered these links while Western competitors remain largely absent, due to international sanctions on both Khartoum and Naypyidaw. Sudan, like Burma, will stage controversial elections next year, amid speculation that oil-rich southern Sudan will later secede, a move that Khartoum is likely to resist with military force.
Another possible destination is Eritrea―a closed, autocratic regime akin to Kim Jong-il's dictatorship in North Korea. Eritrea has unresolved border problems with Ethiopia, and is also supporting some Islamist factions in Somalia.
The US reportedly tipped off Thai authorities about the illicit cargo, according to Thai media reports that the government and Americans have not commented on. However it is not clear why the crew landed at Bangkok's Don Mueang Airport. If carrying illicit weaponry from Pyongyang, this move would appear foolhardy in extreme, given the close military and intelligence links between Thailand and the US.
US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton lauded the seizure, stating that it "shows that sanctions can prevent the proliferation of weapons and it shows that the international community when it stands together can make a very strong statement."
Experts at Swedish-based SIPRI, an arms monitoring organization, traced the jet to an arms trader linked to Victor Bout, who is now in prison in Bangkok. It appears the airplane was most recently registered under a company called Beibars, linked to Serbian arms dealer Tomislav Dmanjanovic. According to SIPRI and the UN, past owners of the aircraft have trafficked arms to Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Sudan and Chad. It had previously been registered with three companies identified by the US Department of the Treasury as firms controlled by Mr Bout, labeled the “Merchant of Death” for his role in supplying arms to an array of terrorist groups and insurgents around the world.
The US is trying to extradite Bout, who was arrested in Thailand in March last year, and later indicted on four terrorism charges in New York.
Earlier in 2009, the US navy shadowed a North Korean ship suspected of carrying arms to Burma, forcing it to turn back. North Korea is helping the Burmese junta with conventional weaponry, and there is some speculation that the nuclear-armed Communist regime in Pyongyang is sharing this technology with Naypyidaw.
However, Victor Cha, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, says that Burma is now wary of receiving arms transfers from North Korea.
The Burmese junta is not under an international arms embargo, despite calls for one to be applied, and therefore does not have to rely on the underground arms trade to equip its military, which is believed to be the largest in Southeast Asia.
Cha acknowledged that precise analysis of what and how North Korea is selling, and to who, remains impossible. The Thai seizure is likely a drop in the ocean of what is estimated at a $1 billion annual trade. Cha cited a recent visit by China’s Premier Wen Jiabao to North Korea, followed by Beijing’s defense minister, as fueling fears that North Korea may on occasion be able to send arms through China, which shares a land border with Burma. China is thought to fear instability or economic collapse in North Korea, and Pyongyang relies on its illicit arms trade for foreign currency.
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The Irrawaddy - Call to Reorganize NLD Garners Support, Questions
By ARKAR MOE - Thursday, December 17, 2009
NLD leaders embrace Aung San Suu Kyi's call to reorganize Burma's most prestigious opposition party, while raising questions about timing and and other matters.
However, the party now faces difficult questions of how quickly and extensively the leadership structure can be reorganized, replacing long-serving leaders now in their 80s and 90s and how will such changes affect its decision on whether or not to take part in the 2010 national election?
Among the issues within the NLD have been differences of views between younger and more senior party members in terms of aggrersive promotion of the party's interest throughout the country and its participation in the upcoming election. In recent years, the regime closed NLD offices throughout the country, threatening its survival as a viable opposition group, and arrested and jailed many party members.
On Wednesday, Suu Kyi called for a reorganization of the central executive committee (CEC) after meeting with three elderly and ailing senior leaders.
NLD spokesman Khin Maung Swe confirmed to The Irrawaddy on Thursday that most NLD offices outside of Rangoon are closed. "There are many difficulties in holding a nationwide meeting," he said.
He said the central executive committe can be reorganized more effectively.
The NLD has not held a nationwide party gathering for at least a decade because of harassment by the authorities and other setbacks. Although younger party members recently called for party meetings across the country, the CEC did not authorize the move, sources said.
Political observers inside Burma have said the NLD must strengthen its presence in the countryside to maintain its popularity and influence, particular ahead of the 2010 general election.
Myat Hla,74, the NLD chairperson in Pegu and an elected representative of the people's parliament, told The Irrawaddy on Thursday, “I welcome Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s calls. Most NLD CEC members are not functioning effectively now. If the NLD does not reorganize, it will lose its leadership role.”
Senior party leader Win Tin told The Irrawaddy, “I agree that the NLD needs to reorganize, but, it won't be easy to carry out all in short time.”
Moe Zaw Oo, secretary 2 of the Foreign Affairs Department of the National League for Democracy—Liberated Area (NLD-LA), told The Irrawaddy on Thursday: “It’s high time to reform, and I welcome Suu Kyi‘s call. It's natural that there are different views between older members and youths. But finally we must all be united in the best interests of the NLD.”
The NLD should hold a nationwide meeting, he said, but the military government would probably not allow it.
In November 2009, NLD members from Pegu and Mandalay divisions sent a joint letter calling for a national conference to debate the issue of the NLD’s role in next year’s election.
The letter also called for the resignation of two elderly NLD leaders.
Recently, members of the youth wing of the party voiced ideological differences publically, saying the main objective of forming the NLD in 1988 was to bring about democracy and positive change in the country. They said that instead the party had drifted into a “survival” mode.
Responding to the criticism, some members said the party reversed its so-called "survival" policy, noting that in 2008, it rejected the junta’s call to withdraw NLD statements that criticized the constitutional referendum.
The NLD wrote to the Election Commission on Nov. 16 saying that under the election law it had the authority to reorganize its party.
By ARKAR MOE - Thursday, December 17, 2009
NLD leaders embrace Aung San Suu Kyi's call to reorganize Burma's most prestigious opposition party, while raising questions about timing and and other matters.
However, the party now faces difficult questions of how quickly and extensively the leadership structure can be reorganized, replacing long-serving leaders now in their 80s and 90s and how will such changes affect its decision on whether or not to take part in the 2010 national election?
Among the issues within the NLD have been differences of views between younger and more senior party members in terms of aggrersive promotion of the party's interest throughout the country and its participation in the upcoming election. In recent years, the regime closed NLD offices throughout the country, threatening its survival as a viable opposition group, and arrested and jailed many party members.
On Wednesday, Suu Kyi called for a reorganization of the central executive committee (CEC) after meeting with three elderly and ailing senior leaders.
NLD spokesman Khin Maung Swe confirmed to The Irrawaddy on Thursday that most NLD offices outside of Rangoon are closed. "There are many difficulties in holding a nationwide meeting," he said.
He said the central executive committe can be reorganized more effectively.
The NLD has not held a nationwide party gathering for at least a decade because of harassment by the authorities and other setbacks. Although younger party members recently called for party meetings across the country, the CEC did not authorize the move, sources said.
Political observers inside Burma have said the NLD must strengthen its presence in the countryside to maintain its popularity and influence, particular ahead of the 2010 general election.
Myat Hla,74, the NLD chairperson in Pegu and an elected representative of the people's parliament, told The Irrawaddy on Thursday, “I welcome Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s calls. Most NLD CEC members are not functioning effectively now. If the NLD does not reorganize, it will lose its leadership role.”
Senior party leader Win Tin told The Irrawaddy, “I agree that the NLD needs to reorganize, but, it won't be easy to carry out all in short time.”
Moe Zaw Oo, secretary 2 of the Foreign Affairs Department of the National League for Democracy—Liberated Area (NLD-LA), told The Irrawaddy on Thursday: “It’s high time to reform, and I welcome Suu Kyi‘s call. It's natural that there are different views between older members and youths. But finally we must all be united in the best interests of the NLD.”
The NLD should hold a nationwide meeting, he said, but the military government would probably not allow it.
In November 2009, NLD members from Pegu and Mandalay divisions sent a joint letter calling for a national conference to debate the issue of the NLD’s role in next year’s election.
The letter also called for the resignation of two elderly NLD leaders.
Recently, members of the youth wing of the party voiced ideological differences publically, saying the main objective of forming the NLD in 1988 was to bring about democracy and positive change in the country. They said that instead the party had drifted into a “survival” mode.
Responding to the criticism, some members said the party reversed its so-called "survival" policy, noting that in 2008, it rejected the junta’s call to withdraw NLD statements that criticized the constitutional referendum.
The NLD wrote to the Election Commission on Nov. 16 saying that under the election law it had the authority to reorganize its party.
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‘Economics and politics inseparable’, Stiglitz tells Burma
Thursday, 17 December 2009 20:28 Mungpi
New Delhi (Mizzima) - Nobel Laureate Prof. Joseph Stiglitz said Burma needs an all inclusive economic process in order to achieve stability and security as “Economics and politics cannot be separated.”
Prof. Stiglitz was speaking at a forum on “Restoring Burma as the Rice Bowl of Asia”, organised by the Burmese government and the United Nations Economics and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), on Monday.
“Economics and politics cannot be separated,” said the Nobel Prize winning economist.
“For Myanmar [Burma] to play a role on the world stage — and to achieve true stability and security — there must be widespread participation and inclusive processes. This is the only way forward for Myanmar [Burma],” he added.
According to a UN Press release on Monday, the former World Bank Chief said Burma has a large opportunity for development and that it should take a comprehensive approach.
He urged the Burmese government to promote access to appropriate agricultural financing, take measures to boost access to seeds and fertilizers, dramatically boost spending on health and education, and create well-paid jobs in construction of rural infrastructure in order to stimulate development and raise incomes and spending.
Prof Stiglitz, however, said, while Burma’s revenues earned from the sales of oil and gas can help open up a new era, if they are not wisely used, the opportunities would be wasted.
“Revenues from oil and gas can open up a new era, if used well. If not, then valuable opportunities will be squandered,” Prof. Stiglitz said.
Prof. Stiglitz also noted that well-functioning institutions were critical to success and that Burma could learn from the mistakes made by other resource-rich countries.
The American economist was visiting Burma at the invitation of UNESCAP. Prior to his visit, critics aired doubts about the Burmese junta’s desire to accept serious advice on economic reforms.
According to Prof. Sean Turnell of the Macquarie University of Sydney, Australia, genuine economic reform will require political space and willingness as it is impossible for the economy to be partially open to reform.
Turnell said the failed economic situation in Burma is the result of decades of economic mismanagement by the ruling military junta, which has no comprehensive economic planning.
“It is my hope these ideas and analysis will open a new space for policy discussion and a further deepening of our development partnership,” UN Under-Secretary-General and ESCAP Executive Secretary Noeleen Heyzer said at the event held in Burma’s new jungle capital city of Naypyitaw.
“These development objectives can only be achieved through the successful engagement of local experts and people who know what is happening on the ground. This development partnership, requested by the Government of Myanmar [Burma], provides a unique platform for eminent international scholars and local researchers to exchange experiences and ideas with government agencies and civil society,” Dr. Heyzer added.
The event is the second in a series launched by Dr. Heyzer during her visit in July and was organized by ESCAP in collaboration with Burma’s Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation and Ministry of National Planning and Economic Development.
Thursday, 17 December 2009 20:28 Mungpi
New Delhi (Mizzima) - Nobel Laureate Prof. Joseph Stiglitz said Burma needs an all inclusive economic process in order to achieve stability and security as “Economics and politics cannot be separated.”
Prof. Stiglitz was speaking at a forum on “Restoring Burma as the Rice Bowl of Asia”, organised by the Burmese government and the United Nations Economics and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), on Monday.
“Economics and politics cannot be separated,” said the Nobel Prize winning economist.
“For Myanmar [Burma] to play a role on the world stage — and to achieve true stability and security — there must be widespread participation and inclusive processes. This is the only way forward for Myanmar [Burma],” he added.
According to a UN Press release on Monday, the former World Bank Chief said Burma has a large opportunity for development and that it should take a comprehensive approach.
He urged the Burmese government to promote access to appropriate agricultural financing, take measures to boost access to seeds and fertilizers, dramatically boost spending on health and education, and create well-paid jobs in construction of rural infrastructure in order to stimulate development and raise incomes and spending.
Prof Stiglitz, however, said, while Burma’s revenues earned from the sales of oil and gas can help open up a new era, if they are not wisely used, the opportunities would be wasted.
“Revenues from oil and gas can open up a new era, if used well. If not, then valuable opportunities will be squandered,” Prof. Stiglitz said.
Prof. Stiglitz also noted that well-functioning institutions were critical to success and that Burma could learn from the mistakes made by other resource-rich countries.
The American economist was visiting Burma at the invitation of UNESCAP. Prior to his visit, critics aired doubts about the Burmese junta’s desire to accept serious advice on economic reforms.
According to Prof. Sean Turnell of the Macquarie University of Sydney, Australia, genuine economic reform will require political space and willingness as it is impossible for the economy to be partially open to reform.
Turnell said the failed economic situation in Burma is the result of decades of economic mismanagement by the ruling military junta, which has no comprehensive economic planning.
“It is my hope these ideas and analysis will open a new space for policy discussion and a further deepening of our development partnership,” UN Under-Secretary-General and ESCAP Executive Secretary Noeleen Heyzer said at the event held in Burma’s new jungle capital city of Naypyitaw.
“These development objectives can only be achieved through the successful engagement of local experts and people who know what is happening on the ground. This development partnership, requested by the Government of Myanmar [Burma], provides a unique platform for eminent international scholars and local researchers to exchange experiences and ideas with government agencies and civil society,” Dr. Heyzer added.
The event is the second in a series launched by Dr. Heyzer during her visit in July and was organized by ESCAP in collaboration with Burma’s Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation and Ministry of National Planning and Economic Development.
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ADB will not expand TFFP in Burma
Thursday, 17 December 2009 17:42 Siddique Islam
Dhaka (Mizzima) - The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is not interested in expanding its Trade Finance Facilitation Program (TFFP) in Burma calling it a ‘sensitive’ country, a senior ADB official said in Dhaka on Thursday.
“We’re not interested in expanding the ongoing TFFP in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma,” Steven Beck, the head of Trade Finance Capital Markets and Financial Sectors Division and Private Sector Operations Department of the ADB, said.
There is lower market demand of such trade facilitation in the South East Asian country, he added.
Mr. Steven is now in Dhaka for expansion of the TFFP in Bangladesh by signing deals with 12 local private commercial banks.
The TFFP was set up in 2004 and was expanded to a $1 billion programme in March this year after the ADB perceived a growing and urgent need to address the lack of finance that was holding back trade, particularly in developing economies.
Under the programme, the triple-A rated ADB provides loans and guarantees through, and in conjunction with, local and international banks to back trade transactions.
The TFFP is already active in Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.
The TFFP is scheduled to expand in Philippines, Mongolia and Uzbekistan in the first quarter of 2010. It will be followed by Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, after which it will make its presence felt in all other Central Asian countries over the course of the rest of 2010, the Manila-based multilateral donor agency said.
Thursday, 17 December 2009 17:42 Siddique Islam
Dhaka (Mizzima) - The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is not interested in expanding its Trade Finance Facilitation Program (TFFP) in Burma calling it a ‘sensitive’ country, a senior ADB official said in Dhaka on Thursday.
“We’re not interested in expanding the ongoing TFFP in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma,” Steven Beck, the head of Trade Finance Capital Markets and Financial Sectors Division and Private Sector Operations Department of the ADB, said.
There is lower market demand of such trade facilitation in the South East Asian country, he added.
Mr. Steven is now in Dhaka for expansion of the TFFP in Bangladesh by signing deals with 12 local private commercial banks.
The TFFP was set up in 2004 and was expanded to a $1 billion programme in March this year after the ADB perceived a growing and urgent need to address the lack of finance that was holding back trade, particularly in developing economies.
Under the programme, the triple-A rated ADB provides loans and guarantees through, and in conjunction with, local and international banks to back trade transactions.
The TFFP is already active in Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.
The TFFP is scheduled to expand in Philippines, Mongolia and Uzbekistan in the first quarter of 2010. It will be followed by Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, after which it will make its presence felt in all other Central Asian countries over the course of the rest of 2010, the Manila-based multilateral donor agency said.
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‘Enthusiastic’ Suu Kyi calls for party reform
Dec 17, 2009 (DVB)–The detained leader of Burma’s largest political party has called for it to be reorganised for the first time in the party’s 21-year history, following rare talks with three senior party members.
The demand was heralded as “really necessary” by senior National League for Democracy (NLD) member, Win Tin, who has been a lynchpin for the pro-democracy movement in Burma since the party’s formation in September 1988.
The winds of change that Aung San Suu Kyi has ushered in came after she earlier requested, via a letter to the ruling junta, a meeting with party elders. She also requested a cross-party meeting and talks with the junta’s senior general, Than Shwe.
The talks were also hailed by the US, which has been urging for dialogue between the junta and opposition parties.
"We hope this is a step towards a meeting between Aung San Suu Kyi and the entire central executive committee of the National League for Democracy," US state department spokesperson, Ian Kelly said.
Win Tin said that it signifies both a fresh approach from the NLD, and a sign that “if the junta agrees to her meeting with the party elders, she may be able to meet with Than Shwe. It can result in dialogue”.
The top echelons of the NLD are all in their senior years. At the meeting on Monday, at which Suu Kyi proposed the reform, were 92-year-old U Aung Shwe, 85-year-old U Lwin and U Lun Tin, who is 89.
“They are more than 80 years old. The NLD already has the idea of expanding and reforming by giving young people places so that future activities could be carried out,” said NLD spokesperson Khin Maung Shwe.
U Win Tin continued that “the junta should do the same thing to bring innovation to Burmese politics. If the junta has the same spirit of renovation, of course we will have new ideas and new thinking to work for the country”.
With the 2010 elections looming, and as yet little indication of the future of Burmese politics, Win Tin said that regardless of who takes power, “they must have some new ideas of how to tackle the problems of Burma and problems of Burmese society”.
He conceded that many will be troubled by Suu Kyi’s conciliatory tone, but the positivity displayed by the party on the eve of elections will encourage hope both in Burma and abroad that dialogue and change are possible.
“She is quite willing to work with the junta and some people are quite surprised; they don’t like the idea of co-operation,” he said.
What has changed recently in the minds of western governments has been the line that should be taken with the errant generals at the top of Burma’s political pile, one of engagement instead of isolation.
Athough the fresh approach from the international community, coupled with developments within the NLD, have been met with enthusiasm, Khin Maung Shwe said however that “when welcoming this, we have to do it with great caution.”
Whilst many of the senior NLD members will move aside to allow fresh blood into the party leadership, Win Tin was in no doubt about the ultimate leader of the party.
“She is a wonderful girl, really. She is always very enthusiastic; she is working all the time, even alone in her house she is working very hard, more than 10 to 15 hours a day. That letter is proof,” he said.
“She is retiring the older generation, she is not just paying respects,” he said, adding that “she has got the ideas and she is well enough in health”.
Reporting by Joseph Allchin
Dec 17, 2009 (DVB)–The detained leader of Burma’s largest political party has called for it to be reorganised for the first time in the party’s 21-year history, following rare talks with three senior party members.
The demand was heralded as “really necessary” by senior National League for Democracy (NLD) member, Win Tin, who has been a lynchpin for the pro-democracy movement in Burma since the party’s formation in September 1988.
The winds of change that Aung San Suu Kyi has ushered in came after she earlier requested, via a letter to the ruling junta, a meeting with party elders. She also requested a cross-party meeting and talks with the junta’s senior general, Than Shwe.
The talks were also hailed by the US, which has been urging for dialogue between the junta and opposition parties.
"We hope this is a step towards a meeting between Aung San Suu Kyi and the entire central executive committee of the National League for Democracy," US state department spokesperson, Ian Kelly said.
Win Tin said that it signifies both a fresh approach from the NLD, and a sign that “if the junta agrees to her meeting with the party elders, she may be able to meet with Than Shwe. It can result in dialogue”.
The top echelons of the NLD are all in their senior years. At the meeting on Monday, at which Suu Kyi proposed the reform, were 92-year-old U Aung Shwe, 85-year-old U Lwin and U Lun Tin, who is 89.
“They are more than 80 years old. The NLD already has the idea of expanding and reforming by giving young people places so that future activities could be carried out,” said NLD spokesperson Khin Maung Shwe.
U Win Tin continued that “the junta should do the same thing to bring innovation to Burmese politics. If the junta has the same spirit of renovation, of course we will have new ideas and new thinking to work for the country”.
With the 2010 elections looming, and as yet little indication of the future of Burmese politics, Win Tin said that regardless of who takes power, “they must have some new ideas of how to tackle the problems of Burma and problems of Burmese society”.
He conceded that many will be troubled by Suu Kyi’s conciliatory tone, but the positivity displayed by the party on the eve of elections will encourage hope both in Burma and abroad that dialogue and change are possible.
“She is quite willing to work with the junta and some people are quite surprised; they don’t like the idea of co-operation,” he said.
What has changed recently in the minds of western governments has been the line that should be taken with the errant generals at the top of Burma’s political pile, one of engagement instead of isolation.
Athough the fresh approach from the international community, coupled with developments within the NLD, have been met with enthusiasm, Khin Maung Shwe said however that “when welcoming this, we have to do it with great caution.”
Whilst many of the senior NLD members will move aside to allow fresh blood into the party leadership, Win Tin was in no doubt about the ultimate leader of the party.
“She is a wonderful girl, really. She is always very enthusiastic; she is working all the time, even alone in her house she is working very hard, more than 10 to 15 hours a day. That letter is proof,” he said.
“She is retiring the older generation, she is not just paying respects,” he said, adding that “she has got the ideas and she is well enough in health”.
Reporting by Joseph Allchin
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