BurmaNet News: January 19, 2000

[strider@xxxxxxxxxxx]

--------------- The BurmaNet News ---------------
January 19, 2000
Issue # 1442
-------------------------------------------------

Noted in passing:  "Our leaders wish us ill."  A trishaw driver quoted 
in Under a Dragon.  See NEW STRAITS TIMES (MALAYSIA): BURMA-- SUFFERING 
IS PART OF LIFE.
 

==========
HEADLINES:
==========

Inside Burma-
 NEW STRAITS TIMES (MALAYSIA): BURMA-- SUFFERING IS PART OF LIFE 
 BANGKOK POST: WA SHIFTING 90,000 NEAR THAI BORDER 
RADIO AUSTRALIA:  RELOCATION PLAN FOR OPIUM POPPY GROWERS ASSESSED
 JAPAN TIMES: DOWN THE AYEYARWADY RIVER TO THE SEA 

International-
 BANGKOK POST: 'PRESS BURMA TO REOPEN UNIVERSITIES'
 BANGKOK POST: BURMA ROW LEAVES BORDER VULNERABLE
 BANGKOK POST: ALLEGED BURMESE REBELS NABBED IN SAMLOT
 DPA: CAMBODIA TIGHT-LIPPED ON RETURN OF BURMA REBELS
 REUTERS: BANGLADESHIS REPORTED SHOT BY MYANMAR FORCES
 JDW: INDIA AND MYANMAR LOOK TO BURY YEARS OF DISTRUST
 GUARDIAN (London): THE WORLD@WAR


*****************************************************************
NEW STRAITS TIMES (MALAYSIA): BURMA-- SUFFERING IS PART OF LIFE

January 19, 2000 


Review by Otto Steinmayer 

UNDER THE DRAGON 
Travels in a Betrayed Land 
By Rory Maclean 
(Flamingo, 224 pages) 

A SAD, sad book. A very sad book. We have all heard of Burma. Since 
Burma - none of the Burmese I have ever met use the name "Myanmar" - is 
a neighbour and fellow member of Asean, little news about actual 
conditions for ordinary Burmese makes it into our local media. 

Still, enough TV clips, radio and print accounts make their way out to 
ensure Burma's infamous reputation as the land where everybody is 
miserable except for the handful of people who run it. 

Gibbon called history nothing more than the chronicle of the "crimes, 
follies and disasters of mankind". The same forms our daily diet of 
instant news and over the decades, it's easy for our feelings to be 
calloused. 

So we say, yeah, things are tough all over. Until a writer like Rory 
Maclean comes along and - ignoring ideology and all but the most basic 
politics - shows us what brutality people have to face. 

The Burmese are abused, battered and crushed. 

Take Ma Ni Ni. Her father eked out a living as a masseur in a Rangoon 
hotel. His bicycle was stolen by a soldier. Ni Ni's father ransomed it 
from a warrant officer (who had stolen it in turn) for 100 kyat - 
US$2.50 but also two months' rent. 

The elder Ma lost his job, and during the uprising of 8.8.88 he 
vanished. 

Ni Ni went looking for her father through the bloody hell that the army 
had made of the city, a vain task. She saw nurses shot down at the 
hospital. When development replaced chaos, she went to work as a 
labourer on a hotel project. The English architect lured her into being 
his concubine, then abandoned her. 

Ni Ni got a job in Thailand; as a dishwasher, she thought; in fact, she 
was kidnapped into prostitution. After some years, Thai authorities 
raided the brothel she was then imprisoned in and shipped her back to 
Burma, where she spent a year in detention: there was no one to claim 
her. A foreign charity offered her sanctuary and taught her to weave 
baskets, at which she excelled. Ni Ni was thus on the way to reclaiming 
her life when she died not long after, too young. 

This is the first person, the first story. Many other Burmans appear in 
Under the Dragon: a retired Sandhurst-trained colonel-turned-monk; a 
censor at the State publishing department. She married a journalist, and 
that was the crime for which she was arrested. In prison, she created a 
magazine of the mind, a heroic feat of memory and spirit, to stay sane 
and human. A trishaw driver who comes right out and says, "Our leaders 
wish us 
ill." A pair of ethnic Chinese twin sisters who lost everything they 
had, first in racial violence instigated by the military government in 
the '60s, then again after 1988, when the SLORC introduced a cutthroat 
capitalism - based on foreign money - that destroyed their little 
business. 

Each life shows that in Burma all you need, whether you're intellectual 
or working stiff, to attract the wrath of the dictatorship is to possess 
integrity and decency. 

Imagine these experiences multiplied by tens of millions. When such 
stories as Maclean tells are typical, who can calculate the frightful 
scale of sorrow and misery in the country? The thought of it freezes the 
heart. 

How can we face such tragedy? How could Maclean have faced such tragedy 
and horror closely enough to be able to write about them? In the first 
place, Maclean has a strong soul, and his strength comes from his 
humanity and compassion. In the second place, he has his art. Under the 
Dragon is a beautifully written book. 

Don't scoff at art. A philistine age may despise Maclean, thinking that 
he has "taken advantage" of other people's pain in using it as an excuse 
to write a travel book. Hardly. A plain catalogue of case studies might 
be less beautiful, more factual and a lot fuller, but case studies are 
just that: lists of victims, all of whom come to seem equally anonymous, 
equally wretched, in short, human sludge. 

Literary style rescues these unhappy people. The writer sees them and 
presents them as people of flesh and blood. He knows they struggled as 
well as suffered. Words restore their individuality and dignity. If they 
have lost at everything else, they have triumphed in endurance and the 
writer's careful beauty saves their achievement from oblivion and crowns 
it. This is no lie of rhetoric. 

Maclean did not go to Burma on purpose to tourist in hell. His wife 
Katrin suggested the trip. She is a basket-maker, and her object in 
going to Burma with her husband was to find out whether a particularly 
lovely bamboo shopping basket she found in the British Museum was still 
made and used. 

Baskets are an apt metaphor. They are practical objects of art, light 
and strong. They are made by ordinary people the way they like best, and 
are part of everyday life. They are also going out of use. The generals' 
wives prefer Hermes and Louis Vuitton, and modern commercial culture 
peddles cheap plastic sacks stamped with Disney characters to the poor. 

Baskets are the useful, the beautiful, the personal, the tried-and-true, 
everything that the military government would like to see erased from 
Burmese life in its greed to enrich itself and itself only. 

Katrin and Rory's search for the basket is the thread that structures 
the journey. The quest gives them a sense of purpose, a reason for going 
to particular places. They did not have to go out looking for pathos; 
plenty of pathos found them on the way. 

Travel in Burma is rough. If they had not set a goal, they might have 
fled home, appalled, after a week in Rangoon. They persisted. After 
learning that the basket of their search was made by someone of the 
Palaung people, they went to Namhsan in the middle of the north country. 
The journey and the one night stay are nightmarish reading. The only way 
to get to Namhsan was to accept a ride from Phahte, "honoured uncle". He 
turns out to be a petty chief, and by the time Maclean realises the 
depth of the man's depravity, it's too late: he's committed to a tour at 
gunpoint. 

Phahte is a drunk, an annoying loudmouth, a squalid slob, a pretended 
Christian and a real bigot, and an insatiable exactor of his subjects' 
homage. Violent and volatile, he is as dangerous as only a man like him, 
in a position of absolute power, can be. A petty warlord is still a 
warlord. 

Phahte orders people to dinner. His most treasured ornament is his 
automatic pistol. He likes to shoot chickens, and there's no doubt that 
he'd make as little scruple about shooting people. 

And yet Phahte's mother is there also. Nothing in the book seems more 
poignant to me than the contrast of this thug and his patient mother, 
devoted to him but deeply saddened by his ferocious, mindless greed. 
Phahte is loyal to the generals. When he hears the name of Aung San Suu 
Kyi, he spits. Whatever else, something must be horribly wrong in a 
state where such criminal types are allowed to legitimise their 
tyrannies. 

We wish Burma well. Military governments are notoriously unstable and 
brittle. 

Change has come to Indonesia, and it must come one day to Burma, too. 
Then we will see that in truth it was the dictators who were the most 
miserable people in the land.

*****************************************************************
BANGKOK POST: WA SHIFTING 90,000 NEAR THAI BORDER
19.1.00/BANGKOK POST
NUSARA THAITAWAT

ON TOP OF THE STATED PLAN TO MOVE 50,000

Some 90,000 ethnic Wa under the protection of the United Wa State
Army are being relocated to Mong Yawn on the Thai-Burmese border,
a reliable source told the Bangkok Post yesterday.

The source, who is well connected on both sides of the sensitive
border adjoining Chiang Mai province and Burma's Shan state, said
the 90,000 were on top of the 50,000 villagers from opium-growing
areas in Shan state who are being relocated under a joint
Burmese-Wei Hsueh-kang project to eradicate the crop by 2005.

The 90,000 will bring up to 120,000 r the population of Mong
Yawn, a newly developed UWSA settlement opposite Thailand's Ban
San Ton Du in Mae Ai district, Chiang Mai.

The government, under the strong recommendation of army chief Gen
Surayud Chulanont, closed off the San Ton Du-Mong Yawn temporary
border crossing five months ago in an attempt to deny the UWSA
the fruits of their drug trade. It is convinced the UWSA is
funding its massive development projects with money from sales of
millions of methamphetamine pills to the Thai market.

The source, who paid a recent visit to Mong Yawn, said soldiers
were working day and night to build small huts to accommodate the
newcomers and that the area of Mong Yawn, some 30km from the Thai
border had expanded beyond recognition from his last visit a few
months ago, with little space left for anything else.

The newcomers are given one sack of rice and 50 baht per family
per month for the first year. They are also to be engaged in the
UWSA agricultural project to be completed in four years. The
first two years are intended to clear forest and mountainous land
for fruit and vegetable planting, before moving on to rice
cultivation.

The population was just 10,000 in March last year; it increased
to 12,000 in June and reached 30,000 last December. The source
said the newcomers were ethnic Wa, mostly from Burma's eastern
Shan State, but also from neighbouring Yunnan province in
southern China, who are well-educated. Most are civilians.

"All have volunteered to come to Mong Yawn because there isn't
much of a future for them where they are," said the source.

Thai agricultural experts were hired last year to start huge
fruit plantations near Mong Yawn. It has also hired some 500-600
Thai workers in Mong Yawn for its infrastructure projects which
include a dam, roads, electricity and water, telephone lines, a
fuel storage a school and a hospital.

The source said thousands of longan trees had been planted under
the project and were growing well. Mong Yawn had less success
with rice cultivation because of a large number of rodents. I

The closure of the border has slowed but not stopped the
development projects, with supplies reaching Mong Yawn through
other border crossings.

Mong Yawn leaders are confident the newcomers can be
accommodated.

Mong Mai, opposite Ban San Maked in Mae Fah Luang district,
Chiang Mai, another new settlement of the UWSA under the control
of rival drug baron and 46th brigade commander, Wei Hsueh-kang,
is also doing well. Some 500,000 longan trees have been planted
there.

The source said Wei had also initiated plantations of teak and
plum trees but he was unsure of their progress.


The massive and well funded development projects in Mong Mai
(also known as Ban Hong or simply "46" after Wei's brigade
number) and in areas between Mongshat and Tachilek under Wei's
control, will have no problem absorbing the 50,000 being
relocated with the help of the Burmese military government.

Wei Hsueh-kang, alias Prasit Chivinnitipanya, is wanted by
Thailand and the United States on drug trafficking charges.
Washington has placed a US$2 million reward for information
leading to his arrest and conviction.

*****************************************************************
RADIO AUSTRALIA:  RELOCATION PLAN FOR OPIUM POPPY GROWERS ASSESSED by 
Radio Australia correspondent 

 
Radio Australia, Melbourne, in English 1005 gmt 17 Jan 00 

[Peter Mares, presenter] Burma's military regime says it will force tens 
of thousands of people to move from their homes in a bid to stop heroin 
production in the country's northern border region. During the next 
three years, 50,000 villagers from the Shan State will be moved away 
from areas where the government says the soil is too poor to grow 
anything but opium poppies. The plan has the backing of the ethnic Wa 
army in Shan State, which is described by the US State Department as a 
leading drug-trafficking syndicate. 

Southeast Asia correspondent Ginny Stein has just returned from an 
official government tour of the mountainous Shan State and she joins us 
now from Bangkok. Ginny, just describe where you were taken to hear 
about the Burmese regime's latest scheme to tackle the drug problem. 

[Stein] Well, we crossed into Burma from the Thai border crossing at Mae 
Sae, crossing into Tachilek, where we were met by officials from 
Rangoon, and then we travelled by helicopter around the eastern Shan 
State to the Wa stronghold towns of (?Chan Song) and to another town 
that is being established, called (?Wan Han). That is where they are 
planning to move 50,000 people; already, 10,000 are there. It's an area 
they are trying to cultivate into a longan farm, as a [word indistinct] 
which they are hoping to be able to sell into the Thai market, although 
they have admitted that their marketing plan isn't there yet. So they're 
yet to work out exactly where this crop is going to go. 

[Mares] It sounds like a social experiment on a huge scale. 

[Stein] Well, it's an experiment that seems to have both the military 
regime's and the Wa's backing, from what we were told and what we were 
able to see. Their simple approach to this was that these farmers in the 
north of where we were, where we saw the people arriving at [as heard], 
come from a mountainous region where the soil is only suitable for 
growing opium. It may be suitable for other crops but they say quite 
simply the infrastructure isn't there for them to be able to even 
consider growing anything else, that over the decades this is all 
they've known how to do, and unless they move them out and give them an 
alternative, they'll have no choice but to continue growing opium. 

[Mares] From past experience, though, are there indications that this 
plan can work? 

[Stein] Well, we've been told by the Wa before that a) [as heard] 
they've never been involved in drugs; we've also been told by them that 
they are committed to the eradication of drugs. Setting out that 
contradiction is one thing. They say they have a 15-year plan, that 
they've thought through a considerable period of it in various parts, 
but they're hoping that within five years from now that they'll no 
longer be involved in any illegal drug production whatsoever. 

[Mares] And Ginny, did you get any chance to assess what the people 
being moved themselves think about this plan? 

[Stein] Well, we were told simply by officials that people were being 
told they had to move, that the Wa commander to the region had spoken to 
their people. Most were in agreement. We were told that there were some 
who were, well, maybe not so much in agreement but the authorities were 
insisting that they moved. When I asked them, what did that mean when it 
comes to insisting people move, they were rather short on answers. They 
quite simply came up with a response saying: well, people come, people 
go; we then get them to come back, once they see that conditions here 
are quite OK. But the conditions of the new arrivals are far from OK, 
they are worse-looking refugee camps [words indistinct] approaches than 
anything I have even seen in Timor. People are living in the dirt; they 
have put some very temporary leaf-bark sort of huts up for themselves. 
We were told that this is of course temporary but it doesn't look like 
they'll be moving anywhere very quickly, for at least a short period of 
time. 

[Mares] OK Ginny, thanks very much for joining us. 

***********************************************
JAPAN TIMES: DOWN THE AYEYARWADY RIVER TO THE SEA

The Japan Times 

January 19, 2000, Wednesday 

   By Hugh & Midori Paxton 

The steamer docked at the sun-soaked Yangon pier could have just sailed 
in on a river of ink straight from Kipling's pen. 

Vendors in sarongs scamper and chirrup through the crowded lower deck 
dodging chickens and crab crates, balancing plates of fried shrimp on 
their heads. Two decks above, red-robed monks lean with dignity from the 
first-class cabins dropping paper streamers or unfolding umbrellas. 

The SS Baumawady hasn't seen a paint brush in years; its squat, enormous 
funnel belches a plume of smoke that scatters the swooping gulls and it 
positively simmers with smells - spices, sweat, sandalwood, hint of 
latrine, frying, fuel oil and that gorgeous, indefinable musk of 
tropical Asia. What Joseph Conrad called the "sigh of the east." 

Here it starts: the river road down to Bogalay city and the mangrove 
forests of the lower Myanmar delta where the mighty Ayeyarwady River 
(after a journey of 2,050 km) splits into a spider web of countless 
channels before emptying into the Andaman Sea. 

Myanmar is the largest nation in Indochina (676,581 sq. km), but its 
population is comparatively small. Its unequaled variety of ecosystems 
includes the ice-capped eastern Himalayas where the Ayeyarwady first 
rises, tropical forests, extinct volcanoes and coral reefs. There are 
tigers, tapirs, elephants, three species of rhinoceros, red pandas, tomb 
bats, plus little-known mammals such as the mythun, goral, takin and 
linsang. 

The delta mangrove forests are home to some darned weird fish, abundant 
birds and Crocodylus porosus, the gigantic estuarine crocodile, a 
species credited with eating 1,000 retreating Japanese soldiers in the 
mangroves of Rakhine in just one night back in 1945. 

More of the crocs later. 

As the Baumawady sets sail with an ebullient blast of the whistle, I 
watch the Yangon high-rises dwindle, the chaotic jumble of river craft 
recede, and then settle down on the deck with a small stack of books and 
papers and a bottle of Peace Myanmar Group's bottled water ("Mineral is 
essential. Warranty: Absence of E. coli and Pathogenic Organisms.") 

Research time. 

Or, more accurately, distraction time. The children are first. Solemn 
knots of them, faces painted with thanaka powder, decorously courteous 
but at the same time entranced by even the most trivial pursuits of a 
rarely observed foreigner. The papers are abandoned and we get into 
pulling faces at each other. They do great faces, and the film they use 
up is budget shattering. 

Then there's the river. Where its banks are not covered with thick 
stands of phoenix palms, there are stilt huts, betel fields, duck farms, 
pagodas and fishing villages. Fish traps as convoluted as a Bangkok 
bamboo building scaffold occupy strategic spots; customs boats mount 
random searches for contraband on shabby junks; flocks of egrets explode 
out of reed beds. There are floating shrines, and plenty of shifting 
sand banks for the SS Baumawady to run aground on, which it does, from 
time to time. 

Eight hours later, as Bogalay city heaves into sight, I feel justifiably 
proud. Despite the distractions, I've managed to read almost three whole 
pages of the "Ecological Reconnaissance of Meinmahla Kyun Wildlife 
Sanctuary and Vicinity (MKWS)," by Thorbjarnarson, Platt and Khaing, 
Wildlife Conservation Society New York. 

Executive summary of this excellent report follows. When Myanmar becomes 
a signatory to the Ramsar Convention for wetlands protection, the 
136-sq.-km MKWS should be first to be designated a Ramsar site of world 
importance. Delta mangroves have suffered this century due to wood 
cutting and clearance for paddies. MKWS is the last relatively undamaged 
site with at least 40 species of mangroves. Huge numbers of migratory 
birds stop here. It is home to five species of jungle cats, river 
dolphins, the now endangered Crocodylus porosus, one elephant and unique 
species of turtles (Myanmar has the largest number of turtle species in 
Southeast Asia, 28 in all). 

No one's really sure quite what else lives here, either in the maze of 
winding river channels or among the twisted roots of the mangrove 
stands. Funds for research are urgently needed. One thing that can be 
stated with certainty, though, is that swimming (or indeed dangling 
one's feet cheerily in the sediment-thick water) is unwise. 

As Wildlife Dept. Range Officer U Soe Lwin explained on our arrival in 
Bogalay, estuarine crocodile numbers have crashed in the delta but a 
release program of 1-year-old juveniles is aiming to bring about a 
recovery - and there are at least two great survivors. 

The first of these is called Htun Shwe (named after the first of its 12 
known human victims). The second is dubbed Kyun Pat Gyi ("Island 
Rounder") due to its habit of slowly circling an island in the MKWS. The 
Island Rounder, U Soe Lwin states with assurance, is "30 feet [9 meters] 
long at least," which would make it the largest estuarine crocodile ever 
recorded. 

It has certainly eaten enough people, most recently pulling a 
30-year-old fisherman who was sitting in his boat washing mud off his 
legs after entering the MKWS illegally to cut wood. The man's son tried 
to pull him back into the boat, but you don't win tugs of war with the 
Island Rounder. 

Locals believe the two crocodiles are nats (supernatural beings) and 
hold rituals to appease them. 

The best way to visit the area is to book your trip with Woodland 
Travels, an ecotouristic company that has affiliations with the 
Department of Forestry. The advantages are various. They handle the red 
tape, permits, arrange transport and accommodations at the Department of 
Forestry guest house and hook you up with the range officers who will 
show you around on foot, but mainly by boat, on day trips from Bogalay. 

The range officers are wonderful fellows. They'll offer you fried beetle 
larvae (cicada-size; taste and texture like fatty, shrimp-flavored 
custard, verdict unprintable), regale you with fascinating anecdotes 
(fights between dolphins and crocs, jackal attacks, the ghost ship that 
turned up abandoned by its crew but with a hold full of smuggled 
crocodiles, etc.) and their wives concoct some of the best food I've had 
in Asia. Delta food is a real treat. 

In addition to the crocodile breeding program, two delta islands are 
protected nesting grounds for sea turtles. The Forestry Department is 
also operating a greatly needed mangrove reforestation program. 

"We have 1.4 million man groves ready to plant in the rainy season," 
range officer U Kan Ton explained as mudskippers and mangrove crabs 
seethed among the shoots and several hundred whistling ducks flew 
overhead (whistling, as is their wont). 

Already 3,680 hectares have been planted and degraded land restored. 
Good news, not just for wildlife and ecotourists for but also for the 
delta's people. Mangroves are nature's most fertile nurseries for fish, 
crabs and prawns. When they go, everything and everyone is the poorer 
for their passing. 

Woodland Travels: 422/426 Strand Road, 07 FJV Commercial Centre, 
Botataung Township, Yangon, Myanmar. Telephone +95 (1) 20-2071, fax +95 
(1) 20-2074, e-mail woodland@datser 

co.com.mm or see Web page at www.woodlandgroups.com 

*****************************************************************
BANGKOK POST: 'PRESS BURMA TO REOPEN UNIVERSITIES'
19.1.00/BANGKOK POST

CONTINUED CLOSURE HAMPERS EDUCATION

Burmese opposition groups in exile have appealed to Unesco, now
meeting in Bangkok, to press Rangoon to reopen universities.

The National Council of the Union of Burma (NCUB) said the
Rangoon government's continued closure of universities has
hampered Burmese citizens' access to education.

The closure was against Unesco's goal, set at its previous
meeting a decade ago, to promote education and reduce the
illiteracy rate, it said on Monday in a letter to participants of
the Unesco conference in Bangkok.

"The closure of the universities to prevent student activists
from organising political groups has placed thousands of young
Burmese in limbo," it added. Though the Rangoon government
recently allowed universities to reopen, the process was
selective and the government still blocked students from
involvement in various activities, it said.

Forty-two countries are participating in the regional conference
of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural
Organisation. The meeting, which ends tomorrow, is to evaluate
educational progress in the Asia and Pacific region.

"We appeal to the participants of the ongoing conference in their
collective or individual capacity to urge the military junta to
respect the human rights of the people of Burma, particularly to
stop all activities that violate the rights of people to
education," said the Bangkok-based NCUB.

The NCUB is made up of exiled Burmese activists and opposition
members of parliament.

*****************************************************************
BANGKOK POST: BURMA ROW LEAVES BORDER VULNERABLE
19.1.00/BANGKOK POST
DARITDET MARUKATAT

Problems with Burma are leaving the Thai border vulnerable to
more landmines, sources in the Defence Ministry said on Monday.

The Thailand Mines Action Centre (TMAC) is worried over the
possibility that more mines would be laid at the Burmese
frontier, some of which could spill into Thai territory since the
borderline remains unclear, the sources said.

They said the two main factors contributing to the problem were
recent border tensions after the Burmese embassy seizure in
Bangkok on Oct 1 last year, and Thailand's intensified efforts to
seal off the supply route of methamphetamines from Burma.

Thailand has accused ethnic minority rebels in Burma of producing
and sending the drug into the country.

Thai armed forces stopped laying mines since a global ban went
into effect in Thailand in May last year. Under an agreement
signed in 1997, Thailand has to destroy its stockpile as well as
clear mined areas.

According to TMAC, there are mines scattered over 796 square
kilometres in Thailand. Along the Thai-Burmese border alone,
mines have been found in areas totalling 53sq km in Chiang Rai,
Mae Hong Son, Tak and Chumphon provinces.

The sources said only the border with Burma remained vulnerable
to the risk of more mines being laid, since fighting inside
Cambodian is now over and since Thailand no longer has serious
conflicts with its other neighbours.

The mines action centre was set up last year to train deminers,
to destroy mines in stock and to clear mined areas before
returning them for civilian use.

*****************************************************************
BANGKOK POST: ALLEGED BURMESE REBELS NABBED IN SAMLOT

19.1.00/BANGKOK POST
PHNOM PENH
AP

Two anti-government activists from Burma were arrested after
allegedly attempting to solicit Cambodian training to use against
their country's military junta, officials said yesterday.

The two men were taken into custody last week in Samlot, a
battle-scarred town on the Thai border, after apparently asking
former Khmer Rouge rebels to teach them guerrilla tactics.

"They were seeking help in training and supplies from our
regional military to fight the Burmese government," Im Dara,
deputy commander of military police in Battambang province, said
by telephone.

Khmer Rouge guerrillas in Samlot were among the last to
surrender, negotiating their integration into the Cambodian army
in late 1998.

The small town, about 320km northwest of Phnom Penh, is
considered the birthplace of peasant resistance to the royalist
Cambodian government of the 1960s.

The Cambodia Daily identified the dissidents as Mon Say and Kao
Sik, names which if correct are likely to belong to members of
one of Burma's ethnic minorities. Provincial authorities did not
know what resistance group they are affiliated with.

Some of the resistance groups in the past have obtained weapons
from Cambodia, where there is a huge supply of armaments - a
legacy of more than two decades of war which ended only recently.

The weapons were smuggled across Thailand to the Burmese border.
Many Burmese dissidents, in addition to tens of thousands of
people displaced by fighting, have taken refuge in Thailand.

A Burmese embassy official in Phnom Penh said yesterday that
Ambassador Tint Lwin planned to contact the Cambodian government
about the arrested dissidents, but declined to comment further.

The fight against Burma's ruling generals came under wide
international scrutiny in October when a small group of student
activists staged a spectacular raid on the Burmese embassy in
Bangkok.

They briefly took embassy staff and tourists hostage before
fleeing to the Burmese-Thai border.

*****************************************************************
DPA: CAMBODIA TIGHT-LIPPED ON RETURN OF BURMA REBELS
DEUTSCHE PRESSE AGENTUR
19.1.00/
PHNOM PENH


Cambodian authorities remained tight-lipped yesterday about the
fate of two Burmese nationals jailed after they allegedly sought
weapons to fight the military regime in Rangoon.

Military intelligence chief Mol Rouep refused to say where the
pair, Mon Say and Kao Sik, were being held. He said authorities
had not yet decided whether or not to send them back to Rangoon.

"The government will decide on this later when we finish our
investigation," he said.

The United Nations Convention on Refugees bane the deportation of
nationals who might face persecution in their home country. The
UN human rights office in Phnom Penh is monitoring the case, an
official said.

Mon Say and Kao Sik were arrested last weekend by military police
in Battambang province, They had no passports and were officially
charged with illegal entry into Cambodia.

But police said the pair, identified by Cambodians as members of
the Mon ethnic minority in Burma, had boasted of being resistance
leaders in a rebel force fighting against the State Peace and
Development Council, the military junta that rules Burma.

The rebel Mon army has made peace with the Rangoon government a
few years ago.

*****************************************************************
JDW: INDIA AND MYANMAR LOOK TO BURY YEARS OF DISTRUST

Jane's Defence Weekly 

January 19, 2000 

 

 

BERTIL LINTNER JDW Special Correspondent 

Bangkok 

 

Alandmark exchange of military visits earlier this month indicates a 
warming of relations between India and Myanmar, following years of 
distrust that have verged on open hostility. 
  
Indian Army Chief of Staff Gen V P Malik led a tri-service 
delegation to Mandalay on 5 January. His counterpart, Myanmar Army 
Chief Gen Maung Aye, accompanied the Indian group the following day to 
Shillong, headquarters of the Indian Air Force Eastern Command and a 
centre for several military and paramilitary units of India's border 
security forces. 
  
Two Indian ministerial delegations, led by Industry Minister 
Murasoli Maran and Power Minister P R Kumaramangalam, visited 
Myanmar around the same time. Among the results of the meetings were 
agreements on improving communication links and the launch of 
regular consultations concerning border security issues. 
  
The latter could lead to joint efforts aimed at curbing the 
activities of ethnic and ideologically-based insurgents operating 
along the porous 1,375km shared border. 
  
India's northeastern states of Assam and Nagaland are threatened by 
ethnic rebels operating from bases in Myanmar's northwestern Sagaing 
Division, while pro-democracy insurgents in Myanmar have sought 
sanctuary in the northeastern Indian state of Manipur. Further, Chin 
rebels from Myanmar's Chin State maintain base camps straddling the 
border with the Indian state of Mizoram. 
  
India's move to improve relations with Yangon has also been prompted 
by concern over China's expanding influence in Myanmar. Beijing has 
delivered vast quantities of military equipment to Myanmar since 
1989, and trade links have grown extensively.  New Delhi initially 
tried to counter China's influence by supporting Myanmar's pro- 
democracy movement. However, around 1993, it began to re-evaluate 
this strategy out of concern that its policies had achieved little 
while pushing Myanmar closer to Beijing. The result was a policy 
shift aimed at improving relations with Yangon. 
  
An unprecedented joint military operation, code-named "Golden Bird", was 
conducted in 1995 against Naga and Assamese rebels returning to their 
base camps in Sagaing Division with new arms that had been covertly 
delivered by sea to Bangladesh. Myanmar military personnel were offered 
places at Indian staff colleges, and New Delhi agreed to upgrade a vital 
border road. This road - from the border town of Moreh, in Manipur, to 
Tamu on the Myanmar side and on to Kalemyo in the Myanmar plains - is a 
major conduit for cross-border trade while providing strategic links 
important to counter-insurgency 
operations. 
  
Myanmar has traditionally served as a buffer state between India and 
China, a status that was upset only after the current military-led 
government assumed power in Yangon in 1988. These initiatives suggest 
that Yangon may now be seeking to resume a more balanced relationship 
with Asia's two main powers.






REUTERS: BANGLADESHIS REPORTED SHOT BY MYANMAR FORCES
January 19, 2000 
Web posted at: 8:49 AM HKT (0049 GMT) 
COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh (Reuters) -- Myanmar frontier guards have shot 
and wounded two Bangladeshis and abducted 20 along Bangladesh's 
southeastern border, security officials said on Tuesday. 
"The incident occurred at Tumbru border point, 65 kilometers (40 miles) 
southeast of Cox's Bazar resort town, on Monday afternoon," a Bangladesh 
Rifles (BDR) border force officer said. 
"The Nasaka (Myanmar frontier guards) conducted the raid when the 
victims were collecting woods in Bangladesh territory close to the 
border," Lieutenant-Colonel Mohammd Wasim told Reuters. 
Two people were admitted to hospital with bullet wounds and 20 of their 
companions were abducted, he said. 
"We have sent a note of protest to Nasaka and demanded immediate release 
of our nationals." Nasaka is Myanmar's official frontier force. 
Cross border shooting incidents are not uncommon between the two sides, 
often accompanied by Bangladeshi allegations of intrusions by Myanmar 
forces into its territory. 





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THE GUARDIAN (London): THE WORLD@WAR

January 19, 2000 

  
Continuing the Guardian series on electronic life, John Vidal hears how 
dictators, democracies and transnational capitalism are all vulnerable 
to global subversive coalitions using the internet 

 
    We are at war. Not the sort that pits army against army, that sheds 
blood, destroys economies and bankrupts governments, but what is being 
called by the US military 'social netwars'. Little noticed and less 
analysed, they are being taken seriously as the possible style of future 
conflicts. Already they are beginning to shape the new international and 
national political agendas. 

In a series of papers commissioned by the world's most powerful army, 
the Rand Institute - a leading US government-funded think tank with 
close links to the White House - has argued that the information 
revolution now sweeping through most countries is migrating power away 
from nation states towards new non -governmental alliances and networks 
of civil organisations. The implications for the way societies develop 
and the foreign policy of governments may be huge, say the authors, and 
the threat to established, but particularly authoritarian, regimes may 
be significant. 

'Netwar refers to information-related conflict at a grand level between 
nations or societies,' says John Arquilla, one of the report's authors. 
'It means trying to disrupt or damage what a target population knows, or 
thinks it knows, about itself and the world around it. A social netwar 
may focus on changing public or elite opinion, or both . . . It may 
involve diplomacy, propaganda and psychological campaigns, battles for 
public opinion and for media access and coverage.' 

The tone is militaristic, and the report includes the activities of 
terrorists, criminals and militias, all of whom are using the latest 
communications to operate, but the broad analysis of the new battle 
lines between entrenched government and social activism is pretty close 
to what many in non-governmental organisations are saying. 

The past 50 years have seen the rise and rise of two new major forces on 
the world stage: the non-governmental group and the media. The power of 
the two to change public perceptions is undisputed, but the electronic 
revolution is now able to bring them together in ways that were 
inconceivable just a decade ago. The globalisation of capital, business 
and governanace is being matched by the globalisation of opposition. 

Huge networks of public interest, environment, human rights, consumer 
development, religious and umbrella civil society groups, drawing in 
local, national and international organisations, are beginning to 
emerge. For the first time they are able to respond immediately to 
international events, counter state propaganda or bring concerted 
pressure to bear on governments, companies or international bodies. 

The most recent netwar was the Seattle world trade talks, where hundreds 
of diverse groups - often not even present in the city - massively 
opposed an organisation which very few people in the world had ever 
heard of, let alone thought about. Through a concerted 'information' 
campaign and public protest, they raised a global debate questioning the 
very legitimacy of the World Trade Organisation. 

They set an agenda of public disquiet which shocked many western 
governments and strengthened the arguments of many poor countries who 
had been prepared to be sidelined. 

Opposition to the multilateral agreement on investment(MAI), an OECD 
initiative that sought to rewrite the rules of international investment, 
is another example of recent netwar. A coalition of several hundred 
groups sowed confusion and outflanked the governments by picking holes 
in the arguments, alerting interest groups and demanding accountability. 


Other netwar arenas include the global grassroots campaign against world 
debt, started by Jubilee 2000 but picked up across the world; the 
massive campaign against landmines - the first netwar, the authors note, 
to have won a Nobel prize; and the international opposition to 
genetically modified foods. 

All the issues have very quickly moved on to the international agenda in 
the past few years, taking governments and industries by surprise. All 
three have forced climbdowns, new laws and safeguards and caused 
governments deep embarrassment. The authors anticipate a new global 
peace and disarmament movement arising 'from a grand alliance among 
diverse NGO and other civil society actors attuned to netwar'. 

It is not just governments at risk. Corporations, especially in 
contentious areas such as oil, mining, banking, chemicals and new 
biological technologies, are all liable to be 'hit' - and can do very 
little to counter the threats posed. 

The social netwar may also be a fundamental threat to capitalism and neo 
-liberal economies, the US army has been warned. 'A new generation of 
revolutionaries, radicals and activists are beginning to create 
information -age ideologies in which identities and loyalties may shift 
from the nation state to the transnational level of global civic 
society. New kinds of actors, such as anarchistic and nihilistic leagues 
of computer-hacking 'cyboteurs', may also partake of netwar'. 

The US military, like the British police, has always tended to overstate 
the case to further its own agendas, but the difficulty they face 
countering coordinated opposition coming at them from many direct ions 
is real. 'Old hierarchies have a difficult time fighting networks,' says 
the report. 'The Zapatista movement in Mexico, with its legions of 
supporters and sympathisers among local and transnational NGOs, shows 
that social netwar can put a democratising autocracy on the defensive 
and pressure it to continue adopting reforms.' 

The report's authors believe that it takes networks to fight networks. 
'Governments will have to adopt designs and strategies like those of 
their adversaries . . . they must draw on the same principles and 
(adopt) a willingness to innovate doctrinally.' And they suggest that 
the scenes of future social netwars could include Cuba, Nigeria, Russia 
and Saudi Arabia. 

Cuban grassroots groups are connecting to outside NGOs. What could 
emerge before long are the conditions for a fully-fledged social netwar 
if Cuba becomes more open. In Saudi, the ruling family keeps tight 
control, but an underground exists and people's access to modern 
telecommunications is improving. 'Opportunities may grow for an 
indigenous dissident movement to emerge and gain links to outside 
fundamentalist and even secular democratic forces,' says the report. 
Even a country as closed as Burma may, say the authors, be vulnerable to 
a social netwar. 'Free Burma' exile groups have organised into a network 
to promote the downfall of the junta and to support internal 
pro-democracy activists. The authors predict that authoritarian regimes 
may try to harass, control, arrest and expel activists, and regulate the 
formation and behaviour of NGOs through judicial methods, even creating 
'dummy NGOs'. 

They do not include countries like the US and Britain, which are 
well-advanced in trying to counter environmental and other activism 
through all these methods. 

'Social netwar is fundamentally anti-establishment,' say the authors. 
'It may be used by leftists, rightists or anyone else with an 
anti-establishment agenda.' It is, they conclude, 'more likely to be 
used against states rather than by them'.



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