Newspaper accused of accepting drug

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OTTAWA AMBASSADOR ACCUSES GLOBE AND MAIL
BurmaNews - BC:  July 16, 1998
News  (based on a news release of the Embassy of Myanmar in Ottawa)

VANCOUVER -- A news release issued by the Myanmar Embassy in Ottawa on
Tuesday says that  Canada's national newspaper, the Globe and Mail, may
have been paid for publishing a recent story on the rape of women of ethnic
origin in Burma.

Payment for publishing the article, the embassy statement said, is likely
to have originated with insurgent groups using the profits of Burma's
flourishing drug trade "to buy influence and possibly even 'space' in a
major newspaper to gain the sympathy of uninformed people".

The Globe and Mail published a full page article under the headline, Rape
of ethnic women just another strategy for Burmese army, in its Saturday
Focus section on July 4.  
Journalists Dennis Bernstein and Leslie Kean argued that "rape is
systematically being used by Burma's military as part of policy of "ethnic
cleansing" and provided detailed evidence collected by grass roots human
rights organizations to back up their claim.

Investigations into the sources of the Globe and Mail article, the embassy
statement says, led to the conclusion that splinter groups from the former
Mong Tai Army had fed the journalists with fabricated stories from remote
border areas in Shan state in northeastern Burma.  

The Mong Tai Army (MTA), commanded by legendary narcotics kingpin Khun Sa,
surrendered to government forces in January 1996, but according to the
embassy,  splinter forces from the army financed by "million-dollar trading
partners" of the MTA are continuing their operations in smaller groups
"wreaking havoc on villagers who cannot pay ransom money by executing the
village elders, kidnapping young women and scorching whole villages to the
ground".

The Globe and Mail has not seriously examined the "credibility and
legitimacy" of grass roots human rights organizations such as the Burmese
Women's Union and the Shan Human Rights Foundation quoted in the article,
the Embassy says.    It urges the newspaper to "check out with Canadians
who have recently travelled into these States and even met with former
insurgent leaders" now collaborating with Burma's military government
before publishing one-sided stories.

A representative of the Globe in Vancouver said he "could not possibly
imagine" that the newspaper would have accepted payment for publishing the
rape article.  He said he would be forwarding the embassy statement to
Foreign Editor Patrick Martin in Toronto for further examination.

Chao-Tzang Yawnghwe of the Asian Studies Institute at the University of
British Columbia, a leading member of the Shan exile community, commented
that Ambassador Kyaw Win in Ottawa was "way off base on this one".  He
promised a full statement after studying the Embassy news release in
detail. 

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