S.Korea firm sign billion dollar Myanmar gas deal
Tue Feb 23, 2:09 am ET
SEOUL (AFP) – Hyundai Heavy Industries said it signed a 1.4 billion dollar deal Tuesday with another South Korean firm to develop a huge natural gasfield in military-ruled Myanmar.
Hyundai Heavy, the world's largest shipyard, signed the contract with trading company Daewoo International to build offshore and onshore plant at the Shwe project off northwest Myanmar by March 2013.
Daewoo International has agreed to supply gas from the field from May of the same year through a pipeline to China.
The project will produce 500 million cubic feet (15 million cubic metres) of gas per day for between 25 and 30 years. The field is estimated to hold between 4.5 trillion and 7.7 trillion cubic feet of gas.
Hyundai Heavy will build a 40,000-ton offshore gas platform, a subsea production system, pipelines, an onshore gas terminal, a jetty and a supply base.
"The project will help to enhance the partnership between Hyundai Heavy and Daewooo International," Hyundai Heavy CEO Oh Byung-Wook said in a statement, adding his company expects additional orders in Myanmar.
Myanmar, which has been ruled by the military since 1962, is under economic sanctions by the United States and Europe because of its human rights record and long-running detention of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
But their impact has been weakened as neighbours such as China, India and Thailand spend billions of dollars for a share of its oil and gas reserves.
A report by rights groups last June said South Korea's government was failing to hold its corporations to account for abuses linked to natural gas development in Myanmar.
The report, by EarthRights International and the Shwe Gas Movement, said the gas project had already been linked to forced relocations and other human rights violations.
Local people who criticised the work faced arbitrary arrest and detention, it said.
Tue Feb 23, 2:09 am ET
SEOUL (AFP) – Hyundai Heavy Industries said it signed a 1.4 billion dollar deal Tuesday with another South Korean firm to develop a huge natural gasfield in military-ruled Myanmar.
Hyundai Heavy, the world's largest shipyard, signed the contract with trading company Daewoo International to build offshore and onshore plant at the Shwe project off northwest Myanmar by March 2013.
Daewoo International has agreed to supply gas from the field from May of the same year through a pipeline to China.
The project will produce 500 million cubic feet (15 million cubic metres) of gas per day for between 25 and 30 years. The field is estimated to hold between 4.5 trillion and 7.7 trillion cubic feet of gas.
Hyundai Heavy will build a 40,000-ton offshore gas platform, a subsea production system, pipelines, an onshore gas terminal, a jetty and a supply base.
"The project will help to enhance the partnership between Hyundai Heavy and Daewooo International," Hyundai Heavy CEO Oh Byung-Wook said in a statement, adding his company expects additional orders in Myanmar.
Myanmar, which has been ruled by the military since 1962, is under economic sanctions by the United States and Europe because of its human rights record and long-running detention of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
But their impact has been weakened as neighbours such as China, India and Thailand spend billions of dollars for a share of its oil and gas reserves.
A report by rights groups last June said South Korea's government was failing to hold its corporations to account for abuses linked to natural gas development in Myanmar.
The report, by EarthRights International and the Shwe Gas Movement, said the gas project had already been linked to forced relocations and other human rights violations.
Local people who criticised the work faced arbitrary arrest and detention, it said.
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Group slams Thai deadline for registering migrants
Human rights group slams Thai deadline for registering foreign migrant workers
Thanyarat Doksone, Associated Press Writer, On Tuesday February 23, 2010, 11:35 am
BANGKOK (AP) -- A complicated process to register millions of foreign workers from Thailand's poorer neighbors could leave many in legal limbo and vulnerable to extortion by authorities and other abuse, a human rights group said Tuesday.
New York-based Human Rights Watch called on the Thai government to postpone a Feb. 28 deadline for between 2 million and 3 million workers from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos to begin the registration process to verify their nationalities. If they fail to register, they become subject to arrest and deportation.
The process, which they have two years to complete, is meant to weed out illegal foreign workers.
A large number of the migrants -- 80 to 90 percent of whom are from Myanmar -- entered the country illegally and the Thai government earlier attempted with limited success to have all of them registered. Most have poor prospects of making a decent living in their own countries, and take low-paying jobs that Thais are unwilling to do.
Human Rights Watch said the verification process is expensive, complicated and poorly regulated, keeping many migrants from reporting themselves and thus making them vulnerable to abuse.
A report by the group, based on interviews with 82 people, said abuses faced by the migrants include killings, torture in detention, extortion, sexual abuse and forced labor. It said some were perpetrated by corrupt civil servants, police, unscrupulous employers and thugs who knew that the migrants weren't protected by law.
Kapach Nimmanheminda, a spokesman for Thailand's Labor and Social Welfare Ministry, said there have been reports of extortion and harassment of illegal immigrants, but the ministry expected the situation to improve once the workers are legally registered.
"The illegal migrant workers have not been vocal about the abuses because they were afraid of threats. Once they have proven their nationalities, they will have their own right to ask for justice," Kapach said.
Human rights group slams Thai deadline for registering foreign migrant workers
Thanyarat Doksone, Associated Press Writer, On Tuesday February 23, 2010, 11:35 am
BANGKOK (AP) -- A complicated process to register millions of foreign workers from Thailand's poorer neighbors could leave many in legal limbo and vulnerable to extortion by authorities and other abuse, a human rights group said Tuesday.
New York-based Human Rights Watch called on the Thai government to postpone a Feb. 28 deadline for between 2 million and 3 million workers from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos to begin the registration process to verify their nationalities. If they fail to register, they become subject to arrest and deportation.
The process, which they have two years to complete, is meant to weed out illegal foreign workers.
A large number of the migrants -- 80 to 90 percent of whom are from Myanmar -- entered the country illegally and the Thai government earlier attempted with limited success to have all of them registered. Most have poor prospects of making a decent living in their own countries, and take low-paying jobs that Thais are unwilling to do.
Human Rights Watch said the verification process is expensive, complicated and poorly regulated, keeping many migrants from reporting themselves and thus making them vulnerable to abuse.
A report by the group, based on interviews with 82 people, said abuses faced by the migrants include killings, torture in detention, extortion, sexual abuse and forced labor. It said some were perpetrated by corrupt civil servants, police, unscrupulous employers and thugs who knew that the migrants weren't protected by law.
Kapach Nimmanheminda, a spokesman for Thailand's Labor and Social Welfare Ministry, said there have been reports of extortion and harassment of illegal immigrants, but the ministry expected the situation to improve once the workers are legally registered.
"The illegal migrant workers have not been vocal about the abuses because they were afraid of threats. Once they have proven their nationalities, they will have their own right to ask for justice," Kapach said.
*************************************************************
Cameroonian flees to French Embassy in Myanmar
AP - 2 hours 39 minutes ago
YANGON, Myanmar – A diplomat says a Cameroonian man arrested in Myanmar has fled temporarily to the French Embassy while being taken to court.
The French diplomat says the man claimed Tuesday to be a football player and said he had been arrested about three weeks ago.
The diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release information, did not disclose the man's name but said he had been arrested on a nonpolitical charge.
He says the man, who appeared to be in his twenties, wanted to inform the embassy of his arrest so it could let his family know.
Another embassy official says the man surrendered to police after about 1 1/2 hours.
AP - 2 hours 39 minutes ago
YANGON, Myanmar – A diplomat says a Cameroonian man arrested in Myanmar has fled temporarily to the French Embassy while being taken to court.
The French diplomat says the man claimed Tuesday to be a football player and said he had been arrested about three weeks ago.
The diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release information, did not disclose the man's name but said he had been arrested on a nonpolitical charge.
He says the man, who appeared to be in his twenties, wanted to inform the embassy of his arrest so it could let his family know.
Another embassy official says the man surrendered to police after about 1 1/2 hours.
*************************************************************
Washington Letter
New York Times - Supporting Dissent With Technology
By INDIRA A.R. LAKSHMANAN
Published: February 23, 2010
Cameran Ashraf was instant-messaging from Los Angeles with an activist in Iran during anti-government demonstrations Feb. 11 when the chat went dead.
Had Iran’s government “shut down the Internet” to thwart dissidents from organizing online, or had the authorities come to arrest the man, Mr. Ashraf said he wondered as he described the incident during an online video interview. Mr. Ashraf, who says he sees himself as a digital aid worker, immediately alerted other Iranian contacts to block surveillance of their Web traffic.
A 29-year-old American whose parents emigrated from Iran, Mr. Ashraf is a co-founder of AccessNow, a group of tech-savvy volunteers who joined forces during Iran’s crackdown on election protests last year to help Iranians evade censorship. They are the type of cyberactivists the U.S. State Department is seeking to support with $50 million in funds for an expanding counteroffensive against suppression of Internet freedom.
“The fact that many governments are trying to prevent their citizens from expressing themselves or obtaining information that would be critical” underscores the importance of defending online speech and assembly, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a Feb. 16 interview. The United States wants to support “garage type” outfits trying to circumvent Web censorship, she said.
AccessNow has communicated with Google on censorship and security issues and received help from its YouTube subsidiary when Iranian protest videos were hacked, said Brett Solomon, a co-founder of the group, in New York.
“This is what we do, at the core of who we are: to make sure that everyone has access,” said Scott Rubin, a Google and YouTube spokesman who works on free expression issues.
The State Department has given $15 million in the past two years to private projects that use technology and training to promote online freedoms. It is reviewing applications for $5 million to support work including research into circumventing firewalls and surveillance, and $30 million more will be available later this year, said Daniel Baer, deputy assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor.
Helping activists creates a problem by exposing them to retribution from repressive governments. Projects are so sensitive and the people involved at such risk that the State Department declined to identify current applicants. One Washington-based group that got the bulk of the money doled out so far — more than $13 million for projects worldwide — asked not to be named, fearing that Chinese employees would be jailed.
AccessNow’s founders haven’t received government funds and said they would have reservations about accepting any because they want to remain independent and protect contacts in countries where taking foreign money is a crime.
The group does disseminate open-source software that receives indirect U.S. support, including Tor, a network of virtual tunnels that allows people to surf anonymously. Built on work by the Office of Naval Research, the science and technology arm of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, Tor was developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, and by volunteers. It is used by an average of 8,000 people in Iran and 100,000 in China at any moment, said Andrew Lewman, executive director of the nonprofit Tor Project in Dedham, Massachusetts.
Scrutiny of digital dissidents drew headlines last month when Google, the Mountain View, California, search-engine company, said the e-mail accounts of Chinese rights activists had been singled out in an attack on its computer systems. Mrs. Clinton called on the Chinese authorities in a Jan. 21 speech to “conduct a thorough investigation” and said U.S. technology firms should use their influence to protest censorship, surveillance and theft of information.
Iran’s post-election restrictions on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook — used to organize and publicize protests — inspired Mr. Ashraf, Mr. Solomon and two Internet enthusiasts in Los Angeles, who all met online, to form AccessNow. A handful of other volunteers help run servers and share technical support.
“Our genesis is Iran, but the idea behind AccessNow is to develop a global movement,” Mr. Solomon, a 39-year-old Australian, said in an Internet video chat, adding that he’s sharing his experience with Tibetan, Burmese and Cuban dissidents.
The Internet has built-in perils for democracy advocates. Users who don’t utilize encryption or other methods to obscure their identity leave a digital trail of conversations, contacts and Web sites visited.
Global Voices Online, an international bloggers network, has documented 206 cases of bloggers under arrest or threat, most in China, Egypt and Iran. Last year, Internet journalists outnumbered print, radio and television reporters among 136 imprisoned members of the news media, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, based in New York.
Mehdi Saharkhiz, 28, an Iranian in New Jersey, joined AccessNow after his father, a journalist named Isa Saharkhiz, was arrested outside Tehran eight months ago. He has gathered 2,200 videos on his OnlyMehdi YouTube channel, including iconic footage by anonymous Iranians who won a George Polk Award in journalism last week for filming the killing of Neda Agha-Soltan, who has become a symbol of resistance.
“YouTube videos provided some of the only perspective of what was happening in Iran,” said Olivia Ma, 27, news manager of the video-sharing site. During the protests this month, videos were hacked and erased; AccessNow alerted Ms. Ma, who restored them.
Not every problem is so easily resolved. Mr. Ashraf hasn’t heard back from the Iranian rights campaigner who disappeared from his screen.
New York Times - Supporting Dissent With Technology
By INDIRA A.R. LAKSHMANAN
Published: February 23, 2010
Cameran Ashraf was instant-messaging from Los Angeles with an activist in Iran during anti-government demonstrations Feb. 11 when the chat went dead.
Had Iran’s government “shut down the Internet” to thwart dissidents from organizing online, or had the authorities come to arrest the man, Mr. Ashraf said he wondered as he described the incident during an online video interview. Mr. Ashraf, who says he sees himself as a digital aid worker, immediately alerted other Iranian contacts to block surveillance of their Web traffic.
A 29-year-old American whose parents emigrated from Iran, Mr. Ashraf is a co-founder of AccessNow, a group of tech-savvy volunteers who joined forces during Iran’s crackdown on election protests last year to help Iranians evade censorship. They are the type of cyberactivists the U.S. State Department is seeking to support with $50 million in funds for an expanding counteroffensive against suppression of Internet freedom.
“The fact that many governments are trying to prevent their citizens from expressing themselves or obtaining information that would be critical” underscores the importance of defending online speech and assembly, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a Feb. 16 interview. The United States wants to support “garage type” outfits trying to circumvent Web censorship, she said.
AccessNow has communicated with Google on censorship and security issues and received help from its YouTube subsidiary when Iranian protest videos were hacked, said Brett Solomon, a co-founder of the group, in New York.
“This is what we do, at the core of who we are: to make sure that everyone has access,” said Scott Rubin, a Google and YouTube spokesman who works on free expression issues.
The State Department has given $15 million in the past two years to private projects that use technology and training to promote online freedoms. It is reviewing applications for $5 million to support work including research into circumventing firewalls and surveillance, and $30 million more will be available later this year, said Daniel Baer, deputy assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor.
Helping activists creates a problem by exposing them to retribution from repressive governments. Projects are so sensitive and the people involved at such risk that the State Department declined to identify current applicants. One Washington-based group that got the bulk of the money doled out so far — more than $13 million for projects worldwide — asked not to be named, fearing that Chinese employees would be jailed.
AccessNow’s founders haven’t received government funds and said they would have reservations about accepting any because they want to remain independent and protect contacts in countries where taking foreign money is a crime.
The group does disseminate open-source software that receives indirect U.S. support, including Tor, a network of virtual tunnels that allows people to surf anonymously. Built on work by the Office of Naval Research, the science and technology arm of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, Tor was developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, and by volunteers. It is used by an average of 8,000 people in Iran and 100,000 in China at any moment, said Andrew Lewman, executive director of the nonprofit Tor Project in Dedham, Massachusetts.
Scrutiny of digital dissidents drew headlines last month when Google, the Mountain View, California, search-engine company, said the e-mail accounts of Chinese rights activists had been singled out in an attack on its computer systems. Mrs. Clinton called on the Chinese authorities in a Jan. 21 speech to “conduct a thorough investigation” and said U.S. technology firms should use their influence to protest censorship, surveillance and theft of information.
Iran’s post-election restrictions on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook — used to organize and publicize protests — inspired Mr. Ashraf, Mr. Solomon and two Internet enthusiasts in Los Angeles, who all met online, to form AccessNow. A handful of other volunteers help run servers and share technical support.
“Our genesis is Iran, but the idea behind AccessNow is to develop a global movement,” Mr. Solomon, a 39-year-old Australian, said in an Internet video chat, adding that he’s sharing his experience with Tibetan, Burmese and Cuban dissidents.
The Internet has built-in perils for democracy advocates. Users who don’t utilize encryption or other methods to obscure their identity leave a digital trail of conversations, contacts and Web sites visited.
Global Voices Online, an international bloggers network, has documented 206 cases of bloggers under arrest or threat, most in China, Egypt and Iran. Last year, Internet journalists outnumbered print, radio and television reporters among 136 imprisoned members of the news media, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, based in New York.
Mehdi Saharkhiz, 28, an Iranian in New Jersey, joined AccessNow after his father, a journalist named Isa Saharkhiz, was arrested outside Tehran eight months ago. He has gathered 2,200 videos on his OnlyMehdi YouTube channel, including iconic footage by anonymous Iranians who won a George Polk Award in journalism last week for filming the killing of Neda Agha-Soltan, who has become a symbol of resistance.
“YouTube videos provided some of the only perspective of what was happening in Iran,” said Olivia Ma, 27, news manager of the video-sharing site. During the protests this month, videos were hacked and erased; AccessNow alerted Ms. Ma, who restored them.
Not every problem is so easily resolved. Mr. Ashraf hasn’t heard back from the Iranian rights campaigner who disappeared from his screen.
*************************************************************
I.H.T. Op-Ed Contributor
New York Times - A First Step Toward Democracy?
By STANLEY A. WEISS
Published: February 22, 2010
YANGON — When British forces first floated up the Irrawaddy River in 1885 to depose King Thibaw of Burma, locals were startled to see a Burmese prince, in full regalia, sitting on the deck of one of the steamers. His presence reassured locals that the British planned to seat a new king, not overthrow the kingdom. As Thant Myint-U recalls in his book, “The River of Lost Footsteps,” it was only when a young student talked his way onto the ship and came face-to-face with the royal prince that the truth was discovered: The “prince” was an imposter, a former classmate of the student’s. By then, it was too late — the telegraph line to the palace in Mandalay had been cut.
The question, 125 years later, is whether the Burmese military junta — which has ruled this country, now known as Myanmar, since 1962 — is about to pull its own version of bait-and-switch.
For the first time since 1990 — when officials arrested 2,000 people, including the opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, after the last general election — the ruling generals have announced that parliamentary elections will take place this year. Reportedly, the generals are preparing to switch their uniforms for longyis and run for office — the equivalent of Fidel Castro swapping his army greens for guayaberas and hitting the campaign trail.
Many in the West are disposed to see the election as a fraud, since the junta’s Constitution reserves 25 percent of the seats for the military and bars Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi — imprisoned for 14 of the past 20 years — from running.
Still, the question remains: Even if the election is stage-managed by the military; even if Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy chooses not to participate; and even if Senior General Than Shwe selects the next president; if the election occurs without violence or repression, will it represent a step forward?
The answer seems to be: Yes.
“I don’t know if the elections will have legitimacy in the eyes of the West,” said the Myanmar scholar Robert Taylor. “But they will have legitimacy in Asia, and that is all the regime is worried about.”
I asked an official of the junta how the West should regard this election. “This is a first step toward democracy,” he tells me. “After ruling the country for 48 years, the military needs some mechanism to safeguard the interests and safety of persons. This is also an exit strategy for older leaders, because in five years, the new generation will take over, not only the military but civilian politics. They will work to change the military role in politics.”
The Burmese writer Ma Thanegi, who spent three years in prison after working as Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s assistant, was blunt. “Yes, elections would represent a step forward — what other choice is there?” she asked. “If the West really wants to help the people, they should accept the new government as no longer the military rule, and give it a chance.”
“What America should do,” a prominent businessman told me, “is shift the conversation from sanctions to engagement, from scolding to giving, and find soft steps to help bring about outcomes that will be beneficial to both Myanmar and the U.S.”
The Obama administration so far has sought to engage the junta, urging a dialogue between the regime, the National League for Democracy and other opposition parties, while calling for Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s release. In November, Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell led a U.S. team to Yangon for the highest level talks in 14 years.
Where should the U.S. focus its efforts? Here are three ways:
It should provide opportunities for students to attend U.S. universities, to build ties to the next generation. It should start a program of cultural, educational, and sporting exchanges, including a new program to send teachers to Myanmar. It should review its current sanctions policy.
No nation in Asia — from South Korea to Taiwan to Indonesia — has made an easy transition from dictatorship to democracy. But change needs to start somewhere. As the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, recently said, “2010 will be a very critical year for Myanmar.” There may yet be light at the end of the Irrawaddy.
Stanley A. Weiss is the founding chairman of Business Executives for National Security.
New York Times - A First Step Toward Democracy?
By STANLEY A. WEISS
Published: February 22, 2010
YANGON — When British forces first floated up the Irrawaddy River in 1885 to depose King Thibaw of Burma, locals were startled to see a Burmese prince, in full regalia, sitting on the deck of one of the steamers. His presence reassured locals that the British planned to seat a new king, not overthrow the kingdom. As Thant Myint-U recalls in his book, “The River of Lost Footsteps,” it was only when a young student talked his way onto the ship and came face-to-face with the royal prince that the truth was discovered: The “prince” was an imposter, a former classmate of the student’s. By then, it was too late — the telegraph line to the palace in Mandalay had been cut.
The question, 125 years later, is whether the Burmese military junta — which has ruled this country, now known as Myanmar, since 1962 — is about to pull its own version of bait-and-switch.
For the first time since 1990 — when officials arrested 2,000 people, including the opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, after the last general election — the ruling generals have announced that parliamentary elections will take place this year. Reportedly, the generals are preparing to switch their uniforms for longyis and run for office — the equivalent of Fidel Castro swapping his army greens for guayaberas and hitting the campaign trail.
Many in the West are disposed to see the election as a fraud, since the junta’s Constitution reserves 25 percent of the seats for the military and bars Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi — imprisoned for 14 of the past 20 years — from running.
Still, the question remains: Even if the election is stage-managed by the military; even if Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy chooses not to participate; and even if Senior General Than Shwe selects the next president; if the election occurs without violence or repression, will it represent a step forward?
The answer seems to be: Yes.
“I don’t know if the elections will have legitimacy in the eyes of the West,” said the Myanmar scholar Robert Taylor. “But they will have legitimacy in Asia, and that is all the regime is worried about.”
I asked an official of the junta how the West should regard this election. “This is a first step toward democracy,” he tells me. “After ruling the country for 48 years, the military needs some mechanism to safeguard the interests and safety of persons. This is also an exit strategy for older leaders, because in five years, the new generation will take over, not only the military but civilian politics. They will work to change the military role in politics.”
The Burmese writer Ma Thanegi, who spent three years in prison after working as Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s assistant, was blunt. “Yes, elections would represent a step forward — what other choice is there?” she asked. “If the West really wants to help the people, they should accept the new government as no longer the military rule, and give it a chance.”
“What America should do,” a prominent businessman told me, “is shift the conversation from sanctions to engagement, from scolding to giving, and find soft steps to help bring about outcomes that will be beneficial to both Myanmar and the U.S.”
The Obama administration so far has sought to engage the junta, urging a dialogue between the regime, the National League for Democracy and other opposition parties, while calling for Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s release. In November, Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell led a U.S. team to Yangon for the highest level talks in 14 years.
Where should the U.S. focus its efforts? Here are three ways:
It should provide opportunities for students to attend U.S. universities, to build ties to the next generation. It should start a program of cultural, educational, and sporting exchanges, including a new program to send teachers to Myanmar. It should review its current sanctions policy.
No nation in Asia — from South Korea to Taiwan to Indonesia — has made an easy transition from dictatorship to democracy. But change needs to start somewhere. As the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, recently said, “2010 will be a very critical year for Myanmar.” There may yet be light at the end of the Irrawaddy.
Stanley A. Weiss is the founding chairman of Business Executives for National Security.
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February 23, 2010, 11.15 am (Singapore time)
The Business Times - Myanmar to open up ports to private sector
YANGON - Myanmar's military government has invited offers from private companies to operate six major ports in the country's commercial capital and build more in anticipation of a boost in exports.
Myanmar's Transport Ministry has publicly invited offers from 'reliable Myanmar citizens, private businessmen, companies and organisations' to operate six ports in Yangon and to develop new facilities under a Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) arrangement.
The announcement carried by state-owned Kyemon newspaper on Monday said companies would be able to apply for leases of up to 30 years, with the option of extending.
Those awarded contracts would have to dredge sand bars and improve navigability in Yangon River. They will then be responsible for maintaining waterways and collecting maintenance fees from the ships and vessels, the daily said.
The reason for privatising the ports was to allow professional handling of imports and exports, which were likely to increase in the future, the announcement said. About 90 per cent of the country's foreign trade goes through Yangon ports.
Two private companies, Asia World and Myanmar International Terminal Thilawa (MITT), already run two modern ports in Yangon on a BOT basis.
The Transport Ministry is planning to transfer Myanmar's only shipping line, Myanma Five Star, to Myanmar Economic Holding, a business enterprise under the control of the Defence Ministry, a government source told Reuters.
The military regime, which has ruled the former British colony for almost half a century, plans to transfer hundreds of state-owned enterprises to the private sector in the run-up to the country's first elections in two decades, due this year.
Critics say that while the elections will usher in a civilian administration, the army will still be the biggest force in national politics, retaining control behind the scenes.
The Business Times - Myanmar to open up ports to private sector
YANGON - Myanmar's military government has invited offers from private companies to operate six major ports in the country's commercial capital and build more in anticipation of a boost in exports.
Myanmar's Transport Ministry has publicly invited offers from 'reliable Myanmar citizens, private businessmen, companies and organisations' to operate six ports in Yangon and to develop new facilities under a Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) arrangement.
The announcement carried by state-owned Kyemon newspaper on Monday said companies would be able to apply for leases of up to 30 years, with the option of extending.
Those awarded contracts would have to dredge sand bars and improve navigability in Yangon River. They will then be responsible for maintaining waterways and collecting maintenance fees from the ships and vessels, the daily said.
The reason for privatising the ports was to allow professional handling of imports and exports, which were likely to increase in the future, the announcement said. About 90 per cent of the country's foreign trade goes through Yangon ports.
Two private companies, Asia World and Myanmar International Terminal Thilawa (MITT), already run two modern ports in Yangon on a BOT basis.
The Transport Ministry is planning to transfer Myanmar's only shipping line, Myanma Five Star, to Myanmar Economic Holding, a business enterprise under the control of the Defence Ministry, a government source told Reuters.
The military regime, which has ruled the former British colony for almost half a century, plans to transfer hundreds of state-owned enterprises to the private sector in the run-up to the country's first elections in two decades, due this year.
Critics say that while the elections will usher in a civilian administration, the army will still be the biggest force in national politics, retaining control behind the scenes.
*************************************************************
The National - UN examines mistreatment of Muslims in Myanmar
Larry Jagan, Foreign Correspondent
Last Updated: February 22. 2010 6:38PM UAE / February 22. 2010 2:38PM GMT
BANGKOK // A United Nations envoy has expressed deep concern about the persecution of Myanmar’s Muslims by the authorities. “There is no doubt that there is severe discrimination of Muslims,” the UN special rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar, Tomas Ojea Quintana, said after visiting the west of the country where Muslims are concentrated.
During his five-day mission, Mr Quintana, an Argentine former labour rights lawyer, visited Sittwe, capital of northern Rakhine state, and Buthidaung, one of the state’s main towns and site of the most serious allegations of persecution and repression of the Muslims, often known as Rohingya.
This is the first time a senior UN envoy has been allowed to visit this region although the UN and international aid organisations do have projects and people in the area.
“There have been many allegations levelled at the authorities, so it was important for me to be able to see the situation firsthand,” he said.
While he was there he also visited a prison, which was a real revelation, he said during an interview on the weekend.
“The prison was full of women, some still nursing their young children,” he said. Most had been charged with immigration offences and received sentences of up to five years. But human-rights groups believe they are victims of the government’s ban on Muslims marrying.
“Men are often jailed for illegal marriages, but many, especially women, are arrested after travelling illegally [across the border] to Bangladesh to get married,” said Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project, which monitors the situation of Rohingyas in the region.
The UN envoy raised the issue of the alledged ban on marriage with the authorities, both locally and in the Myanmar capital, Naypidaw, and received the same answer. Muslims, like everyone, have the right to marry, but they have to have the correct birth certificates and citizenship papers.
This is the crux of the matter, according to human-rights groups and aid workers who know the area and monitor the situation there.
“Myanmar’s Muslim minority are subject to systematic persecution: they are effectively denied citizenship, they have their land confiscated, and many are regularly forced to work on government projects,” said Benjamin Zawacki, Amnesty International’s Myanmar researcher based in Bangkok.
“The regime creates conditions and circumstances that make it clear to the Rohingyas that they are not wanted or welcome in the country,” he said.
More than 300,000 Rohingyas are in camps or hiding in neighbouring Bangladesh to escape the persecution across the river in Rakhine, according to the UN. More than 700,000 Rohingyas still live in Myanmar.
Mr Quintana singled out Rakhine for his visit after persistent stories of persecution that included forced labour, extortion, land confiscation, travel restrictions, banned marriages and unregistered children. On his last visit to Myanmar, in 2009, his request to visit the area was denied.
Because the authorities refuse most Rohingyas permission to marry, many live together after a traditional Muslim ceremony. The children born from these couples are denied registration and citizenship – making them non-persons.
Mr Quintana took up the issue of citizenless children in his last report to the UN in November and pressed representatives of the regime on it again during this visit, but with little result.
“The issue of unregistered children is serious as their numbers keep growing,” Ms Lewa said. “What is the future of these children? Without being registered, they won’t be able to apply for a travel permit, marriage, and so on. They are all potential refugees.”
Mr Quintana’s visit to Rakhine was a significant concession by the regime. “I received a lot of independent information from various sources before I went there, and I find them very credible.”
The envoy said he did not have time to verify all the claims in the reports, but from what he saw he believed they were relatively accurate. “And I hope by visiting there I can help highlight the plight of Myanmar’s Muslims,” he said.
Overall, the UN envoy was downbeat about his trip. “Political prisoners, of which there are more than 2,100, will not be released anytime soon,” he said. “The government continues to deny that there are any prisoners of conscience in their jails.”
Mr Quintana wanted to impress upon the authorities that the release of all political prisoners before this years planned elections was essential if the electoral process was to be convincing.
“These are well-educated and capable people who could participate in the election and help make the whole process credible, I told the authorities,” he said.
Mr Quintana did not hold out much hope of change in Myanmar in the near future.
Myanmarese officials would not discuss the elections in detail even though it was evident that preparations for the polls were already in full swing. All that the men in charge of the elections would say was that the legal framework was being prepared and the electoral law would be finished in time.
Larry Jagan, Foreign Correspondent
Last Updated: February 22. 2010 6:38PM UAE / February 22. 2010 2:38PM GMT
BANGKOK // A United Nations envoy has expressed deep concern about the persecution of Myanmar’s Muslims by the authorities. “There is no doubt that there is severe discrimination of Muslims,” the UN special rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar, Tomas Ojea Quintana, said after visiting the west of the country where Muslims are concentrated.
During his five-day mission, Mr Quintana, an Argentine former labour rights lawyer, visited Sittwe, capital of northern Rakhine state, and Buthidaung, one of the state’s main towns and site of the most serious allegations of persecution and repression of the Muslims, often known as Rohingya.
This is the first time a senior UN envoy has been allowed to visit this region although the UN and international aid organisations do have projects and people in the area.
“There have been many allegations levelled at the authorities, so it was important for me to be able to see the situation firsthand,” he said.
While he was there he also visited a prison, which was a real revelation, he said during an interview on the weekend.
“The prison was full of women, some still nursing their young children,” he said. Most had been charged with immigration offences and received sentences of up to five years. But human-rights groups believe they are victims of the government’s ban on Muslims marrying.
“Men are often jailed for illegal marriages, but many, especially women, are arrested after travelling illegally [across the border] to Bangladesh to get married,” said Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project, which monitors the situation of Rohingyas in the region.
The UN envoy raised the issue of the alledged ban on marriage with the authorities, both locally and in the Myanmar capital, Naypidaw, and received the same answer. Muslims, like everyone, have the right to marry, but they have to have the correct birth certificates and citizenship papers.
This is the crux of the matter, according to human-rights groups and aid workers who know the area and monitor the situation there.
“Myanmar’s Muslim minority are subject to systematic persecution: they are effectively denied citizenship, they have their land confiscated, and many are regularly forced to work on government projects,” said Benjamin Zawacki, Amnesty International’s Myanmar researcher based in Bangkok.
“The regime creates conditions and circumstances that make it clear to the Rohingyas that they are not wanted or welcome in the country,” he said.
More than 300,000 Rohingyas are in camps or hiding in neighbouring Bangladesh to escape the persecution across the river in Rakhine, according to the UN. More than 700,000 Rohingyas still live in Myanmar.
Mr Quintana singled out Rakhine for his visit after persistent stories of persecution that included forced labour, extortion, land confiscation, travel restrictions, banned marriages and unregistered children. On his last visit to Myanmar, in 2009, his request to visit the area was denied.
Because the authorities refuse most Rohingyas permission to marry, many live together after a traditional Muslim ceremony. The children born from these couples are denied registration and citizenship – making them non-persons.
Mr Quintana took up the issue of citizenless children in his last report to the UN in November and pressed representatives of the regime on it again during this visit, but with little result.
“The issue of unregistered children is serious as their numbers keep growing,” Ms Lewa said. “What is the future of these children? Without being registered, they won’t be able to apply for a travel permit, marriage, and so on. They are all potential refugees.”
Mr Quintana’s visit to Rakhine was a significant concession by the regime. “I received a lot of independent information from various sources before I went there, and I find them very credible.”
The envoy said he did not have time to verify all the claims in the reports, but from what he saw he believed they were relatively accurate. “And I hope by visiting there I can help highlight the plight of Myanmar’s Muslims,” he said.
Overall, the UN envoy was downbeat about his trip. “Political prisoners, of which there are more than 2,100, will not be released anytime soon,” he said. “The government continues to deny that there are any prisoners of conscience in their jails.”
Mr Quintana wanted to impress upon the authorities that the release of all political prisoners before this years planned elections was essential if the electoral process was to be convincing.
“These are well-educated and capable people who could participate in the election and help make the whole process credible, I told the authorities,” he said.
Mr Quintana did not hold out much hope of change in Myanmar in the near future.
Myanmarese officials would not discuss the elections in detail even though it was evident that preparations for the polls were already in full swing. All that the men in charge of the elections would say was that the legal framework was being prepared and the electoral law would be finished in time.
*************************************************************
The Downfall of Human Rights
By Joshua Kurlantzick | NEWSWEEK
Published Feb 19, 2010
From the magazine issue dated Mar 1, 2010
Touring Asia in November, Barack Obama hit all the usual presidential themes, including free trade, investment, and strategic alliances, except for one: human rights. During a scripted press conference in Beijing, Obama barely mentioned it. In Shanghai he offered only mild criticism of China's Internet blocks, saying he was a "big supporter of noncensorship." Obama's nonstatements amount to a clear break from nearly three decades of U.S. policy. From its engagement with the brutal Burmese junta to its decision to avoid the Dalai Lama when he first visited Washington during Obama's tenure to its silence over the initial outbreak of protests in Iran, Obama's administration has taken a much quieter approach to rights advocacy than his predecessors George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. "Conceding to China upfront doesn't buy you better cooperation further down the track," says Sophie Richardson of Human Rights Watch.
Obama's waffling was hardly unique. Across Europe, Asia, and Latin America, many democracies have abandoned global human-rights advocacy, trotting it out only for occasional speeches or events like International Human Rights Day. With the prominent exception of Canada, the developed world has fallen mum. Earlier this year European nations handed the chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, one of the major organizations tasked with promoting human rights in Eurasia, to Kazakhstan, a country accused by human-rights groups of arbitrary arrest, detention, and torture. In Japan, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has promised a new dialogue with North Korea, rather than pressuring Pyongyang to first release alleged Japanese abductees. In contrast to predecessors such as Junichiro Koizumi, Hatoyama prefers a soft approach to China as well, calling for far closer ties while all but ignoring the growing climate of repression under the government of Hu Jintao.
The Australian government, once known for stinging critiques of China, Burma, and other autocratic regimes, now collaborates with Indonesia and other neighbors to prevent refugees from Sri Lanka and elsewhere from entering the country, instead detaining the migrants in a Guantánamo-like camp on remote Christmas Island. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has refrained from criticizing China, even for the arrest of an Australian mining executive on what many observers see as a trumped-up spying charge. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy has failed to deliver on his campaign promise to champion human rights and end the country's old ties to African dictators. Instead of the "new relationship" with Africa that Sarkozy promised, his government has backed the new ruler of Gabon, Ali Bongo Ondimba, despite widespread claims of fraud in his election, and offered a state welcome to Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, the general who launched a coup in Mauritania. Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, the cofounder of Médecins Sans Frontières, a unique kind of human-rights organization, admitted in an interview, "There is a permanent contradiction between human rights and the foreign policy of a state."
In the developing world, too, young democracies that once seemed ready to stand up for human rights have beat a retreat. After apartheid ended, many activists had high hopes for South Africa's ruling African National Congress, which had benefited from a global pressure movement when it was fighting white rule. Yet the ANC has used its influence at the United Nations to protect not only the brutal regime in Zimbabwe—where South Africa has security and economic interests—but tyrants as far afield as Burma. In December, Thailand, which during the Vietnam War era sheltered tens of thousands of Indochinese refugees, forced some 3,000 Hmong back to Laos, where they could face persecution. Cambodia deported a group of Uighurs back to China, despite the fact that Uighurs previously returned to China have been executed.
The age of global human-rights advocacy has collapsed, giving way to an era of realism unseen since the time of Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon. In the West, the failure of George W. Bush's moralizing style of democracy promotion, combined with the pragmatism inspired by the global financial crisis, has made leaders far more reticent to assert a high profile on rights issues. In private, Obama officials say that they deliberately took a humbler tone because of the global rejection of Bush's claim that he was fighting in Iraq to advance the cause of democratic rights. But such a strategy, initially appreciated by countries tired of Bush, can go too far. "The administration wanted to send the message that the U.S. is listening to the world again, that they are the anti-Bush," says one former senior State Department official, who did not want to be quoted by name criticizing his old colleagues too harshly. "Rather than saying, 'OK, we have made some mistakes, but we are correcting them, and that doesn't mean we are going to ignore what's going on in Russia, or China, or Iran,' instead they've just gone silent."
And in hard times, human-rights advocacy starts to look like a luxury, particularly when some of the countries whose cooperation is critical to rebuilding the global economy, such as China and oil-rich Kazakhstan, also rank among the worst human-rights abusers. In the flush early 2000s, Tony Blair could afford to make improving governance in Africa a British government priority, but his successor, Gordon Brown, spends most of his time trying to fix Britain's debt morass. In the U.S., the Obama administration's domestic agenda makes it leery of alienating potential partners abroad. As Hillary Clinton said during her first visit to China as secretary of state, "Our pressing on those issues [human rights] can't interfere with the global economic crisis."
The changing global balance of power may now prevent human rights from ever gaining the international attention it did in the 1990s and early 2000s. At that time, leaders and techno-evangelists argued that new technologies would give human-rights campaigners an edge over repressive governments. President Clinton warned Beijing that controlling the Internet would prove as tough as "trying to nail Jell-O to a wall." Well, consider the Jell-O nailed: even though Twitter, Facebook, and other tools have helped Iranian protesters bring their stories to the world, authoritarian governments have figured out how to monitor and block the Internet and other new tools. China's "Great Firewall" is now so extensive that many Chinese Internet users have no idea how much information they are actually missing out on, and countries such as Saudi Arabia and Vietnam have brought in Chinese Internet specialists to learn how to build their own Great Firewalls. And in a tough business climate, few Western technology companies—or Western governments—seem willing to stand up to this Internet censorship. Google's public condemnation of Beijing's alleged hacking drew headlines, but another story got far less notice: no other Silicon Valley giant publicly supported Google's stance.
Many current world leaders also happen to have strongly realist instincts, low-key demeanors, and little inclination to push the cause. Brown, Hatoyama, and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh do not have the idealistic instincts and charisma of a Blair or Koizumi. While Bill Clinton's dynamism helped him make a strong case for human rights in places such as Vietnam and China—the likes of the dour Brown cannot follow that act. In the office of the U.N. secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon is no Kofi Annan. He cuts a retiring pose, meekly leaving Burma last July after the regime refused to allow Ban to meet opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The one leader who has the popularity and flair to press the case for human rights does not have the inclination. Obama's desire to be a consensus builder, even when dealing with brutal governments, also pushes him toward nonconfrontation. He seems to think he can find common ground with anyone, even Sudan's Omar al-Bashir and North Korea's Kim Jong Il. As the historian Walter Russell Mead notes in a lengthy essay in Foreign Policy magazine, the president falls into the Jeffersonian tradition of American leaders, in that he wants to "reduce America's costs and risks overseas by limiting U.S. commitments." He believes "that the United States can best spread democracy and support peace by becoming an example of democracy at home." In contrast, the heirs of Woodrow Wilson, such as John F. Kennedy, Paul Wolfowitz, and, in many ways, Bill Clinton, believed that promoting democratic values abroad helps global stability.
In most democracies, the public has also become far less interested in global human rights. In 2005 crowds around the world attended the Live 8 concerts designed to increase support for aid to Africa; though aid is not solely a human-rights issue, the concerts were a sign of the rich world's international engagement. Don't expect to see any Live 9. With unemployment skyrocketing, the residents of democracies have turned inward, fighting against immigration, rethinking free trade—and paying far less attention to what happens in Iran or Sudan or North Korea. One poll by the Pew Research Center, released in December, found that 49 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. should "mind its own business" internationally, leaving other nations to work out their problems themselves. That was the highest percentage of Americans expressing isolationist sentiment in four decades.
Today the lack of interest in human rights has been virtually institutionalized in Washington and other capitals. A decade ago, policymakers could move up the ladder within bureaucracies like the U.S. State Department, the British Foreign Office, or Germany's Foreign Ministry by focusing on human rights, but today advocating for global freedom will get you nowhere. In many Western democracies, increasingly partisan politicians apply far greater scrutiny to every detail of diplomats' records, and human-rights work requires aggressive, often controversial statements and actions—just the types of activities that could get a promotion blocked by elected legislators. When Britain's ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, criticized that regime's abuses (and Britain's tolerance of them), he was recalled to London and removed from his post. Britain's relationship with Uzbekistan was deemed critical to the war on terror, and Murray's bosses apparently thought he was freelancing too much with his opinions. As a result, government bureaus that focus on human rights often have become dumping grounds for the weakest diplomats and places "where Foreign Service officers don't want to serve," according to one former staffer in that bureau.
Other structural changes bode poorly for human-rights advocacy. While the major democracies dominated the world stage in the 1990s, today autocracies like Russia and China have found that economic success can co-opt the middle class, normally the main source of support for human rights. In China, the government has boosted salaries for opinion leaders like professors, opened up membership in the Communist Party to entrepreneurs, and taken other steps to ensure that the regime's success enriches the middle class as well. This strategy works: in polls conducted by the Pew research organization, Chinese respondents had a higher level of satisfaction with conditions in their country than almost any other people in the world. Now the autocracies are effectively exporting this model. Growing aid from China makes it easier for lesser autocracies to dismiss Western pressure on human rights. In December, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has ruled for three decades and stands accused of creating a climate of fear for political opponents, praised China for building roads and bridges with "no complicated conditions."
China and Russia have started to twist the concept of human rights in ways that gut its meaning. In a paper issued in June, Freedom House notes that Chinese President Hu Jintao's report to the 17th Party Congress in 2007 used the words "democracy" and "democratic" some 60 times, without ever explaining how China qualifies as a democracy. "Russia and China are working to muddy the waters abroad as well," wrote Freedom House. Indeed, the Kremlin backs organizations operating in Central Asia and the Caucasus that mimic Western groups like Amnesty International or America's National Endowment for Democracy, but work to promote Putin-style "managed democracy," essentially authoritarianism with a thin veneer of social freedoms. Similarly, China now runs training programs for as many as 15,000 foreign officials annually, including many legal specialists and local authorities, who learn how China has managed to open its economy without allowing real political liberalization.
It's possible that the old idealism will return, just as Jimmy Carter followed Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon. The yearning for freedom remains, and after a slow start, Obama's administration has begun making human-rights advocacy a higher priority, finally meeting with the Dalai Lama, stepping up its criticism of Zimbabwe and Iran, appointing a special envoy for human rights in North Korea, more aggressively condemning Internet censorship in China, and taking China to task for its alleged attacks on Google. But the fact is that the past year has been one of the toughest in decades for prominent dissidents. Freedom House's report "Freedom in the World," released in January, revealed a global decline in political freedoms and civil liberties for the fourth year in a row, the longest drop in the almost 40 years that the survey has been produced. The decline stems from repressive governments cracking down harder, and leading democracies apparently "losing their will" to speak out in response. A recent string of major dissident cases—including China's rounding up signers of the Charter 08 call for rule of law, and sentencing activist Liu Xiaobo to 11 years in jail, as well as crackdowns in Vietnam and Central Asia—has received what Chris Walker of Freedom House considers "astonishingly little attention and support from the democracies."
It's only going to get tougher. The global recession may give way to a long period of slow growth, particularly in the leading democracies. If China can stymie democracy today, how much more influential will it be when its economy is the world's largest? Though Obama may be focusing more on rights now, the president's power is decreasing after his first, honeymoon year in office, and has taken a hit from the recent loss of the Democrats' super-majority in the Senate. New and potential future leaders in other major democracies—Jacob Zuma, David Cameron—haven't demonstrated much interest in international human-rights advocacy. And realism and isolationism, once ingrained, can be hard to shake off. In the past, it has required cataclysmic historic events to spark idealism, like the fall of the Berlin Wall or the 9/11 attacks, to shake Western populations out of their torpor.
Kurlantzick is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
By Joshua Kurlantzick | NEWSWEEK
Published Feb 19, 2010
From the magazine issue dated Mar 1, 2010
Touring Asia in November, Barack Obama hit all the usual presidential themes, including free trade, investment, and strategic alliances, except for one: human rights. During a scripted press conference in Beijing, Obama barely mentioned it. In Shanghai he offered only mild criticism of China's Internet blocks, saying he was a "big supporter of noncensorship." Obama's nonstatements amount to a clear break from nearly three decades of U.S. policy. From its engagement with the brutal Burmese junta to its decision to avoid the Dalai Lama when he first visited Washington during Obama's tenure to its silence over the initial outbreak of protests in Iran, Obama's administration has taken a much quieter approach to rights advocacy than his predecessors George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. "Conceding to China upfront doesn't buy you better cooperation further down the track," says Sophie Richardson of Human Rights Watch.
Obama's waffling was hardly unique. Across Europe, Asia, and Latin America, many democracies have abandoned global human-rights advocacy, trotting it out only for occasional speeches or events like International Human Rights Day. With the prominent exception of Canada, the developed world has fallen mum. Earlier this year European nations handed the chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, one of the major organizations tasked with promoting human rights in Eurasia, to Kazakhstan, a country accused by human-rights groups of arbitrary arrest, detention, and torture. In Japan, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has promised a new dialogue with North Korea, rather than pressuring Pyongyang to first release alleged Japanese abductees. In contrast to predecessors such as Junichiro Koizumi, Hatoyama prefers a soft approach to China as well, calling for far closer ties while all but ignoring the growing climate of repression under the government of Hu Jintao.
The Australian government, once known for stinging critiques of China, Burma, and other autocratic regimes, now collaborates with Indonesia and other neighbors to prevent refugees from Sri Lanka and elsewhere from entering the country, instead detaining the migrants in a Guantánamo-like camp on remote Christmas Island. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has refrained from criticizing China, even for the arrest of an Australian mining executive on what many observers see as a trumped-up spying charge. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy has failed to deliver on his campaign promise to champion human rights and end the country's old ties to African dictators. Instead of the "new relationship" with Africa that Sarkozy promised, his government has backed the new ruler of Gabon, Ali Bongo Ondimba, despite widespread claims of fraud in his election, and offered a state welcome to Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, the general who launched a coup in Mauritania. Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, the cofounder of Médecins Sans Frontières, a unique kind of human-rights organization, admitted in an interview, "There is a permanent contradiction between human rights and the foreign policy of a state."
In the developing world, too, young democracies that once seemed ready to stand up for human rights have beat a retreat. After apartheid ended, many activists had high hopes for South Africa's ruling African National Congress, which had benefited from a global pressure movement when it was fighting white rule. Yet the ANC has used its influence at the United Nations to protect not only the brutal regime in Zimbabwe—where South Africa has security and economic interests—but tyrants as far afield as Burma. In December, Thailand, which during the Vietnam War era sheltered tens of thousands of Indochinese refugees, forced some 3,000 Hmong back to Laos, where they could face persecution. Cambodia deported a group of Uighurs back to China, despite the fact that Uighurs previously returned to China have been executed.
The age of global human-rights advocacy has collapsed, giving way to an era of realism unseen since the time of Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon. In the West, the failure of George W. Bush's moralizing style of democracy promotion, combined with the pragmatism inspired by the global financial crisis, has made leaders far more reticent to assert a high profile on rights issues. In private, Obama officials say that they deliberately took a humbler tone because of the global rejection of Bush's claim that he was fighting in Iraq to advance the cause of democratic rights. But such a strategy, initially appreciated by countries tired of Bush, can go too far. "The administration wanted to send the message that the U.S. is listening to the world again, that they are the anti-Bush," says one former senior State Department official, who did not want to be quoted by name criticizing his old colleagues too harshly. "Rather than saying, 'OK, we have made some mistakes, but we are correcting them, and that doesn't mean we are going to ignore what's going on in Russia, or China, or Iran,' instead they've just gone silent."
And in hard times, human-rights advocacy starts to look like a luxury, particularly when some of the countries whose cooperation is critical to rebuilding the global economy, such as China and oil-rich Kazakhstan, also rank among the worst human-rights abusers. In the flush early 2000s, Tony Blair could afford to make improving governance in Africa a British government priority, but his successor, Gordon Brown, spends most of his time trying to fix Britain's debt morass. In the U.S., the Obama administration's domestic agenda makes it leery of alienating potential partners abroad. As Hillary Clinton said during her first visit to China as secretary of state, "Our pressing on those issues [human rights] can't interfere with the global economic crisis."
The changing global balance of power may now prevent human rights from ever gaining the international attention it did in the 1990s and early 2000s. At that time, leaders and techno-evangelists argued that new technologies would give human-rights campaigners an edge over repressive governments. President Clinton warned Beijing that controlling the Internet would prove as tough as "trying to nail Jell-O to a wall." Well, consider the Jell-O nailed: even though Twitter, Facebook, and other tools have helped Iranian protesters bring their stories to the world, authoritarian governments have figured out how to monitor and block the Internet and other new tools. China's "Great Firewall" is now so extensive that many Chinese Internet users have no idea how much information they are actually missing out on, and countries such as Saudi Arabia and Vietnam have brought in Chinese Internet specialists to learn how to build their own Great Firewalls. And in a tough business climate, few Western technology companies—or Western governments—seem willing to stand up to this Internet censorship. Google's public condemnation of Beijing's alleged hacking drew headlines, but another story got far less notice: no other Silicon Valley giant publicly supported Google's stance.
Many current world leaders also happen to have strongly realist instincts, low-key demeanors, and little inclination to push the cause. Brown, Hatoyama, and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh do not have the idealistic instincts and charisma of a Blair or Koizumi. While Bill Clinton's dynamism helped him make a strong case for human rights in places such as Vietnam and China—the likes of the dour Brown cannot follow that act. In the office of the U.N. secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon is no Kofi Annan. He cuts a retiring pose, meekly leaving Burma last July after the regime refused to allow Ban to meet opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The one leader who has the popularity and flair to press the case for human rights does not have the inclination. Obama's desire to be a consensus builder, even when dealing with brutal governments, also pushes him toward nonconfrontation. He seems to think he can find common ground with anyone, even Sudan's Omar al-Bashir and North Korea's Kim Jong Il. As the historian Walter Russell Mead notes in a lengthy essay in Foreign Policy magazine, the president falls into the Jeffersonian tradition of American leaders, in that he wants to "reduce America's costs and risks overseas by limiting U.S. commitments." He believes "that the United States can best spread democracy and support peace by becoming an example of democracy at home." In contrast, the heirs of Woodrow Wilson, such as John F. Kennedy, Paul Wolfowitz, and, in many ways, Bill Clinton, believed that promoting democratic values abroad helps global stability.
In most democracies, the public has also become far less interested in global human rights. In 2005 crowds around the world attended the Live 8 concerts designed to increase support for aid to Africa; though aid is not solely a human-rights issue, the concerts were a sign of the rich world's international engagement. Don't expect to see any Live 9. With unemployment skyrocketing, the residents of democracies have turned inward, fighting against immigration, rethinking free trade—and paying far less attention to what happens in Iran or Sudan or North Korea. One poll by the Pew Research Center, released in December, found that 49 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. should "mind its own business" internationally, leaving other nations to work out their problems themselves. That was the highest percentage of Americans expressing isolationist sentiment in four decades.
Today the lack of interest in human rights has been virtually institutionalized in Washington and other capitals. A decade ago, policymakers could move up the ladder within bureaucracies like the U.S. State Department, the British Foreign Office, or Germany's Foreign Ministry by focusing on human rights, but today advocating for global freedom will get you nowhere. In many Western democracies, increasingly partisan politicians apply far greater scrutiny to every detail of diplomats' records, and human-rights work requires aggressive, often controversial statements and actions—just the types of activities that could get a promotion blocked by elected legislators. When Britain's ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, criticized that regime's abuses (and Britain's tolerance of them), he was recalled to London and removed from his post. Britain's relationship with Uzbekistan was deemed critical to the war on terror, and Murray's bosses apparently thought he was freelancing too much with his opinions. As a result, government bureaus that focus on human rights often have become dumping grounds for the weakest diplomats and places "where Foreign Service officers don't want to serve," according to one former staffer in that bureau.
Other structural changes bode poorly for human-rights advocacy. While the major democracies dominated the world stage in the 1990s, today autocracies like Russia and China have found that economic success can co-opt the middle class, normally the main source of support for human rights. In China, the government has boosted salaries for opinion leaders like professors, opened up membership in the Communist Party to entrepreneurs, and taken other steps to ensure that the regime's success enriches the middle class as well. This strategy works: in polls conducted by the Pew research organization, Chinese respondents had a higher level of satisfaction with conditions in their country than almost any other people in the world. Now the autocracies are effectively exporting this model. Growing aid from China makes it easier for lesser autocracies to dismiss Western pressure on human rights. In December, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has ruled for three decades and stands accused of creating a climate of fear for political opponents, praised China for building roads and bridges with "no complicated conditions."
China and Russia have started to twist the concept of human rights in ways that gut its meaning. In a paper issued in June, Freedom House notes that Chinese President Hu Jintao's report to the 17th Party Congress in 2007 used the words "democracy" and "democratic" some 60 times, without ever explaining how China qualifies as a democracy. "Russia and China are working to muddy the waters abroad as well," wrote Freedom House. Indeed, the Kremlin backs organizations operating in Central Asia and the Caucasus that mimic Western groups like Amnesty International or America's National Endowment for Democracy, but work to promote Putin-style "managed democracy," essentially authoritarianism with a thin veneer of social freedoms. Similarly, China now runs training programs for as many as 15,000 foreign officials annually, including many legal specialists and local authorities, who learn how China has managed to open its economy without allowing real political liberalization.
It's possible that the old idealism will return, just as Jimmy Carter followed Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon. The yearning for freedom remains, and after a slow start, Obama's administration has begun making human-rights advocacy a higher priority, finally meeting with the Dalai Lama, stepping up its criticism of Zimbabwe and Iran, appointing a special envoy for human rights in North Korea, more aggressively condemning Internet censorship in China, and taking China to task for its alleged attacks on Google. But the fact is that the past year has been one of the toughest in decades for prominent dissidents. Freedom House's report "Freedom in the World," released in January, revealed a global decline in political freedoms and civil liberties for the fourth year in a row, the longest drop in the almost 40 years that the survey has been produced. The decline stems from repressive governments cracking down harder, and leading democracies apparently "losing their will" to speak out in response. A recent string of major dissident cases—including China's rounding up signers of the Charter 08 call for rule of law, and sentencing activist Liu Xiaobo to 11 years in jail, as well as crackdowns in Vietnam and Central Asia—has received what Chris Walker of Freedom House considers "astonishingly little attention and support from the democracies."
It's only going to get tougher. The global recession may give way to a long period of slow growth, particularly in the leading democracies. If China can stymie democracy today, how much more influential will it be when its economy is the world's largest? Though Obama may be focusing more on rights now, the president's power is decreasing after his first, honeymoon year in office, and has taken a hit from the recent loss of the Democrats' super-majority in the Senate. New and potential future leaders in other major democracies—Jacob Zuma, David Cameron—haven't demonstrated much interest in international human-rights advocacy. And realism and isolationism, once ingrained, can be hard to shake off. In the past, it has required cataclysmic historic events to spark idealism, like the fall of the Berlin Wall or the 9/11 attacks, to shake Western populations out of their torpor.
Kurlantzick is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
*************************************************************
Phnom Penh Post - Myanmar painter uses canvas to open gateway into the spirit world
Tuesday, 23 February 2010 15:01 Douglas Long
Working in a trance-like state, artist Soe Naing brings nat culture to life in his vivid paintings
EVERY year in the middle of monsoon season, the town of Taungbyone in central Myanmar hosts a festival that draws thousands of spirit worshippers from across the country. The six-day event is unusually raucous for Myanmar, often characterised by hard drinking, gambling and other boisterous behaviour.
The main attraction of the festival are the spirit mediums, invariably gay men dressed as women who channel supernatural beings while dancing and spinning to the clanging rhythm of traditional Burmese percussion music. Swigging rum straight from the bottle, the possessed cross-dressers provide a flesh-and-blood vessel through which the spirits can dispense wisdom and prophecies to their eager followers.
The culture of venerating these spirits, known as nats, has its roots in animist belief, but in Myanmar it has, for many people, become an integral part of Buddhism. Statues of the most powerful Burmese nats, known as the 37 Lords, can be seen at Buddhist pagodas, as can figures representing numerous lesser regional and ethnic nats. The spirits are worshipped at home, at public shrines and at festivals known as nat pwe, of which the one at Taungbyone is the biggest.
The vivid colours and frantic dynamism of the nat subculture would seem to make it a natural choice for visual artists looking for interesting subject matter, and yet the overwhelming majority of painters in Myanmar take the more traditional, static images of Buddhism as their primary source of inspiration.
One artist who has broken from the pack in this regard is Soe Naing, a 49-year-old painter whose images of nats and vahanas (animals closely associated with Hindu deities) are on display at the French Cultural Centre (CCF) in Phnom Penh until February 28.
Soe Naing’s trajectory as an artist started in the early 1980s with formal training under painters U Lun Gywe and U Thein Han at the University of Yangon, from which the painter graduated in 1985 with a bachelor’s degree in zoology.
Uninspired by the rigid demands of formal training in traditional art forms, Soe Naing did not start painting seriously until the early 1990s, when he met contemporary artist Aung Myint and was introduced to the works of abstract expressionists like Willem De Kooning and Jackson Pollock.
Soe Naing’s work quickly took on many of the characteristics mid-20th century abstract American painting, but he wasn’t willing to completely abandon traditional art. In 1996 he caught his first glimpse of the religious murals at the ancient Burmese temple complex of Bagan and started integrating some of the mythical images into his own paintings.
Erin Gleeson, the curator of the CCF exhibition, said Soe Naing’s style was a “marriage of his experience” of abstract expressionism, his visit to Bagan and his zoology studies. “In one way it’s biographical, and in another way it’s derivative of abstract expressionism in the West.”
However, she added that since 2004 the artist has made strides towards carving out his own distinctive style. She attributes this jump in development to Soe Naing’s residency with Networking and Initiatives for Culture and the Arts (NICA) in 2003, through which “he was able to have some money and take some time to explore something new”.
Chu Chu Yuan, NICA’s director for programmes and training, agreed that from the early 2000s the artist “gradually developed his own language coming from influence of American expressionism”.
According to Soe Naing, this new language grew out of his efforts during his residency to rid his mind of any sense of expectation or any need to adhere to a specific artistic tradition.
“When I was an artist-in-residence for NICA, the obligation to paint for [the program] was pressure for me,” he said in an email interview. “All the paintings were ruined by the clouding of my mind by the greed for being able to say ‘I painted this’ and show off my paintings, and the grief of the worry about not being able to produce.”
He explained that he wasn’t able to create satisfactory images until he left the studio where he usually painted and went out to his front porch with little pieces of cardboard and red and black paint.
“I scratched this way and that, like a chicken, and that was the real painting – A Little Human and Other Creatures,” Soe Naing said, referring to the series of images featured in a book published by NICA following his residency.
Chu Chu Yuan observed in an essay written for the NICA book that Soe Naing’s resulting images “became infused with strange permutations of life forms”.
The images had an eerie quality described by Myanmar art critic Zaw Zaw Aung as “grotesque” and “ominous”. “They could be said to evoke a sense of unbalance, unpleasantness or just disappointment,” he wrote. “Some images appear pessimistic and even inauspicious, giving a sense of impending ill.”
Although Soe Naing has developed stylistically since his NICA residency, thematically the oil-on-canvas paintings now on display at CCF, which were created in 2007 and 2008, do not represent a huge departure from what the artist has been making for the past decade. Indeed, as early as 1997 artist Naing Zaw observed that Soe Naing “has been influenced by the bright colours and images of Myanmar nat festivals”.
At the same time, the images are not nearly as unappealing as Zaw Zaw Aung’s descriptions seem to indicate.
The paintings are rendered in thick dollops and sweeping swathes of paint that are placed on the canvas with a palette knife rather than a brush. Seeing the grain of the strokes, it is easy to visualise the artist’s vigorous gestures as he worked. The colours are often fresh and cheerful, standing in opposition to any sense of pessimism.
One visitor from Myanmar who viewed the exhibition last week said the colours were vivid enough to evoke more than just the visual experience of the nat pwe.
“When I see these paintings I hear the music of the nat pwe. I think [Soe Naing] expresses sounds through bright colours,” said Aye Sapay Pyu, on a month-long visit to Phnom Penh.
The nat pwe act as a gateway to the spirit world, and the figures are clearly from a place that is not our own, a realm populated by hermaphrodites, humanoid figures bearing sword-like weapons, and in one instance a horse and rider galloping across a black void.
The source of the otherworldly quality of these paintings is best explained by Soe Naing himself. Although he doesn’t claim to be channelling nats while he paints, he admits that the creative process is akin to being possessed by a spirit not beholden to the dictates of reason.
“Nats are in a state of trance;I am too, and so are my little humans. Nats are dynamic. I am in motion, too. so are my little humans,” he said.
Soe Naing added that although he has never been to the big festival at Taungbyone, his mother worshipped nats at home and he has seen a number of smaller nat pwe. “Those ceremonies encourage me,” he said.
He added that he has not yet tried to paint the most powerful spirits – the 37 Lords – because he was “not chosen yet”. With this enigmatic statement, it’s unclear whether he has not yet decided to paint them, or they have not yet decided to allow themselves to be painted.
But he insisted: “I will try to paint the 37 Lords, while I am in a trance, of course, and my human mind disappears.”
It seems that for Soe Naing, this “disappearance” of the human mind is necessary for the creative process to unfold, a means of overcoming what he refers to as the “rubbish” of the mind to “strip away pretence”.
“It is only when you are eager to paint, and are free of grief and greed, healthy, and with the mind at peace, that you are in the frame of mind to accept uncertainty,” he said.
The dangerous reputation of nats might also play a part in this freeing of the mind.
Although nats have many followers in Myanmar, there is a general unease about spirit worship: Nats are a notoriously fickle bunch who can lend help when they want to, but who are also capable of bringing great misfortune upon those who don’t show the proper respect.
It’s no wonder, then, that so many artists avoid including nat images in their work. But where others sense danger, Soe Naing sees liberation.
“Looking at Soe Naing’s paintings, the term ‘angst’ comes to my mind,” critic Zaw Zaw Aung said. “[These feelings] might be irresistible or even destructive to us. However, for artists, it is the time to create art, and a time to give something to the world.”
“Nats are supposed to be something bad,” Soe Naing acknowledged, but added: “When people are possessed by nats, they forget the worries of their lives. They can become the brothers of the Lord Nats.”
Soe Naing’s nats and vahanas paintings are on display at the French Cultural Centre’s Exhibition Hall (218 Street 184) until February 28.
Tuesday, 23 February 2010 15:01 Douglas Long
Working in a trance-like state, artist Soe Naing brings nat culture to life in his vivid paintings
EVERY year in the middle of monsoon season, the town of Taungbyone in central Myanmar hosts a festival that draws thousands of spirit worshippers from across the country. The six-day event is unusually raucous for Myanmar, often characterised by hard drinking, gambling and other boisterous behaviour.
The main attraction of the festival are the spirit mediums, invariably gay men dressed as women who channel supernatural beings while dancing and spinning to the clanging rhythm of traditional Burmese percussion music. Swigging rum straight from the bottle, the possessed cross-dressers provide a flesh-and-blood vessel through which the spirits can dispense wisdom and prophecies to their eager followers.
The culture of venerating these spirits, known as nats, has its roots in animist belief, but in Myanmar it has, for many people, become an integral part of Buddhism. Statues of the most powerful Burmese nats, known as the 37 Lords, can be seen at Buddhist pagodas, as can figures representing numerous lesser regional and ethnic nats. The spirits are worshipped at home, at public shrines and at festivals known as nat pwe, of which the one at Taungbyone is the biggest.
The vivid colours and frantic dynamism of the nat subculture would seem to make it a natural choice for visual artists looking for interesting subject matter, and yet the overwhelming majority of painters in Myanmar take the more traditional, static images of Buddhism as their primary source of inspiration.
One artist who has broken from the pack in this regard is Soe Naing, a 49-year-old painter whose images of nats and vahanas (animals closely associated with Hindu deities) are on display at the French Cultural Centre (CCF) in Phnom Penh until February 28.
Soe Naing’s trajectory as an artist started in the early 1980s with formal training under painters U Lun Gywe and U Thein Han at the University of Yangon, from which the painter graduated in 1985 with a bachelor’s degree in zoology.
Uninspired by the rigid demands of formal training in traditional art forms, Soe Naing did not start painting seriously until the early 1990s, when he met contemporary artist Aung Myint and was introduced to the works of abstract expressionists like Willem De Kooning and Jackson Pollock.
Soe Naing’s work quickly took on many of the characteristics mid-20th century abstract American painting, but he wasn’t willing to completely abandon traditional art. In 1996 he caught his first glimpse of the religious murals at the ancient Burmese temple complex of Bagan and started integrating some of the mythical images into his own paintings.
Erin Gleeson, the curator of the CCF exhibition, said Soe Naing’s style was a “marriage of his experience” of abstract expressionism, his visit to Bagan and his zoology studies. “In one way it’s biographical, and in another way it’s derivative of abstract expressionism in the West.”
However, she added that since 2004 the artist has made strides towards carving out his own distinctive style. She attributes this jump in development to Soe Naing’s residency with Networking and Initiatives for Culture and the Arts (NICA) in 2003, through which “he was able to have some money and take some time to explore something new”.
Chu Chu Yuan, NICA’s director for programmes and training, agreed that from the early 2000s the artist “gradually developed his own language coming from influence of American expressionism”.
According to Soe Naing, this new language grew out of his efforts during his residency to rid his mind of any sense of expectation or any need to adhere to a specific artistic tradition.
“When I was an artist-in-residence for NICA, the obligation to paint for [the program] was pressure for me,” he said in an email interview. “All the paintings were ruined by the clouding of my mind by the greed for being able to say ‘I painted this’ and show off my paintings, and the grief of the worry about not being able to produce.”
He explained that he wasn’t able to create satisfactory images until he left the studio where he usually painted and went out to his front porch with little pieces of cardboard and red and black paint.
“I scratched this way and that, like a chicken, and that was the real painting – A Little Human and Other Creatures,” Soe Naing said, referring to the series of images featured in a book published by NICA following his residency.
Chu Chu Yuan observed in an essay written for the NICA book that Soe Naing’s resulting images “became infused with strange permutations of life forms”.
The images had an eerie quality described by Myanmar art critic Zaw Zaw Aung as “grotesque” and “ominous”. “They could be said to evoke a sense of unbalance, unpleasantness or just disappointment,” he wrote. “Some images appear pessimistic and even inauspicious, giving a sense of impending ill.”
Although Soe Naing has developed stylistically since his NICA residency, thematically the oil-on-canvas paintings now on display at CCF, which were created in 2007 and 2008, do not represent a huge departure from what the artist has been making for the past decade. Indeed, as early as 1997 artist Naing Zaw observed that Soe Naing “has been influenced by the bright colours and images of Myanmar nat festivals”.
At the same time, the images are not nearly as unappealing as Zaw Zaw Aung’s descriptions seem to indicate.
The paintings are rendered in thick dollops and sweeping swathes of paint that are placed on the canvas with a palette knife rather than a brush. Seeing the grain of the strokes, it is easy to visualise the artist’s vigorous gestures as he worked. The colours are often fresh and cheerful, standing in opposition to any sense of pessimism.
One visitor from Myanmar who viewed the exhibition last week said the colours were vivid enough to evoke more than just the visual experience of the nat pwe.
“When I see these paintings I hear the music of the nat pwe. I think [Soe Naing] expresses sounds through bright colours,” said Aye Sapay Pyu, on a month-long visit to Phnom Penh.
The nat pwe act as a gateway to the spirit world, and the figures are clearly from a place that is not our own, a realm populated by hermaphrodites, humanoid figures bearing sword-like weapons, and in one instance a horse and rider galloping across a black void.
The source of the otherworldly quality of these paintings is best explained by Soe Naing himself. Although he doesn’t claim to be channelling nats while he paints, he admits that the creative process is akin to being possessed by a spirit not beholden to the dictates of reason.
“Nats are in a state of trance;I am too, and so are my little humans. Nats are dynamic. I am in motion, too. so are my little humans,” he said.
Soe Naing added that although he has never been to the big festival at Taungbyone, his mother worshipped nats at home and he has seen a number of smaller nat pwe. “Those ceremonies encourage me,” he said.
He added that he has not yet tried to paint the most powerful spirits – the 37 Lords – because he was “not chosen yet”. With this enigmatic statement, it’s unclear whether he has not yet decided to paint them, or they have not yet decided to allow themselves to be painted.
But he insisted: “I will try to paint the 37 Lords, while I am in a trance, of course, and my human mind disappears.”
It seems that for Soe Naing, this “disappearance” of the human mind is necessary for the creative process to unfold, a means of overcoming what he refers to as the “rubbish” of the mind to “strip away pretence”.
“It is only when you are eager to paint, and are free of grief and greed, healthy, and with the mind at peace, that you are in the frame of mind to accept uncertainty,” he said.
The dangerous reputation of nats might also play a part in this freeing of the mind.
Although nats have many followers in Myanmar, there is a general unease about spirit worship: Nats are a notoriously fickle bunch who can lend help when they want to, but who are also capable of bringing great misfortune upon those who don’t show the proper respect.
It’s no wonder, then, that so many artists avoid including nat images in their work. But where others sense danger, Soe Naing sees liberation.
“Looking at Soe Naing’s paintings, the term ‘angst’ comes to my mind,” critic Zaw Zaw Aung said. “[These feelings] might be irresistible or even destructive to us. However, for artists, it is the time to create art, and a time to give something to the world.”
“Nats are supposed to be something bad,” Soe Naing acknowledged, but added: “When people are possessed by nats, they forget the worries of their lives. They can become the brothers of the Lord Nats.”
Soe Naing’s nats and vahanas paintings are on display at the French Cultural Centre’s Exhibition Hall (218 Street 184) until February 28.
*************************************************************
The Associated Press February 22, 2010, 11:53AM ET text size: TT
BusinessWeek - Malaysia mulls allowing refugees to work
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia
Malaysia may allow refugees the right to work in an apparent bid to reduce the country's labor shortage and deflect criticism of ill-treating them, a news report said Monday.
The proposal would mark a major policy shift toward refugees who, as illegal immigrants, have been subject to detention, caning and deportation. Malaysia has so far refused to officially recognize them, fearing a flood of migrants.
Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said authorities would discuss letting employers hire refugees instead of importing foreign workers. The country depends heavily on foreign labor in such industries as construction, manufacturing and farming.
"The suggestion might work but we need to look at it from all angles," The Star quoted Hishammuddin as saying.
Officials could not immediately be reached for further details.
Earlier this month, Malaysia announced it planned to issue ID cards to refugees -- in a first move toward recognizing them and sparing them from being arrested with other illegals.
Florida Sandanasamy, an official with local refugee rights group Tenaganita, welcomed the work proposal as a first "small step."
The United Nations refugee agency says there are almost 80,000 registered refugees and asylum-seekers in Malaysia. Most of them fled persecution in Myanmar.
All of them are waiting to be resettled to a third country that officially accepts them, granting them legal status and the right to work.
BusinessWeek - Malaysia mulls allowing refugees to work
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia
Malaysia may allow refugees the right to work in an apparent bid to reduce the country's labor shortage and deflect criticism of ill-treating them, a news report said Monday.
The proposal would mark a major policy shift toward refugees who, as illegal immigrants, have been subject to detention, caning and deportation. Malaysia has so far refused to officially recognize them, fearing a flood of migrants.
Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said authorities would discuss letting employers hire refugees instead of importing foreign workers. The country depends heavily on foreign labor in such industries as construction, manufacturing and farming.
"The suggestion might work but we need to look at it from all angles," The Star quoted Hishammuddin as saying.
Officials could not immediately be reached for further details.
Earlier this month, Malaysia announced it planned to issue ID cards to refugees -- in a first move toward recognizing them and sparing them from being arrested with other illegals.
Florida Sandanasamy, an official with local refugee rights group Tenaganita, welcomed the work proposal as a first "small step."
The United Nations refugee agency says there are almost 80,000 registered refugees and asylum-seekers in Malaysia. Most of them fled persecution in Myanmar.
All of them are waiting to be resettled to a third country that officially accepts them, granting them legal status and the right to work.
*************************************************************
Japan Today - Migrant-support group to provide orientation for Myanmar refugees
Tuesday 23rd February, 03:22 AM JST
TOKYO — An independent organization supporting migrants will provide language and cultural orientation for refugees from Myanmar scheduled to arrive in Japan later this year on a resettlement program, officials of the International Organization for Migration said Monday.
The IOM made the announcement on the orientation program to be held in a Thailand refugee camp as Japan is set to accept 30 Myanmar refugees a year from the camp over the next three years as a pilot resettlement program. Earlier this month, Japanese government officials finished interviewing refugee candidates for the program in the camp on the Thailand-Myanmar border.
Pindie Stephen, a senior migrant training officer at IOM, said the organization will hold three to five days of cultural orientation and three weeks of language training. She expressed hope that this would serve as a stepping stone for the post-arrival training they will receive in Japan necessary for their independent living.
Tuesday 23rd February, 03:22 AM JST
TOKYO — An independent organization supporting migrants will provide language and cultural orientation for refugees from Myanmar scheduled to arrive in Japan later this year on a resettlement program, officials of the International Organization for Migration said Monday.
The IOM made the announcement on the orientation program to be held in a Thailand refugee camp as Japan is set to accept 30 Myanmar refugees a year from the camp over the next three years as a pilot resettlement program. Earlier this month, Japanese government officials finished interviewing refugee candidates for the program in the camp on the Thailand-Myanmar border.
Pindie Stephen, a senior migrant training officer at IOM, said the organization will hold three to five days of cultural orientation and three weeks of language training. She expressed hope that this would serve as a stepping stone for the post-arrival training they will receive in Japan necessary for their independent living.
*************************************************************
Tuesday February 23, 2010
The Star Online - Wedding party ends in brawl
BUTTERWORTH: A Myanmar couple’s wedding reception was marred following a brawl between some of their guests and passers-by.
Sources said a group of guests, who were having drinks after the reception ended, had a tiff with a few residents who were passing by the wedding house at about 6am on Sunday.
The residents later called in a few friends, who then engaged in a free-for-all.
Two Myanmar nationals who sustained serious head and body injuries were rushed to the Seberang Jaya Hospital.
It is learnt that the couple were not at the scene when the incident happened.
Central Seberang Prai OCPD Asst Comm Azman Abd Lah said nine men, including six Myanmar nationals, were picked up following the incident.
He said three men were believed to have used parang and sticks to attack each other during the incident.
“Initial investigations show that the incident started from a misunderstanding,” said ACP Azman.
The Star Online - Wedding party ends in brawl
BUTTERWORTH: A Myanmar couple’s wedding reception was marred following a brawl between some of their guests and passers-by.
Sources said a group of guests, who were having drinks after the reception ended, had a tiff with a few residents who were passing by the wedding house at about 6am on Sunday.
The residents later called in a few friends, who then engaged in a free-for-all.
Two Myanmar nationals who sustained serious head and body injuries were rushed to the Seberang Jaya Hospital.
It is learnt that the couple were not at the scene when the incident happened.
Central Seberang Prai OCPD Asst Comm Azman Abd Lah said nine men, including six Myanmar nationals, were picked up following the incident.
He said three men were believed to have used parang and sticks to attack each other during the incident.
“Initial investigations show that the incident started from a misunderstanding,” said ACP Azman.
*************************************************************
ASIA NEWS NETWORK
Thailand may deport 1.3m migrants
News Desk
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Publication Date: 22-02-2010
A large number of migrant workers from Burma, Cambodia and Laos face the threat of deportation from Thailand if the government goes ahead with its nationality verification process, an independent United Nations human rights expert warned last week.
In January, the Thai Cabinet passed a resolution allowing for a two-year extension of work permits for approximately 1.3 million migrants provided that they were willing to submit biographical information to their home governments prior to February 28.
However, migrants who fail to do so by this deadline risk deportation after the 28 February deadline.
Jorge Bustamante, the UN expert on the human rights of migrants, noted in a news release that carrying out the verification process in its current form places many documented and undocumented migrant workers at risk after February 28.
“I am disappointed that that the government of Thailand has not responded to my letters expressing calls for restraint,” said the expert, who reports to the Geneva-based Human Rights Council.
“I reiterate my earlier messages to the government to reconsider its actions and decisions, and to abide by international instruments,” he added. “If pursued, the threats of mass expulsion will result in unprecedented human suffering and will definitely breach fundamental human rights obligations.”
Bustamante called on Thailand to respect the principle of “non-refoulement”, noting that among the groups who may potentially be deported are some who may be in need international protection and should not be returned to the country of origin.
Like all UN human rights experts, Bustamante works in an independent and unpaid capacity.
Thailand may deport 1.3m migrants
News Desk
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Publication Date: 22-02-2010
A large number of migrant workers from Burma, Cambodia and Laos face the threat of deportation from Thailand if the government goes ahead with its nationality verification process, an independent United Nations human rights expert warned last week.
In January, the Thai Cabinet passed a resolution allowing for a two-year extension of work permits for approximately 1.3 million migrants provided that they were willing to submit biographical information to their home governments prior to February 28.
However, migrants who fail to do so by this deadline risk deportation after the 28 February deadline.
Jorge Bustamante, the UN expert on the human rights of migrants, noted in a news release that carrying out the verification process in its current form places many documented and undocumented migrant workers at risk after February 28.
“I am disappointed that that the government of Thailand has not responded to my letters expressing calls for restraint,” said the expert, who reports to the Geneva-based Human Rights Council.
“I reiterate my earlier messages to the government to reconsider its actions and decisions, and to abide by international instruments,” he added. “If pursued, the threats of mass expulsion will result in unprecedented human suffering and will definitely breach fundamental human rights obligations.”
Bustamante called on Thailand to respect the principle of “non-refoulement”, noting that among the groups who may potentially be deported are some who may be in need international protection and should not be returned to the country of origin.
Like all UN human rights experts, Bustamante works in an independent and unpaid capacity.
*************************************************************
The Nation - Karen refugees deported to safety, insists Kasit
Published on February 24, 2010
Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya yesterday defended the government's decision to deport Karen refugees to Burma before the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), which had received some complaints about the matter.
Many refugees do not wish to return to Burma, because they believe their lives will be endangered. The junta government is constantly clashing with ethnic groups and is believed to have set booby traps along the border.
The refugees are also worried they will not have enough food and money to sustain themselves because they have not worked on their farms in Burma for a long time.
Kasit said more than half of the 3,000 Karen refugees had already been deported, and were "now safe", dismissing all concerns about their welfare.
The foreign minister also urged foreign non-governmental organisations to find funds to help the refugees if they were really worried about their conditions.
Published on February 24, 2010
Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya yesterday defended the government's decision to deport Karen refugees to Burma before the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), which had received some complaints about the matter.
Many refugees do not wish to return to Burma, because they believe their lives will be endangered. The junta government is constantly clashing with ethnic groups and is believed to have set booby traps along the border.
The refugees are also worried they will not have enough food and money to sustain themselves because they have not worked on their farms in Burma for a long time.
Kasit said more than half of the 3,000 Karen refugees had already been deported, and were "now safe", dismissing all concerns about their welfare.
The foreign minister also urged foreign non-governmental organisations to find funds to help the refugees if they were really worried about their conditions.
*************************************************************
The Irrawaddy - Suu Kyi's Election Year Role Still in Doubt
By AUNG NAING OO - Tuesday, February 23, 2010
When the Burmese military government said it would hold a general election in 2010, many Burmese strongly suspected that the junta would find an excuse to keep pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in detention—perhaps until after polling had taken place.
Their worst fears were confirmed when John Yettaw, an American citizen, swam across Inya Lake to the democracy icon’s home, handing Burma’s ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) the perfect opportunity. A weird criminal trial of Suu Kyi ensued—obviously politically motivated— and the Burmese heaped blame on Yettaw for the events that unfolded later.
In the end, the Burmese government succeeded in placing Suu Kyi back under house arrest with an 18-month suspended prison sentence. Mission accomplished!
Despite the disappointment, the events did not come as a surprise for the Burmese. For the past two decades, Suu Kyi has been a constant thorn in the junta’s side.
The generals have grappled with a major dilemma about how to handle the charismatic and highly principled daughter of the country’s revered independence hero. They wanted to reorder Burma’s political structure in a way that assures military power while providing a semblance of civilian rule. But Suu Kyi stood in their way.
The 2010 general election is the final episode in the SPDC’s political transformation plan, and the generals will in no way allow anyone or anything to disrupt it. There are many seemingly insurmountable obstacles on the road to an election this year, but the continued incarceration of Suu Kyi essentially removes one of them.
The Yettaw court case ended in August 2009. Whether calculated mathematically or judged by political considerations, it is not hard to conclude that if Suu Kyi is required to serve out her full sentence of 18 months she will not be free until January or February 2011—perhaps a few months after the 2010 election. It was a plan superbly hatched and perfectly executed.
Towards the end of January, however, the news agency Reuters carried an unconfirmed report quoting Minister of Home Affairs Maj-Gen Maung Oo telling a meeting in central Burma that Suu Kyi would be freed by this November.
Judging by the release of the National League for Democracy's Vice-Chairman, Tin Oo, on completion of his house arrest sentence, it is probable that Suu Kyi will be released as Maung Oo promised. But this coincides with another rumor predicting that the election will take place on the astrologically correct date October 10, 2010 or 10-10-10.
These rumors are significant. They can be considered a hint of what the SPDC has in mind for Suu Kyi.
The SPDC will need to free her as soon as possible because her release is the key to ending international sanctions and the country’s isolation. The next government will need to work efficiently to tackle the huge problems facing the country and it cannot afford to be bogged down by undue international pressure.
I still hope that the unfolding events later this year may prove wrong for those like me, who are skeptical on the prospects for her pre-election freedom. I doubt it, however. I cannot believe the generals will release her before the election, and it is unlikely that any amount of protests and pressure either from within or outside the country would be able to change that.
Not only is her release before the election improbable, but so also is her potential candidacy in the election.
In the 1990 election, Suu Kyi was unable to register her candidacy, which was rejected on the grounds that she was married to a foreigner. She was also under house arrest at the time.
The 1990 election was held in the absence of a constitution. This time around, Suu Kyi is not even constitutionally eligible. The 2008 constitution has several provisions that critics say were particularly designed to serve as obstacles to her potential candidacy in any poll.
At first glance, the charter appears to make the political system —and the potential to hold office—open to anyone.
The constitution's Article 369, Chapter 8, stipulates “Subject to this Constitution and relevant laws, every citizen has the right to elect and right to be elected to the Pyithu Hluttaw, the Amyotha Hluttaw, and the Region or State Hluttaw.”
Yet this ominous and conflicting condition—“Subject to this Constitution and relevant laws”—actually encompasses a wide range of provisions that would criminalize the democracy icon, and also prevent many dissidents from contesting the elections.
Specifically, Article 121 of the constitution, under the section “Disqualification for the Pyithu Hluttaw Representatives,” has five sub-sections, of which sub-sections a, b and e would apply to many dissidents, including Suu Kyi.
Sub-section (a) disqualifies “a person serving prison term, having been convicted by the Court concerned for having committed the offence.” As predicted earlier, Suu Kyi will still be under detention at the time of an election, rendering her ineligible to stand, even if she tries to register her candidacy.
Sub-section (b) deals with members of parliament who were disqualified from the (previous) Hluttaw and sub-section (e) is about elected candidates who owe allegiance to a foreign government, are subject to or a citizen of a foreign government.
Unlike in 1990, Suu Kyi is no longer married to a foreigner so her candidacy cannot be rejected on this basis. But these three sweeping categorizations disqualify her and all political prisoners, most notably the leaders of the 88 Student Generation group such as Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi as well as candidates elected in 1990 but who who have been disqualified for one reason or another over the past 20 years.
In the final analysis, however, politics is the art of possible. And in Burma, everything finally depends on Snr-Gen Than Shwe. If he can cut a deal with Suu Kyi regarding her role under the new polity or if he no longer sees her as a threat, she could be released.
Last November, Min Lwin, a high-ranking official in Burma’s Foreign Ministry, told the news agency AP in Manila: "There is a plan to release her soon ... so she can organize her party.”
Even if this daring pronouncement comes true, Suu Kyi's candidacy in the 2010 election would be very doubtful—but I hope I am wrong.
By AUNG NAING OO - Tuesday, February 23, 2010
When the Burmese military government said it would hold a general election in 2010, many Burmese strongly suspected that the junta would find an excuse to keep pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in detention—perhaps until after polling had taken place.
Their worst fears were confirmed when John Yettaw, an American citizen, swam across Inya Lake to the democracy icon’s home, handing Burma’s ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) the perfect opportunity. A weird criminal trial of Suu Kyi ensued—obviously politically motivated— and the Burmese heaped blame on Yettaw for the events that unfolded later.
In the end, the Burmese government succeeded in placing Suu Kyi back under house arrest with an 18-month suspended prison sentence. Mission accomplished!
Despite the disappointment, the events did not come as a surprise for the Burmese. For the past two decades, Suu Kyi has been a constant thorn in the junta’s side.
The generals have grappled with a major dilemma about how to handle the charismatic and highly principled daughter of the country’s revered independence hero. They wanted to reorder Burma’s political structure in a way that assures military power while providing a semblance of civilian rule. But Suu Kyi stood in their way.
The 2010 general election is the final episode in the SPDC’s political transformation plan, and the generals will in no way allow anyone or anything to disrupt it. There are many seemingly insurmountable obstacles on the road to an election this year, but the continued incarceration of Suu Kyi essentially removes one of them.
The Yettaw court case ended in August 2009. Whether calculated mathematically or judged by political considerations, it is not hard to conclude that if Suu Kyi is required to serve out her full sentence of 18 months she will not be free until January or February 2011—perhaps a few months after the 2010 election. It was a plan superbly hatched and perfectly executed.
Towards the end of January, however, the news agency Reuters carried an unconfirmed report quoting Minister of Home Affairs Maj-Gen Maung Oo telling a meeting in central Burma that Suu Kyi would be freed by this November.
Judging by the release of the National League for Democracy's Vice-Chairman, Tin Oo, on completion of his house arrest sentence, it is probable that Suu Kyi will be released as Maung Oo promised. But this coincides with another rumor predicting that the election will take place on the astrologically correct date October 10, 2010 or 10-10-10.
These rumors are significant. They can be considered a hint of what the SPDC has in mind for Suu Kyi.
The SPDC will need to free her as soon as possible because her release is the key to ending international sanctions and the country’s isolation. The next government will need to work efficiently to tackle the huge problems facing the country and it cannot afford to be bogged down by undue international pressure.
I still hope that the unfolding events later this year may prove wrong for those like me, who are skeptical on the prospects for her pre-election freedom. I doubt it, however. I cannot believe the generals will release her before the election, and it is unlikely that any amount of protests and pressure either from within or outside the country would be able to change that.
Not only is her release before the election improbable, but so also is her potential candidacy in the election.
In the 1990 election, Suu Kyi was unable to register her candidacy, which was rejected on the grounds that she was married to a foreigner. She was also under house arrest at the time.
The 1990 election was held in the absence of a constitution. This time around, Suu Kyi is not even constitutionally eligible. The 2008 constitution has several provisions that critics say were particularly designed to serve as obstacles to her potential candidacy in any poll.
At first glance, the charter appears to make the political system —and the potential to hold office—open to anyone.
The constitution's Article 369, Chapter 8, stipulates “Subject to this Constitution and relevant laws, every citizen has the right to elect and right to be elected to the Pyithu Hluttaw, the Amyotha Hluttaw, and the Region or State Hluttaw.”
Yet this ominous and conflicting condition—“Subject to this Constitution and relevant laws”—actually encompasses a wide range of provisions that would criminalize the democracy icon, and also prevent many dissidents from contesting the elections.
Specifically, Article 121 of the constitution, under the section “Disqualification for the Pyithu Hluttaw Representatives,” has five sub-sections, of which sub-sections a, b and e would apply to many dissidents, including Suu Kyi.
Sub-section (a) disqualifies “a person serving prison term, having been convicted by the Court concerned for having committed the offence.” As predicted earlier, Suu Kyi will still be under detention at the time of an election, rendering her ineligible to stand, even if she tries to register her candidacy.
Sub-section (b) deals with members of parliament who were disqualified from the (previous) Hluttaw and sub-section (e) is about elected candidates who owe allegiance to a foreign government, are subject to or a citizen of a foreign government.
Unlike in 1990, Suu Kyi is no longer married to a foreigner so her candidacy cannot be rejected on this basis. But these three sweeping categorizations disqualify her and all political prisoners, most notably the leaders of the 88 Student Generation group such as Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi as well as candidates elected in 1990 but who who have been disqualified for one reason or another over the past 20 years.
In the final analysis, however, politics is the art of possible. And in Burma, everything finally depends on Snr-Gen Than Shwe. If he can cut a deal with Suu Kyi regarding her role under the new polity or if he no longer sees her as a threat, she could be released.
Last November, Min Lwin, a high-ranking official in Burma’s Foreign Ministry, told the news agency AP in Manila: "There is a plan to release her soon ... so she can organize her party.”
Even if this daring pronouncement comes true, Suu Kyi's candidacy in the 2010 election would be very doubtful—but I hope I am wrong.
*************************************************************
The Irrawaddy - Will the Regime Launch Another Monk 'Purification' Campaign?
By WAI MOE - Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Dissident Burmese monks could face more repression from the regime that could resemble the 1980 crackdown under the late dictator Ne Win’s campaign under the motto “Purification of Sasana [religion].”
Ashin Kumara, the chairman of the State Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee, said during his concluding address to the State Working Committee for Sangha on Saturday that in 1980 the government examined monks to determine who were “fake and who were real Buddhist.” The effort was undertaken through the state monastic discipline committee, he said.
“Ah-Dhamma (unrighteousness) ideologies were banned by force and the campaign was successful,” in sidelining activists monks, Ashin Kumara said, according to the state-run-newspaper “Myanma Ahlin” on Sunday.
The 1980 campaign had similarities to the pressure that has been applied on the Sangha since the 2007 Saffron Revolution, which saw monks in the forefront of anti-regime demonstrations.
Ashin Kumara's remarks were interpreted by observers as a warning to activist monks in the run-up to the national elections this year. He vowed to crackdown on elements of ideology, similar to 1980, that he says are destroying Thravada Buddhism.
The official repression of activists monks in 1980 cast a negative light over the Sangha and thousands of monks were disrobed or arrested during the crackdown that followed.
Well-known monks who were involved in social issues at the time included the abbots of Htoo Gyi Monastery and Thein Phyu Monastery, who were forced to disrobe or arrested by then Minister of Home and Religious Affairs Sein Lwin.
Under the Ne Win campaign, all “alternative” Buddhist ideologies and writing as well as many smaller Sangha sects were banned. Nine Buddhist sects were approved by the state at the time, and the law is still in effect.
As part of the purification campaign, many influential monks such as Ashin Ukkahta were forced to sign statements that their books and pamphlets were in error and their publications were banned. Many monks who practiced Buddhist ideologies other than the state-approved Theravada ideology were banned from wearing saffron colored robes and now wear different colored robes, such as sky blue.
“At the time, the situation was terrifying for monks. Everyone wondered when their turn would come,” said Ashin Javana, a former abbot of Shwepyithar Monastery in Rangoon, recalling the 1980 crackdown.
“Many abbots were accused of having relations with woman and disrobed,” he said. “The government used women as a trap to promote character assassination on monks. If women came to a monastery, monks had to consider if they were government agents.”
The 1980 purification campaign drew a mixed response from the public. Some argued that the campaign was good because Buddhism in Burma needed purification because many monks lived in violation of the Vinaya or monastic discipline rules.
However, most observers agreed that the campaign was used by Ne Win to silence the monks' opposition to his policies following the military coup in 1962.
Burma expert Gustaaf Houtman wrote that Ne Win’s regime was tested by monks throughout the 60s-70s. The first occurred in April 1963 when monks successfully protested against the state taking custodianship of Mahamyatmuni, a famous pagoda in Mandalay.
Over a 20-year period, hundreds of monks, nuns and novices were arrested and disrobed. In one outlandish case, the regime discredited Ashin Laba, a monk who was a critic of the regime, by accusing him of murder and cannibalism.
The abbot of Su Htoo Pan Monastery in Rangoon, Ashin Nayaka, died during interrogation in the late 1970s. Since Nayaka’s death, the family of Sein Lwin, who was in charge of the 1980 crackdown, has become a main taga [sponsor] of the monastery.
Since 1980, Burmese monks have been targeted frequently under Burma’s penal code section 295 for malicious acts insulting religion or religious beliefs. Section 295 was created by the British during colonial rule in 1860 to deter religious riots, said Nyi Nyi Hlaing, a Burmese lawyer living in exile who represented monks in trials during 2007-2008.
“However, since 1980 section 295 has been used by the regime to imprison monks who disagree with them,” he said.
In 2006, 37 novice monks were imprisoned under section 295 after a dispute with local authorities in Thingangun Township in Rangoon. One of the monks, Ashin Sobhita, was sentenced to two years with hard labor and then forced to be a porter in a military offensive in Karen State.
In an interview in Mae Sot, he told The Irrawaddy, “It was very terrible. The soldiers did not treat me as a monk, but as their slave.”
Since the monk uprising in 2007, the military junta has jailed 253 monks as political prisoners, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners-Burma.
Nyi Nyi Hlaing said that all 253 monks were charged under section 295, among other charges.
By WAI MOE - Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Dissident Burmese monks could face more repression from the regime that could resemble the 1980 crackdown under the late dictator Ne Win’s campaign under the motto “Purification of Sasana [religion].”
Ashin Kumara, the chairman of the State Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee, said during his concluding address to the State Working Committee for Sangha on Saturday that in 1980 the government examined monks to determine who were “fake and who were real Buddhist.” The effort was undertaken through the state monastic discipline committee, he said.
“Ah-Dhamma (unrighteousness) ideologies were banned by force and the campaign was successful,” in sidelining activists monks, Ashin Kumara said, according to the state-run-newspaper “Myanma Ahlin” on Sunday.
The 1980 campaign had similarities to the pressure that has been applied on the Sangha since the 2007 Saffron Revolution, which saw monks in the forefront of anti-regime demonstrations.
Ashin Kumara's remarks were interpreted by observers as a warning to activist monks in the run-up to the national elections this year. He vowed to crackdown on elements of ideology, similar to 1980, that he says are destroying Thravada Buddhism.
The official repression of activists monks in 1980 cast a negative light over the Sangha and thousands of monks were disrobed or arrested during the crackdown that followed.
Well-known monks who were involved in social issues at the time included the abbots of Htoo Gyi Monastery and Thein Phyu Monastery, who were forced to disrobe or arrested by then Minister of Home and Religious Affairs Sein Lwin.
Under the Ne Win campaign, all “alternative” Buddhist ideologies and writing as well as many smaller Sangha sects were banned. Nine Buddhist sects were approved by the state at the time, and the law is still in effect.
As part of the purification campaign, many influential monks such as Ashin Ukkahta were forced to sign statements that their books and pamphlets were in error and their publications were banned. Many monks who practiced Buddhist ideologies other than the state-approved Theravada ideology were banned from wearing saffron colored robes and now wear different colored robes, such as sky blue.
“At the time, the situation was terrifying for monks. Everyone wondered when their turn would come,” said Ashin Javana, a former abbot of Shwepyithar Monastery in Rangoon, recalling the 1980 crackdown.
“Many abbots were accused of having relations with woman and disrobed,” he said. “The government used women as a trap to promote character assassination on monks. If women came to a monastery, monks had to consider if they were government agents.”
The 1980 purification campaign drew a mixed response from the public. Some argued that the campaign was good because Buddhism in Burma needed purification because many monks lived in violation of the Vinaya or monastic discipline rules.
However, most observers agreed that the campaign was used by Ne Win to silence the monks' opposition to his policies following the military coup in 1962.
Burma expert Gustaaf Houtman wrote that Ne Win’s regime was tested by monks throughout the 60s-70s. The first occurred in April 1963 when monks successfully protested against the state taking custodianship of Mahamyatmuni, a famous pagoda in Mandalay.
Over a 20-year period, hundreds of monks, nuns and novices were arrested and disrobed. In one outlandish case, the regime discredited Ashin Laba, a monk who was a critic of the regime, by accusing him of murder and cannibalism.
The abbot of Su Htoo Pan Monastery in Rangoon, Ashin Nayaka, died during interrogation in the late 1970s. Since Nayaka’s death, the family of Sein Lwin, who was in charge of the 1980 crackdown, has become a main taga [sponsor] of the monastery.
Since 1980, Burmese monks have been targeted frequently under Burma’s penal code section 295 for malicious acts insulting religion or religious beliefs. Section 295 was created by the British during colonial rule in 1860 to deter religious riots, said Nyi Nyi Hlaing, a Burmese lawyer living in exile who represented monks in trials during 2007-2008.
“However, since 1980 section 295 has been used by the regime to imprison monks who disagree with them,” he said.
In 2006, 37 novice monks were imprisoned under section 295 after a dispute with local authorities in Thingangun Township in Rangoon. One of the monks, Ashin Sobhita, was sentenced to two years with hard labor and then forced to be a porter in a military offensive in Karen State.
In an interview in Mae Sot, he told The Irrawaddy, “It was very terrible. The soldiers did not treat me as a monk, but as their slave.”
Since the monk uprising in 2007, the military junta has jailed 253 monks as political prisoners, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners-Burma.
Nyi Nyi Hlaing said that all 253 monks were charged under section 295, among other charges.
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Headless body found near Rangoon suburb Park
Tuesday, 23 February 2010 18:20 Kyaw Kha
Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – A man's body with no head was found near Hlawga Park, east of San Pya village, Htauk Kyant, Mingaladon Township, Rangoon Division, police said.
The headless body was found the morning of February 12 which was the national holiday of Union Day. The body was found beside the Rangoon-Hmawbi highway near the entrance gate of Hlawga Park.
The Htauk Kyant Police Station said that the identity of victim is not yet known but he is not believed be to from the area. According to police the investigation of the case is still underway.
"We have not yet received more information on this case. It is the body of male and we found only one dead body. We have not yet learned his identity and other facts", a police officer from this police station said to Mizzima.
This Rangoon-Hmawbi highway is usually deserted at the night time except some trucks and usually there are no small passenger cars driving on this road. Local people believe that the victim is not from the area and he might have been dropped off by someone coming from Rangoon.
According to the police office the area surrounding Hlawga Park is often deserted and is known to be a crime ridden area. Some murder cases have taken place in the area in the past he said.
In 2003-2004 several taxi drivers were murdered and robbed at night by passengers who hired the cabs to take them to Htauk Kyat, Hmawbi, Hlegu, Pegu and other suburban areas. After these incidents, many taxi drivers stopped taking their passengers to these suburbs at night.
Tuesday, 23 February 2010 18:20 Kyaw Kha
Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – A man's body with no head was found near Hlawga Park, east of San Pya village, Htauk Kyant, Mingaladon Township, Rangoon Division, police said.
The headless body was found the morning of February 12 which was the national holiday of Union Day. The body was found beside the Rangoon-Hmawbi highway near the entrance gate of Hlawga Park.
The Htauk Kyant Police Station said that the identity of victim is not yet known but he is not believed be to from the area. According to police the investigation of the case is still underway.
"We have not yet received more information on this case. It is the body of male and we found only one dead body. We have not yet learned his identity and other facts", a police officer from this police station said to Mizzima.
This Rangoon-Hmawbi highway is usually deserted at the night time except some trucks and usually there are no small passenger cars driving on this road. Local people believe that the victim is not from the area and he might have been dropped off by someone coming from Rangoon.
According to the police office the area surrounding Hlawga Park is often deserted and is known to be a crime ridden area. Some murder cases have taken place in the area in the past he said.
In 2003-2004 several taxi drivers were murdered and robbed at night by passengers who hired the cabs to take them to Htauk Kyat, Hmawbi, Hlegu, Pegu and other suburban areas. After these incidents, many taxi drivers stopped taking their passengers to these suburbs at night.
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Two policemen injured in clash with drug cartel sent to Rangoon
Tuesday, 23 February 2010 12:21 Sai Zuan Sai
Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – Two policemen, injured in an ambush by drug traffickers on February 20, which claimed the lives of 14 police personnel, were sent to Rangoon General Hospital from Tachileik hospital by air yesterday.
The drug cartel’s army led by king pin Naw Kham opened fire on policemen on routine patrol in the Golden Triangle area bordering Burma, Laos and Thailand on Saturday, leaving 14 dead or missing and two injured. The policemen were from Wan Pong Township police force in Tachileik District, Shan State.
Police Sub-Inspector Sein Hlaing received gunshot injuries with bullets still embedded in his body. Police constable Kee Muu, who received gunshot wounds in his legs and arms, was sent to Rangoon by Myanmar Airways.
Quoting Sub-Inspector Sein Hlaing, a person close to Tachileik police station said that a 16-member police unit led by Police Inspector Khin Maung Yin was on routine patrol duty in three boats. Two boats came ashore when they saw two women and two men fleeing to the island when they reached Pu Kying Island in Laos' territory.
When the two police boats came ashore, the drug traffickers opened fire on them. They used 40 mm grenade launchers and then opened small arms fire.
The boatman in the last boat with four policemen fell into the water when they were ambushed with grenade launchers. The rest of the policemen opened counter fire and tried to flee in which the boat hit a rock and turned turtle. After the encounter, Laos soldiers saved sub-inspector Sein Hlaing and police constable Kee Muu from the water, it is learnt.
The clash occurred on Pu Kying Island, which is some distance from Wan Pong on the Mekong River. It is in Laos territory east of Pa Sar and Sam Puu villages.
The body of police inspector Khin Maung Yin was found on a jetty in Thailand at about 9:50 a.m. on 22 February and sent to Tachileik hospital mortuary, according to the police source.
"The police will cremate six bodies today. Three bodies are still missing and five bodies are in Wang Pong. The total is 16 besides two people's militias and three boatmen," Tachileik police sources said.
The missing are police sub-inspector Thant Zin, anti-drug force police corporal Zin Min Maung and a local boatman, it is learnt.
Police Chief Khin Yee arrived in Tachileik yesterday.
Quoting survivors, the police source said that the injured were brutally tortured and killed with knives by the drug cartel’s army.
The Naw Kham drug trafficking group is believed to have 80 personnel. It collects levy and protection money from drug traffickers in the notorious Golden Triangle along with trafficking of heroin and Methamphetamine drugs.
Naw Kham first joined the Lwe Maw militia force led by drug warlord Khun Sa and then joined the Shan United Army (SUA) and Mong Tai Army later. Then he shifted to Tachileik when Khun Sa surrendered to the junta in 1996. Local people accuse him of having a nexus with some local authorities.
Tuesday, 23 February 2010 12:21 Sai Zuan Sai
Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – Two policemen, injured in an ambush by drug traffickers on February 20, which claimed the lives of 14 police personnel, were sent to Rangoon General Hospital from Tachileik hospital by air yesterday.
The drug cartel’s army led by king pin Naw Kham opened fire on policemen on routine patrol in the Golden Triangle area bordering Burma, Laos and Thailand on Saturday, leaving 14 dead or missing and two injured. The policemen were from Wan Pong Township police force in Tachileik District, Shan State.
Police Sub-Inspector Sein Hlaing received gunshot injuries with bullets still embedded in his body. Police constable Kee Muu, who received gunshot wounds in his legs and arms, was sent to Rangoon by Myanmar Airways.
Quoting Sub-Inspector Sein Hlaing, a person close to Tachileik police station said that a 16-member police unit led by Police Inspector Khin Maung Yin was on routine patrol duty in three boats. Two boats came ashore when they saw two women and two men fleeing to the island when they reached Pu Kying Island in Laos' territory.
When the two police boats came ashore, the drug traffickers opened fire on them. They used 40 mm grenade launchers and then opened small arms fire.
The boatman in the last boat with four policemen fell into the water when they were ambushed with grenade launchers. The rest of the policemen opened counter fire and tried to flee in which the boat hit a rock and turned turtle. After the encounter, Laos soldiers saved sub-inspector Sein Hlaing and police constable Kee Muu from the water, it is learnt.
The clash occurred on Pu Kying Island, which is some distance from Wan Pong on the Mekong River. It is in Laos territory east of Pa Sar and Sam Puu villages.
The body of police inspector Khin Maung Yin was found on a jetty in Thailand at about 9:50 a.m. on 22 February and sent to Tachileik hospital mortuary, according to the police source.
"The police will cremate six bodies today. Three bodies are still missing and five bodies are in Wang Pong. The total is 16 besides two people's militias and three boatmen," Tachileik police sources said.
The missing are police sub-inspector Thant Zin, anti-drug force police corporal Zin Min Maung and a local boatman, it is learnt.
Police Chief Khin Yee arrived in Tachileik yesterday.
Quoting survivors, the police source said that the injured were brutally tortured and killed with knives by the drug cartel’s army.
The Naw Kham drug trafficking group is believed to have 80 personnel. It collects levy and protection money from drug traffickers in the notorious Golden Triangle along with trafficking of heroin and Methamphetamine drugs.
Naw Kham first joined the Lwe Maw militia force led by drug warlord Khun Sa and then joined the Shan United Army (SUA) and Mong Tai Army later. Then he shifted to Tachileik when Khun Sa surrendered to the junta in 1996. Local people accuse him of having a nexus with some local authorities.
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Thai authorities clear landmines after soldiers injured
Tuesday, 23 February 2010 15:01 Usa Pichai
Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – Last week after three Thai soldiers were injured by landmines near the Thai Burma border, Tak Province authorities launched an extensive search of the area and are presently removing lethal mines along the banks of the Moei River which divides Burma from Thailand. The soldiers were injured while on anti smuggling patrol in an area known for smuggling near Thasailuad village in Maesot district.
Following the explosion Master Sergeant Wutthikorn Khamchum had his right foot amputated, while Sergeant Thawit Leumin and Sergeant Thanapat Amthim suffered minor injuries.
Samart Loifa, Tak Province Governor said on Monday that he urged villagers in the area to watch for explosive devices and inform authorities if they see anything suspicious.
“The incident occurred in an area where cars and motorcycles are smuggled regularly from Thailand to Burma. Officials believe that the suspects are smugglers angry by Thai authorities’ new measures that could limit crime in the area,” Samart said, according to a report posted on the Thai news website Komchadluek. Earlier this month in another incident along the border a soldier stepped on a mine and was also injured.
On Friday, Maj Gen Sonthisal Wittaya-aneknan, the commander of Naresuan Task Force of the Royal Thai Army visited the three injured soldiers and surveyed the area where the incident occurred.
Thai officials last month warned villagers living near the border to keep an eye on their vehicles after a number of motorcycles and cars were stolen in Thailand and thought to be taken to Burma,
In a monthly press conference in January, the Tak Province Governor said that Myawaddy authorities on the Burmese side of the river Moei are registering motorcycles and cars without verifying the original source of the vehicles from.
The Governor said this policy affected local villagers along the Thai– Burma border in the province. There were several instances of vehicles being stolen, even after officials attempted to restrict border crossing through 30 border check points along Meoi River, frequently used to transport goods and people between the two countries.
The zone is opposite Burmese territory controlled by the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) and it is difficult for the Thai authorities to follow suspects, who often flee to Burma to avoid arrest. The DKBA is a junta backed cease group that split from the Karen National Union in the mid 1990’s, it is considered by many experts to be a key player in Burma’s booming amphetamine export business, smuggling and extortion.
Tuesday, 23 February 2010 15:01 Usa Pichai
Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – Last week after three Thai soldiers were injured by landmines near the Thai Burma border, Tak Province authorities launched an extensive search of the area and are presently removing lethal mines along the banks of the Moei River which divides Burma from Thailand. The soldiers were injured while on anti smuggling patrol in an area known for smuggling near Thasailuad village in Maesot district.
Following the explosion Master Sergeant Wutthikorn Khamchum had his right foot amputated, while Sergeant Thawit Leumin and Sergeant Thanapat Amthim suffered minor injuries.
Samart Loifa, Tak Province Governor said on Monday that he urged villagers in the area to watch for explosive devices and inform authorities if they see anything suspicious.
“The incident occurred in an area where cars and motorcycles are smuggled regularly from Thailand to Burma. Officials believe that the suspects are smugglers angry by Thai authorities’ new measures that could limit crime in the area,” Samart said, according to a report posted on the Thai news website Komchadluek. Earlier this month in another incident along the border a soldier stepped on a mine and was also injured.
On Friday, Maj Gen Sonthisal Wittaya-aneknan, the commander of Naresuan Task Force of the Royal Thai Army visited the three injured soldiers and surveyed the area where the incident occurred.
Thai officials last month warned villagers living near the border to keep an eye on their vehicles after a number of motorcycles and cars were stolen in Thailand and thought to be taken to Burma,
In a monthly press conference in January, the Tak Province Governor said that Myawaddy authorities on the Burmese side of the river Moei are registering motorcycles and cars without verifying the original source of the vehicles from.
The Governor said this policy affected local villagers along the Thai– Burma border in the province. There were several instances of vehicles being stolen, even after officials attempted to restrict border crossing through 30 border check points along Meoi River, frequently used to transport goods and people between the two countries.
The zone is opposite Burmese territory controlled by the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) and it is difficult for the Thai authorities to follow suspects, who often flee to Burma to avoid arrest. The DKBA is a junta backed cease group that split from the Karen National Union in the mid 1990’s, it is considered by many experts to be a key player in Burma’s booming amphetamine export business, smuggling and extortion.
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Six on hunger strike in Insein prison
Feb 23, 2010 (DVB)–Six Burmese political inmates in Rangoon’s infamous Insein prison are on hunger strike after complaining that authorities there are refusing to provide for “basic human requirements”.
Inmates in Insein prison, where the majority of Burma’s 2,100 political prisoners are held, have long complained of dire conditions, with up to four prisoners often crammed into tight cells and denied medical treatment.
The panopticon prison, built by the British during the colonial era, last year became the focus of international attention after Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was detained there during her closed court trial.
The six, who include opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party members Nyi Pu, Kyaw Myo Naing, Nyi Nyi Aung and Nay Moe Aung, as well as Aung Naing Myint and Aung Naing, who are in jail for their links to the banned All Arakan Students' and Youths' Congress (AASYC), have said they began the strike yesterday and will continue to refuse food until 25 February.
A number suspected of leading the strike have now been placed in solitary confinement, the source said, after calling for greater medical assistance, better quality food and permission to read and write.
Their demands, first made on 17 February, coincided with a visit to Burma by UN special rapporteur for human rights, Tomas Ojea Quintana. He was however denied a meeting with any political prisoners, including detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
It also coincides with reports that 71 inmates in the remote Buthidaung prison in Burma’s western Arakan state are on hunger strike in protest at the insufficient amounts of food given to prisoners.
The 71 are all non-Burmese, mainly Bangladeshi, who were also denied a meeting with Quintana when he visited Buthidaung last week, according to the Dhaka-based Narinjara news agency.
Reporting by Yee May Aung
Feb 23, 2010 (DVB)–Six Burmese political inmates in Rangoon’s infamous Insein prison are on hunger strike after complaining that authorities there are refusing to provide for “basic human requirements”.
Inmates in Insein prison, where the majority of Burma’s 2,100 political prisoners are held, have long complained of dire conditions, with up to four prisoners often crammed into tight cells and denied medical treatment.
The panopticon prison, built by the British during the colonial era, last year became the focus of international attention after Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was detained there during her closed court trial.
The six, who include opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party members Nyi Pu, Kyaw Myo Naing, Nyi Nyi Aung and Nay Moe Aung, as well as Aung Naing Myint and Aung Naing, who are in jail for their links to the banned All Arakan Students' and Youths' Congress (AASYC), have said they began the strike yesterday and will continue to refuse food until 25 February.
A number suspected of leading the strike have now been placed in solitary confinement, the source said, after calling for greater medical assistance, better quality food and permission to read and write.
Their demands, first made on 17 February, coincided with a visit to Burma by UN special rapporteur for human rights, Tomas Ojea Quintana. He was however denied a meeting with any political prisoners, including detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
It also coincides with reports that 71 inmates in the remote Buthidaung prison in Burma’s western Arakan state are on hunger strike in protest at the insufficient amounts of food given to prisoners.
The 71 are all non-Burmese, mainly Bangladeshi, who were also denied a meeting with Quintana when he visited Buthidaung last week, according to the Dhaka-based Narinjara news agency.
Reporting by Yee May Aung
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