Amnesty urges Europe to back Myanmar crimes inquiry
By Kelly Macnamara | AFP News – Sun, Sep 4, 2011
Europe's "wait and see" approach to army-dominated Myanmar is "irresponsible", Amnesty International has said, urging the EU to back an inquiry into crimes against humanity in the country.
The Myanmar government "has continued to violate human rights on a massive scale", four years after the brutal suppression of a monk-led protest, known as the Saffron Revolution, said Amnesty's Myanmar researcher Benjamin Zawacki.
He said reports from ethnic minority areas suggest 50,000 people may be internally displaced by conflict, while abuses have continued under a new regime, which came to power after controversial November elections.
In an article on Friday for the online exile news magazine Irrawaddy, Amnesty urged the European Union and its member states to lend their support to the establishment of a UN commission of inquiry into crimes against humanity.
"'Wait and see' -- what the government will do before the elections, how the elections will be conducted, whether the new government will make any changes -- has been the prevailing and irresponsible approach," he said of the international community, including the EU.
"We have waited for years, even decades, and seen quite enough: these violations call for accountability."
Hostilities between the military and armed ethnic rebels in Kachin State in the north and Karen and Shan states near the Thai border in the east, have been "accelerated or renewed" since the election, Zawacki said.
There have been recent accounts of the army using prisoners as porters, human shields and minesweepers and of rape and other forms of sexual violence, he said. The number of displaced people was thought to be 30,000 in Shan State and 20,000 in Kachin State as of the end of July.
The UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Tomas Ojea Quintana, is to present a report to the UN in October and Zawacki said an EU-led resolution on Myanmar is likely to follow.
Amnesty welcomed the public support of 12 EU nations for a commission of inquiry, but "regrets" that the EU as a bloc and influential members Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden have not openly backed the move.
On a recent rare visit to the country Quintana, who angered Myanmar's ruling generals last year by suggesting that rights violations could warrant a UN inquiry, said serious concerns remained, particularly the plight of more than 2,000 political prisoners.
Myanmar's government has appeared keen to improve its image recently, holding the first talks between democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi and President Thein Sein, a former general.
The regime has also called for peace in minority areas, but its overtures have so far been met with distrust by rebel groups.
A report on Friday's parliamentary session in the state-run New Light of Myanmar said rebels wanting an end to the conflicts should get in touch with the government, which plans to set up a "team for peace talks".
Minister for Information Kyaw Hsan said the regime would "conduct peace negotiations with armed groups in accordance with the 2008 constitution to make peace with them, maintaining balance of the both sides", the paper reported on Saturday.
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ASIAONE - Myanmar, North Korea traded rice for arms: US cable
Monday, Sep 05, 2011
BANGKOK - Myanmar's regime has allegedly exported rice and other agricultural commodities to North Korea in exchange for arms, according to a US diplomatic cable released by anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.
The July 2009 memo from the US embassy in Yangon said that Myanmar had exported about 20,000 tons of rice to North Korea through military-owned Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd.
According to a well-placed business source, Myanmar "has been exporting rice and other agricultural commodities to North Korea for over five years in exchange for arms," added the cable, which referred to "conventional weapons".
US diplomatic memos released last year by WikiLeaks said Washington has also suspected for years that Myanmar ran a secret nuclear programme supported by Pyongyang.
A UN report published in November said North Korea was supplying banned nuclear and ballistic equipment to Myanmar, along with Iran and Syria.
Myanmar has dismissed reports of its nuclear intentions and brushed aside Western concerns about possible cooperation with North Korea.
A civilian administration has been nominally in charge of Myanmar since March, following a controversial election last year, but its ranks are dominated by former generals.
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Asia News Network - New US envoy to Myanmar to boost dialogue
Chua Chin Hon
The Straits Times
Publication Date : 05-09-2011
America's new point man for Myanmar says he is looking to engage the reclusive South-east Asian country in a "serious and sustained" dialogue.
In his first media interview, United States Ambassador Derek Mitchell said he hoped his upcoming visit to Myanmar and the region would help dispel the notion that his appointment was merely an extension of American sanctions against the regime.
"(The Myanmar government) sees me, incorrectly, simply as a function of sanctions," Mr Mitchell, 47, told The Straits Times in an interview.
"I want to get the word out to Asean generally and (Myanmar) that my position is to engage and not to lecture - to listen and establish a focus and sustained conduit for a relationship between the two sides."
Formerly a senior Pentagon official, Mr Mitchell was nominated earlier this year to serve as the first US special envoy for Myanmar - a position created as part of a law passed in 2008 called the Block Burmese Junta's Anti-Democratic Efforts (Jade) Act.
The US government and Congress continue to refer to the South-east Asian country as Burma; its military rulers changed the name to Myanmar in 1989.
The Jade Act extends longstanding US sanctions, imposed against Myanmar since 1993, to include jewellery such as jadeite and rubies.
Over the past two years, the Obama administration has been trying to take a new approach towards Myanmar by adopting a "dual track" strategy that combines sanctions with diplomatic outreach. Results, however, have been disappointing so far.
There has been hope in some quarters that Mr Mitchell's appointment, confirmed by Congress only last month, would bring fresh momentum and renewed focus to the process.
Unfortunately, lingering suspicion on the part of the Myanmar government, which appears concerned by the special envoy's connection to the Jade Act, has emerged as an early stumbling block.
Mr Mitchell said sanctions were an obvious component of US policy towards Myanmar, but stressed that his role as a special representative and policy coordinator was broad-based and not confined by trade and investment restrictions against the country.
He said that during his upcoming trip - which has not been finalised and could include stops in Bangkok and Jakarta as well - he planned to listen to what the Myanmar government and other key players had to say on a wide range of issues.
"We get indications of change, indications of intention to reform - we see productive, initial dialogue that's occurring between President Thein Sein and Aung San Suu Kyi and others," he added. "It is quite encouraging."
Even though Mr Mitchell is the first official envoy to Myanmar from the US, he is by no means the only one who has been tasked with the difficult mission of engaging Naypyidaw and encouraging the regime to undertake meaningful political and economic reforms.
The United Nations and the European Union have also sent special envoys there. In addition, American lawmakers such as Senators John McCain and Jim Webb, as well as veteran Asia hands from the State Department, have made high-profile visits in recent years.
Nevertheless, progress has been very limited. There is also a growing view among South-east Asian observers that the competition between China and India to gain influence in resource-rich Myanmar has helped the regime resist outside pressure for change.
China, for instance, reportedly invested more than US$8 billion (S$9.6 billion) in Myanmar last year, mostly in long-term energy projects. Indian investments lag behind those by Beijing, but several multibillion-dollar deals involving new hydro-power and natural gas projects have been bandied about in recent years.
Mr Mitchell said he would be working closely with the Chinese and Indian governments in his new role, as well as with the UN, the EU and Asean. And what would separate his efforts from previous US attempts, he said, would be the singular focus brought to the issue - a rarity in Washington.
"My job is to be thinking and engaging 24/7 on the issue of Burma," he added. "It is very difficult to have that kind of focus in the US government... because we are distracted by so many issues."
His goals for now are broad-based. One is to promote an honest dialogue between the Myanmar government and the country's opposition forces and various ethnic groups, as well as bring about the release of political prisoners. Another is to ensure that Naypyidaw abides by its international commitments.
When asked to define what "success" would look like given the difficulties involved, he said: "Success would be a process where there is internal dialogue, internal reconciliation, (with Myanmar) coming to grips with the problems it faces politically and economically.
"I think our job is to assist this process any way we can from the outside."
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The Advocate - Burmese still walking on deadly ground
LINDSAY MURDOCH
05 Sep, 2011 12:00 AM
SAW Maungpu's dead eyes point towards the bare concrete floor of a hut clinging to the side of a jungle mountain on the Thai side of the border with Burma.
''Landmines are not good but we have to use them to protect ourselves from the Burmese army,'' says 20-year-old Mr Maungpu, a former soldier of the Karen National Liberation Army, an armed group that has been fighting for autonomy in Burma for 55 years.
Trained to defuse landmines, Mr Maungpu was guarding his village in 2009 when he reached down to pick up what looked like one.
He regained consciousness in a Karen army field hospital blind and missing half of his two arms.
Sixteen grossly disfigured former Karen soldiers grow vegetables and make handicrafts to survive in Mae Hla camp C, near the Thai border town of Mae Sot, 250 kilometres north-west of Bangkok.
Aged between 13 and 66, most are blind and do not have arms or legs.
As they suffer, Burma continues to lay landmines, the only government in the world that still does, despite a 2009 United Nations vote that banned their use worldwide, according to the annual Landmine Monitor published by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
The report says armed ethnic groups fighting the Burmese along the border are also laying the deadly explosives in a conflict that has escalated in recent months.
Mr Maungpu says he had no choice but to become a village guard, exposing himself to the risk of the hidden explosives.
''My father was killed by the Burmese army in 2004,'' he says. ''They had come to the village looking for porters … he resisted and they shot him.''
Mr Maungpu was left to care for his mother.''I just wanted to help my village,'' he says.
Saw Klowsay, 43, lost his right leg just below the knee when in 2008 he and other Karen soldiers were guarding the Mae Hla camp, fearing an attack from Burmese soldiers.
As he stepped over a fallen tree, an explosion hurled him into the air.
''Landmines are bad … sure, we used them as well, but mostly to protect ourselves from the Burmese army,'' he says.
The Mae Hla camp's handicapped unit has received some help from international donors, including a church group in Australia, since it was founded in 2000.But the funding is due to run out next year.
There are also fears among an estimated 140,000 Burmese refugees living in camps along the border that the Thai government will soon force them to return to Burma.
''It's hard because people are still being killed and maimed by landmines in the border areas,'' says Ler Lay Kler, a volunteer who helps look after the camp's landmine victims.
The latest was a 66-year-old rubber plantation owner who stepped on a landmine and was killed instantly in Pattani last week.
The Landmine Monitor says armed groups are still laying landmines in five other countries - Afghanistan, Colombia, India, Pakistan and Yemen - the lowest number since 1999.
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Ashland City Times - To help Myanmar refugees, Rutherford teachers get creative
The Karen learn basics through gestures, music
1:25 AM, Sep. 4, 2011 |
Written by Tony Gonzalez | The Tennessean
SMYRNA — In the refugee camps where she grew up in Thailand, Shee Ku walked through the jungle to sit in dirt-floor classrooms where teachers punished mistakes with physical force.
At Smyrna High School, where she enrolled in 2007, teachers were kinder, but Shee Ku felt intimidated in new ways.
She simply didn’t understand anything in class. She’d never seen a calculator or a computer, and common American concepts tripped her up on exams.
Shee Ku’s people, a group known as the Karen, escaped oppression by the military in Myanmar — formerly known as Burma — by moving to camps and eventually to the United States.
Dozens of Karen families began arriving in Rutherford County in 2007, challenging the local schools in ways faced by few other Middle Tennessee districts outside Nashville.
Confronted with teenagers who could not read or write in any language, who could not add or subtract, who in some cases had never been to a school at all, educators had to invent new ways to help students learn.
For the first Karen arrivals in ninth grade, teachers had just four years to make it happen.
In the spring, Shee Ku and four classmates became the first Karen students in the county to graduate from high school. This fall, some are marking another milestone by enrolling in college.
“The whole situation from which they’re coming is different. Limited educational experiences, the language is different. ... I can’t even imagine what they’re having to go through,” said Nona Hall, coordinator of the county’s English as a Second Language program.
Although Rutherford County is home to Tennessee’s third-largest ESL student population, nothing could adequately prepare teachers for working with refugees, Hall said.
So teachers often “make it up as we go,” said ESL instructor Collin Olson.
He scheduled a field trip to a restaurant to acquaint students with common items. He introduced photos of animals that the Karen had never seen in the jungle. And he helped create a math class that uses as little English as possible.
Outside of school, Olson and Hall are working with others to form a nonprofit that will bring tutoring, English and life-skills classes directly to the apartment complex where many Karen live.
Such classes would be valuable even to someone like 20-year-old Shee Ku. Despite a 3.7 grade-point average that earned her a scholarship, her difficulties in reading English make testing a miserable experience.
It took her four tries to get through the written portion of the driver’s license test, which she laughs about.
But she turned serious when discussing her low score on a Motlow State Community College exam, which pushed her into a remedial-reading course, delaying her pursuit of a nursing degree.
“I don’t know if I can be one. I want to be,” she said.
A year of firsts
In a year of firsts for Smyrna High, two other students became the first Karen to test out of the ESL program, triumphing over a five-day exam that teachers said would defeat many native speakers.
The school also added a third ESL teacher to assist with students new to English.
By the end of September, the community tutoring center may join the list of successes. At the Chalet Apartments on Joyner Drive, Hall and Olson hope to turn one apartment into a meeting place that would chip away at one of the district’s toughest challenges: bridging the gap between school and home, where parents are not always accustomed to taking an active role in education.
It also would help adults understand American laws, housing, medical care and appliances.
Visiting the apartments after school on a recent day, Hall talked with Karen boys who gathered at the popular gazebo on a grassy central island in the parking lot. She pestered the boys about their teeth becoming discolored from chewing betel nuts, but they playfully dodged her questions.
Recent graduate Per Kar Doh, 21, plans to move to Kentucky to work in a chicken processing plant. He said he’ll return in two years for college.
Hall worries that he won’t.
Inside a second-floor apartment, wearing a long, white traditional dress with bright stripes, junior Gay Gay Moo, 18, prepared to complete her homework. She, too, wants to go to college and wants to be a translator. The Karen language — “about as different from English as it can be,” Olson says — is highly specific to its people and comes in three written forms, so finding local translators is a challenge.
Gay Gay Moo listed Algebra II as a favorite class, thanks to the teaching style of Robert Drake. He and Olson developed lessons with as few English words as possible for a class that is for the first time entirely Karen.
The result is a class unlike any other the students know. The bespectacled Drake uses wild pantomimes, including jumping, clapping and waving his arms, to match mathematical graphs. He also tries to learn Karen words, even if it means repeating their word for “multiply” at least a dozen times before getting the pronunciation right.
To explain one technique, Drake flipped on a song sample of 1994’s dance mega-hit “I Like to Move It.” The students laughed, answered his questions and were still quoting the song lyrics later in the afternoon.
“They are some of the most hardworking students I have,” Drake said.
Popular destination
Just down the road from Smyrna High is All Saints Episcopal Church, where the influx of Karen refugees and their work on a vegetable farm saved the property from being sold in 2008.
Strong support from churches and schools have made Smyrna a particularly attractive destination for Karen families, including those initially placed elsewhere in the United States, said Ye Win, who works for the church assisting families.
There are now more than 150 Karen students in Smyrna schools, and families are still arriving in the city at a faster pace than in any other Middle Tennessee community except Nashville, said Nathan Kinser, director of the local office of World Relief, which assists in refugee placements.
The growing population continues to push the schools and volunteers to lend more support.
As the nurse she wants to become, Shee Ku would give back to the community that has supported her, a goal common to many Karen students who listed translating, social work and medicine as career interests.
“Many students want to make the experience of their people in the camps better, or to end the situation of the camps altogether,” Olson said. “Even if it’s not necessarily having to do with the camps … many of the students are focused on building community here.”
About 210 of 260 in the All Saints congregation are Karen. The Sunday service is in English, but the Rev. Randy Hoover-Dempsey pauses after each sentence of the sermon to allow Ye Win to translate for the Karen.
The church also serves as a tutoring center, where students learn English through classes and choir.
On a recent Saturday, the Karen listened to a YouTube praise song to learn its words. Then, as one man strummed a scratched, smudged and out-of-tune black guitar, the group sang together. Their words came quietly and hesitantly at first, then gained strength at the chorus.
Singing along was Thaw They Bwe, 18, who is considering a career in social work so he can assist others with medicine and food stamps.
“My parents, they want me to be a smart student,” he said.
Unfamiliar ideas
The Karen must pour themselves into schoolwork, teachers said, because so many ideas are unfamiliar to them. On tests, students struggle because they don’t know about bowling, sleepovers or summer camp.
“You don’t know what they don’t know,” Olson said. “We didn’t understand the unique challenges of these students.”
The school’s newest ESL teacher, Lori Foutch, said other teachers tried to prepare her.
“But they couldn’t,” she said, pointing to a puzzle on the floor, the first her students had ever seen.
During her basic reading class, Foutch teaches her high schoolers one letter at a time in a slow march toward a first-grade reading level.
It can take children seven years to learn social language, and more for academic language, Foutch said.
“And we get them for four (years). It’s hard to expect them to interpret academic-speak in that period of time,” she said.
Karen students take the same tests as native speakers. Although most still fail the tests — which account for a quarter of the final grade — they perform well enough in class to move to the next grade level and graduate.
But even that failing standard could change before long, as many of the younger Karen children are advancing fast enough with English to humble older brothers and sisters.
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Daily Telegraph - Burma's women forced to be Chinese brides
Burma, an eccentric military dictatorship ruled by golf-playing, Buddhist-worshipping generals, is now the main source of forced brides in China. David Eimer hears their story.
By David Eimer, Ruili
7:00AM BST 04 Sep 2011
Aba was just 12-years-old when she left her hometown of Muse in Burma to visit Yunnan Province in China's far southwest. When she crossed the border, she was expecting to spend only a few hours away from home.
But it would be three long years before Aba saw her family again. Like thousands of other young girls and women from Burma, she had been duped into coming to China so she could be sold into a forced marriage to one of the growing number of Chinese men who – because there are not enough girl babies born in China – cannot find wives any other way.
During her time in China, Aba endured routine beatings, while never being able to communicate with her family or even go outside on her own. Above all, she lived with the knowledge that she was destined to be married to the son of the family that had bought her – as if she was one of the pigs or chickens that ran around their farm.
"I was sold for 20,000 Yuan (£1,880)," said Aba. "I was too young to get married when they bought me. It was later that they told me I had to get married to their son. I was lucky in a
way. If I had been two or three years older when I was taken, I'd be married to him now."
Most people wouldn't consider it fortunate to be kidnapped as a child and sold into virtual slavery. But Aba is one of the lucky ones. Not only did she escape a forced marriage, but she was rescued and was able to return home.
For most of the women from Burma who are sold as unwilling brides in China, there are no happy endings. Instead, they face at best lives of misery and drudgery. At worst, they are driven to suicide.
No one knows how many thousands of women are trafficked into China each year to be the wives of the men known as guang gun, or bare branches, the bachelors in rural areas who cannot find brides by conventional means. What is certain is that it is a number increasing all the time. Thirty years of China's one-child policy has combined with the traditional Chinese preference for male children to create a devastating gender imbalance.
It is estimated that 120 boys are now born in China for every 100 girls. According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, that means by 2020 some 24 million men will be unable to find wives.
"The one-child policy has had a considerable impact. Where you have a demographic imbalance, you have a situation where women are in demand. Sometimes, that demand is met through legitimate marriage brokers. Other times it is met by non-legitimate means," said David Feingold, the International Coordinator for HIV/Aids and Trafficking in Unesco's Bangkok office, and the writer and director of the 2003 documentary Trading Women.
Burma, an eccentric military dictatorship ruled by golf-playing, Buddhist-worshipping generals, is now the main source of forced brides in China.
Not only is it one of the most repressive countries in the world, but desperate poverty and frequent food shortages make it very easy for the traffickers to trick women into leaving for
China and jobs that will never materialise. Instead, the women are sold as wives.
"The majority of women being trafficked from Burma into China end up as forced brides or in marriages where there's exploitation," said Mr Feingold.
Prices for the women range from 6,000 to 40,000 Yuan (£560-£3750), depending on their age and appearance. According to the Kachin Women's Association of Thailand (Kwat), a Thai-based NGO that helps trafficked Burmese women, around 25 per cent of the women sold in China are under 18. "The men always want healthy, young women who can produce babies. The women are really just regarded as baby-making machines," said Julia Marip, the head of Kwat's anti-trafficking programme in Yunnan Province.
Once Aba arrived in Ruili, a scruffy border town in Yunnan that is the main transit point for trafficked women from Burma, she was sold to a family who owned a cotton farm in the northeast of China. Now almost 16 and pretty with a shy smile, Aba is one of three children of a casual labourer and an unemployed mother.
At first glance, she looks like a normal teenager in her jeans and white T-shirt. It is only when she speaks in a quiet voice that it becomes clear what a horrific experience she endured, and how she remains deeply traumatised by it. "I still don't like going out on my own, especially in the evening," she said.
Thankfully, Aba escaped being paraded in public in front of potential buyers, which is the fate of many trafficked women. It is a brutal and dehumanising experience.
"Sometimes they'll be sold in markets that are held in parks. The traffickers will put the women in nice dresses and make-up. It's very cruel, because the women are happy to be wearing nice clothes, which they've never had before, and then they are sold like vegetables," said Miss Marip.
Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine the terror Aba must have felt, thousands of miles away from home with strangers who treated her as a possession they could abuse.
"I couldn't speak Chinese at first, so I couldn't understand what chores I had to do, so I would make mistakes. Then the mother would beat and slap me," said Aba. "I was afraid a lot of the time and very lonely because I had no friends to talk to. I cried a lot. In the beginning, they told me gently to stop crying. Later on, they would shout at me when I cried."
Escaping was not an option; she had no money and no idea where she was in China, while the family made sure she couldn't slip away. "They watched me all the time. I wasn't allowed to go out on my own."
One day, she discovered why she was being guarded so closely. She was told that she was to be married to the 20 year-old son of the family. "I had no idea that was why they had taken me until then. I refused but they told me I had to marry him," said Aba.
Virtually all women sold as forced brides find themselves trapped in what is essentially a marital prison. "Most trafficked women don't escape. We can't help them," said Miss Marip.
Faced with the hopelessness of their situations, some choose to end their lives by swallowing the fatal chemical pesticides used on farms, the most common way to commit suicide in the Chinese countryside.
But Aba did avoid a forced marriage. During a routine identity card check in her area, the police discovered that she was a foreigner and she was taken away, just weeks before she was due to be wed. "I explained what had happened to me and the police went to see the family. They told them, 'You can't buy people, they're not animals'. They asked me if I wanted to prosecute them but I said, 'no'. I just wanted to forget it and go home," said Aba.
Three years after she had disappeared from her parents' lives, Aba walked alone across the Chinese/Burmese border and returned to her home. "My parents were very shocked to see me. They started crying and so did I. I was so happy to see them," said Aba. Her mother and father had tried to find their daughter. "They went to the Muse police and told them I had been kidnapped and taken to China. But the police asked for 6,000 Yuan (£560) to investigate and my parents couldn't afford to pay," said Aba.
According to Kwat, that is the standard response of the Burmese authorities to cases of trafficked women. On the other side of the border, the Chinese police devote more energy to combating the domestic trafficking of children than they do to investigating the gangs who bring in women from overseas.
Until last year, the tiny minority of trafficked women who do escape were treated as illegal immigrants and imprisoned until they could be repatriated.
For Unesco's David Feingold, there is only so much the authorities can do anyway. "The idea that police enforcement can stop trafficking is ludicrous. The US hasn't been able to do it and they have almost unlimited resources. You have to address the underlying economic and social issues that prompt migration across borders," he said.
Aba knows as well as anyone what they are. Four months ago, the high unemployment in Burma saw her return to Ruili illegally in search of a job.
Now, she earns 650 Yuan (£60) a month working as a waitress in a restaurant.
Her time as a trafficked teenager has left her speaking fluent Mandarin, which enables her to blend in with the locals. Learning Chinese, though, is scant compensation for the three years of her life that was stolen from her.
"I still hate the family for what they did to me," said Aba. "I think I always will."
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4 September 2011 Last updated at 19:39 ET
BBC News - Viewpoint: Change in Burma - one step at a time
South Asia specialist and Chatham House associate fellow Marie Lall assesses recent events in Burma, amid some signs of change in the South East Asian nation.
The last three weeks have been a time of fast-paced political change in Burma, though this may be scarcely discernible to the outside world.
Civil society organisations, the local press, expats and the population generally - all of whom are used to very slow progress, if any - have been having a hard time keeping up as things are moving on a daily basis.
The last session of parliament had closed on 30 March with the ruling military-led SPDC (State Peace and Development Council) officially handing over executive power to the president and legislative power to the new assemblies on that day.
For those watching the development of Burma's political landscape during those early weeks, it seemed that a power struggle between more conservative and more progressive forces was dominating events in the capital, Nay Pyi Taw.
The question on many minds was how much progress could be made under those circumstances.
The despondent feeling was compounded by the resumption of armed clashes with a number of ethnic groups, notably the Kachin Independence Army after a two decade-old ceasefire.
Economic aims
In mid-August, quite suddenly, things started to change. The president, Thein Sein, spoke on 17 August before the parliament was due to reconvene on 22 August.
His address was aimed at government officials and hundreds of members of 40 different business and social organisations, which also included civil society organisations - such as the Free Funeral Association - which had previously been critical of the government.
Foremost on the agenda was economic development, and with it came a surprising invitation for exiles to return home to help develop the country.
The economy also dominated the president's opening speech on 22 August. He spoke of action to ensure good governance, clean government and democratic practices.
He spoke of fundamental rights of citizens; the rule of law; transparency; reducing the gap between the rich and the poor; creation of a harmonious society; economic reforms; and environmental conservation. He also hinted at bureaucratic opposition to necessary reforms.
These speeches followed on the heels of a less visible but just as important political and legislative action to establish a commission to review existing laws.
Committees have spent a busy summer reviewing hundreds of pieces of legislation and taking advice from international organisations such as the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Unocha), as well as from local NGOs.
Laws which have already been written or rewritten and which will come in front of this parliamentary session include legislation on labour unions, as well as legislation governing the response in the case of natural disasters.
Key visits
However, the event with the biggest impact was Aung San Suu Kyi's meeting with the president on 19 August. It built on two meetings she had with Labour Minister Aung Kyi, who had acted as a liaison between the government and the pro-democracy leader over the summer.
It had been unclear until that morning if she would accept the invitation to attend the National Workshop on Reforms for National Economic Development in Nay Pyi Taw.
In the event she agreed to make an appearance, and the country was able not only to see her photographed with the head of state below her father's picture but also watch her on TV joking with a number of other ministers during the conference.
The VIP treatment - including a dinner hosted in her honour by the wife of the president - was a sign that the government was serious in its efforts for national reconciliation.
Another high-impact visit, well reported by the press, was that of the UN special rapporteur on human rights, Tomas Quintana, from 21-25 August.
He had previously proposed that the UN should consider a commission of inquiry into Burma's human rights situation. The government had not allowed him to visit for over a year.
This time, his trip included a visit to the parliament during one of its sessions, a meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi, a trip to Insein jail and a meeting with Burma's civil society leaders in Rangoon, the very first of its kind.
His verdict upon leaving was that substantial change was indeed needed; however, his tone was more conciliatory and he gave credit to the structural changes which have taken place since the elections.
In the meantime, parliament had reconvened. The main innovation here was the fact that the privately-owned press was now allowed to attend sessions and report on parliamentary sittings.
In the first session of the parliament, at the start of 2011, only government media had been allowed.
Achilles heel
In part, all these changes are possible because the government has now achieved a measure of independence without needing to consult the military at every step.
Burma's prime concern is the preparation for entry into the ASEAN Free Trade Area (Afta) and ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), as well as wanting to take its turn as ASEAN's chair in 2014.
However, the growing confidence of the administration is possibly also at the origin of the resumption of armed conflict with some of the ethnic armed groups.
Whilst Nay Pyi Taw puts the fighting down to troops reacting to local incidents, the broader question remains on how a lasting peace can be achieved with both ceasefire and non-ceasefire groups.
The president's suggestion that in the first instance the armed groups should take their grievances to their state/regional government is not necessarily an acceptable solution as many armed groups are seeking to band together and to demand a national ceasefire and a national solution applicable to all.
To this the government is most unlikely to respond. The ethnic conflict remains Burma's Achilles heel and needs to be taken as seriously as economic reforms and national reconciliation with Aung San Suu Kyi.
Marie Lall is a South Asia specialist at the Institute of Education, University of London, and an associate fellow at Chatham House. She was in Burma from 2-27 August 2011.
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New US envoy to Myanmar to boost dialogue
Chua Chin Hon
The Straits Times
Publication Date : 05-09-2011
America's new point man for Myanmar says he is looking to engage the reclusive South-east Asian country in a "serious and sustained" dialogue.
In his first media interview, United States Ambassador Derek Mitchell said he hoped his upcoming visit to Myanmar and the region would help dispel the notion that his appointment was merely an extension of American sanctions against the regime.
"(The Myanmar government) sees me, incorrectly, simply as a function of sanctions," Mr Mitchell, 47, told The Straits Times in an interview.
"I want to get the word out to Asean generally and (Myanmar) that my position is to engage and not to lecture - to listen and establish a focus and sustained conduit for a relationship between the two sides."
Formerly a senior Pentagon official, Mr Mitchell was nominated earlier this year to serve as the first US special envoy for Myanmar - a position created as part of a law passed in 2008 called the Block Burmese Junta's Anti-Democratic Efforts (Jade) Act.
The US government and Congress continue to refer to the South-east Asian country as Burma; its military rulers changed the name to Myanmar in 1989.
The Jade Act extends longstanding US sanctions, imposed against Myanmar since 1993, to include jewellery such as jadeite and rubies.
Over the past two years, the Obama administration has been trying to take a new approach towards Myanmar by adopting a "dual track" strategy that combines sanctions with diplomatic outreach. Results, however, have been disappointing so far.
There has been hope in some quarters that Mr Mitchell's appointment, confirmed by Congress only last month, would bring fresh momentum and renewed focus to the process.
Unfortunately, lingering suspicion on the part of the Myanmar government, which appears concerned by the special envoy's connection to the Jade Act, has emerged as an early stumbling block.
Mr Mitchell said sanctions were an obvious component of US policy towards Myanmar, but stressed that his role as a special representative and policy coordinator was broad-based and not confined by trade and investment restrictions against the country.
He said that during his upcoming trip - which has not been finalised and could include stops in Bangkok and Jakarta as well - he planned to listen to what the Myanmar government and other key players had to say on a wide range of issues.
"We get indications of change, indications of intention to reform - we see productive, initial dialogue that's occurring between President Thein Sein and Aung San Suu Kyi and others," he added. "It is quite encouraging."
Even though Mr Mitchell is the first official envoy to Myanmar from the US, he is by no means the only one who has been tasked with the difficult mission of engaging Naypyidaw and encouraging the regime to undertake meaningful political and economic reforms.
The United Nations and the European Union have also sent special envoys there. In addition, American lawmakers such as Senators John McCain and Jim Webb, as well as veteran Asia hands from the State Department, have made high-profile visits in recent years.
Nevertheless, progress has been very limited. There is also a growing view among South-east Asian observers that the competition between China and India to gain influence in resource-rich Myanmar has helped the regime resist outside pressure for change.
China, for instance, reportedly invested more than US$8 billion (S$9.6 billion) in Myanmar last year, mostly in long-term energy projects. Indian investments lag behind those by Beijing, but several multibillion-dollar deals involving new hydro-power and natural gas projects have been bandied about in recent years.
Mr Mitchell said he would be working closely with the Chinese and Indian governments in his new role, as well as with the UN, the EU and Asean. And what would separate his efforts from previous US attempts, he said, would be the singular focus brought to the issue - a rarity in Washington.
"My job is to be thinking and engaging 24/7 on the issue of Burma," he added. "It is very difficult to have that kind of focus in the US government... because we are distracted by so many issues."
His goals for now are broad-based. One is to promote an honest dialogue between the Myanmar government and the country's opposition forces and various ethnic groups, as well as bring about the release of political prisoners. Another is to ensure that Naypyidaw abides by its international commitments.
When asked to define what "success" would look like given the difficulties involved, he said: "Success would be a process where there is internal dialogue, internal reconciliation, (with Myanmar) coming to grips with the problems it faces politically and economically.
"I think our job is to assist this process any way we can from the outside."
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The Nation - Push for opening in banking ahead of AEC
By Wichit Chaitrong
Published on September 6, 2011
Finance Minister Thirachai Phuvanatnaranubala wants to speed up financial liberalisation under the Asean Economic Community by allowing more foreign banks to establish a presence here.
"While Asean members plan to open the AEC financial market in 2015, with full opening coming in 2024, we should accelerate it," he said yesterday.
More foreign banks here, in particular large banks from Asean countries or China, India and South Korea, should increase competition, he said.
Consumers would benefit from the expected narrowing of the interest spread between loan and deposit rates, he told the Fiscal Policy Office's annual symposium on the future of the Thai economy moving towards the AEC.
For example, the first-, second- or third-largest bank in India should locate branches in Thailand to facilitate the growth in trade and investment between the two countries, he said, adding that he would consult with the Bank of Thailand on relaxing the barriers to entry.
To prepare for the AEC, the government will cut the corporate income-tax rate from 30 per cent to 23 per cent next year and to 20 per cent in the following year.
The Board of Investment is also considering reforming its incentive package, as current tax breaks may be too much, Thirachai said.
As more Asean firms list on other stock exchanges in the near future, minority shareholders should be protected, he said. Currently it is too costly for shareholders to pursue civil cases against companies in other Asean countries.
Asean governments are now working on a mechanism to protect shareholders, Thirachai said.
Bhanupong Nithiprapa, economics dean at Thammasat University, said Singapore would gain a greater advantage under financial liberalisation, as its banks were very competitive.
The Thai government should prepare for liberalisation by strengthening its fiscal position. Public debt should be reduced to 40 per cent of gross domestic product to maintain fiscal discipline. Lower debt would leave the government with ample resources in time of crisis.
The deepening of economic integration will also bring risks to the economy, possible via trade and financial market linkages, he said.
Pailin Chuchotthavorn, chief executive officer of IRPC, a subsidiary of PTT, said the government should develop rail and road links with Asean countries, particularly the East-West Corridor from Danang, Vietnam, to Dawei in Burma, and the link to southern China and India.
Former finance minister Chalongphob Sussangkarn said Asean should look beyond 2015. Now academics are trying to look at Asean 2030. Researchers expect that by 2030 Asean as a bloc will be as important as a key economic player as India, though Asean's economy may be much smaller than China's.
A study by the Fiscal Policy Office found that Thailand's value-added-tax rate of 7 per cent was too low while its corporate income-tax rate of 30 per cent was too high compared with peer countries. And the highest rate of 37 per cent in Thailand's progressive personal income tax is also too high.
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The Nation - One dead after jail riot
By Pattani
Published on September 6, 2011
A prison riot in Pattani yesterday saw one inmate killed and two others wounded after a clash between Buddhist and Muslims inmates over "minor" regulations, a lack of halal food and overcrowding.
Pattani prison commander Awuth Suwanno said the riot started after Muslim inmates accused Phanuwat Khong-in, a Buddhist inmate appointed an assistant to prison guards of treating them unfairly and not complying with halal regulations in the prison kitchen.
Small fights occurred and continued sporadically before the death of Phanuwat was reported and inmates Wayu Engchuan and Sak Kai, a Burmese, were injured, Awuth said.
There are no details on who attacked the three men.
Yesterday's riot was the third in a month after two incidents at Narathiwat prison in August because of overcrowding. The Pattani prison has capacity for 900 inmates but has had more than 1,300 for many years.
Confrontations continued all day after the fights in the morning but rather in a non-violent way, with groups of rival inmates separating each other, and those not involved sitting in the middle of the main lawn, Awuth said.
The situation improved but had not returned to normal at press time last night, after authorities and prison managers agreed to seven demands. These included appointing Muslim inmates as kitchen hands, guard assistants and clerks, plus the transfer of three Buddhist inmates and a few others to areas where there are no Muslim prisoners.
Awuth said there were 19 inmates transferred from Narathiwat prison and 15 from Yala prison, who would be questioned on whether they planned yesterday's riot or influenced inmates to stage it.
Security sources said warnings that people may try to stir up trouble using race and religion as motives had been sent to the local prisons but corrections officials had not heeded the warnings.
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Thai-ASEAN News Network
TAN Network - Pattani Prison Riot Under Control
UPDATE : 5 September 2011
Authorities have been able to contain the riot at the Pattani Prison but the death toll has risen to two, while another inmate is seriously injured.
About 40 to 50 inmates at the Pattani Prison staged a riot this morning, claiming unfair treatment from the wardens.
Inmate Panuwat Pong-in was killed in prison, while Wayu Engchuan died at Pattani Hospital.
A Burmese inmate was seriously injured and is currently being treated.
Authorities were unable to contain the situation earlier this afternoon after negotiations were held as the inmates demanded the prison relax its rules, make sure kitchen staff are Muslims, cancel severe punitive measures and not transfer the rioters to other prisons among others.
Deputy Pattani Governor Seri Sihatrairat said the riot originated from a brawl between inmates and officials tried to break up the fight.
However, the situation intensified due to a large number of inmates joining the chaos.
Commenting on the inmates' demand to change prison officials to Muslims, the Pattani deputy governor said the prison will consider the request and will review all alleged mistreatments against Muslim inmates.
Seri went on to say that the Pattani Islamic Committee has been contacted to hold talks with the inmates.
Most inmates involved in today's riot were those who had been transferred from the Narathiwat and Yala provincial prisons.
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The Globe & Mail - China’s CNPC close to Afghan oil deal
Matthew Green and Leslie Hook
Financial Times
Published Monday, Sep. 05, 2011 1:20PM EDT
CNPC, the Chinese energy company, is poised to win the first oilfield to be tendered in Afghanistan since the U.S. ousted the Taliban in revenge for sheltering Osama bin Laden a decade ago.
China’s push into Afghanistan is part of a broader drive to secure resources to fuel economic growth that has seen its state-owned companies venture into increasingly risky countries.
CNPC, China’s biggest oil and gas producer, beat rival bids from Australia’s Buccaneer Energy, London-based Tethys Petroleum and Shahzad International of Pakistan in a tender for three blocks in the Amu Darya basin in the relatively peaceful north-west.
The state-owned company has a history of working in tough political environments shunned by western companies, including Sudan, Burma and Iran.
The Afghan government has ordered the mining ministry to negotiate the details of the contract before a final decision is made.
“CNPC gave the highest bid,” Jalil Jumriany, head of policy and promotion in Afghanistan’s mining ministry, told the Financial Times.
“It depends on how the negotiation goes on and then the final winner will be chosen.”
CNPC appears to have offered a similar combination of attractive royalties and promises to develop infrastructure that helped a Chinese consortium win a bid for Afghanistan’s $3.4-billion Aynak copper deposit in 2008.
Mr. Jumriany said CNPC had offered to pay a 15 per cent royalty on each barrel of crude and 30 per cent corporation tax on its profits, as well as build a $300-million refinery. CNPC declined to comment.
Afghan officials have been keen to tout the country’s mineral resources – including the vast Hajigak iron ore deposit that has attracted interest from mainly Indian companies. A lack of exploration means the country’s true oil and gas potential remains largely unknown.
“What CNPC is doing here is taking a position on relatively unknown oil assets at potentially low prices,” said Bradley Way, Beijing-based head of Asia energy for BNP Paribas.
CNPC’s foray into Afghanistan mirrors the way the company has made strides in Iraq, where it has also gained a foothold in the wake of the US-led invasion. CNPC is providing services for Iraq’s biggest oilfield, in conjunction with BP and an Iraqi group.
Although the Amu Darya blocks are only estimated to contain about 80 million barrels of oil, a tiny amount by global standards, analysts say a successful bid could put CNPC in prime position to win bigger fields.
Mr. Jumriany said Afghanistan’s government is planning to conduct seismic surveys before tendering blocks in the Afghan Tajik Basin, which he said is estimated to hold some 1.8 billion barrels of oil.
China has long cultivated oil and gas ties with Central Asia. In recent years the completion of two major Chinese pipelines into Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan has allowed China to further tap the region’s hydrocarbons.
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The Grand Rapids Press - Refugee from Myanmar who came to Grand Rapids joins National Guard to give back to U.S.
Published: Sunday, September 04, 2011, 8:00 AM
By Ted Roelofs | The Grand Rapids Press
The drill sergeant had never heard such a thing.
When he handed out uniforms for basic training at Fort Jackson, S.C., one soldier in the platoon thanked him for the new clothes.
That would be Pvt. Saw Blut, a Grand Rapids resident and refugee of Myanmar who joined the National Guard a few months ago.
“I have never heard a complaint from that soldier. I think he exceeds the discipline here,” said Staff Sgt. Jamar Mabry.
Blut, 20, said he simply wants to repay the country that is his new home.
“This country, they help me. I want to give back something, too,” he said.
Blut was to graduate last week from basic training then attend classes in vehicle maintenance before returning to Grand Rapids later this year.
Persecuted in his homeland
His background might explain why Blut does not take freedom or opportunity for granted.
He belongs to an ethnic minority called the Karen people who have been persecuted in the nation formerly known as Burma for decades. It is estimated that 200,000 people have been driven from their homes in decades of war, with more than 100,000 living in refugee camps across the border in Thailand.
“The soldiers would come into our villages, kill and terrorize our people and burn our houses,” Blut said.
Soldiers also threatened to force him to serve in the army against his will, Blut said.
Blut grew up in a poor rural village near Pathein, the fourth-largest city in Myanmar. Plumbing, electricity and paved roads are considered luxuries.
Blut said he speaks with his parents several times a year on a shared line, but disconnections and interference on the line make it difficult to keep in touch. He has a sister and brother who still live in Myanmar, as well.
Blut said that, in 2007, “I ran out of my country and went to Malaysia.”
A new home: West Michigan
He later applied for refugee status and arrived in Grand Rapids in 2008. As a refugee, he has legal permanent resident status and can apply for citizenship after five years. The U.S. military accepts citizens and those with permanent resident status.
Blut was assisted in resettlement by Grand Rapids-based Bethany Christian Services, where officials say hundreds of refugees from Myanmar have settled in West Michigan in the past half-dozen years. More than 60,000 have settled in the United States since 2005.
Lukas Ziomkowski, a program supervisor for Bethany, called Blut “a great example of how successful refugees can be in our community and communities across the country. He is extremely motivated. He doesn’t take anything for granted. He is very hard working.”
He added that he was not entirely surprised Blut chose to enter the military.
“I think he quickly became patriotic and thankful toward our country as well. I could see him doing this as a way of giving back.”
To hear Blut tell it, the rigors of basic training are more like a walk through clover than some physical ordeal.
“Basic training was great. I have great battle buddies,” he said.
Drill sergeant Mabry said he wouldn’t mind having a few more like Blut.
“If we get more soldiers like that, it will have a positive influence on everybody. If you tell him to do something, he gets it done.”
And why not?
“It’s a very good country,” Blut said. “We can say whatever we want. You can practice any religion you want.
“If you try hard, there is a lot of opportunity.”
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Scotland on Sunday - Burma's barmy army cry freedom
Published Date: 04 September 2011
By Lewis Pierce in Rangoon
THE hardships and oppression of living in an authoritarian country like Burma, or Myanmar as its military rulers style it, all but vanish at the gates of its football stadiums.
Or so say the fans, who swarm in for a carnival of drunken revelry that would never be tolerated off the terraces.
"I don't come here to support any particular team," said schoolboy Kyaw Lin, 15, standing in a particularly rowdy section at a recent match. "I come for the freedom to shout anything I want."
Sport provides an escape in much of the world. But in Burma, with secret police and jail terms of up to 100 years for dissent, a football match offers even more cause for raucous merriment in a sea of grinding poverty and fear. It offers 90 minutes of liberation, even though lorryloads of riot police ring stadiums during games, mostly near the exits.
A World Cup qualifier in July between "Myanmar" and Oman was called off before half-time by a Japanese referee after fans threw stones, bottles and shoes onto the pitch, and an Oman coach was reportedly hit on the head.
The episode, however, has done little to diminish the excitement in the stands. "I'm going to break your legs!" shouted a fan as a striker moved down field in a recent match. This was one of the more polite contributions. The stand reeked of cheap booze, and the occasional pool of vomit, from barechested fans sporting a variety of crude tattoos.
Burma is one of Asia's most impoverished countries and also one of its most expensive. Opening a cellphone account costs £400. A new car can run in excess of £124,000 because of taxes and permits. But two things are cheap here: rice (about 10p a small bucket) and a ticket to football matches (40p a go). Deliberately or not, the government is taking a page out of Imperial Roman, with football standing in for bread and circuses.
The Myanmar National League was formed with government encouragement in 2008, a time of anger at the military's handling of a deadly cyclone and fresh memories of large-scale protests led by Buddhist monks the year before. The government prodded business bosses to help bankroll the league and its 12 teams.
Now in its third season, the league has proved successful, a local complement to a longstanding obsession with the English Premiership. In Burma, sports newspapers outsell all the rest. "When someone faces a lot of hardship and burdens in his daily life, he wants to forget them," said U Ko Htut, a well-known football writer. "There are not many people who obtain success in our country. We want to imagine we are football stars. We want to put ourselves in their shoes."
Ko Htut was imprisoned for 13 years and tortured for being a student activist during a major uprising in 1988. Writing about sports is the closest thing to freedom of expression in Burma. The censors rarely bother him, he said, unlike political journalists whose work is excised and redacted.
Burma has suffered under various shades of military rule since a 1962 coup d'etat, a political legacy that has engendered a distrust for authority among its 55 million people.
So it comes as little surprise that referees - the symbol of authority during matches - are the target of generous doses of invective.
Entering a soccer stadium, the Burmese, generally polite, leave civility at the gate. U Min Aung, 29, owns a business and has a three-year-old daughter. Once in the stands, though, he strips off his shirt and paces drunkenly through the crowd, berating the opposition team.
Occasionally he throws bottles, or anything else he can get hold of, on the pitch. During a recent match he tried, unsuccessfully, to rip out the concrete seating. Min Aung said that in July he had joined the near riot during the international against Oman. He showed no signs of remorse. "The referee was unfair," he said. "Everyone was throwing bottles. I did, too."
A statement by Fifa, the World Cup governing body, said the referee stopped the match after "local supporters repeatedly hurled objects onto the field. The matter will be referred to the Fifa disciplinary committee."
The rowdiness also involves fights between rival fans. But tension is often defused because many fans are too drunk to land a punch.
Nor is bad behaviour necessarily restricted to the fans. In 2004, three players on the national team were red-carded in a game against Singapore: one for persistent fouling; another for kicking mud at the ref; and another for hitting a Singapore player with a water bottle then gesturing his contempt as he strolled to the dugout.
The incident even embarrassed some fans, already frustrated with the team's poor showing. Burma's glory years came in the 1950s and 1960s, when the team won pan-Asian tournaments and regularly defeated its neighbours.
Now Fifa ranks "Myanmar" 165th out of 203 national teams, that's 110 places behind Scotland.
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The Malaysian Insider - Most US firms plan to expand business in SE Asia: Amcham
September 05, 2011
SINGAPORE, Sept 5 – Eighty-five per cent of US companies in Southeast Asia plan to expand their business as the region will become more important in the next two years, the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Singapore said today.
“ASEAN continues to grow in importance for businesses in the region,” AmCham Singapore said in a statement, citing a poll of 327 senior executives from US companies in Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam between May 18 and June 8.
ASEAN refers to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and also includes Brunei, Myanmar and Laos.
Seventy-three per cent of respondents said ASEAN’s importance to their companies will increase over the next two years, up from 70 per cent in a survey last year, while not a single company said it intended to shrink its regional operations.
Regionally, Indonesia was the most popular destination for US companies, with 72 per cent of respondents reporting their company was planning to expand there.
“Indonesia’s strengths lie in its low-cost business environment. Respondents enjoy low-cost labour as well as low housing and office lease costs,” AmCham Singapore said.
“However, there are also major concerns with corruption, laws and regulations, and infrastructure.”
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Financial Express Bangladesh - Dhaka for quick repatriation of Rohingya refugees
Dhaka, Tuesday September 6 2011
Foreign Minister (FM) Dr Dipu Moni Monday urged Myanmar for quick repatriation of the remaining Rohingya refugees from Nayapara and Kutupalong camps in Cox's Bazar, reports UNB.
Dipu Moni made the call while Myanmar Ambassador in Dhaka Min Lwin met her at her office.
During the meeting, the FM underlined the importance of improving connectivity between the two countries through direct air, rail and waterways.
She appreciated the progress made through the ongoing bilateral meetings under the auspices of Foreign Office Consultations, Joint Trade Commission and Joint Boundary Working Group.
Dipu Moni proposed Myanmar to reach a broader framework agreement with Bangladesh for cooperation in multifaceted areas.
She urged the envoy to persuade the Myanmar businessmen to import more Bangladesh products, including pharmaceuticals, readymade garments and jute.
The FM renewed Bangladesh's interest to import surplus electricity and gas from Myanmar.
Referring to the sincere efforts made by the present Bangladesh government to resolve issues with neighbouring countries on the basis of friendship and goodwill, Dipu Moni requested the new Myanmar government to come forward to avail of the goodwill and sincerity in the best interest of the two countries and their peoples.
Min Lwin appreciated the ideas of the Foreign Minister and said all pending issues with Bangladesh will be resolved through discussion.
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Strategy Page - The Generals Seek A Deal
September 4, 2011: The newly elected government, still controlled by the military (which has run the country since 1962) is facing a desperate situation. Decades of dictatorship have ruined the economy, and been unable to suppress urban and tribal rebel groups. The army has been fighting a futile war with the tribal militias all that time, without achieving victory. Four years ago there was a widespread uprising in the non-tribal south. While not very violent (the tribes have far more weapons), this scared the generals, who have now been experimenting with new ways to stay in power, and out of prison. The generals know that if they are overthrown, prosecution, or worse, is likely. The UN and many Western nations are already talking about prosecuting Burmese leaders for “crimes against humanity.”
The government must also keep fighting in order to satisfy a major ally; China. In northern Burma, over a million Chinese have been allowed to move in, along with Chinese financed hydroelectric and natural gas development projects. The Chinese will start building a railroad into northern Burma by the end of the year. The new dams will displace thousands of tribal people, and all the electricity will be sold to China, and all that revenue will go to the Burmese government. Same with the natural gas, and seeing the military grab most of the revenue from these deals has enraged the urban population as well. Burma is, according to international surveys, one of the three most corrupt countries in the world (along with Afghanistan and Somalia.) While not as chaotic and violent as Somalia and Afghanistan, the potential is there, and the generals know it.
The Burmese generals tried to play India off against China, but that did not work. India was sensitive to criticism (of dealing with Burma) from Indian and Western pressure groups, and backed away. This left China free to grab it all, or something like that.
So it’s no wonder the tribes are still fighting. In response, the army has renewed its "total war" strategy against the tribal militias of the north earlier this year. These tactics concentrate on terrorizing the unarmed tribal population, as a way of obtaining information on the tribal rebels, and encouraging the tribal people to withdraw support for the rebels. There have been over 400 clashes (ambushes and raids mostly) so far this year. This war gets very little media attention, largely because the government keeps journalists out of the tribal area. But the war has produced over 50,000 refugees, who often can be reached by journalists.
All this has had limited success, but the fact that the fighting has continued for over half a century indicates that this is not a long term (or any term) solution. Currently, the army is concentrating on the SSA (Shan State Army, a force of several thousand armed men) and the larger United Wa State Army. Actually, there are two Shan State Armies (north and south) and these have joined forces against the government (despite the fact that one of them is technically a government ally). For the last decade, the government had some success in dividing the tribes with bribes and good treatment. But that did not work as thoroughly as the government wanted, so now it's back to old school genocide in the jungle. That doesn't work, but the new veneer of democracy has encouraged the government to believe it can claim the new nastiness is the will of the people.
Meanwhile, the generals, via the newly elected (under military supervision) democratic government are trying to negotiate their way out of punishment for past sins. In effect, negotiations to that end are under way. Most of the generals appear to have accepted the fact that their half century effort to create a socialist dictatorship has failed. If it comes to a full blown civil war everyone, especially the army officers, lose. So a negotiated deal is now a possibility. There’s no guarantee this will work, since many of the senior army leaders still believe some of their own press-releases about how powerful the military is (it isn’t). Some of the generals are worried about Burma becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of China. But mostly, the generals fear running out of money to maintain the comfortable lifestyle the active duty and retired officers have enjoyed for decades. Poverty, not rebellion, is bringing the generals to the negotiating table. But it could get ugly. The tribal leaders are demanding that there be no more “divide and conquer” negotiations, and that all the tribes be involved at once in the peace talks. This could get messy, as some of the tribes are at odds with other tribes.
September 3, 2011: Government controlled media announced that the DKBA (Democratic Karen Buddhist Army), on August 18th, had agreed to dissolve and turn into 12 battalions of the border guard. This was supposed to happen to all tribal militias according to a 2008 agreement. But six of the militias, including the DKBA, refused to go along, and some of those that did, later reneged (because the government did not keep its end of the deal). DKBA leaders responded to this latest announcement by calling it misleading. Some DKBA fighters had accepted the government offer, but most were still fighting the army.
August 28, 2011: In Arakan State, on the west coast, villagers found a World War II bomb (that was dropped nearly 70 years ago, but did not go off). While trying to pry open the bomb, it exploded, killing seven people. The Burmese west coast was heavily fought over by Japanese and Allied troops during World War II.
August 20, 2011: A military convoy carrying two army generals was ambushed in Karen state. Three soldiers died, but the two generals (who ran military operations in Karen state) were unharmed.
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Monsters and Critics - Myanmar nixes subway plan for new capital
Sep 4, 2011, 7:30 GMT
Yangon - Myanmar's government has shelved plans for a subway in the country's new capital due to lack of demand, media reports said Sunday.
Minister for Railways Aung Min confirmed the project had been dropped for Naypyitaw, 350 kilometres north of the old capital of Yangon, last week, the Myanmar Times reported.
In August, Russian news media reported that a Russian firm had won a contract to construct a 50-kilometre subway in Naypyitaw, a sprawling capital covering 7,054.37 square kilometres with less than 1 million inhabitants, primarily civil servants, military men and politicians.
'Nobody would use the metro in Naypyitaw, due to its population density,' Aung Min said. 'No foreign company would agree to build it under a build, operate and transfer system because there's no way they could make a profit.'
Aung Min is a member of the cabinet that took office on April 1, following the country's first general election in two decades on November 7.
Myanmar was ruled by a junta between 1988-2010. Former junta chief Senior General Than Shwe decided to move the capital from the port city of Yangon to central Naypyitaw in November 2005.
Thousands of civil servants were forced to leave relatively cosmopolitan Yangon for the newly constructed capital within weeks.
Many bureaucrats have lived in the new capital without their families, forcing them to commute to Yangon every weekend, sources said.
Aung Min said the government was considering building an express rail from Yangon to Mandalay through Naypyitaw in the future.
The existing railway line between Yangon and Naypyitaw is 375 kilometres long. A one-way trip takes nine hours.
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Monsters and Critics - Myanmar pledges fair payments for railroad land
Sep 4, 2011, 6:31 GMT
Yangon - Myanmar's government has pledged to adequately compensate landowners along a 800-kilometre route for a rail link from China to the Bay of Bengal, reports said Sunday.
Minister for Railways Aung Min said the government was determined to ensure that citizens 'are not cheated' by the 20-billion-dollar project. The railroad would link a deep seaport in Rakhine State on the Bay of Bengal with Muse on the Chinese border, the Myanmar Times reported.
'We are negotiating in detail with the Chinese side on all issues, including compensation for the land needed to construct the line,' Aung Min said last week. 'We are doing everything to protect our people so they are not cheated.'
Human rights groups have raised concerns about the rail link, noting that mega-projects in Myanmar have led to land expropriation, forced labour and other abuses in the past.
'If the land is privately owned, we will evaluate the value with the local authorities and the Chinese company will pay that price to the owners,' Aung Min said.
He said the government was negotiating s contract with state-owned China Railways Engineering Corporation. Construction could begin in December.
Aung Min is a member of the cabinet that started work on April 1, following the November 7 general election.
Construction of the Kyaukpyu-Muse railroad is expected to take five years to complete under a build, operate and transfer contract.
'It will cost about 20 billion dollars,' Aung Min said. 'We might give China Railways Engineering Corporation the right to operate the line for 50 years.'
The single-track line would operate with electric trains capable of travelling at about 200 kilometres per hour, with a capacity for 4,000 tons of cargo plus passengers.
The railroad will follow the same route as oil and natural gas pipelines from the Bay of Bengal to the Myanmar-China border, which is being built by another state-owned Chinese company.
Both projects are designed to cut transportation costs for China.
'With this railroad China can get access to the sea and transport their goods without having to pass through the Malacca Strait,' Aung Min said.
The government is also considering a plan to build a railroad linking Dawei on the Bay of Martaban to Kanchanaburi in Thailand.
In November 2010, Ital-Thai Development Corp of Thailand signed an agreement to develop a deep seaport and special economic zone near Dawei.
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New Zealand Herald - Migrant's resistant TB costing $10k a month
4:35 PM Saturday Sep 3, 2011
An immigrant from Myanmar who is New Zealand's first case of "extensively" drug-resistant tuberculosis is being treated at a cost of $10,000 a month to taxpayers.
Experts described the case as the most drug-resistant strain reported in New Zealand or Australia.
The man, now in his early 30s, arrived in New Zealand in 2006 with latent TB, but although he had had a chest x-ray, it wasn't picked up until he saw an Otago GP in March last year.
TB usually affects the lungs and is spread by coughing and sneezing, but it can also affect other organs and the lymph glands.
The man went to the GP with a discharge from an enlarged lymph gland on his abdomen.
TB is readily treated by antibiotics, but since the 1980s, drug-resistant bacterial strains have evolved.
They make treatment more complex, expensive and harder for patients to tolerate.
Since 1999, 28 cases of multi-drug resistant TB have been reported in New Zealand, but until Otago doctors detected the present case, there had been none of the even more worrying extensive drug resistance.
Dunedin Hospital respiratory physician Dr Colin Wong and colleagues, writing in the Medical Journal of Australia, said that as well as being New Zealand's first case of extensively drug-resistant TB, it was the most drug-resistant strain reported in Australasia.
"Given the increasing frequency of travel and immigration from high-risk areas, New Zealand and other countries in the region are likely to encounter more cases of extensively drug-resistant TB in the future," the doctors' report said.
The man was initially treated out of hospital. But when preliminary tests showed the strain was unusually resistant "his urgent admission to hospital was arranged, with provision for isolation to prevent airborne disease transmission".
He was put on seven antibiotics - six oral and one injected - some of which had to be imported from the United States after New Zealand supplies ran out.
He is now out of hospital, but will continue to be treated with six oral antibiotics at least until the end of the year.
Dr Wong said yesterday the man was doing well, although he suffered from nausea and occasional emotional difficulties as side effects of the drugs.
"He's returned back to normal life. He's working. I think he is going to be applying for New Zealand residency."
His work visa had expired and an application for a new one was at first declined by Immigration NZ.
"But on appeal from his lawyer, with medical support", the man had been allowed to stay for compassionate reasons.
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TerraDaily.com - North Korea's Kim does not trust China: US cable
by Staff Writers
Seoul (AFP) Sept 5, 2011
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il expressed distrust of his country's major economic prop China during a 2009 meeting with a visiting South Korean businesswoman, according to a US diplomatic cable.
The cable released by anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks summarises a meeting between the US ambassador in Seoul and Hyundai Group chairwoman Hyun Jung-Eun, who had recently returned from a meeting in Pyongyang with the leader.
The cable dated August 28, 2009 quoted Hyun as saying Kim had made a comment about "not trusting" China, without elaborating.
Kim also complained that Seoul's unification ministry tasked with handling cross-border relations had "lost the driver's seat" to the foreign ministry, which he asserted did not understand North Korea.
Hyun's group developed two major cross-border joint projects, the Mount Kumgang resort and the Kaesong industrial estate.
The cable depicts Kim in apparent conciliatory mood, just months after a long-range missile launch and a second nuclear test sparked international concern.
Discussing relations with the United States, he told Hyun he had altered some parts of the Arirang festival to "fit American tastes".
Arirang involves tens of thousands of performers in mass games and artistic performances that praise the communist regime and the ruling dynasty.
The leader reportedly told Hyun he had cut out a sketch depicting a missile launch because he had heard Americans did not like it.
"He had also been advised that South Koreans did not like to see so many soldiers in the performance, so now more students were included," the cable says.
However, Kim described relations with Japan as "far worse than ever before" and Hyun was told separately by a senior official that the leader had ordered Japanese cars banned from Pyongyang's streets.
The North's leader returned late last month from a visit to China, his second this year to Pyongyang's sole major ally and top trade partner.
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The Irrawaddy - Suu Kyi's First Article for 23 Years Published in Burma
By WAI MOE Monday, September 5, 2011
Pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi has published her first article in the Burmese media for 23 years on the front page of Pyithu Khit News Journal, while Messenger News also ran an exclusive interview with the Nobel Laureate as its cover story.
Pyithu Khit (People’s Era) was permitted by the Burmese censorship board—the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division under the Ministry of Information—to publish Suu Kyi’s article entitled Holiday-1 in this week's edition, according to journalists and distributors in Rangoon.
An official at Pyithu Khit Journal told The Irrawaddy on Monday that they also carried a piece by one of her close aides—veteran journalist Win Tin’s old article on Suu Kyi’s father Aung San.
“We applied at the censorship board for the right to publish the article and they allowed it. There was not much difficulty during the process,” he added.
The other publication receiving the green light from the censorship board, headed by former military officers, is Messenger News Journal. It is run by Zaw Min Aye, son of ex-Lt-Gen Tin Aye who is currently chairman of the Union Election Commission and former chief of Military Ordinance.
The censoring process for Suu Kyi’s interview took around 10 months before permission was granted.
“The interview with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi took place in December 2010 [shortly after her release from house arrest]. Since then we have been applying for permission to publish the interview at the censorship board,” said an official with Messenger Journal who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“The censorship board cut all references to politics, which amounted to around 75 percent of the interview, but allowed issues related to youth,” he added.
In this week's issue, Pyithu Khit used Suu Kyi’s photo alongside her son Htain Lin and his dog. It was taken during her trip to Pagan in July.
The granting of permission for Suu Kyi’s article and interview to appear with front page photos comes soon after her first trip to Naypyidaw and talks with President Thein Sein on August 19-20. She was invited to the administrative capital for a state-sponsored economic workshop as a “special guest,” and also had two meetings with government minister
Aung Kyi in July and August.
This move comes amid calls from the international community for the Burmese regime to ensure Suu Kyi's safety and human rights. US Senator John McCain urged the new Burmese administration to guarantee Suu Kyi’s rights and freedom of movement during a statement in Rangoon at the end of his trip to Burma in June.
For the last 23 years, even Suu Kyi’s name or any symbols indirectly referring to her—such as “the lady,” “the mother” or “the rose”—were banned in publications within the military-ruled Southeast Asian nation.
The censorship board’s recent actions contrast with last November when nine Burmese private journals were suspended from publishing for one or two weeks for covering her release. The censorship board said the journals were “crossing the line.”
Suu Kyi’s article and interview in the Burmese media this week received mixed reactions from journalists in Burma. Some welcomed the move while others view the issue with skepticism, with the Naypyidaw regime remaining notorious for enforcing draconian laws oppressing freedom of expression.
In Burma, anyone can still be charged and imprisoned under the Printers and Publishers Law, the Electronic Transaction Law and the Official Secrets Act among others, if authorities suspect any publication is challenging the state.
“I think allowing Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s article and interview is firstly the outcome of meetings between her and government officials, and secondly relates to the question of space in the Burmese media,” said an experienced freelance reporter in Rangoon.
“It would be too early and out of context if we examine only this case instead of the whole media environment of the country,” he added.
A female senior staffer with a leading news journal in Rangoon said, “It is very good to see Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s photos, article and interview in Pyithu Khit and Messenger. But some publishers will misuse her photos and writings for their own benefit since journals with her photos are easily sold out.”
According to distributors in Rangoon, this week's edition of both Pyithu Khit and Messenger with Suu Kyi’s article and interview are quite popular among readers and have been selling well.
“Many people came to buy the Messenger News Journal with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s photo this morning. Unlike last week, it was sold out within a few hours due to her interview,”
said the owner of a journal stand in Rangoon’s Tamwe Township.
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The Irrawaddy - WikiLeaks Cables Show China's Support for UWSA
By KO HTWE Monday, September 5, 2011
Burma's strongest ethnic armed group of the United Wa State Army (UWSA) is confident of the “upper hand” in any battle with government troops after being equipped with more than 30 US-manufactured surface-to-air missiles, according to a recent dispatch by WikiLeaks.
Rangoon-based United States Embassy Charge d'Affaires Larry Dinger sent the cable in January 2010 after talking with UWSA's Deputy Liaison Officer Soe Than.
In the cable, Soe Than also predicted that Burmese troops would face serious logistical challenges and numerous potential casualties if they were to attack the group.
The UWSA also received financial and moral support from China, said Soe Than.
He said the Chinese thought the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) was angling for new allies—specifically the US, North Korea and Russia—so China was beefing up its financial and military support for the UWSA in response.
Chinese government representatives attend all UWSA ceremonies and five representatives from the Chinese Embassy in Rangoon attended a Wa anniversary celebration in December 2009, he added.
A separate 2009 cable concerning the UWSA also claimed that the group was well-armed with US-manufactured grenade launchers, as well as shoulder-mounted surface-to-air missiles and launchers provided by Russia.
The cable claims that there were 30,000 active-duty Wa troops with an additional 10,000 youth and auxiliary forces, many of whom are enrolled in training or engaged in agriculture.
“The only threat the UWSA is not prepared to face is major airstrikes by the Burma Army,” Soe Than was quoted in the cable.
The Wa group found it easy to purchase arms from Thailand, China (including Hong Kong), and Singapore, according to leaked documents. But the UWSA denied manufacturing armaments or purchasing shoulder-mounted surface-to-air missiles and launchers from Russia in 2005 or 2006.
Hong Pang Company, based in Tachilek, is the parent company for many Wa investments, said Soe Than.
He also claimed the UWSA has over US $2billion invested in “transportation (including Yangon Airway), hotels (including Yangon City Hotel), restaurants, gems, mining, teak, road/building construction, property development, manufacturing (including of the ubiquitous plastic rice bags), wood processing (including a facility at the Mingaladon Industrial Estate near Rangoon's airport), massage parlors, and music recording studios (including "NASA" Studio—NFI).”
For the Wa, retention of the UWSA is non-negotiable and leaders are prepared to abandon all legitimate economic interests throughout the country—estimated by the Wa as over US $2 billion—if necessary to preserve their right to arms.
Since last year, the Burmese regime has been pressuring 17 ceasefire armies to accept the Border Guard Force (BGF) plan, but only a few have joined. The others, including the UWSA and the Karen Independence Army, have refused.
Comparing Military Security Affairs Chief Lieutenant General Ye Myint with former Prime Minister and Military Intelligence Chief Khin Nyunt, UWSA Commander Bao Youxiang said he respected Khin Nyunt.
In 2009, Bao Youxiang met with Ye Myint for 30 minutes but no solution regarding the BGF was reached. The UWSA did not accept the Burmese government's BGF proposal but opted to “not answer” rather than reply no.
Soe Than said, “You can never trust the SPDC. They always negotiate while holding a sword behind their back.”
Burma's ethnic Wa population is estimated at nearly one million and strives to maintain its army and autonomy over its own ethnic region, but has expressed no desire leave the federal system and secede from Burma.
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The Irrawaddy - Govt Army Accused of Planting Landmines around Kachin Church
By SAW YAN NAING Monday, September 5, 2011
Kachin Christians have accused Burma's armed forces of abusing their religious rights after government troops seized control of a church in Kachin State and turned it into a military outpost, complete with fortifications, trenches and landmines, according to local sources.
The church, in the village of Katsu in Waimaw Township, was commandeered by the Burmese army last month amid an ongoing armed conflict with the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), a former ceasefire group that resumed hostilities with government troops on June 9.
On Aug 26, members of the Katsu Kachin Baptist Church sent a letter of complaint to the chief minister of Kachin State saying that government troops from Infantry Battalion (IB) 58 and IB 318 had banned them from entering the church since Aug 13.
“They [the government army] took over the church in Katsu village and started fortifying it. They have banned local villagers from going to the church or traveling around the area,” said Mai Li Awng, a spokesperson for a local Kachin relief group called Wun Tawng Ningtwey (“Light for Kachin People”).
“I don't think they should be allowed to do this because the church is a religious site, and has nothing to do with politics. It's not appropriate to take over a church and turn it into a military base. It's a human rights abuse,” she added.
Naw La, a Kachin activist, said that there has been an increase in cases of extortion, torture and looting in Katsu since fighting between the KIA and government troops began in June. Clashes occur near Katsu almost every day, he said.
The government troops have also taken over houses abandoned by local villagers. Katsu has around 100 houses and a population of about 1,000, although most have fled the area since fighting began.
The commanders of IB 58 and IB 318 had earlier rejected an appeal made by the church members on Aug 16 that called for the removal of landmines planted in the church compound, as well as in a schoolyard and along several main roads.
In their letter, the church members wrote: “We the members of the Katsu Baptist Church are facing difficulties in worshiping the God we believe in.”
In the letter, addressed to Kachin State Chief Minister La John Ngan Hsai, the church called for the removal of the mines.
“We therefore respectfully would like to urge the Kachin State Chief Minister to remove the mines, give us the normal situation around the church as before and the right to travel safely to farms and paddy fields by taking necessary actions,” read the letter.
An estimated 20,000 Kachin civilians have so far been displaced by the conflict, many of them seeking refuge on the Sino-Burmese border and in the city of Laiza, where the KIA is based, according to Kachin relief groups.
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Suu Kyi attends Tagore’s 150th anniversary celebration at Indian embassy
Monday, 05 September 2011 22:13 Ko Pauk
Rangoon (Mizzima) – Aung San Suu Kyi made a special visit to the Indian embassy in Rangoon on Monday evening for the 150th anniversary celebration of Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1913.
This marks the first ever visit to the Indan embassy by Suu Kyi, who attended high school and graduated from college in India.
The New Delhi-based National Coalition Government of Burma (NCGUB) exile government minister Dr. Tint Swe said, “The visit by a key leader of the Burmese democracy movement to a major function of India is really significant. I assume this will help in enhancing long-term bilateral relationship between the two countries.”
Inviting Suu Kyi to the function would reflect well on the Indian government’s “Look East” policy that has been criticized by the international community, he said.
“We can say this is a significant step in bilateral relations,” he said.
Diplomats from other foreign missions have often attended functions held at the NLD party headquarters in Rangoon, but the Indian embassy never sent its diplomats to the functions, NLD party spokesman Ohn Kyaing said.
Indian Foreign Ministry Secretary Ms. Nirupama Rao met Aung San Suu Kyi for about an hour while the Indian foreign minister visited Burma in June. Both sides said that they wished to make relationship between two countries frank and friendly.
The Indian embassy in Burma has organized various events to honour Tagore including a symposium on his philosophy and art at Rangoon University and an Arts Camp at the embassy.
Suu Kyi has deep relations with India. She graduated from Lady Shri Ram College in 1964. She received the Jawalhala Nehru International Understanding Prize in 1993, the Rajiv Gandhi prize in 1996, the Outstanding Student of Delhi University in 1997 and the Subbhas Chandra Bose Prize in 2007.
In a video message sent during her 66th birthday celebrations on June 19, she said that she wished to see India stand in accord with her status as the largest democracy in the world.
Tagore and Burma
Tagore visited Burma three times during the colonial period. He visited Shwedagon Pagoda on May 5, 1916, and Indians in Rangoon celebrated his birthday on May 8 that year at Jubilee Hall in Rangoon. He attended the “Bengali Literature Conference” held in Rangoon on March 24, 1924, and stayed in Rangoon for four days. An inscription engraved in both Burmese and English marks his visit to a building at No. 392-396 Merchant Street, Rangoon, on the east wall of “Guardian Magazine.” He also visited Burma from October 22-24, 1927, for the Dewali Festival.
During his first visit, he noted that Indians were a majority and Burmese were a minority in Rangoon. He wrote, “Burma did not look like Burma when I reached there. Rangoon just exists on a map and it’s as if it didn’t really exist on the ground. In other words, the city does not look like a tree growing from the ground, it looks like a bubble drifting in the water.”
Admirers of Tagore’s literature established the “Burma- Tagore Association” in 1952. Burmese writer Paragu translated at least five books by Tagore. Many of his poems and stories were translated by other writers including Maung Phyu, Zaw Gyi, Min Thu Wun, Mya Than Tint, Myint Soe Hlaing and Hein Latt.
The well-known works of Tagore in Burmese are Gitanjali, Gardener, Stray Birds, and Picking Fruits and Sitra.
Gitanjali (Verse No. 35):
“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way in the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.”
The first Asian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), wrote more than 3,000 poems and songs. He wrote many plays, a ballet, an opera, stage plays, shadow plays and other works He also wrote many short stories, novellas, essays and articles in both his mother tongue Bengali and English. He was also a musician who wrote many songs, and he created more than 400 paintings and exhibited them in France, England, Germany and Russia. He established the “Santiniketan” school and worked to improve education standards.
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Burmese Supreme Court to be asked to order halt to Myitsone Dam project
Monday, 05 September 2011 12:18 Tun Tun
New Delhi (Mizzima) - A group of politicians will ask the Burmese Supreme Court to issue an injunction to stop work on the Myitsone Dam project on the Irrawaddy River and to reveal more information about the dam project.
Candidates who ran in the 2010 election including Bauk Ja and Min Aung of the National Democratic Force; Aung Myo Oo of Peace and Diversity Party; former Democracy Party (Myanmar) candidate Soe Kyi; and independent candidate Win Cho said they plan to file the lawsuit as soon as the current session of Parliament ends, if more information is not made available.
“How much benefit would the Myitsone Dam bring to our citizens? How will the dam adversely affect the people?” said Win Cho.
“It’s certain that many citizens will be adversely affected by the dams. But, we don’t know exactly how much benefit they would bring. We know as much as the exile media can make available. We want to know more about it.”
The electoral candidates said that they decided to file a lawsuit because the authorities had not disclosed enough information, and they feared the dam would lead to the extinction of the Irrawaddy River.
The 2008 Constitution gives citizens the right to sue the Union government in the Supreme Court. In cases of a citizen’s suit, the Supreme Court can issue a writ of habeas corpus, writ of mandamus, writ of prohibition, writ of quo warranto or writ of certiorari.
The suit will ask the court to issue a writ of prohibition and a writ of quo warranto. A writ of prohibition is an order to halt work or actions. A writ of quo warranto is an order to show the authority on which work or actions are based.
“If MPs cannot get real information about the Myitsone Dam construction and the possibility of the extinction of Irrawaddy River before the parliament ends, we will file suit,” Win Cho said.
After the Myitsone dam project is completed, 6,000 megawatts of electricity will be generated and the bulk of the electricity will be sold to China, according to reports. Five dams are planned for the Malikha River.
China Power Investment Corporation (CPI) is leading the construction and financing of the dam projects and Burma’s state power utility Myanma Electric Power Enterprise, the Steven Law and the Asia World companies are also involved in the projects.
The area of the Myitsone dam project is 18,000 square miles. The height of the dam is 152 meters (500 feet) and the height of the upper reservoir is 299 meters (980 feet). The affected area of the dam is wider than the area of Singapore. Because of the dam’s impact, 15,000 people in villages are likely to be adversely affected.
In September, 1,600 people including prominent writers and artists signed a petition to urge President Thein Sein to stop the Myitsone Dam project. The petition was signed by “People who want the Irrawaddy to survive forever” and titled “An appeal urging a stop to the Myitsone dam project in order to prevent the Irrawaddy River from extinction and to avoid adverse effects on the Burmese citizens.”
“If the Irrawaddy River is extinct because of the Myitsone Dam, future generations will suffer,” Nu Nu, an 88-generation student who is an organizer of the petition, told Mizzima.
The petition urged the government to authorize international experts conduct research on the Myitsone Dam project to stop the construction during the research and to inform the public about it findings. A second petition with additional signatures will be sent in the coming weeks.
On August 11, opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi released an open letter, “Irrawaddy Appeal,” saying that the lack of sound planning, the failure to enforce necessary conservation laws and poor ecological awareness have created diverse problems for the country.
Kyaw Thu, the chairman of Free Funeral Service Society, who signed the petition, said: “The Irrawaddy River is the lifeblood of our country. If you are a good Burmese citizen, you have the responsibility to preserve the river.
“Constructing the dam…is very dangerous. We need to ensure that we do the things that will protect it and restore it to its original condition.”
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Over 100 Indian MPs call for release of Burmese political prisoners
Monday, 05 September 2011 19:53 Mizzima News
Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – Indian MPs have signed a letter to Burmese President Thein Sein urging the immediate release of political prisoners currently in prison in Burma.
More than 100 Indian MPs from various parties signed the letter, according to a press release issued by Ram Jethmalani, an MP and one of the organizers of the Parliamentarians’ Forum for Democracy in Burma. The MPs who signed the petition are from both ruling parties and opposition parties. The main ruling party is the Congress Party while the main opposition party is the Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP.
The forum will hold a press conference at the Press Club of India in New Delhi on Tuesday in which they will support the call by Burmese opposition leader and and Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi for the release of Burma's political prisoners and will announce the sending of the signed letter to President Thein Sein.
There are still 1,995 political prisoners languishing in prisons in Burma. They have been kept in deplorable and inhuman conditions, according to the forum. Many of them have been sentenced to 65 years and more of rigorous imprisonment, and have little hope of ever leaving prison.
The release of Aung San Syu Kyi by the new government has been a welcome move, according to the forum. However, her release alone does not signify Burma’s transition to democracy. If the new government is serious about its intention of promoting democracy, human rights and the rule of law in Burma then it is incumbent upon the new government of Burma to release all the other political prisoners too, who constitute no other threat than that of being the voice of dissent, said the lawmakers.
The Indian parliamentarians “hope to see a genuine democratic system in Burma and, as the first step towards peace and reconciliation in Burma, we call upon the President and the government of Burma to release all political prisoners in the country. Their release will be a positive step in the spirit of conciliation and dialogue that Burma now needs.”
The Indian Parliamentarians’ Forum for Democracy in Burma was established in 2005 (http://www.indoburmanews.net/documents/movements) and currently has 18 MPs (across parties).
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DVB News - Nargis naval stand off?
Published: 5 September 2011
According to a newly leaked ‘wikileak cable’ Maung Aye, at the time junta number-2 was under the impression that the Russians would send three war ships to Burmese waters in response to the presence of US Navy vessels in the Bay of Bengal, in the aftermath of cyclone Nargis.
“Maung Aye reportedly went on a tirade regarding “American warships in the Delta” and claimed that after a Chinese appeal to the U.S. had failed to remove them, the Russians had threatened to send three of their own ships in response,” the cable says.
The cable, which is dated 11 June 2008, also states that Maung Aye claimed that 300,000 people had been killed by the cyclone. According to the cable the ‘vice senior general’ told this to government business crony, Tay Za. The information was then relayed by Tay Za’s older brother, Thiha to the owner of the “business consortium” Myanmar Egress, Nay Win Maung.
Maung Aye, according to the cable was so incensed by coverage of the disaster that he ordered the sealing off of the delta region and is quoted in the cable saying that the death toll would be released; “over his dead body.”
The 300,000 figure compares with official estimates which are closer to 150,000. The cable’s figure would put Nargis in the league with the deadliest on record, alongside the lower estimates for Cyclone Bhola, which struck Bangladesh in 1971.
The source, Nay Win Maung claimed to US diplomats to be close to Tay Za’s older brother, Thiha. While his group, Myanmar Egress, which receives EU funding, was said in another cable to have imported diesel fuel, which it sold at market rates in the aftermath of the cyclone.
Thiha for his part is believed by sources to have been involved in the construction of secretive tunnels which were allegedly built with North Korean help.
Nay Win Maung meanwhile also told the US embassy that two factions emerged in response to the cyclone, in which Maung Aye and current vice president Tin Aung Myint Oo formed a hard line faction. According to the cable they became more “aggressive” as information about the devastation leaked out. Nay Win Maung is quoted as describing vice President Tin Aung Myint Oo as a “cowboy”.
However; “Nay Win Maung said it was Prime Minister Thein Sein who had appealed directly to Than Shwe to secure the Senior General’s permission to allow international and
humanitarian staff to travel to the affected areas.”
He further described Thein Sein and head of the USDP, Htay Oo as “smart” and “pragmatic”.
The cable suggests meanwhile that Tin Aung Myint Oo’s rise, was an intentional policy of Than Shwe’s, in order to divide him from fellow “hard liner,” Maung Aye. Who it is believed may have formed a hard line faction, perhaps against the senior general.
The US offered to deliver aid via their naval vessels to the delta, which induced fears that the US would invade in similar fashion to their invasion of Iraq.
Maung Aye, who is now retired, is believed to be in poor health and be a heavy drinker, which has resulted in him being viewed as some what unreliable. He is roundly described as a hard line traditionalist who opposed even tactical signs of softening from the regime, such as cease fires with armed ethnic groups in the 1990′s and warmer relations with ASEAN countries.
However doubts will surely remain about the source of the information. Burma scholar Bertil Lintner described the possibility of a Russian naval presence as “impossible,” whilst stating that the information was probably “opportunism” on the part of Nay Win Maung; as he attempted to gain favour with the US embassy.
However Maung Aye was believed to have had strong ties with Russia, leading the most senior delegation to the country in 2006 since the sixties. The trip was allegedly responsible for spearheading Russian training of Burmese intelligence officials and physicists. This trip also allegedly included discussions of a weapons deal, with Maung Aye allegedly more fond of Russian military equipment than Chinese.
The most recent cables form part of an estimated 250,000 leaked cables that wikileaks released simultaneously, there are believed to be over 3,000 relating to Burma.
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ေတာ္လွန္ေရးသီခ်င္းမ်ား(Politics Song)
Wednesday, 7 September 2011
BURMA RELATED NEWS - SEPTEMBER 03-05, 2011
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