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The BurmaNet News: April 28, 1999



------------------------ BurmaNet ------------------------
"Appropriate Information Technologies, Practical Strategies"
----------------------------------------------------------

The BurmaNet News: April 28, 1999
Issue #1260

Noted in Passing: "We are not invading any country, we are not fighting any
country, we are not threatening any country with nuclear weapons...why not
understand our situation?" -Myanmar Foreign Minister Win Aung (see REUTERS:
INTERVIEW-MYANMAR WON'T BE SWAYED BY EU SANCTIONS)

HEADLINES:
==========
REUTERS: MYANMAR WON'T BE SWAYED BY EU SANCTIONS 
AP: OIL COMPANIES REACT TO PRESSURE ON HR ABUSES 
IC: MILITARY PRACTICES "SEVERE" CENSORSHIP  
SCMP: CUTBACK SEES SWITCH TO SYNTHETIC DRUGS 
BKK POST: ANTI-NARCOTICS MEETING 
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REUTERS: INTERVIEW-MYANMAR WON'T BE SWAYED BY EU SANCTIONS
28 April, 1999 by David Brunnstrom

MONGLA, Myanmar, April 28 (Reuters) - European Union sanctions on Myanmar's
military government over human rights do not reflect reality and will not
succeed, Foreign Minister Win Aung has said.

"They will do whatever they like and we in our country will steadfastly do
what
is right for our country regardless of whatever actions they take," he told
Reuters on Tuesday while visiting a minority zone in Myanmar's northeastern
Shan State.

He was responding to a decision by the European Union to extend by six months
restrictions it has imposed on visits by high level officials from Myanmar.

These restrictions caused cancellation of a meeting of foreign ministers of
the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the European Union supposed to take
place in late March.

"We cannot deviate from our chosen path," Win Aung said.

"This is very important. They are pressing again and they are using the same
tactics again, which is not successful of course and does not reflect any
reality in our country's situation."

Win Aung told journalists earlier that Myanmar hoped for normal relations with
the EU.

"We are not invading any country, we are not fighting any country, we are not
threatening any country with nuclear weapons...why not understand our
situation?"

Diplomats in Myanmar estimate the authorities are holding up to 2,000
political
prisoners. They include hundreds of members of the National League for
Democracy (NLD), which won 1990 elections by a landslide but was never allowed
to govern.

Win Aung told Reuters NLD members would be freed if the party renounced the
setting up of a committee last year to represent parliament.

"Whenever they announce that, they will be released tomorrow," he said.

The vice chairman of the NLD, Tin Oo, said at the weekend the party was still
looking for dialogue with the government but was sticking to its insistence
that its leader, 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, be allowed to
take part.

The military has long refused to enter a dialogue with Suu Kyi, who has been
the biggest thorn in its side since she emerged as an opposition leader at the
height of a pro-democracy rising crushed by troops in 1988.

NLD chairman Aung Shwe did meet the powerful head of military intelligence
Lieutenant-General Khin Nyunt last year and the NLD called for the release of
political prisoners as a sign of good faith.

But Tin Oo said nothing came of this demand.

Win Aung said the NLD had failed to create grounds for discussions.

"Every time, whenever they have the opportunity, they oppose, attack, denounce
and condemn. How can you create grounds where we can stand together?"

He said the government was working to build a strong nation and economy but
the
NLD was doing all it could to thwart that, for instance by calling for a
boycott of tourism.

"We had a vision that we could start our economy moving with tourism, so we
put
in a lot of effort and money preparing for that. Then they had a campaign not
to visit Myanmar.

"They have lost the opportunity, they have lost the chance. The people have
come to understand the real motive of the NLD -- just for power, not for the
nation building process."

****************************************************************

AP: OIL COMPANIES REACT TO PRESSURE ON HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES
28 April, 1999  

LOS ANGELES (AP) _ Human rights activists in the United States and abroad
increasingly are calling upon the world's major oil companies to leave
oil-rich
regions where tales of torture and disappearances flow as freely as crude
itself.

Recent activism includes a campaign by women's groups to stop the construction
of a pipeline in Afghanistan, a lawsuit against a California oil company's
practices in Myanmar and protests over the deaths of three activists,
including
Terence Freitas of Los Angeles, in Colombia.

This week in Los Angeles, a Colombian Indian tribe and its supporters will ask
Occidental Petroleum Corp. shareholders to consider an ultimatum: drop
drilling
plans on their tribal land or they will commit mass suicide by walking off a
1,400-foot cliff.

At Friday's meeting in Santa Monica, shareholders will face the protesters'
demands and vote on a resolution written in part by Freitas before he was
killed by Colombian guerrillas in February that calls for a study on how
opposition by the 5,000-member tribe could affect profits.

Los Angeles-based Occidental opposes the resolution, saying it has acted as "a
model corporate citizen in Colombia for 30 years."

Appealing to stockholders is just one of a growing number of strategies
used by
activists to influence the behavior of oil companies, said Arvind Ganesan, an
analyst with Human Rights Watch in New York.

"It's an industry under pressure on human rights now," Ganesan said.
"Shareholder meetings are a good forum to air these kinds of concerns."

Although most oil giants refuse to pull out of troubled regions, some are
responding with new corporate human rights policies, he said.

"Companies are realizing that, because of the reputation hit they can take in
an environment of low oil prices, it's not in the company's best interest to
have a human rights problem," Ganesan said.


Freitas was a longtime U'wa supporter who worked to keep Occidental from
drilling on tribal land. His organization, the U'wa Defense Working Group,
contends that oil brings violence: Guerrillas target pipelines and surrounding
villages and governments respond by militarizing the regions.

"Oil always brings an ugly transformation of the culture and almost always
brings violence," said Robert Benson, a Loyola University law professor, who
heads a group seeking to bring state pressure on companies.

In a petition filed last week with state Attorney General Bill Lockyer,
Benson's group asked the state to revoke the corporate charter of El
Segundo-based Union Oil Company of California, or Unocal.

Benson claims that in Myanmar, Unocal has forced villagers to relocate and
used
forced labor to build the company's infrastructure.

Unocal denies the allegations. Mike Thacher, a Unocal spokesman, says the
company is a solid corporate citizen. Just this year, it formalized a
corporate
position on human rights, he said.

"The bottom line is, we respect human rights in all of our projects," Thacher
said. "This includes our investment in Myanmar and it would have included any
investment in Afghanistan, had we had one."

In December, Unocal withdrew from a plan to build an $8 billion pipeline
through Afghanistan. Feminist groups had criticized the company over the
project, which required working with the Taliban, an Islamic militia whose
interpretation of religious law has forced women to wear an all-enveloping
veil
and banned women from work and girls from school.

Thatcher said the company withdrew over concern that there "was not a stable
government in place that was recognized by the U.S."

Unocal was the only major U.S. company still in Myanmar after Atlantic
Richfield Co. ended its natural gas exploration there last year.

Arco, based in Los Angeles, also contended its retreat from Myanmar, ruled
by a
military government accused of human rights abuses, was a business decision
that had nothing to do with human rights.

But human rights may be playing a bigger role in company policies.

Chevron faced a shareholder proposal in 1997 asking the board to develop
guidelines for working in countries with ongoing human rights violations.
Shareholders have, also without success, made similar demands of Royal
Dutch-Shell over its drilling operations in Nigeria.

Although the proposals have failed, the San Francisco-based company has
altered
its approach to human rights issues, said spokeswoman Cerris Tavinor, in a
phone interview from its office in London.

In the past two years, Shell has consulted with human rights groups and
adopted
a human rights policy, Ms. Tavinor said.

"We do withdraw if violence occurs and we have canceled contracts if we're not
happy with the other participating groups' behavior," she said.

However, Ms. Tavinor acknowledged that the Nigerian government makes its own
decisions about "protecting strategic installations."

"We can't control any government anywhere," she said.

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IFEX "COMMUNIQUE": ARTICLE 19 REPORT SAYS MILITARY PRACTICES "SEVERE"
CENSORSHIP
27 April, 1999 from communique@xxxxxxxx

Censorship under the military rulers in Burma (Myanmar) is among the world's
most severe, says ARTICLE 19 in "Acts of Oppression", a report published
earlier this month when the United Nations Commission on Human Rights was
meeting to examine the situation in Burma. According to the report, "under
successive military governments, the law in Burma has been used as an
instrument for the suppression of rights, particularly with respect to freedom
of expression. Vague and sweeping censorship laws shut out any criticism
whatsoever of the ruling elite." In an 15 April press release, Andrew
Puddephatt, Executive Director of ARTICLE 19 said, "The international
community
has failed most singularly to address the appalling human rights situation in
Burma. It will take more than handwringing to get the military government back
to barracks."

ARTICLE 19 notes, "Since the army first began controlling the levers of state
power in 1962, numerous publications have been censored or banned; hundreds of
journalists, writers, poets, playwrights and cartoonists, as well as
pro-democracy activities have been arrested, detained or sentenced to long
prison terms, tortured, ill-treated or otherwise harassed. Tens of
thousands of
ordinary people have been punished simply for peacefully expressing their
views." For further information, contact Ilana Cravitz, ARTICLE 19 Press
Officer, 33 Islington High St., London N19LH, U.K. tel: +44 1 71 278 9292,
fax:
+44 1 71 713 1356, e-mail: article19@xxxxxxxxxx, website:
<http://www.gn.apc.org/article19>http://www.gn.apc.org/article19/.

****************************************************************

SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST: CUTBACK SEES SWITCH TO SYNTHETIC DRUGS
28 April, 1999 by Greg Torode

Burma yesterday confirmed the worst fears of its neighbours - that poppy
eradication efforts are merely forcing heroin producers to switch to making
methamphetamines.

Border Areas Minister Colonel Thein Nyunt told a drug control conference in
Bangkok that more co-operation and exchanges of intelligence were needed.

"We have experienced a new trend in production and trafficking of
methamphetamine tablets emerging in the Myanmar [Burma] drug scene," he told
the closed-door Ministerial Conference on Drug Abuse Control, involving Laos,
Burma and Thailand - the three countries whose border areas make up the Golden
Triangle.

Thai authorities and foreign drug investigators fear new processing
laboratories in Burma and Laos are behind a surge in trafficking of the
powerful synthetic stimulant.

Most are thought to line border areas of Burma's Shan State in heavily
fortified compounds once used exclusively for heroin production.

The Thai Narcotics Control Board estimates more than 200 million
methamphetamine tablets entered Thailand last year to feed a lucrative young
urban market rather than the truck drivers and labourers who used to favour
the
pills.

Foreign diplomats say the supply is such that they fear it is starting to
spread beyond Thailand.

While citing figures claiming extensive destruction of poppy fields over the
past two years, Colonel Nyunt warned that more than 21kg of stimulants and 7.5
tonnes of ephedrine had been seized.

"We still feel . . . lack of sufficient funding will undermine the plan in
trying to achieve its ambitious objective of total elimination of illicit
narcotic crops."

Foreign observers described the figures as alarming but urged caution, saying
Burma's military regime was now desperate for anti-drug funding as embargos
bite.

"If these amounts of ephedrine are sloshing through the country, we must find
some way to act," a Western envoy said. "The time has come for detailed
work on
the amphetamine threat."

****************************************************************

BANGKOK POST: ANTI-NARCOTICS MEETING
27 April, 1999

Firm action against drugs sought from Burma, Laos

MoU proposed to show commitment

The Office of Narcotics Control Board yesterday called for firm action from
Burma and Laos to jointly crack down on drugs.

ONCB Secretary-General Payont Pantsri made the call in a meeting aimed at
seeking concrete plans for drugs suppression.

Mr Payont proposed the three countries should sign a memorandum of
understanding to show commitment and pave the way for joint cooperation which
should focus on a curb on stimulants as a first area before extending to drugs
suppression.

A source attending the meeting said the proposed signing of the MoU would be a
step forward because previous talks had ended with no concrete measures.

Mr Payont, addressing the second meeting of senior officials on cooperation in
drug abuse control yesterday, pointed out that although the three countries
had
made every effort to fight against this scourge, illicit trafficking and drug
abuse were still rampant.

"The drugs situation has changed," he said. "While heroin and opium still
continue to spread, demand for and supply of methamphetamines is increasing
alarmingly."He said closer cooperation on drug control among the three
countries and with other countries and international drug control
organisations
was needed.

Ministers from the three countries will convene today and issue a joint
declaration reaffirming their anti-drugs stance.

Thailand has launched a campaign to reduce opium poppy cultivation areas by
using alternative development projects. In the past two years, the country saw
only a 1,485 hectare increase in the cultivation area.

Burma has planned to eliminate the cultivation of opium poppy in 15 years. The
Burmese plan concentrates on supply elimination, demand elimination, law
enforcement, and local participation.

Laos' opium production was 123 tons last year, a drop of 17 tons from 1996,
according to a national survey.
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