4 November 2011
Amnesty International - Myanmar political prisoners held in dog cells and denied water
The Myanmar authorities must act immediately to end the ill-treatment of some15 political prisoners in Yangon’s Insein Prison, where they have been denied water and some reportedly held in “dog” cells, Amnesty International said today.
The prisoners started a hunger strike on 26 October in protest over being denied the reductions in their sentences which are allowed to criminal convicts. The following day, prison authorities began denying the hunger-strikers drinking water, putting them at risk of death from dehydration. This continued until at least 2 November.
Two of the prisoners were sent to hospital on Tuesday, while eight of the prisoners have been held in cells designed to hold dogs, local sources say.
“Depriving prisoners of drinking water as a punishment for participating in a hunger strike is deeply inhumane. What’s more, by treating the prisoners in this manner, the authorities in Myanmar are violating international law. They must immediately provide them with adequate drinking water and remove the eight from the dog cells,” said Donna Guest, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for Asia.
“They should also initiate an independent investigation into reports that some of the prisoners are being held in such cells, she said.
The hunger strikers have also been denied any visits, medicine, food or letters from their families.
The dog cells at Insein Prison are about 10 feet in length and seven feet wide, windowless and soundproof. There is generally no proper sanitation, no bed and no mats on the floor.
In Myanmar, political prisoners are regularly charged under vaguely worded laws, mostly relating to security or public order concerns, which allow excessively broad interpretation by the authorities.
Prison conditions in Myanmar fall far short of many international standards. Food, water and medical care are insufficient; political prisoners are often held far away from their families; and many have been subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, including prolonged solitary confinement.
While just over 300 political prisoners have been released this year, the majority of those detained in recent years remain behind bars.
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UN News Centre - Sustaining recent initiatives could set Myanmar on a new course – UN envoy
4 November 2011 – The United Nations envoy for Myanmar today called on the authorities to keep up the momentum of recent initiatives to strengthen national unity and advance dialogue and reconciliation, stressing the ‘historic opportunity’ they have to set the country on a new path.
This was the third visit since last year’s election for Special Adviser Vijay Nambiar and the second since the establishment of a new Government seven months ago. It also comes amid the ongoing dialogue between the Government and pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and the release last month of a significant number of detainees.
“At this juncture, it is of crucial importance, for Myanmar’s regional and global standing, to maintain the positive momentum that these initiatives have generated,” Mr. Nambiar, who is also Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Chief of Staff, said in a statement issued in Yangon at the end of his five-day visit.
He said the UN strongly encourages the continuation of such efforts as well as the reform agenda led by President Thein Sein as the best way to strengthen domestic and international confidence in Myanmar’s commitment to a reform process that is incremental, systematic and sustainable.
“In particular, we encourage all concerned to build on the steps taken thus far through an inclusive and broad-based political process to strengthen national unity,” said the envoy.
“The release of the remaining political prisoners as part of the recent amnesty process and the enactment of the proposed amendments to the political party registration law are steps that can and should be taken as a matter of priority. Continuous dialogue is also needed to bring about peace and development in border areas.
“If sustained, these and other efforts offer a historic opportunity to set the country on a course that can fulfil the promises made to the people of Myanmar,” he stressed.
During his visit, Mr. Nambiar met with a number of Government officials in Naypyitaw, including Vice-President U Tin Aung Myint Oo, as well as with the Union Peacemaking Group and with the Union Election Commission.
In Mandalay and in Pathein, he was received by the Chief Ministers of Mandalay region and Irrawaddy region, respectively, and in Yangon, he met with Ms. Suu Kyi at her residence.
He also met with representatives of several political parties and with civil society groups, as well as with the National Human Rights Commission.
Mr. Nambiar also participated earlier this week in the first Green Economy Green Growth conference, which he said showed that it is now possible for a wide range of actors to come together to openly discuss common concerns.
“It is an indicator of the direction in which Myanmar must continue to move if its democratic transition process is to succeed and if the country is to contribute to the global agenda by effectively addressing such concerns at home,” he stated.
He told the gathering of business leaders, academics, government officials, civil society groups and private citizens that in Myanmar, as elsewhere, green growth is an integral part of efforts to protect the environment while creating decent jobs, reducing poverty and inequality, and achieving globally agreed development targets.
“As Myanmar opens up to a changing world, the green growth agenda can help drive the advancement of sustainable development: it is good business – good politics – and good for society,” he stated.
The Special Adviser also addressed a ceremony yesterday to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the swearing-in of U Thant, a “great son of Myanmar” who served as the third Secretary-General of the UN.
“It is for the Government and people of Myanmar to maximize opportunities and to lead the changes they want to see for their country,” said Mr. Nambiar. “We in the United Nations wish and want Myanmar to succeed. But it has to be a success that is inclusive and includes all elements in the country to the extent that we can help facilitate the efforts which are essentially nationally owned.”
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Myanmar eases limits on party membership
AP – 13 mins ago
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Myanmar's president signed a revised law on political parties on Friday in an apparent attempt to encourage Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy to accept the political system and reregister as a party.
President Thein Sein signed the amendments to the Political Party Registration Law as senior U.S. diplomats were ending a visit to encourage his government to push forward with democratic reforms.
If the National League for Democracy reregisters as a legal party, it could join upcoming but still unscheduled by-elections which would be the first electoral test of its popularity in more than two decades.
Bringing Suu Kyi's party back into the fold would also give the government greater legitimacy at home and abroad.
The group was delisted as a political party last year after it refused to register for November 2010 elections, saying they were being held under undemocratic conditions.
The amendments of the party law signed by Thein Sein on Friday alter three areas of the party law to accommodate Suu Kyi and her party.
The law, originally enacted in March last year by the previous military junta, prohibited anyone who has been convicted of a crime from being a member of a political party. Suu Kyi had been convicted on a trumped-up charge, and would have had to leave the party she helped found. The clause has now been dropped, clearing the way for former political prisoners to engage in politics.
Another article was amended to say that registered parties shall "respect and abide" by the constitution rather than "safeguard" it. The change was evidently made to accommodate criticisms of the charter by Suu Kyi's group without making them illegal.
A third change says parties need to run only a minimum of three candidates in by-elections, making it easier for smaller parties to participate.
"Now that the law has been passed, we will hold a meeting to decide whether or not we will register," the spokesman of Suu Kyi's group, Nyan Win, told The Associated Press. Nyan Win said the amendments were in line with the group's wishes.
The junta that ruled Myanmar until handing over power to the current elected military-backed government in March this year enacted a constitution and other laws with provisions aimed at limiting Suu Kyi's political activities, fearing her influence. Her party overwhelming won a 1990 general election, but the army refused to had over power, instead repressing Suu Kyi and other democracy activists.
The U.S. and other Western countries imposed political and economic sanctions against the junta for its failure to hand over power and its poor human rights record.
The elections last November gave an army-backed party a huge majority in Parliament, and the constitution contains provisions that ensure the continued domination of the armed forces.
However, Thein Sein, who was the junta's prime minister, has instituted a series of small reforms to encourage political reconciliation, including an easing of censorship and the opening of a dialogue with Suu Kyi.
At the same time, the Obama administration has sought to engage the government, shifting away from the previous U.S. policy of shunning it.
U.S. special envoy to Myanmar Derek Mitchell told reporters in Yangon on Friday that Thein Sein's government has taken positive steps and that Washington views the release of political prisoners and bringing the National League for Democracy into the political system as necessary reforms.
"We are thinking very actively about how we can support reform by our actions as we see the government taking those concrete steps," he said. He said the U.S. "would love to respond in kind" and was consulting closely with the government.
The U.S. could gradually ease its sanctions against Myanmar and allow aid from multilateral lending institutions such as the World Bank, over which it has exercised a veto.
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November 04, 2011
VOA News - Imprisoned Burmese Uprising Leader Reported in Poor Health
Danielle Bernstein | Bangkok
Amnesty International says an imprisoned Burmese monk and a key leader in the country's 2007 anti-government protests known as the "Saffron Revolution," is seriously ill. Despite Burmese political reforms welcomed by rights groups and western nations, some 2,000 political prisoners remain behind bars.
U Gambira was the leader of the All Burma Monks' Alliance, a key group involved in the September 2007 uprising against the government. After organizing weeks of demonstrations, he escaped the government crackdown on the protests and went into hiding. He was arrested in November and has been in prison ever since.
Last month, there were rumors that he had been released along with nearly 200 other political prisoners as part of a broader amnesty. But U Gambira remains in Kale prison and Amnesty International says he is now seriously ill and is being denied adequate medical attention.
The London-based rights group quoted sources close to U Gambira as saying he has been suffering injuries from torture in April 2009, when he was reportedly shackled and beaten on the head with a stick. People who have visited him say he has scars around his eyes and has difficulty speaking.
Benjamin Zawacki, Burma researcher for Amnesty International, says the monk requires urgent medical attention.
"His health is deteriorating at a very very rapid rate," explained Zawacki. "He had no major preexisting health conditions, and his health at the current time is extremely alarming. A number of political prisoners have died in the custody of security forces and prison system and Myanmar and so that possibility can't be ruled out."
Amnesty says prison guards are treating him with sedatives instead of administering proper medical care. Researchers say one former prison official has appealed to government authorities for medical treatment.
October's prisoner amnesty included political prisoners such as the popular comedian Zarganar and political activist Su Su Nway, but international rights groups decried the releases as inadequate.
Amnesty’s Zawacki says the continued ill-treatment of U Gambira contrasts the recent economic and political reforms hailed as progress in the country.
In an interview with VOA's Burmese Service, Burma's Information Minister Kyaw San said authorities have already released 16,000 prisoners as part of mass amnesties. However he followed a longstanding government policy of refusing to acknowledge the existence of any political prisoners.
He says today there are prisoners in Burma, but they are there because they broke the law. That is why they are in prison. However, he says, among those prisoners there might be some who were involved in politics. He says the president is kind enough to consider them on a case-by-case basis and release them as he sees fit.
Burmese officials have launched a series of political and economic reforms aimed at improving their bid to chair the 10-member ASEAN bloc in 2014. This month ASEAN members are meeting in Bali and will decide on Burma’s bid. Winning the rotating chairmanship would give the government greater international legitimacy.
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Mail & Guardian - Burma ambassador's questionable past
MARINA SIMPSON & LIONEL FAULL
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA - Nov 04 2011 00:00
A Mail & Guardian investigation has raised serious concerns about the past life of Burma's ambassador to South Africa, Myint Naung.
Local and international human rights activists believe there is evidence to suggest that he may be a former brigadier general whose name has been linked to a wave of human rights abuses involving ethnic Karen villagers in the eastern part of Burma and a brutal attack on a Buddhist monastery in Rangoon in 2007 (see "The Karen people" below).
They are calling on the South African government to scrutinise the ambassador's credentials and, if necessary, expel him.
"With the decades of well-documented atrocities in Karen state, any risk that South Africa could be harbouring war criminals should be taken seriously," said political analyst Kiru Naidoo. "If there is even a hint of war crimes, an offending ambassador should be marched out of the country."
In March this year, Burma's state media reported that Myint Naung had been appointed ambassador to South Africa. In July, he presented his credentials to President Jacob Zuma at a public ceremony at State House.
The links
In August last year, Irrawaddy news magazine, a Burmese exile publication, reported that a Brigadier General Myint Naung was one of several senior military figures who had been transferred to Burma's ministry of foreign affairs pending their appointment to Burmese embassies abroad.
The report said Myint Naung was based in Karen state and referred to him as the principal of Bayinnaung military academy.
Members of South Africa's Burmese community, who asked not to be named, said: "It is well known that he is a senior military man. It was confirmed by his officials. Even his father-in-law, who visited South Africa a month ago, was an ex-general."
One source described a conversation with the ambassador at an embassy reception at which Myint Naung reportedly said that his children's education had suffered because "he was usually away at shei-dan [the frontline or battle zone]".
The ambassador's wife, Swe Swe Thein, has the same name as the wife of the brigadier general and both men are "crazy" about golf.
Access to information
However, the M&G hit a stumbling block when it tried to obtain a copy of the ambassador's credentials from South Africa's department of international relations and co-operation. At the time of going to press, and after repeated requests, the M&G had still not received the requested information or any official explanation of why it could not be provided.
"As far as we can tell, there's no sensible reason for this," said Right2Know campaign co-ordinator Murray Hunter.
"You can't make public information un-public. It's like trying to put toothpaste back into the tube. It's just one small example among countless others of how South African officials seem to actively fear information."
The Burmese embassy in Pretoria was equally reluctant to send a copy of the ambassador's credentials or to answer questions about his alleged military background.
The embassy also refused a request for a face-to-face interview on the grounds that South Africa is the ambassador's "first posting" and he would therefore prefer to respond by email.
The M&G sent two sets of questions over an eight-day period but no further response was forthcoming.
Camouflages or Calvins?
If the ambassador is a former brigadier general, it would not come as a surprise to most Burma-watchers, even though the country is allegedly on the "road to democracy".
"The generals who have ruled Burma for 50 years have simply swopped their camouflages for Calvins. While there has been a recent positive shift in their thinking, free political activity is still not possible," said Naidoo.
Mark Farmaner, the director of Burma Campaign UK, agreed: "Burma's government has a civilian face, but the president and most ministers are all recently retired military men and they continue to appoint ex-military figures to key positions, including as ambassadors" he said.
"Dictatorship is dictatorship, whether it be military or civilian, but the international community seems to think that a civilian dictatorship is an improvement on a military one."
For Farmaner, it is not just a question of Myint Naung's possible military background but also of the deeper implications if it is proved that he is indeed Brigadier General Myint Naung.
"Any military commander who has served in Karen state could be linked to war crimes and crimes against humanity. The South African government should not be accepting possible war criminals as ambassadors," Farmaner said.
Documented human rights abuses
The M&G has seen documentation compiled by the Karen Human Rights Group detailing a range of human rights abuses carried out by military operation command #4 during the time Brigadier General Myint Naung is believed to have been in charge. It includes many attacks on displaced villagers and the destruction of homes, schools and agriculture.
"We believe that any state receiving diplomats who previously served in the Tatmadaw [Burma army] should make basic inquiries regarding their service history," said Matt Finch, spokesperson for the human rights group.
"In the case of Brigadier General Myint Naung, publicly available information indicates he may have served as a commanding officer for military operations command #4 during periods when we documented the unit committing serious violations of international humanitarian law in rural eastern Burma."
Independent Burmese media -- including a journalist who reported secretly from inside the country -- also claim that Brigadier General Myint Naung was also behind a brutal attack on Buddhist monks at Ngwe Kyar Yan monastery in 2007.
The attack, they say, was part of the military regime's crackdown on peaceful protesters after the Saffron Revolution, in which hundreds of thousands of monks and civilians marched through Burma's cities to demand democratic change.
Precedent
Following the 2007 crackdown, the Australian government rejected an army general the Burmese authorities had appointed as ambassador to Canberra.
"We made it clear to the Burmese that under no circumstances were we going to have somebody from their military regime as an ambassador here in Australia," Reuters quoted Foreign Minister Alexander Downer as saying.
Burma's exiled prime minister, Sein Win, who is a cousin of Burmese Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, told the M&G that he supported Australia's decision. But he stopped short of asking South Africa to follow suit because "it would be undiplomatic".
"We wish that each government [would] make such a move on its own without us requesting it," he said.
Naidoo isn't confident that this will happen. He described South Africa's policy on Burma as "a maze of confusion", pointing out that "South African support gives the generals the legitimacy they desperately crave".
"Surely the land of Mandela, Tambo and Biko should be more discerning about its friends," he said.
The Karen people
The Karen people live in south-east Burma, along the Thai border, and are the country's second-largest ethnic group.
Their struggle for independence started in the 1940s, while Burma was still under British colonial rule.
The Karen National Liberation Army and other groups have fought the Burmese government since 1949 in the world's longest-running civil war.
Organisations including the United Nations, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Karen Human Rights Group have documented human rights abuses in Karen state for many years.
Their reports speak of forced labour, sexual assault, the destruction of villages and agriculture, recruitment of child soldiers, summary execution, and the use of civilians as "human mine-sweepers".
Their documentation shows that the vast majority of these abuses have been perpetrated by the Burmese military.
Thai-Burma border relief organisations estimate that nearly half a million Karen have been internally displaced, and another 160 000 live in refugee camps in Thailand.
HRW's Asia director, Brad Adams, says: "While the world has rightly condemned the treatment of Aung San Suu Kyi and the lack of democracy, it needs also to focus on the Burmese army's brutal displacement of the Karen and other ethnic minorities." -- Marina Simpson & Lionel Faull
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November 04, 2011 11:06 AM
Indonesia Ranks 124 In UNDP Human Development Index
By Ahmad Fuad Yahya
JAKARTA, Nov 4 (Bernama) -- Indonesia has been ranked 124 in the Human Development Index (HDI) out of 187 countries surveyed, according to the 2011 Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
Among the 10-member countries of Asean, the republic fared better than Vietnam (128th), Laos (138th), Cambodia (139th) and Myanmar (149th) but was behind the four other founding member countries.
Leading the list of Asean countries is Singapore, which is ranked 26th, followed by Brunei (33rd), Malaysia (61st), Thailand (103rd) and the Philippines (112th).
HDI considered economic development and the quality of human resources, which are directly related to quality education and healthcare.
Among Asean's founding member countries, also known as the Asean-5, Singapore recorded the fastest economic growth, between 1989 and 2009 (6.73 per cent), followed by Malaysia (6.15 per cent), Indonesia (5.16 per cent), Thailand (5.02 per cent) and the Philippines (3.79 per cent).
Last year, Indonesia was one of the 10 countries noted for the most progress over the previous 20-year period by the HDI survey.
Indonesia's HDI increased by 54 per cent between 1980 and 2010 as a result of a leap in life expectancy from 54 to 71 years and the per capita income rose 180 per cent to US$3,957.
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Nov 5, 2011
Asia Times Online - Deadly fog on the Mekong
By Michael Winchester
The early October massacre of 13 Chinese barge crew on the Mekong River near the tri-border of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar has thrust the lawless region's problem of criminality and drug trafficking once again into brutal relief. The killings underscored the failure of regional states to cooperate in safeguarding river traffic despite repeated warning signs over recent years in the shape of attacks on shipping, protection rackets and kidnap for ransom incidents.
Embarrassingly for Thailand's government, already all but overwhelmed by a national flood disaster, the latest killings were finally tied to a rogue unit of the Royal Thai Army (RTA) apparently caught up in the web of corruption spawned by narcotic trafficking along the kingdom's northern border.
Exactly how Bangkok and Beijing settle a case which has received widespread publicity - and prompted considerable popular anger in China - remains to be seen. But on this occasion, as in the past, it is unlikely that efforts to cobble together improved security cooperation in the form of joint river patrols and intelligence exchanges will have much impact on either narcotics trafficking or the rampant official corruption it encourages.
Even before the bodies of the dead Chinese boatmen had been retrieved from the river, the fog of disinformation which swiftly descended on the circumstances of the massacre suggested that clumsy efforts at a cover-up were already underway. And predictably enough, Thai press reports dutifully quoting local officials served to amplify the confusion rather than clarify it.
Initially the only undisputed facts to emerge were that on the afternoon of October 5 the two Chinese barges, the Hua Ping carrying fuel oil and the Yu Xing 8 carrying garlic and apples, were brought into the port of Chiang Saen in Chiang Rai province just south of the Golden Triangle tri-border area by Thai authorities.
On the deck of one vessel was the body of a man, later identified as a crew member, who had been shot dead and was found with a Kalashnikov-type assault rifle beside him. Found in sacks divided between both vessels was a shipment of 920,000 methamphetamine, or ya ba, tablets worth an estimated 46 million baht (US$1.5 million).
Over the following days, the bodies of 12 other crew members, including two female cooks, were found washed ashore or floating in the river. Most had been blind-folded and gagged with duct tape, hand-cuffed and shot. By the time the last body, that of Yang Deyi, captain of the Yuxing 8, was retrieved some 10 days after the attack, the international repercussions of the incident were all too clear.
A delegation headed by Guo Shaochun, deputy director-general of the Department of Consular Affairs in the Chinese Foreign Ministry, had already arrived in Chiang Rai to join Chinese diplomats from Bangkok and Chiang Mai and assist the Thai police in an investigation that cynical observers believed might otherwise have proved inconclusive.
Significantly in the light of later developments, the first account of what had occurred was floated by senior Thai officers of the RTA Third Army's Pha Muang Task Force (PMTF), a front-line border security force tasked primarily with stemming the flood of narcotics into the kingdom from Myanmar's Shan State.
According to this version of events, the barges had been hi-jacked and the crew killed north of the Thai border where the river flows between Myanmar and Laos by "drug smugglers" who were planning to use the vessels to smuggle drugs into Thailand.
As they entered Thai waters around 1:30 pm on October 5, they were intercepted by a PMTF unit "acting on a tip-off". A fire-fight reportedly lasting half an hour between the PMTF and the smugglers erupted during which it appeared the dead man on the deck had been shot and killed while all his associates escaped overboard.
Leaps in logic
Bolstering this version of events was the person of Naw Kham, an already notorious former Myanmar militia commander with a long history of drug trafficking, extortion and river piracy - much of it directed against Chinese vessels plying the Mekong. Operating between the tri-border and the Lao village Xiang Kok to the north, the 51-year-old Shan bandit and his band of 30 to 50 hill-tribe gunmen have successfully evaded capture for years moving easily between the remote Lao, Myanmar and Thai banks of the river seldom disturbed by local security officials.
Even to a casual observer, let alone hardnosed Chinese investigators, this tale suffered from two major flaws, however. First, it was never explained why the pirates purportedly fleeing in the water - presumably with the rifles they had used in the fire-fight, as these were not found on the barges - were neither captured nor shot by Thai forces equipped with at least one speedboat.
Secondly, and more basically, it was unclear why drug smugglers with access to their own speedboats needed to seize the barges in the first place and would find it necessary to transport drugs into Thailand on much larger, slower and more conspicuous Chinese vessels. The failure in broad daylight of Chinese barges crewed by hijackers to dock at Chiang Saen might have been expected to arouse the suspicion of Thai port authorities.
Interestingly, in the days that followed the widely-reported battle on the river morphed slowly into a different account in which the two barges were found drifting down river after a violent encounter much further north. On October 11 the New York Times reported that China was suspending passenger and cargo traffic on the river after the vessels were found "adrift" by Thai border police carrying a single corpse and the narcotics.
On October 13 a ranking police officer in Chiang Saen interviewed by Asia Times Online insisted emphatically that there had been no clash in Thai waters.
An alternative explanation of events that attempted to impose some logical coherence on the known facts had river pirates targeting vessels which they knew to be carrying narcotics south to Thailand, killing one armed crewman in a fire-fight and summarily executing the rest. And, indeed, the possibility that some - if not necessarily all - of the Chinese crew might have been less than innocent actors in the drama has been a real one from the start.
Many Chinese barges moving south to Thailand from the Chinese river ports of Si Mao or Jing Hong routinely dock at the Myanmar port of Sop Lui not far south of the Chinese border where the Lui River flows into the Mekong. A straggling village of ramshackle shops, restaurants and brothels, Sop Lui is situated at the end of the road from Mong La, "capital" of Shan State's Special Region 4 in Myanmar.
Its large concrete wharves constitute the only Mekong port serving not only Special Region 4, administered by former insurgents of the National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA), but also the far larger Special Region 2 to the west run by the United Wa State Army (UWSA). Sop Lui has grown as a key transit point for narcotics shipped out of the two special regions, and a range of other products - notably second-hand Japanese motor vehicles, fuel and, on occasion, weapons - shipped in.
Once elements of the now-defunct Communist Party of Burma (CPB), the NDAA and its ally the UWSA have maintained uneasy ceasefire agreements with Myanmar's military since 1989. But in the last two years Myanmar government demands that the former rebels subordinate their forces to central control and mounting military tension have increased the strategic importance of access to the Mekong. Sop Lui and the river today offer a far safer conduit for moving narcotics south to Thailand than land routes which cross military front lines and multiple Myanmar government road check points where bribes no longer guarantee the cooperation of the past.
Extenuating circumstances
Nonetheless, the theory of a pirate attack on barges known to be carrying narcotics still remained problematic. Not least, it failed to explain why the pirates would have left some or all of the valuable shipment they knew to be on board. Further, the cold-blooded slaughter of the entire crew, including women, was both unnecessary and out of character: in the past Naw Kham's men have preferred to release crews they have robbed or in the case of some Chinese take them hostages for ransom.
This fog of disinformation and speculation was swept aside on October 28 when nine PMTF soldiers - a major, a lieutenant and seven other-ranks - turned themselves into Thai police in Chiang Rai and were charged with murder and tampering with evidence. The nine have reportedly denied the charges but statements from senior Thai government officials, notably Deputy Prime Minister Chalerm Yubamrung, suggest the evidence against the soldiers is compelling.
For its part, China has said the case is "basically cracked". Chalerm has added that the Thai soldiers were acting "on an individual basis" rather than in their official military capacity. Meanwhile, a statement by RTA spokesman Colonel Sansern Kaewkamnerd cautioning against "rushing to judge" the case was also telling: he appeared to be pointing obliquely to extenuating circumstances rather than dismissing the charges outright.
If the police charges are supported by evidence, then there are arguably only two broad scenarios in which the PMTF units would have been operating in a rogue capacity. Both very probably involve the troops - described significantly by military sources as "long range patrol" special forces - operating in a covert or semi-covert role beyond Thailand's borders.
This would be nothing new: it is hardly a secret that for at least a decade Thai special forces have gathered intelligence and carried the war on drugs into the lawless southern Shan State where the Myanmar military has either been unable or unwilling to control and when necessary used force.
It is conceivable but highly unlikely that the unit seized two innocent Chinese vessels at random, brought narcotics on board with them, silenced the crew and then staged a "seizure" complete with one dead "smuggler." They might thus have emerged covered both with credit and also able to claim a cash reward made to counter-narcotics units based on the amount of narcotics seized. But the pay-off would hardly have been worth the trouble and sheer brutality. A fake seizure could have been staged on land at much less risk and with much less bloodshed.
Almost certainly closer to the truth is a scenario in which the troops targeted vessels which they knew on the basis of good intelligence to be carrying a shipment of narcotics from Sop Lui into Thailand. By definition such accurate intelligence would have come from a source working with the rogue RTA team with inside knowledge of the shipment and an interest in betraying the cartel moving it. Asia Times Online sources have heard several separate but unconfirmed reports all of which have implicated a wife of senior UWSA commander and indicted drugs-trafficker Wei Xuegang.
Complex relations
Given the complexity of the operation and the systematic brutality involved, one Chiang Mai-based analyst familiar with drug trafficking operations on both sides of the border was inclined to draw two conclusions. The first was that the original shipment was actually far greater than the 920,000 tablets finally retrieved at Chiang Saen and that the bulk of it was likely taken ashore either on the Lao or Myanmar bank well north of the tri-border area.
What was left was a credible minimum for which the Thai troops could claim credit and a cash reward in addition to a share of the loot. The second conclusion was that the systematically conducted slaughter allegedly carried out by the Thai troops was intended as a calculated and unmistakable message from one criminal group to another as much as a means of disposing of witnesses.
Because neither Thai nor Chinese police investigators are likely to release their findings, such conclusions can only be speculative. Indeed, it remains a decidedly open question whether the accused will ever face a court of law. Chinese government calls for justice and prosecution of those found guilty have now apparently come to rest at the door of the RTA, an institution long accustomed to the benefits of impunity while carrying out its operations.
The soldiers are being held in army custody and RTA commander General Prayuth Chan-ocha was quoted in the English-language Thai press saying the series of events before and after the attacks was "highly complicated" and that "when use of force is involved, there will be casualties." He said the Thai soldiers reported to police investigators in "good faith" and that it was "not fair" to report as fact that they had killed the men while the investigation was still pending, according to the report.
The situation is further complicated by the probability that the PMTF team, albeit in a rogue capacity, was operating beyond the nation's borders. In the light of China's far weightier political, economic and security interests in Thailand, it remains to be seen how hard Beijing will seek to push the RTA in the pursuit of justice.
It would be unsurprising if, as the murders slip from the news, a quiet out-of-court settlement sees Bangkok offering generous compensation payments to the families of the dead, while the RTA is spared the embarrassment of rogue soldiers being publicly arraigned. Such an arrangement would also spare China a public airing of its dirty linen, including possible revelations that Chinese-flagged vessels and at least some of their crew were involved in shipping large quantities of narcotics into Thailand.
China has already moved fast to use the incident to demand its southern neighbors - Thailand, Myanmar and Laos - cooperate more forcefully in implementing practical measures to ensure security along the Mekong where Sino-Thai trade was last year measured at 12 billion baht (US$387 million). On October 31, following a meeting in Beijing, Chinese Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu announced all four countries would establish a mechanism for joint river patrols and intelligence sharing.
It is possible that Chinese pressure and a flush of newfound resolve may finally prompt the hunting down of Naw Kham, a figure who has made the mistake of becoming a poster boy for lawlessness on the Mekong. For many local officials in all three countries on the Golden Triangle tri-border, the Shan river pirate may now be more of an embarrassing liability than a profitable asset.
In the longer term, however, the goals announced in Beijing will inevitably be constrained, if not buried, by three factors: entrenched drug-related official corruption; long-standing cross-border suspicions; and, in the case of Myanmar and Laos in particular, limited on-the-ground capacity.
China, the aggrieved party in the latest incident, will also need to confront a far broader problem if it seriously seeks to reduce the violent criminality along the Mekong: the future of Myanmar's Special Regions 2 and 4. Having emerged in the 1990s as regional centers for industrial-scale narcotics production and trafficking, these administrative black holes on China's south-western border owe their continued survival to Beijing's insistence on "border stability", which translates practically into facilitating cross-border investments and sales of weapons, fuel and other strategic goods.
To this extent, the narcotics-driven criminality and corruption spreading south along the Mekong and now impacting violently on Chinese citizens and commercial interests are in large measure the bitter fruit of China's own foreign policy decisions.
Michael Winchester is a journalist specializing in Southeast Asian affairs.
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Thu, Nov. 03 2011 11:14 AM EDT
The Christian Post - Burma Army Targets Christian Civilians in War on Insurgents
Troops attack churches in Kachin state conflict.
By Compass Direct News
A recent attack on Christians and church buildings by Burmese soldiers in Kachin state showed that Christian civilians are targeted in the military offensive against insurgents.
“Targeting of Christians is not unusual in Burma’s conflict zones,” Nawdin Lahpai, editor-in-chief of the Kachin News Group, told Compass by phone, referring to the Oct. 16 military firing at a church, detention of a priest and four parishioners, and burning of church property in Kachin state. “The incident reflects the long-time policy of the Buddhist-Burman-majority Burmese government, which discriminates against the ethnic Christian minority.”
About 90 percent of the roughly 56 million people in Burma (also known as Myanmar) are Buddhist, mostly from the Burman ethnic group. Ethnic Kachins – like six other ethnic minorities who live along the country’s borders with China, Thailand and India – have had armed and unarmed groups fighting for independence or autonomy from successive military-led regimes for decades.
Intense fighting between the Burma army and the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) began in June. But it’s not just the armed groups that are the target of Burmese troops, said the editor, a Kachin Christian.
In the Oct. 16 attack, about 150 soldiers from Light Infantry Battalion 438 stormed Nam San Yang village in the Daw Phung Yang area of Bhamo District in Kachin state, which borders China, reported Mizzima, a Delhi-based news organization run by Burmese journalists. Members of a Catholic church who were preparing for Sunday mass heard gunfire and saw soldiers approaching them. They lay on the ground as the army men opened fire at them. No one was hurt.
The soldiers caught Catholic priest Jan Ma Aung Li and four other men.
“They said that all males in the village were people’s militiamen and KIO staff,” Mizzima quoted Aung Li as saying.
The soldiers asked the Christians where the insurgents had stored guns and bombs. When the five detainees said they were not from the KIO, the soldiers kicked them and hit them with gun butts. They ransacked the whole church, apparently to look for weapons and bombs.
“Then they tied our hands with wire and took us away,” the priest told Mizzima. On the way, about 150 more soldiers from Light Infantry Battalion 121 joined them. The Christians were forced to carry heavy rucksacks as they walked with the 300 army men. After walking for three hours, they rested at Lawkathama Monastery, where the soldiers and the KIO’s armed wing, the Kachin Independence Army, had a brief exchange of fire.
Later, they arrived at a Baptist church, where some soldiers burned the house of the priest, Aung San. The soldiers asked the detainees to tell the KIO that the army was preparing to attack their headquarters in Laiza before releasing them.
When the Christians reached their village, they found their houses burning.
The Kachin editor said religion was a key factor in the Kachin conflict, which dates back to the country’s independence in 1948.
Burma’s seven ethnic states, where most Christians and ethnic minorities live, were administered separately by the British. But ethnic leaders agreed to be incorporated into Burma after the Panglong Agreement was signed in 1947 providing for full autonomy, a share of the national wealth and the right to secession to ethnic states.
But Gen. Aung San – democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi’s father who was the head of the then interim government and who led the signing of the agreement – was assassinated months later. Subsequent governments refused to honor the agreement, but they presumed ethnic states to be part of the new country.
“The government’s policy of Burman-Buddhist domination over minorities started with the country’s first prime minister, U Nu,” the Kachin editor said. The U Nu-led government made Buddhism the state religion in 1961, and that’s when the KIO was formed.
In 1994, the KIO signed a ceasefire agreement with the government. But months before Burma’s first democratic election in two decades in September 2010, the then military-led government asked all armed insurgents to join the border security force. The KIO refused to do so, and the military deemed the ceasefire as void. The army’s offensive followed in June 2011, which has displaced over 30,000 Kachins.
While the majority of Kachins are Christian, Burmese authorities do not allow them to construct new church buildings as non-Burman Buddhist cultural expressions are seen as signs of insurgency.
In a report entitled, “Army Committing Abuses in Kachin State,” released this month, Human Rights Watch (HRW)) quoted a 65-year-old Kachin villager from Sang Gang as saying that when the fighting started in June 2011, the Burmese army uprooted a large Christian cross from a hilltop regarded by the villagers as sacred and used it as a stand for their weapons. The villagers had planned to eventually construct a church building on the site.
A 58-year-old Baptist Christian farmer from Maisakba told HRW how on three occasions. From 2000 to 2009, Burmese authorities forbade his community from constructing a new Christian church, in part because the proposed structure was in the shape of a cross.
The editor said he was worried as the army was increasing military presence also in other ethnic states such as Karen. Burma’s neighbors China, Thailand and India have invested huge sums of money in power generation projects in ethnic states and the Burmese government now wants to end the decades-long insurgency.
“The Kachin conflict might soon expand to the whole ethnic region,” he said.
And when that happens, he added, the suffering of civilians, including Christians, will mount manifold.
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Asian Correspondent - Burma: Women used as sex slaves on Kachin frontline
By Zin Linn Nov 04, 2011 2:01AM UTC
The hostilities between the Burmese military and ethnic Kachin get worse every day and the abuses are much worse than reported by the news media based outside the country.
In recent months, several women and girls were gang raped by Burmese soldiers. Many were killed after being raped. The soldiers raped and killed girls and women in front of their relatives. Many civilians were forced to work as porters for them. In frontline areas, Burmese soldiers are committing crimes freely and with impunity.
Most recently, Kachin woman was kidnapped and gang-raped on the frontline of Mu Bum Mountain by Burmese Army troops, Kachin News Group reported.
28-year-old Sumlut Roi Ja, the mother of a 14-month-old daughter, was kidnapped and gangraped for nearly a week since October 28 by Burmese soldiers in the Mu Bum post, said her relatives. Sumlut Roi Ja is from Hkai Bang village near the China border in Sub-Loije Township in Manmaw (Bhamo) district. The Hkai Bang is situated on the mountainside
of Mu Bum and the villagers there cultivate paddy in the mountain, which is close to the Loije in Kachin State and Jang Hkawng in China’s Yunnan province.
Roi Ja’s gang rape has shocked the villagers of Hkai Bang and they are now fleeing to safer places, said KNG. Three women were abducted earlier and have been kept at the military post so far. They are treated as sex slaves for Burmese soldiers at the post. They are also forced to cook and carry water, according to two porters, who recently escaped from the military post.
The Kachin Women’s Association of Thailand released a report revealing the government of Burma’s atrocities against Kachin people during the past four months during its current war against Kachin resistance forces since June 9.
A report by KWAT entitled “Burma’s Covered Up War: Atrocities Against the Kachin People”, released on October 7, stated the Burma Army broke a 17 year ceasefire with the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and has committed killings, torture and sexual violence, displacing over 25,000 people.
The report said 37 women and girls were raped and 13 were killed during the first two months of the conflict in Kachin State. On September 24, Burma Army soldiers committed three separate rapes involving two girls, aged 14 and 17, and one woman, aged 40, in Muse and Kutkai townships, according to KWAT documents.
These incidents are not random acts of violence, said KWAT spokesperson Shirley Seng. The Burma Army is committing gang-rape and killing on a wide scale. It is clear they are acting under orders, Shirley Seng said.
KWAT demands that the regime immediately stops using rape as a weapon of war, ends the offensive against Kachin and other ethnic groups, and withdraws from the ethnic areas.
KWAT urged the international community to depart its “wait and see” procedure with Burma and fetch improved pressure on the military-dominated government to end its military offensive and atrocities, and also grant needed humanitarian aid without delay to the Kachin IDPs.
“The failed policy allowed the government to start the new war against the Kachin people as well as it lets it carry on attacking women and children. ‘Wait and See’ is a death sentence for us,” Shirley Seng said.
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One year on, Myanmar has more work to do
Published: Nov. 4, 2011 at 12:16 PM
NEW YORK, Nov. 4 (UPI) -- The new government in Myanmar has made significant political steps though atrocities against civilians continue, Human Rights Watch said.
Myanmar touted last year's general elections, the first in nearly two decades, as a path toward civilian leadership. The election was considered a sham by the international community, however.
Nevertheless, Human Rights Watch recognized the new government had passed a series of reform measures but said the real test would be when citizens try to assert fundamental rights.
"Atrocities against civilians in conflict zones, torture of political prisoners and courts that justify repression have been features of the first year of nominally civilian rule as much as the announced reforms," Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
In October, the government in Myanmar released around 200 prisoners as part of a general amnesty given to an estimated 6,300 detainees.
The release followed an appeal to the government from the head of the state-backed National Human Rights Commission to set free prisoners accused of ordinary crimes so they can participate in "nation-building tasks."
Human rights groups said there may be thousands of more political prisoners still behind bars. Tomas Ojea Quintana, special envoy on human rights in Myanmar, said further releases were needed for democratic transition in the country.
"There has been little measurable change in basic modes of governance or repression at the local level across the country," added Pearson.
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Monsters and Critics - UN envoy calls for Myanmar regime to maintain "positive momentum"
Nov 4, 2011, 13:47 GMT
Yangon - The United Nations special envoy to Myanmar, Vijay Nambiar, on Friday called on the new regime to maintain its 'positive momentum,' specifically by broadening an amnesty for political prisoners.
'At this juncture, it is of crucial importance, for Myanmar's regional and global standing, to maintain the positive momentum that these initiatives have generated,' Nambiar said at the end of a five-day visit to the country.
Nambiar is the special advisor on Myanmar affairs to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
On his third visit to Myanmar since the general election on November 7, Nambiar encouraged the new president, Thein Sein, to continue on the path towards political reconciliation with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and pursue other initiatives for a more inclusive political process in the country that has been ruled by the military since 1962.
In October, Myanmar released 200 political prisoners, but an estimated 1,900 remain in jails throughout the country.
'The release of the remaining political prisoners as part of the recent amnesty process and the enactment of the proposed amendments to the political party registration law are steps that can and should be taken as a matter of priority,' Nambiar said in a statement.
The government recently amended the party registration act to pave the way for Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) opposition party to re-register and possibly contest an upcoming by-election.
The amended law has not yet been promulgated.
The NLD boycotted the November polls to protest the previous legislation that would have barred the membership of Suu Kyi in the party. Suu Kyi was released from a seven-year house detention term on November 13, days after the polls.
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The National - No reason to celebrate as Myanmar marks anniversary
Sholto Byrnes
Nov 4, 2011
The celebrations will be muted on Monday when Myanmar, as Burma has been known since 1989, marks the one-year anniversary of the first elections to produce a sitting parliament since 1960. Recent news might have suggested otherwise. Were those polls not the first step towards a remarkable opening of a state whose isolation was for decades rivalled only by North Korea, a fellow pariah which shared with Myanmar the ignominious distinction of being known best for the tyranny of its rulers and the impoverishment and abuse of its citizens?
Since the elections, Thein Sein, a civilian president, has replaced Senior General Than Shwe as head of state, censorship has been loosened, parliament has voted to allow the setting up of independent trade unions and scores of political prisoners have been released. Thein Sein gave in to popular protests against construction of the Chinese-financed Myitsone Dam at the end of September, suspending the project and explaining that it was "against the will of the people". As Peter Popham, the latest biographer of the country's opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, observed, that was "a remarkable reason for a government of Burma to claim to do anything".
National reconciliation certainly seems to be in the air. In August, the president hosted a dinner for Suu Kyi. Such a social occasion was unthinkable under Than Shwe, who abruptly ended meetings if the name of the venerated Nobel Peace Laureate was ever mentioned, and in 2003 actually ordered her assassination. Although the massacre at Depayin, in the country's north-west, failed in its main purpose, Than Shwe later brazenly justified the attempt on the ground that she and her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), were "a threat to national security".
Now, however, it was aperitifs and pleasantries chez the president. Not only that, but unconfirmed reports suggest the NLD will be allowed to take part in a series of 48 by-elections scheduled for December, which could give the opposition a substantial presence in the 440-seat lower house, if not the resounding majority they won in the 1990 elections (which the generals did not recognise) - a victory they would surely have deserved to have replicated had they contested last year's polls.
Kurt Campbell, the US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, is one of many analysts seized by optimism. He recently told an audience in Bangkok that there were "dramatic developments underway" in its neighbour to the west, and that Suu Kyi and the new government had enjoyed a "consequential dialogue". The US has lifted travel restrictions on some government officials and Myanmar has never looked closer to gaining what it has been denied in the past - the rotating presidency of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the international credibility that would accompany it. That decision will be taken at a summit later this month, but why should it not go in its
favour? Myanmar is, after all, according to an unusually unbuttoned Financial Times, "at freedom's gate".
If all this is so, however, one has to ask: why does the excitement displayed by foreign cheerleaders not appear to be so widespread in the country itself?
•••
The answer lies in the nature of the elections whose first anniversary is imminent. Before they took place, U Tin Oo, chairman of the NLD (which had decided not to participate) said: "People seem lacking in enthusiasm over the vote. Many of those who are running have never breathed a word about democracy in their lives." In an interview with The Irrawaddy, a respected journal run by exiles based in Thailand, he concluded: "This election is the one that gets least public attention in our country's history, I think." It was not hard to see why.
Everyone knew the military junta was not going to repeat the mistake it made in 1990, when, assuming its propaganda and brutal crackdowns would lead a cowed populace to vote for its proxies, it allowed a relatively free and fair election.
The NLD went on to win 94 per cent of the vote, hence the regime's dismissal of the results. This time the process would be fixed firmly in favour of the Union Solidarity and Development Party, a regime-run mass organisation which all government employees had to join under a slightly different name. True, it was nominally a party of civilians, but its main leaders were all generals who had just shed their uniforms. As Bertil Lintner, the veteran reporter, puts it in his new book, Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma's Struggle for Democracy: "Weeks before, sources were reporting that the military wanted to make the election credible by producing official results that showed 70 per cent voter turnout with 80 per cent support for its own party. And that was exactly the announced outcome after the November 7 election."
I asked Maung Zarni, a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and founder of the Free Burma Coalition, for his opinion on what many think was a milestone on the road to liberty. "How can I conceivably celebrate the anniversary of the 2010 elections, which resulted in no fundamental changes in Burma's politics or a new era of democratisation?" he replied. "The same generals taking off decorative stars from their chests, swapping green trousers for multicoloured silk skirts, and making themselves known by civilian titles, means nothing, nothing at all ... Nothing that matters to the public in Burma has really changed." Far from being a harbinger of hope, he said, the elections were "a complete farce".
•••
For most of Myanmar's post-independence history, it was of little consequence to the outside world that its brave, if troubled, early period of democracy was completely snuffed out when the army took power in 1962. The leader of the coup, General Ne Win, was one of the Thirty Comrades who, under Aung San (Suu Kyi's father), had formed the core of the Burmese Independence Army during the Second World War, trained first by the Japanese and then switching to the Allies just in time to be recognised as a liberation force rather than being condemned as collaborators. Ne Win was no hero, however. In fact, Aung San had ordered him to be shot in 1941 when he was found to be in a Bangkok brothel instead of on duty. (The junior officer assigned was too afraid to carry out the task, a decision he later regretted. "If I had followed Bogyoke [General] Aung San's orders," said Ta Yar in 1988, "we would not have so much trouble now.")
Initially Ne Win's takeover was welcomed by many outside Myanmar. The country was riven by ethnic insurgencies; the Chinese nationalist Kuomintang occupied an area on the north-east border; and Communists had been fighting a guerrilla war since 1948. One diplomat stationed in Rangoon at the time told me that "Burma would have fallen apart if the army hadn't gone in". Ne Win's "Burmese Path to Socialism" may have turned out to be a crackpot programme that ultimately led to what was once the richest country in the region being awarded "least developed nation" status by the UN in 1987, but at least he was not a Communist - a major plus point for the US during a period when it looked as though the whole of South East Asia might succumb to the "domino effect".
After Ne Win's death in 2002, the British Labour MP Tam Dalyell was still able to write sympathetically about the isolation the general had imposed on the country. "My wife and I were invited to a long and simple lunch of rice and mangoes by Ne Win and his wife Katie in June 1965 ... he had closed Burma as the only way of keeping his country out the horrors of the Vietnam/Cambodia war ... Chou En-lai and the Vietnamese prime minister, Pham Van Dong, wanted to use the Burmese forests as a haven for guerrillas, which would have invited American bombing and Agent Orange."
Tan Sri Abdullah Ahmad, political secretary to the Malaysian deputy prime minister, Tun Abdul Razak, in the 1960s, and later a member of his cabinet, is frank about how the dictator was then viewed in the region. "Ne Win was our friend," he says.
All that changed in 1988. A combination of Ne Win's erratic economic policy - the previous year he had demonetised most of the local banknotes, making 80 per cent of the cash in circulation worthless - and his heavy-handed suppression of student protests had led to unprecedented crowds taking to the streets of Myanmar. There were up to 10,000 casualties when the army answered by opening fire on a day that has become notorious as "8.8.88". By this point Ne Win had already resigned, raising the prospect of multi-party elections and handing the presidency first to General Sein Lwein, the "Butcher of Rangoon" whose tenure lasted only a few days, and then to his sycophantic biographer, Dr Maung Maung.
There followed an all-too-brief "democracy summer" when former officials called for reform. Most notable of all was a speech to up to a million people at the Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon by the wife of an Oxford academic who only happened to be in the country because she was nursing her dying mother - Aung San Suu Kyi.
The summer ended on September 18. Martial law was reimposed and thousands died in a retaliation orchestrated by Ne Win. The election process he had promised still went ahead, but in an atmosphere of intimidation: Suu Kyi narrowly escaped being shot while campaigning the following year. After the NLD still won overwhelmingly, the junta ignored the result and Suu Kyi has spent most of the years since under house arrest. Those of her supporters who shared such a fate were the lucky ones. Many others fled abroad or joined the border-region insurgencies rather than face torture, rape and death in the regime’s appalling prisons.
The West has responded with a barrage of sanctions and repeated condemnations. But these have had little effect on a regime that has India and China as its neighbours, two emerging titans willing to ignore Myanmar’s abysmal human rights record in the interests of trade and exploiting its bountiful natural resources. Every effort at mediation has failed. The 2008 constitution that is supposed to be a part of a “roadmap to democracy” contains numerous provisions to ensure the military retains its dominance, while the armed forces themselves have swelled their ranks and live, with their families, in a parallel state with their own schools, hospitals, shops and housing.
There were two possible scenarios under which the military’s grip could have been broken. After the 1990 elections, argues Lintner, “The NLD should have called a press conference at their Rangoon headquarters. The international media were in Burma at the time, and the press conference would have been telecast live all over the world. The NLD should then have claimed victory and announced that, because of the massive mandate the people had given them, they would now go and liberate their leader, Suu Kyi, from her house arrest. Loudspeaker cars should have crisscrossed Rangoon. A million people would have shown up, and they could easily have unhinged the gates to Suu Kyi’s compound and carried her to Burma’s television studios, where she could have addressed the people, called for calm, and urged the armed forces to be loyal to the new government. Given the fact that even the rank and file had voted for the NLD, it is unlikely that the soldiers in the streets would have tried to stop the masses of people.” The generals “could have been given amnesty and, if they so wanted, been permitted to leave the country for Singapore, China, or any other country that would have been willing to accommodate them ... It would have all have been over in a day.”
An alternative was set out by Justin Wintle, in his 2007 book Perfect Hostage: Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma and the Generals: “The ‘liberal’ West should have exploited the chance to invest in Burma after 1988 – not just for the sake of profit, but by way of setting better examples of employment and business practice inside Burma. Similarly with tourism. If only by a process of osmosis, Burma must have changed. Limiting contact plays into the junta’s hands.”
But neither happened. Lintner’s assessment of the junta’s current position is sobering: “More than a billion dollars have been spent on arms purchases, mainly from -China, at a time when Burma had no external enemies and the decades-long civil war was coming to an end. Never before has Burma had such powerful – and well-equipped – armed forces. The build-up was clearly meant to secure the military’s grip on power and to make sure that there would be no repeat of the popular uprising of 1988.”
•••
The truth is that while the world focuses on Aung San Suu Kyi – Popham’s and Lintner’s new biographies will not be the last; the French filmmaker Luc Besson is just releasing The Lady, his bio-pic of her, and her many supporters include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, U2’s Bono and Gordon Brown, the former British prime minister – it is the military that will decide the future of Myanmar. Unpalatable and unconscionable as it may be, they will probably also have to have a guaranteed and protected place in that future. At one level this is because, like all tyrannical regimes, the junta fears the retribution that may follow any opening up of the political sphere. So much so that when in 1990 Kyi Maung, the acting head of the NLD, told Asiaweek magazine that Myanmar had no need of a “Nuremburg-style tribunal” he was arrested. Even talking about the possibility of coming to terms with the past under a new dispensation is enough to send the generals scurrying to their bunkers in Naypyidaw, the newly constructed capital-cum-fortress in the remote countryside.
But it is also because, despised as it is, the army is virtually the only national institution the country has. Many historians have doubted the wisdom of the decision to exile the last Burmese king, Thibaw, and abolish the monarchy after the British completed their conquest of the country in the Third Anglo-Burmese War in 1885. This not only ended a system of government that had endured for 800 years, but also left leaderless the Buddhist sangha, the communities of monks which were the other pillar of Burmese society. As Peter Popham writes in The Lady and the Peacock: the Life of Aung San Suu Kyi, “They were the potent local symbols of a moral, theological and political system that had governed people’s lives throughout Burmese history. The monks enshrined and sanctified the authority of the Buddhist king, and the people, by giving the monks alms, gained spiritual merit that was obtainable no other way. Now all this was smashed and ruined. It was worse than mere humiliation: the nation had lost its compass.”
Aung San’s army had hardly liberated the country from the Japanese, as Field Marshal Viscount Slim, commander of the advancing British forces, knew very well. “Go on Aung San,” he teased when they first met in May 1945, “you only came to us because you see we are winning.” (The reply? “It wouldn’t be much good coming to you if you weren’t, would it?”) But as in many other countries that had been occupied during the war, such as France, it was the fact of having participated on the victorious Allies’ side that mattered, not the numbers of soldiers who had fought. And it was Aung San who, clad in general’s uniform, had gone to Britain 19 months later and negotiated Burma’s independence.
The army had won its patina of heroism, an association shared with no other institution, and one the new Union of Burma sorely needed. The faint vestiges of that status still cling to it, as is shown by the fact that many prominent NLD leaders have been military men who had fallen out with Ne Win; the party’s chairman U Tin Oo, commander-in-chief of the army in the mid-1970s, is just one. Suu Kyi herself has always been aware of this. When she made her famous speech at the Shwedagon Pagoda in 1988, she stood in front of a giant portrait of her father, and said: “I feel strong attachment to the armed forces. Not only were they built up by my father; as a child I was cared for by his soldiers.” They could and should be, she said, “a force in which the people can place their trust and reliance”.
Some think that long-term reform could come through a reassertion of the country’s Buddhist identity, through the mass-membership meditation organisations and the influence of the sangha, the monks who marched in 2007’s “Saffron Revolution”. But that demonstration of disapproval did not share the success of the other “colour revolutions”; it was put down with a violence that shocked even a population long inured to the excesses of their rulers. Others, less optimistic, take the same line as Lintner: “Change would have to come through the only institution that really matters in the country – its armed forces.” And he sees little chance of that. “Burma’s future looks bleak,” he concludes.
Maung Zarni agrees. “What we are seeing is a slicker, smarter and incredibly richer dictatorship that is co-opting its opponents through carefully crafted reform talks,” he says. Zarni thinks Suu Kyi miscalculated the generals’ “will to power” 23 years ago, and is making a similar mistake about how genuine the desire to change is now.
“Ideologically and strategically, our opposition seems to be stuck in the Neolithic age.” He believes that they and their Western allies are being taken in by the form, while the substance remains the same, with Senior General Than Shwe continuing to run the show behind the scenes. “The real, long-term problem is the military, because it sees itself as an extra-legal organisation which has the constitutional mandate to serve as the real power behind the legislative and the executive. Without the entire military junking this feudal, medieval ruling class ethos, no reforms will be sufficient for the Burmese public to endorse western journalistic hyperbolic expressions such as ‘at freedom’s gate’ or ‘dramatic developments’.” One year on from the elections, he says: “Absolutely nothing foundational in Burmese politics has changed.”
Sholto Byrnes is a contributing editor of the New Statesman and a frequent commentator on South East Asian politics and religion.
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Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2011
The Japan Times - India's Look East policy in top gear
By HARSH V. PANT Special to The Japan Times
LONDON — India hosted the leaders of Myanmar and Vietnam in early October, underscoring once again the seriousness with which it is pursuing its Look East policy as it forges close economic and security ties with two significant nations in East and Southeast Asia and counters China's penetration of its neighborhood.
India's Look East Policy was explicitly designed to initiate New Delhi's re-engagement with East Asia after years of neglect during the Cold War. This is a time of great turmoil in the Asian strategic landscape and India is trying to make itself relevant to the region's members.
With its political and economic rise, Beijing has started dictating the boundaries of acceptable behavior to its neighbors and tensions are rising between China and smaller states in East Asia and Southeast Asia over territorial issues. The United States and its allies have already started re-assessing their regional strategies and a loose coalition is emerging to counterbalance China's growing power.
It is in this broader context that the recent visits by Myanmar and Vietnam's presidents to India assume significance. Though under pressure to promote democratic reforms in Myanmar, India's strategic interests have been winning out in its relations with that country in recent years. Myanmar's reclusive military leader, Gen. Than Shwe, was in India earlier last year and India rolled out the red carpet for the head of Myanmar's State Peace and Development Council.
Previously a harsh critic of the Myanmar junta, since the mid-1990s India has muted its criticism and dropped its vocal support for the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in order to pursue its Look East policy. More important to New Delhi has been China's rapidly growing profile in Myanmar. As India realized that Myanmar — one of its closest neighbors and a major source of natural gas — was increasingly falling under China's orbit, it reversed its decades-old policy of isolation and has now begun to deal directly with the junta.
India has found it difficult to toe the Western line on Myanmar. It is stuck between the demands of its role as the world's largest democracy and the imperatives of its strategic interests. The large Burmese refugee community in India is a product of the 1998 military crackdown in Myanmar. Indian elites have long admired the freedom struggle led by Aung San Suu Kyi, who was honored with one of India's highest civilian awards in 1993. Even today, the official policy of the Indian government is the eventual restoration of democracy in Myanmar. But India's strategic interests in Myanmar have become significant in recent years, especially as China's trade, energy and defense ties with Myanmar have surged.
Strategic interests have led New Delhi to only gently nudge the Myanmar junta on the issue of democracy. India has gained a sense of trust at the highest echelons of Myanmar's ruling elite and does not want to lose this. As such, India remains opposed to Western sanctions on Myanmar. Suu Kyi has indicated that she would be talking to the military junta to find the best alternative for her nation and that should give India a larger strategic space to maneuver.
The three-day state visit to India by Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sam last month highlights the growing closeness of India-Vietnam relations. Ties between New Delhi and Hanoi have raised many eyebrows after India snubbed China and made it clear that India's ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL) will continue to pursue oil and natural gas exploration in two Vietnamese blocks in the South China Sea.
As India's profile rises in East Asia and Southeast Asia and China expands its presence in South Asia and the Indian Ocean region, India is staking its own claims in East Asia and asserting its legitimate interests in East Asian waters. India has a particular interest in protecting the sea lines of communication that cross the South China Sea to Northeast Asia and the U.S.
India has now decided to work with Vietnam to establish a regular Indian presence in the region as part of a larger New Delhi-Hanoi security partnership. New Delhi and Hanoi have significant stakes in ensuring the security of sea lanes and preventing sea piracy, and they also share concerns about Chinese access to the Indian Ocean and South China Sea.
Indian strategic interests demand that Vietnam emerge as a major regional player and India is well placed to help Hanoi achieve that objective. A common approach on the emerging balance of power is emerging with both India and Vietnam keen on reorienting their ties with the U.S. as their concerns about China rise.
Indeed, India is pursuing an ambitious policy in East and Southeast Asia — joining forces with smaller states in the region to offset China's growing dominance and America's likely retrenchment from the region in the near future. It remains to be seen, however, if India can live up to its full potential in the region.
Harsh V. Pant is a professor of defense studies at King's College, London.
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The Nation - PIA earns $4.5 million by renting planes to Burma
Published: November 04, 2011
LAHORE – PIA has earned more than $4.5 million by providing seven charter planes to Burma for Haj operation, said media adviser of PIA Tahir Khaleeq on Thursday.
He said that PIA provided six Jumbo jets and one Air Bus for the purpose since PIA had successfully completed its pre Haj operation in Pakistan. The PIA planes were provided to Burma about a week back and these planes transported 3,200 pilgrims from Rangoon to Jeddah during in a week. The media adviser was of the view that losses-stricken PIA has now started earning revenue. Apart from Rangoon operation, the airline also earned Rs220 million from its domestic special flights, he claimed. These flights were operated specially for Eid purpose.
PIA has also started earning after installation of Simulator at Karachi Tahir claimed and added that now The PIA would also save Rs260 million per month because previously the airline had to spend Rs260 million for the training of its pilots on simulators in Dubai. But now not only PIA own pilots could be imparted training on simulators in Pakistan but other airlines of different countries were also contacting PIA for the training of their pilots. The PIA was also going to install simulators for ATR planes which would help airline to save revenue as well as earn revenue from foreign airlines, the adviser concluded.
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The Irrawaddy - USDP MPs Push Constitutional Amendment to Allow Dual Posts
By WAI MOE Friday, November 4, 2011
Members of Parliament representing Burma’s ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) are attempting to gain support for an amendment to the 2008 Constitution that would allow MPs to simultaneously hold certain top offices in the Executive Branch of government, an amendment that would reduce the number of seats available in the upcoming by-election, according to MPs.
A draft of the amendment, seen by The Irrawaddy, states that Burma’s president, two vice presidents, cabinet ministers and deputy ministers will not have to resign from their MP posts while holding Executive Branch posts. The 2008 Constitution says all such officers must resign as MPs upon accepting such government positions.
Some MPs attending the ongoing session of Parliament in Naypyidaw said they believed that the USDP hardliners attempting to garner support for the constitutional amendment include party leaders and former government ministers such as ex Brig-Gen Thein Zaw, ex Col Aung Thaung, ex Maj-Gen Khin Aung Myint, currently the speaker of the Upper House and of the combined Union Parliament, and Zaw Myint Pe, currently a member of the Upper House Bill Committee.
In addition, the amendment said that the attorney general and deputy attorney general, the auditor general and deputy auditor general, and the chairman and members of the Napyidaw council would not be required to resign as MPs.
If the amendments are approved, it would reduce the number of seats to be contested in the by-election expected to be held in November.
According to election commission officials, there had previously been about 70 constituencies available in the by-election, most of which became open due to MPs resigning after being appointed to Executive Branch posts.
Burma observers said the by-election is an opening for pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, and other opposition parties to join the legal political process, assuming that amendments to the Political Parties Registration Law recently passed by Parliament are signed into law by President Thein Sein.
The amendments to the Political Parties Registration Law remove a provision saying that anyone convicted by a court of law is prohibited from joining a political party and add a provision stating that a political party would only have to contest three constituencies in the by-election in order to be recognized as a legitimate party.
Additional draft constitutional amendments currently being circulated by the USDP members include a term limit of five years for the Union Chief Justice and the justices of the
Supreme Court of Union, who currently serve until the age of 70.
Similarly, the chief justices and other justices on the state and region supreme courts would also have a five year term limit, rather than serving until the age of 65 as the Constitution currently provides.
On Tuesday, the Lower House of Parliament—whose speaker is ex Gen Shwe Mann, the former junta’s No. 3—rejected a proposal that Khin Aung Myint declared had been approved by the combined Union Parliament that would have required all laws, bills and amendments be submitted to the Constitutional Tribunal for approval, which is not currently required by the 2008 Constitution.
Khin Aung Myint introduced and pushed the proposal through a session of the combined Union Parliament on Sept. 28, but Lower House members said that the bill was not in accordance with the 2008 Constitution and was not introduced in accordance with parliamentary laws and regulations.
“Although the decision in the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (the combined Union Parliament) damages the reputation of Parliament, the submission of [a new] proposal and discussions will restore the reputation of the State and the Hluttaw,” Lower House speaker Shwe Mann was quoted as saying by The New Light of Myanmar, a state-run newspaper.
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The Irrawaddy - DKBA Brigade 5 Reaches Ceasefire with Naypyidaw
By SAW YAN NAING Friday, November 4, 2011
The Democratic Karen Buddhist Army’s (DKBA) Brigade 5 reached a ceasefire agreement with a Burmese government delegation on Thursday, said the DKBA Brigade 5 leader, Brig-Gen Saw Lah Pwe.
Saw Lah Pwe told The Irrawaddy on Friday that he signed a ceasefire agreement with a Burmese delegation on Thursday. He said that fighting had stopped and some government troops that previously were deployed on the frontlines had begun to withdraw from areas controlled by DKBA Brigade 5.
“I think they really want to make a ceasefire with us at this moment. Some of the representatives are Burmese officials from Naypyidaw,” said Saw Lah Pwe.
He said that the official statement about the ceasefire agreement with the Burmese authorities will be announced on Nov. 6 and DKBA Brigade 5 will reopen its headquarters in Sone Seen Myaing, Myawaddy Township.
DKBA Brigade 5, which has an estimated 1,500 troops, split with the DKBA, which has an estimated 6,000 troops, and restarted armed conflict with government troops in 2010 when the Burmese military attempted to force the DKBA to join its Border Guard Force. Then on Nov 7, 2010, DKBA Brigade 5 temporarily took control of several government buildings in the town of Myawaddy on the Thai border and the fighting that followed forced over 20,000 people to flee to Thailand.
The renewed hostilities between DKBA Brigade 5 and government troops broke a 15-year-old ceasefire agreement between the DKBA and Burma’s previous military regime, which was signed in 1995.
The DKBA, with the exception of Brigade 5, previously agreed to join the BGF. However, despite the ceasefire, Brigade 5 is no longer being asked to join.
The ceasefire agreement between DKBA Brigade 5 and the Naypyidaw delegation was reached after several previous meetings failed to produce an agreement.
Meanwhile, other government delegations have separately approached other ethnic armed groups such as the Karen National Union, Shan State Army – South and New Mon State Party for peace talks. Some of them have met with the government delegations, but no agreements have been reached thus far.
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The Irrawaddy - Floods Force Evacuation of Bangkok Migrant Shelter
By SIMON ROUGHNEEN Friday, November 4, 2011
NAKHOM PATHOM, THAILAND —Thailand's government announced on Friday afternoon that almost 500 mostly Burmese migrant workers will be evacuated to Ratchaburi, west of the capital of Bangkok, tomorrow morning.
“The floods are less than two kilometers away, so we have to move the group tomorrow, starting at 9am,” announced an official from the Thailand Labor Ministry, who gave his name as Kobchai, at the Rai Khing temple in Nakhon Pathom, close to the flooded western side of Bangkok.
“By tomorrow afternoon we anticipate that Wat Rai Khing will be flooded,” said Kobchai.
Around 60 of the migrants, who have fled rising floodwaters in central plains areas of Thailand and northern Bangkok suburbs, will return to Burma via Mae Sot, also tomorrow.
The shelter, by Friday accessible only by a two and one-half hour drive around Samut Sakhon from central Bangkok, has been the sole sanctuary for the estimated 200,000-400,000 Burmese migrants affected by the floodwaters.
On Friday afternoon at the shelter—set up by the Thai government amid numerous allegations that some migrant workers elsewhere are being exploited by a cabal of Burmese brokers and militia groups working with Thai police and immigration officials—a group of ninety Burmese migrants queued for wages and documents withheld by various employers in flooded Ayutthaya.
A Thai NGO worker at the complex, asking not to be named, said that she referred the cases to Thai government officials, who in turn sought the co-operation of the employers.
“The government worked on our behalf, as the employers would never pay any attention to me,” she said.
Among the group at the shelter are many with the all-too-familiar tales of trafficking and exploitation that have become synonymous with Burmese migrant worker life in Thailand.
Part of the almost 500 migrants who are soon to be moved away from the floods, which still threaten more areas of inner Bangkok as the edge slowly southward, was Zin Lat Soe, a 28-year-old Burmese who arrived in Thailand just one month ago.
After having his leg crushed by a heavy iron chain at the factory where he worked in Ayutthaya, his boss took him to Thammasat University Hospital.
“I did not know how to use the chain. I did not get any training, and do not speak any Thai,” said Zin Lat Soe.
He says his boss left him at the hospital without any means to pay for the treatment he needed.
“Thammasat University Hospital gave 100,000 baht worth of free treatment for him, and then referred his case to us,” said a representative of Living Water Center, an NGO based in flooded Pathum Thani that works to support Burmese migrants.
“We are very grateful for the hospital's kindness, as they have flood troubles of their own as well,” said the NGO staffer.
Now with steel supports protruding from his shin, which is still a melange of sores and fist-sized bruises, he is on crutches, but smiling as he makes his way around Wat Rai Khing
“They have looked after me well here,” he said. “I hope it is the same in Ratchaburi.”
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Mizzima News - The fall of a symbol, the rise of the politician
Friday, 04 November 2011 14:28 Lea Friedberg
(Commentary) — The room was hot and crowded. A sense of restlessness filled the air. All of us, ten young Danish students and two teachers from Denmark, shifted around nervously, some going through their prepared questions, one adjusting a video camera, others waving paper fans trying to cool down, trying to remain calm.
In just a few moments, she would enter, Aung San Suu Kyi, The Lady, the symbol of Burma's democratic struggle. She was meeting with us. It was hard to believe.
In Denmark, before coming to Burma, we had read a great deal about her as part of our preparation for an educational trip to learn about and experience the real Burma. We had learned about her struggle, her sacrifices, her political ambitions, and her uncompromising fight for freedom for her people, at the cost of her own.
The thought of her having spent 15 of the last 21 years in jail was very hard to grasp. The fact that she's been living away from her children, had been denied the opportunity to visit her dying husband, lost friends and allies, either killed, jailed or simply disappeared, was enough to almost bring our little group—all girls—to tears.
The fact that she was still ready to fight and talk with the very people who cost her so much pain astounded us and only seemed to enhance our admiration for her strength.
Coming to Burma, seeing her face everywhere, we were amazed by how much this one woman seemed to mean to the people. It made her seem a little unreal, like a symbol of something greater, more than a human being.
That’s why we were shocked when we saw her. There was no halo on her head, no choir singing as she gracefully entered and greeted us, just a beautiful lady, undoubtedly charismatic, but human just the same.
I have to admit, we did not accept that. She was very straightforward, went instantly to the point—just a brief introduction and small talk and then, what were our questions? You very quickly sensed that she was a busy woman and an experienced politician. I was fascinated. .
We talked about the criticism she was starting to endure for talking with the government, how some people felt betrayed or confused and the difficult art of flexibility and compromise over principles.
We sensed that although she was used to being criticized, these topics was still quite sensitive to her. It appeared this was much harder to take from her own supporters.
People’s eyes might light up by the mention of her name, but we also experienced people who were skeptical of her ongoing communication with the government. We were asked to question her why about she would talk with these people? Did she really believe that they could be trusted? Was she giving in and letting go of her principles?
She understood where her critics came from, but made it clear that this was not some new strategy they had all of a sudden taken upon themselves. The talk, negotiations, deals with the government, were something that they had been working on the whole time.
"When you are a political party you have to have some principles, but there is a great difference between lack of principles and flexibility,” she told us. “Just because you are unprincipled you can’t say that you are flexible, and flexible does not mean lack of principles either, you have to find the right path."
She understood that people, because they had gone through a lot of disappointments, had a hard time believing. But, as she pointed out, if they did not believe that there could be genuine change, why had they then been struggling all along?
"We have always said that we were never promising anything except that we will do our best,” she said. “And I have always been very clear that democracy doesn’t mean that everything will be handed to you on a plate, and that it is important that people in a democracy have responsibilities. No rights without responsibilities."
She underlined the role people themselves played in the struggle for democracy. Her voice strengthened and her brown eyes looked at us intently, trying to make us understand.
She pointed out that negotiations involve give and take, and their goal was not to accomplish what was best for the NLD or the government, but what was best for the people of Burma.
"We were trying to achieve exactly this,” she said, with a voice that left no doubts of her dedication "We were trying to make what seemed impossible possible, and reconciliation is possible."
We sensed her frustration. She had offered a lot, and the thought occurred to me that the fact she was a politician might offend some people.
In her case, she was not able to do anything concrete when she was under house arrest and therefore she could not be criticized for a lack of results or any other wrongdoing for that matter.
Her role as a symbol might serve to increase her popularity but it might also be quite a burden to bear if she were to disappoint, and here lies the problem.
As a politician, you have responsibilities, and there will be compromises and disappointments. This will serve to diminish her popularity among some people. This is the problem, I thought, and this is her challenge—her double role, the politician and the symbol.
She cannot be both a symbol and a politician. One part must perish for the other to grow. The symbol cannot survive in the shadows and dirt of real politics.
The politician cannot move forward, compromising, with the heavy weight of expectations that comes with being a pure symbol of hope.
When asked how she saw her role in the future, if she was going to stay in the role of a symbol of hope and a unifying figure for the country, or if she were to become a politician, she quickly cut us off.
"I am a politician!” she said emphatically. "It is not going to change. I am a member of the NLD, I have always been a member of NLD and I have always been a politician. Whenever I have to fill in an official form and they ask me what my occupation is, I always put down politician."
The last part was said with a glint of a smile in her eyes, but she was dead serious.
Regarding suggestions that she should distance herself from NLD and remain a national figure she was quite clear: that was the worse thing she could do.
"If you want to make democracy work, you should never think that you are greater than your party, that’s the way to dictatorship, that’s not the way to democracy," she said.
She said no democratic leader should ever feel that he or she was greater than the organization he or she came from, and if she were to do that, then she would not help Burma but create great harm to democracy.
"So I am a politician, that’s how it’s going to remain, but I will always work for national unity," she said.
I agree with her. Burma needs the politician more than the symbol if there is ever going to be real change. I cannot see her handling the situation any differently. Of course, a politician, no matter how skilled or popular, could never succeed to serve all interests, but still I wonder—will her political power diminish along with unifying image?
No one doubts that she will remain powerful and to a certain extent a symbol. But if the government senses that her compromising has cost her popularity, they probably will use it against her.
Negotiations involves the difficult dance of handling the different views of her supporters about how to negotiate with the government.
Should she stay away from the pseudo-democratic government that is in power now?
Or should she engage, register the NLD as an official party, continue to try to work closely with the government, or try to find a compromise between being critical and cooperative?
It was still hard to grasp, looking at this petite, elegant woman. I wondered how she could continue working under the pressure and the stress of these changing times in Burma. It made me think of something she had said when talking about how to manage difficult times and believing in change:
"You need endurance and you need faith,” she told us.
As our hour ended, we stood up and sang for her. The song was an African freedom song that had been sung during the Apartheid era in South Africa. It was a song about faith and endurance, a song about the belief that freedom would come. It seemed quite appropriate in her present circumstances.
As I left the headquarters with my class, I was thinking about the person I had just met. Our group split into three or four groups, taking taxis to different parts of the city so that the government officials who were taking our pictures as we stepped out the door onto the hot street would not follow us.
I thought about Aung San Suu Kyi. Charming, an intellectual, sharp, undoubtedly a person who demands your respect. She is not an icon. She is not a saint. She deserves to be thought of as something more, as what she is – politician.
For the future, I think that the best thing for Burma and national reconciliation would be to let her come down from the pedestal were she has been put and recognize her as a human being and a hardcore politician.
Despite the challenges that she faces, I felt an overwhelming sense of hope after our meeting. The faith of a democratic Burma could lie in no safer hands than the delicate hands of this impressive woman.
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Rangoon Region Assembly rejects motion for more water in Rangoon
Friday, 04 November 2011 14:46 Nyi Thit
Rangoon (Mizzima) – The Rangoon Region Assembly on Thursday rejected a motion to distribute more drinking water to the city.
A map of Rangoon Division.The motion, submitted by MP U Kyaw of Thingangyun constituency, was rejected by 98 to 24 votes.
In a discussion, U Kyaw said that the drinking water distributed by the Rangoon City Development Committee to the outskirts of Rangoon was insufficient and he urged the City Development Committee to distribute more water.
“Most of the people in our township are poor. To get water, they have to wait until late at night, so they cannot sleep. Because of insufficient water there are health problems,” U Kyaw told the assembly.
In response to the motion, the Rangoon mayor said that Rangoon distributed 160 million gallons of water daily and there are plans to distribute more water.
“All MPs listen attentively. But when the motion was put into vote, it was supported by only 24 MPs. The military representatives and the USDP MPs objected,” a reporter said.
Rangoon Mayor Hla Myint said that the Rangoon City Development Committee distributes water from Gyophyu Reservoir, Hlawgar Reservoir, Phoogyi Reservoir and Ngamoeyeik Reservoir to 33 townships in the city and distributes underground water to the townships through pump-wells.
The second regular session of the Rangoon Region Assembly ends on November 8. Speaker Sein Tin Win told reporters that the questions raised by MPs cannot be answered during the parliamentary session, but they can be answered after the session.
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KIO power cable serving Myitkyina cut since Tuesday
Friday, 04 November 2011 12:22 Phanida
Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – A power cable at the Mali Stream Hydropower Station owned by the Kachin Independence Organization [KIO] has been cut since Tuesday and could take a week to repair, according to an official of the Buga Company.
The cable provides electricity to Myitkyina and Waimaw.
The KIO alleged that the government was responsible for the severed cable, and that it could have occurred during a recent movement of troops and supplies.
“They cut the power line by bullets,” said La Nang, a KIO spokesperson. “And the power line was cut at Lonzak Hill which is controlled by the government. Then they sent troops to the front. They deployed extra troops within a short time.”
The KIO’s Buga company has provided electricity to Myitkyina and Waimaw since 2006. The Tabak Stream Hydropower Station generates 9.8 megawatts of electricity.
On Wednesday, the government deployed extra troops from Brigade No. 88 to Myitkyina, crossing the Irrawaddy River during the evening, La Nang said.
On June 12, the KIO recalled its employees from the liaison office in Myitkyina and the Buga Company for security reasons, but it continued to provide electricity to Myitkyina and Waimaw.
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DVB News - UK pushes for aid to Kachin refugees
By JOSEPH ALLCHIN
Published: 4 November 2011
The head of the UK government’s aid department in Burma says more access should be granted to the 20,000 internally displaced persons (IDP) in Kachin state currently suffering food shortages due to Naypyidaw’s blockade on foreign aid reaching non-government controlled areas.
Paul Whittingham told DVB that the Burmese government’s denial of access to these people “is of grave concern to … to the humanitarian community”. Reports suggests that vital supplies are running low in the region controlled by the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), where thousands have sought shelter away from Burmese offensives.
“We are pressing the UN to in turn press the government to open up the entire conflict area to humanitarian access, because that is a fundamental humanitarian principle,”
Whittingham said. “At the moment it’s difficult but not impossible to reach big numbers, so that’s something we will be demanding when our ambassador visits Naypyidaw.”
Groups such as the World Food Program, the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) and others are providing assistance to some 5,000 IDPs in Burmese government-controlled areas, but that is believed to be a small proportion of the total displaced by heavy fighting since June.
The UN has however come under fire for failing to publicly push for aid to be channelled to the remaining IDPs.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch has claimed that civilians have not only fled fighting but the many sought to escape the likelihood of being coerced into portering for the Burmese army, and other rights abuses.
Whittingham further called on UN envoy Vijay Nambiar, who is currently visiting Burma, to press Naypyidaw for UN access. “We hope that Nambiar will be raising this as a matter of priority,” he told DVB.
DFID said they were able, through working with local partner organisations, to reach some of those in non-government controlled areas. “We can reach some, but not enough” said Whittingham.
The KIA is believed to be offering support and aid to IDPs in their territory but this has its limits, as fighting lags on and supplies and resources diminish.
Whiitingham did add that dialogue with Burmese government had increased significantly since the new government took over and that granting access for international aid groups to IDPs, despite being minimal, was a departure from the actions of previous administrations.
China has officially closed many roads into Kachin state and allegedly strengthened it’s military presence on the border, with some suspecting that large numbers of civilians will cross the border in search of sanctuary as the conflict between the KIA and Burmese forces intensifies.
The fighting began in June after a 17-year ceasefire between the Burmese government and KIA ended. The KIA has refused to bow to demands to become a government-controlled Border Guard Force.
The government’s actions in Kachin state has caused consternation amongst commentators in Rangoon and elsewhere as relations between Naypyidaw and the Kachin, and indeed civil society in the northern Burmese state, had appeared healthy. The conflict erupted despite President Thein Sein promising peace in ethnic areas.
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DVB News - Burma aids migrants amid Thai controversy
By MAHN SAIMON
Published: 4 November 2011
Burma’s embassy in Thailand has begun issuing temporary passports to migrants fleeing extensive flooding as reports continue to surface of Thai police arresting thousands as they try to cross back into Burma.
Embassy officials have been visiting the flood shelter in at Wat Rai Khing Wittaya monastery in Nakhon Pathom province, where hundreds of Burmese whose legal documents were lost to the floods have been in hiding. Many of these have also lost contact with their employers who hold details on the status of their presence in Thailand.
Thet Khine, who is staying at the monastery, said the officials were “issuing 500 passports for 500 Burmese migrants. Apparently they negotiated with the Thai labour ministry regarding our work permits and it has been sorted.”
Thailand has come under heavy criticism for its treatment of migrant flood victims. Under Thai law migrant workers are normally prohibited from leaving their zones of registration, meaning that thousands have either opted to stay in flood-stricken areas or otherwise face arrest.
Reports earlier this week claimed that up to 1,000 Burmese had been detained in the border town of Mae Sot, and were struggling to access food and water.
Burmese authorities yesterday responded to the growing mass of migrants arriving in Mae Sot by temporarily opening the bridge connecting the town to Myawaddy on the Burmese side of the border, which has been closed since July last year.
A DVB reporter in Mae Sot said however that Thai officials had only allowed 100 or so to cross over the bridge. When asked why they were holding the remaining, Thailand reportedly said that it was waiting to see whether Burmese authorities would arrest those returning via the bridge, many of whom would have left Burma illegally to work in Thailand.
But the real reason may be more sinister: Thai police along the border are believed to be in cahoots with a number of Burmese militias, and may be receiving kick-backs from the hundreds of Burmese that are deported through an unofficial checkpoint run by a Burmese government-aligned Border Guard Force, which is charging 2,500THB per person for entry.
Myawaddy police commander Myo Swe has questioned Thai authorities about reports of their role in the extortion of returning migrants.
“Thai immigration replied that they were only testing with the 100 [that crossed over the bridge] and that they will stop sending them through Border Guard Force checkpoints if the Burmese authorities lodge an official complaint,” said the DVB reporter.
Burmese Deputy Labour Minister Myint Thein told DVB last month that Naypyidaw would dramatically increase assistance to Burmese migrant workers abroad after decades of neglect.
The confirmed death toll from Thailand’s worst floods in 70 years floods now stands at more than 380. Millions continue to flee Bangkok and surrounding provinces, with floodwaters having submerged an area the size of Kuwait and destroyed nearly a quarter of Thailand’s rice crop. The Bangkok Metropolitan Authority says the amount of rainfall this year has been 40 percent higher than average.
Around three million Burmese live in Thailand, many of whom struggle with healthcare and legal assistance. The Burmese embassy is set to embark on a project to help the majority
with official registration.
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Saturday, 5 November 2011
BURMA RELATED NEWS - NOVEMBER 04, 2011
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