BurmaNet News: December 7, 2000

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______________ THE BURMANET NEWS ______________
        An on-line newspaper covering Burma 
________December 7, 2000   Issue # 1677_________

NOTED IN PASSING: ?The [Burmese people's] only weapons are words, reason 
and the example of this brave woman. Let us add our voices to their 
peaceful arsenal.?

President Bill Clinton.  See The Washington Post: For the 
Record?President Clinton?s remarks upon awarding Medal of Freedom to 
Aung San Suu Kyi

INSIDE BURMA _______
*Agence France Presse: Aung San Suu Kyi's legal team begins defence 
against property claim 

REGIONAL/INTERNATIONAL _______
*Agence France Presse: Clinton awards highest US honor to Aung San Suu 
Kyi 
*Agence France Presse: Reporters sans Frontieres condemns repression in 
Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos 
*Bangkok Post: The shadow of an enemy
*Bangkok Post: Inside Politics 
*The Daily Telegraph(London): 'I won't be going back - not to jail'

ECONOMY/BUSINESS _______
*The Times (London): Oil firm's secret deal to free Burma prisoner 

OPINION/EDITORIALS_______
*The Washington Post: For the Record?President Clinton?s remarks upon 
awarding Medal of Freedom to Aung San Suu Kyi


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__________________ INSIDE BURMA ____________________


Agence France Presse: Aung San Suu Kyi's legal team begins defence 
against property claim 

YANGON, Dec 7 

Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's legal team Thursday 
launched its defence against a property suit filed by her brother, who 
is claiming half ownership of her Yangon home. 

In a brief court appearance, the team asked Judge U Soe Thein for a copy 
of the claim filed by US-based businessman Aung San Oo. 

U Soe Thein ordered the case adjourned until Friday when the document is 
to be produced. 

The stop-start nature of the trial indicates that, without political 
intervention, it could drag on for some time, proceeding at the usual 
slow pace of civil cases in Myanmar, which typically take years to 
resolve. 

Observers in Yangon said the defence case will likely hang on whether 
Aung San Oo, as a foreign citizen, is able to own or inherit property in 
Myanmar. 

Aung San Suu Kyi's legal team won a small victory in the case Monday by 
being allowed to defend the opposition leader in the property suit. 

The judge had previously ruled that since neither the National League 
for Democracy (NLD) leader nor her lawyers were present at an earlier 
hearing, the case would proceed without their involvement. 

Aung San Suu Kyi has been held under house arrest in Yangon by the 
military government for over two months, since she and several other NLD 
leaders were barred from taking a train to the northern city of 
Mandalay. 

Aung San Oo filed the suit in October over the Yangon house, which 
belonged to their late mother, Khin Kyi. 

The Burma Lawyers' Council, a Thailand-based exile group, has said the 
case clears the way for the ruling State Peace and Development Council 
(SPDC) to evict Aung San Suu Kyi from the house and cripple her NLD. 

While not overtly political, Aung San Oo is much less critical of the 
regime than his sister, and the two are not close. 

It is believed that before her death Khin Kyi expressed the wish that 
the house be equally shared between the two children, and that if it 
were sold the proceeds should be donated to charity. 





  




The Associated Press 


  View Related Topics  

The materials in the AP file were compiled by The Associated Press. 
These materials may not be republished without the express written 
consent of The Associated Press. 


December 6, 2000, Wednesday, BC cycle 

SECTION: Washington Dateline 

LENGTH: 372 words 

HEADLINE: Clinton gives Burmese opposition leader Medal of Freedom 

DATELINE: WASHINGTON 

BODY: 
A Nobel Peace Prize winner under house arrest in Burma for her human 
rights work received America's highest civilian award Wednesday from 
President Clinton during his commemoration of Human Rights Day. 

Aung San Suu Kyi, the National League for Democracy party leader who won 
the 1991 Nobel for her pro-democracy work and is being detained by the 
country's military government, received the Presidential Medal of 
Freedom. It will be accepted by her son, Alexander Aris. 

Clinton also gave the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights to five 
people: Tillie Black Bear of South Dakota, who established one of the 
first shelters for battered women on an Indian reservation; Frederick 
Charles Cuny of Texas, who spent almost 30 years working to help 
civilian victims of conflict; Norman Dorsen of New York, who dedicated 
50 years of his life to promoting civil rights; Elaine R. Jones of New 
York, who spent 25 years in the NAACP Defense and Education Fund; and 
Archbishop Theodore E. McCarrick, who was recently named leader of the 
510,000 Roman Catholics who live in the District of Columbia and 
southeastern Maryland. 

The Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, was 
established by President Truman as a wartime honor. President Kennedy 
reintroduced it as way to honor civilian service. 

The award will be accepted by Suu Kyi's son because she has been held 
virtually incommunicado and allowed visits only by close relatives since 
Sept. 21, after a dispute with the government in Myanmar, also known as 
Burma. 

The latest dispute in her battle began Aug. 24, when Suu Kyi tried to 
drive out of Yangon. Stopped by authorities, she spent nine days camping 
on the roadside, then was forcibly brought back to the capital. Her 
ordeal brought worldwide sympathy and harsh Western criticism of the 
military junta. 

Suu Kyi won the Nobel for her peaceful struggle for democracy against 
the military regime in Myanmar. The military had overturned her party's 
resounding victory in general elections. 

Hundreds of members of her National League for Democracy have since been 
jailed in Myanmar, one of the world's poorest countries. Suu Kyi also 
was under house arrest for six years before her release in 1995. 










___________________ REGIONAL/INTERNATIONAL___________________
				

Agence France Presse: Clinton awards highest US honor to Aung San Suu 
Kyi 

December 6, 2000, Wednesday 

WASHINGTON, Dec 6 

President Bill Clinton on Wednesday conferred America's highest civilian 
honor on confined Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and 
pledged unending US support for her quest for democracy. 

In a move sure to infuriate Myanmar's military rulers, Clinton awarded 
the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Aung San Suu Kyi in absentia, 
warning the generals they would be outcasts until they ended tyranny and 
poverty in their "land of inherent promise." 

"She sits confined, as we speak here, in her home in Rangoon, unable to 
speak to her people or the world. But her struggle continues and her 
spirit still inspires us," Clinton said. 

No one had done more to teach that "the desire for liberty is 
universal," Clinton said, as he gave the medal to one of Aung San Suu 
Kyi's two sons, Alexander Aris. 

Aung San Suu Kyi, 55, has been a high-profile irritant to Myanmar's 
military rulers for more than a decade, and has been back under house 
arrest in the capital, Yangon, for two months since her latest 
confrontation with the junta. 

Despite previous years confined to her home and constant harassment by 
the generals, she has remained the figurehead for her National League 
for Democracy (NLD) which won elections the military refused to honor in 
1990. 

"The only weapons the Burmese people have are the words of reason and 
the example of this astonishingly brave woman. Let us add our voices to 
their peaceful arsenal," Clinton said. 

"America will also be a friend to freedom in Burma -- a friend for as 
long as it takes to reach the goal for which she has sacrificed so very 
much," he said, at the ceremony marking Human Rights Day. 

The United States is a frequent and damning critic of the Myanmar junta, 
and maintains a punishing array of sanctions and investment restrictions 
against the country. 

Myanmar remains defiant however, vilifying Aung San Suu Kyi through the 
official press and painting her as an agent of foreign powers bent on 
colonialism, including the United States. 

The daughter of independence hero Aung San, who was assassinated months 
before the country, then known as Burma, won independence from Britain 
in 1948, Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1994. 

In 1972 she married British academic Michael Aris and the couple had two 
sons. Aris died last year after a long struggle with cancer after she 
declined an offer to visit him in England, fearing she may have been 
forced into exile. 

Clinton recalled that after Aung San Suu Kyi was made a Nobel laureate, 
she said she would never accept such an honor in her name, but in the 
name of her compatriots. 

"I imagine she would say the same thing today -- that she would tell us 
that for all she has suffered, the separation from her family, the loss 
of her beloved husband, nothing compares to what the Burmese people, 
themselves, have endured." he said. 

The US Presidential Medal of Freedom was created by President Harry 
Truman to honor noble service in times of war, and was expanded by 
President John F. Kennedy to include service in times of peace. 

During the same ceremony, Clinton also honored five US citizens for 
their work in human rights, conferring upon them the Eleanor Roosevelt 
medal created two years ago. 

Those five were: native American Tillie Black Bear for her work with 
battered women; Frederic Cuny, a relief worker killed in Chechnya five 
years ago; Norman Dorsen, former head of the US civil rights union; 
Washington's new archbishop Theodore McCarrick; and a leading lawyer for 
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Elaine 
Jones.




____________________________________________________


Agence France Presse: Reporters sans Frontieres condemns repression in 
Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos 

BANGKOK, Dec 7 


The international press watchdog Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF) 
Thursday condemned the lack of press freedom in three ASEAN nations as 
the bloc prepared to join EU ministers for a landmark meeting. 

In Myanmar, Vietnam and Laos "there is no press freedom and dissident 
journalists face heavy jail sentences ... the state controls the press 
with an iron fist," it said in a statement. 

The media rights groups expressed its "indignation" at Myanmar's 
presence at the ASEAN-EU meeting in the Laotian capital Vientiane 
December 11-12. 

The two blocs are meeting at a ministerial level there for the first 
time since relations cooled in the wake of Myanmar's admission in 1997. 

The Paris-based group said at least 12 journalists were being held in 
jail in Myanmar under "appalling conditions" and the military junta had 
stepped up censorship since placing opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi 
under house arrest more than two months ago. 

RSF also criticised three other ASEAN members, Brunei, Singapore and 
Malaysia, for "restrictive press laws (which) do not allow pluralistic 
expression in the news". 

In Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, press freedom was 
"relatively good", it said. 

ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the 
Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. 



____________________________________________________


Bangkok Post: The shadow of an enemy 



 December 7, 2000  


In films, literature, and media, Burma is Thailand's arch enemy, but 
there may be little truth to the popular perception, and a recent 
seminar suggests the reality is much less dramatic. 

Thousands of Burmese soldiers, ugly and thirsty for blood, march on 
Ayutthaya, killing, raping, and looting. They burn everything to the 
ground, even religious relics, as Ayutthaya's soldiers and citizens, men 
and women alike, fight with heroism to protect their capital. It's yet 
another movie being made of the 1767 fall of Ayutthaya. Factional 
fiction or fictional fact, it seems few are interested in searching for 
the truth in Thai-Burmese relations today. 

The "fact" that Burma is Thailand's arch enemy is so deeply rooted in 
the Thai psyche not because of the cruellest of wars between the two 
countries, but as a result of myth-making over the centuries, part of a 
well-designed strategy of nation building, according to leading 
academics. 

Dr Sunait Chutintaranond, respected Burma expert from Chulalongkorn 
University, cites the case of the fall of Ayutthaya in 1767 - a date 
that all Thais who go through the formal educational system in the 
country must know - in which Burma is portrayed as the enemy of 
Buddhism. During the period of modern nation building in the face of 
Western colonial advances in Southeast Asia in the reign of King Rama V, 
Burma was no longer portrayed as such for its unforgivable 1767 victory, 
but rather as the enemy of the Thai nation, he said. 

"The 'fact' that Burma is our arch enemy has been institutionalised and 
at the same time fictionalised in popular movies. Today this 
fictionalisation is out of control," Dr Sunait said. 

At a recent three-day seminar entitled "From Fact to Fiction: A History 
of Thai-Myanmar Relations in Cultural Context" organised by 
Chulalongkorn's Institute of Asian Studies and Faculty of Arts, Thai and 
Burmese scholars were brought together at the university to explore how 
this fictionalisation was accomplished. 

Three movies were shown. The first portrayed how Thai film directors 
generally see Burma. Suriyothai, six years in the making and still in 
the works under Thailand's foremost film director, Prince Chatri Chalerm 
Yugala, portrays the heroism of Queen Suriyothai, who goes into battle 
to help her king fight the invading Burmese army. She dies in action on 
the battlefield. 

The movie, to be released soon, is being advertised as the prince's 
greatest cinematographic achievement and as very much anticipated by the 
public for its theme and state-of-the-art special effects. 

The second film was Never Shall we be Enslaved by Burma's leading 
director, Kyi Soe Tun, in which the enemy is also portrayed as ugly, 
bloodthirsty and cruel, while the helpless Burmese king and his 
citizens, men and women, fight with heroism. The movie was released in 
1997 and received four national film awards in Burma - best film, best 
director, best supporting actor, and best editing. 

Burma's arch enemy, however, is not Thailand, but the colonial power of 
Great Britain. Dr Sunait, a fluent Burmese speaker, said there are no 
fictionalised historical movies in which Burma portrays Thailand as its 
arch enemy. "In fact, we're never mentioned as an enemy," he said. 

The third film was King of the White Elephants by Pridi Banomyong. First 
released in 1941, the movie was made in English with a cast of leading 
actors who were half Thai and half European. Dr Charnvit Kasetsiri of 
the Southeast Asian Studies programme of Thammasat University commented 
that the movie showed off all of Pridi's progressive ideals about good 
governance, good neighbourliness and the ethics which must be respected 
in times of unavoidable war. 

The message was clear that war is between leaders and not the people, 
and it was a must to minimise the loss of civilians and low-ranking 
soldiers. "The movie was intended to send a message of peace," said Dr 
Charnvit. 

Pridi was then finance minister under the government of Field Marshal 
Pibulsongkram. The film had disappeared during the tumultuous political 
events that sent Pridi into exile. It re-emerged after he left China, 
after 21 years in exile, for Paris in 1983. 

The Burmese king in the movie is understood by Burmese viewers to be the 
King of Ava, but this interpretation is dismissed by both Dr Sunait and 
Dr Charnvit, who say he was just a fictional king. 

At the seminar, Associate Professor Onchuma Yuthavong, an expert in 
theatre, commented on the difference between the historian and the 
dramatist in her speech on "Fact, Truth and Fantasy: The Intermingling 
of Reality and Imagination in Drama, Theatre Plays and Period Movies". 
They both search for the truth and reconstruct it based on whatever 
fragments they can find, she said. 

"The process of reconstruction is where the historian and the dramatist 
part. The dramatist has the freedom to imagine and create and to say, 
'This is my truth,' but this is a no-no for the historian, who must keep 
to the facts," she said. "What makes a dramatist successful in movies 
based on historical fact is the ability to entertain the audience and 
ensure revenue at the box office. If they fail it's the end of the 
imagination and the dramatist has to face reality," she said. 

As for the historian, success lies in presenting controversial new 
findings and new interpretations that can be validated. "But a historian 
is also a dramatist; mostly the historian dreams up a thesis and tries 
to find evidence to support this thesis," Prof Onchuma said. 

Prince Chatri Chalerm, who brought a huge pile of history books on the 
1767 invasion to the seminar, commented before the sneak preview of his 
movie that fiction cannot stray too far from the truth. He said that he 
was sceptical of Queen Suriyothai's existence but after going through 
historical data, he started to believe, and based his movie on what he 
admits is his own reading of history. 

Directors decide, based on history, what events are most important in 
the lives they want to portray. Dr Jim Taylor of the Faculty of 
Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, commented that the 
evolution from fact to fiction was basically a response to 
socio-economic and political conditions. 

He cited the case of the Thai Princess Suphankalaya, who is believed to 
be the elder sister of King Naresuan of Ayutthya. She is believed to 
have given herself as a prisoner in exchange for her captive younger 
brother. She eventually became a wife of the powerful Burmese King 
Burengnong (in Burmese, Bayinnaung) and after his death, a wife of his 
son, the new Burmese ruler, said Dr Taylor. 

Suphankalaya had two children from the first king and was pregnant with 
the second monarch's child when he killed her in a rage after hearing 
that his son had been shot by her brother, King Naresuan. 

Dr Taylor pointed out that the story of the princess is not discussed in 
any of the Thai chronicles and is mentioned only in passing in several 
Burmese chronicles, but she somehow developed a cult-like following in 
1998 and '99. 

Her creation, or re-creation, is attributed to cosmetics entrepreneur Dr 
Nalinee Paiboon, who found luck after her business collapsed and her 
subsequent divorce, by praying to the statue of King Naresuan. She 
funded research into the life of the princess. 

The success of the myth of the princess, Dr Taylor said, was its timing. 
Thailand was going through its worst economic crisis and the feeling of 
insecurity and helplessness at being taken over by international 
financial institutions made the myth even more believable. 

The perception, according to Dr Taylor, was that "belief in Suphankalaya 
will see one safely through the turgid and jagged period of the current 
economic crisis. It will also lead to an increased sense of personal 
security and gain, a refuge and safe domestic 'place'." The myth, seen 
as an urban phenomenon, is dying, though her pictures are still on sale 
in a few places in Bangkok and provincial towns. 

The myth of Burma being Thailand's arch enemy, meanwhile, will continue 
to be perpetuated as scholars work hard to present another perspective 
on bilateral relations. The endless flow of methamphetamine tablets from 
the Burmese border, the influx of hundreds of thousands of illegal 
Burmese workers, the Ratchaburi hospital siege by ethnic insurgents from 
Burma, and the recent jail break by Burmese prisoners, will not help 
these academics. 

Dr Sunait said there seems to be no other "worthy enemy" for Thailand. 
"We were never colonised so we can't portray a European country as our 
enemy. China is too far away, Laos is too small. Cambodia has been 
ungrateful but nothing more. As for Vietnam, we fought them but it was 
over Cambodia," he said. 

At the end of the seminar, a group from the Faculty of Arts performed an 
old song which has long been forgotten - if it's even been heard - by 
the general public. It was a Thai-Burmese friendship song, composed 
especially for a Thai cultural mission sent to Burma in 1954. It says, 
in essence: "Thailand and Burma will love each other forever/We are like 
brothers and sisters, sharing the same religion/We may be separated by a 
border, but we are from the same land/We share the same heartbeat." The 
Burmese participants in the recent seminar attempted to highlight the 
more positive relations between the two countries. They pointed out that 
Burma's nationalist hero, Aung San, could not have rallied his support 
during World War Two without Thai help, even though Thailand was with 
the axis. Such truths, however, seem insignificant in the face of the 
established belief that Burma is Thailand's arch enemy. 

Didn't the great Greek thinker Plato warn us long ago - there is no 
truth in the world, only the illusion of truth; that what we see is only 
a shadow of the truth? 



____________________________________________________


Bangkok Post: Inside Politics 

December 7, 2000


There could be a serious breakdown in relations between our top brass 
and their counterparts in Burma, or it could just be a case of 
no-talkies. 

A pruning of a vine here, a plucking of a big bird there - life is sweet 
for the man who has everything except a political party to lord it over. 


Foot in mouth disease continues to claim victims among those who do 
probably know better. 

- Not on best of terms 

Drug problems and border conflicts have soured relations between 
Thailand and Burma to the point where things are getting personal 
between the military leaders. 

Relations have been decidedly cool for some time, with the military 
chiefs no longer paying frequent visits on each other. 

With millions of methamphetamine pills flooding into Thailand from 
across the Burmese border, the situation has become rather tense of 
late. The Thai military feels, quite rightly, that its Burmese colleague 
is doing nothing to help stem the drug flow. It also suspects that the 
opposite is true, that Burmese troops are involved directly in the drug 
trafficking process. 

Intelligence sources said that at a recent meeting of senior Burmese 
military leaders in Rangoon, Gen Maung Aye, the Burmese army chief, 
denounced three Thai generals as "power-mad warmongers". The three are 
Gen Mongkol Ampornpisit, the former supreme commander, Gen Surayud 
Chulanont, the serving army chief, and Lt-Gen Wattanachai Chaimuenwong, 
the third army region commander. 

Gen Mongkol did not visit Burma while supreme commander and criticised 
it for supporting the United Wa State Army, the major producer of 
methamphetamines across our northern border. 

Gen Surayud, as soon as he took over the post of army commander, 
reversed the practice of Gen Chettha Thanajaro, his predecessor, of 
cultivating personal contacts with the Rangoon junta and handed over the 
matter to the proper authority - the Foreign Ministry. 

The Burmese brass do not like Lt-Gen Wattanachai much because he stands 
firm against them and retaliates against any military action or stray 
artillery fire. He was supposed to have hit out at the Burmese at one 
meeting for being insincere and never meaning what they say. 

In the past few months, this line of thought has been passed along 
unofficially among the Burmese military establishment by word of mouth 
as well as through military radio communications. 

The Burmese postponed indefinitely a regional border committee meeting 
which they were to host in Keng Tung, Shan State, on April 25, 1999. 
There is still no sign the meeting will be rescheduled. 

Gen Sampao Chusri, the new supreme commander, is to lead a 40-strong 
delegation to Burma from Dec 12-13. Though the trip is meant to 
introduce the new Thai commanders to the Burmese, the supreme commander 
is sure to bring up joint drug suppression efforts even though the 
Burmese always say they have no control over UWSA territory. 

Though the delegation will include the new air force and navy chiefs, 
Gen Surayud will not go along because, as he himself said, he is not a 
new army commander. Gen Maung Aye did not attend the first meeting of 
the Asean army chiefs hosted by Gen Surayud in Cha-am last month. 

So relations are not likely to get any warmer any time soon. 


____________________________________________________


The Daily Telegraph(London): 'I won't be going back - not to jail'


December 07, 2000, Thursday 


When James Mawdsley was 22, he gave up beer and girls for a life of 
torture and prayer in Burma. Elizabeth Grice meets him 

By Elizabeth Grice 

James Mawdsley may be human after all. He is not finding it easy to live 
up to the standards he set himself while contemplating his future in the 
stinking confines of a Burmese jail. Little by little, the young human 
rights activist is getting used to the soft life, taking things for 
granted like the rest of us, forgetting to pray. 

"Without realising it," he says, "you start to upgrade your lifestyle: 
slightly better restaurants, slightly better-quality shirts, taking a 
cab instead of walking. It's so gradual, you hardly notice it." 

Idealist that he is, Mawdsley does notice it. Every lapse worries his 
conscience like a stone in a shoe. He is particularly disappointed that 
his rigorous prayer routine has gone to pieces: in jail, he was praying 
12 times a day and telling himself he had to keep up the habit when he 
was released. Three months after his return to Britain, he's disgusted 
that he can't even remember to say grace before he eats. "I feel now I 
don't have time to pray. It's ridiculous." 

Opinion is still divided over whether Mawdsley is a reckless adventurer, 
a saint or a zealot, and meeting him doesn't make it any easier to 
decide. He claims he isn't martyr material but he certainly suits the 
dictionary definition of one. Even if he didn't want to die for the 
cause, he was conducting his solo protest within a hair's breadth of his 
own extinction. 

Mawdsley was first expelled from Burma for pro-democracy activities in 
1997. The following year, he repeated his "crime", was tortured and 
served 99 days of a five-year sentence. The third time he went back - 
choosing a busy market place to distribute leaflets against the 
repressive military regime and playing pro-democracy songs full blast on 
his cassette player - he knew the consequences. 

In fact, they were part of his strategy. He had prepared his family for 
the worst and read the works of Russian and Chinese prisoners of 
totalitarian regimes to equip himself mentally for abuse and 
imprisonment. He correctly predicted the length of his sentence and how 
long he would have to serve. "For me, things were just going to plan." 

Terry Waite rang to offer his help when Mawdsley was released, but he 
seems to have emerged psychologically intact from his 415 days in 
solitary confinement and preferred to deal with sudden freedom in his 
own way. 

He views his slide towards Western comforts with a mixture of amusement 
and distaste ("You are giving up your freedom bit by bit"), but he 
hardly qualifies as a hedonist. The most noticeable thing about him - 
apart from his height and his blondness - is a monkish aura of 
self-possession and detachment. 

His white, open-necked shirt, dark trousers and black brogues are not 
the trappings of a fashion slave. He doesn't smoke or drive. All his 
worldly goods are stacked behind an armchair in his father's flat in 
Knightsbridge - a pitiful collection, even for an itinerant 27-year-old. 


This is his base when he is in England, giving talks for Jubilee 2000, 
the human rights lobby group that helped to secure his freedom in 
October. Otherwise, he lives in Munich with a degree of secrecy that 
suggests he is trying to regain a private life. He says he likes being 
there because he's not recognised and can get on with the next stage of 
his campaign - writing a book - in peace. 

Mawdsley gets asked all the time if he's a masochist. What does he think 
he has achieved? Surely there were more productive ways of drawing 
attention to human rights violations? No, he says, he chose the most 
effective way possible at that time. Look at the media coverage his 
protest received. But his epic defiance of the military junta - a 
personal crusade against evil, no less - has not been all positive. Some 
British aid workers, used to entering and leaving the country as simple 
tourists, are now subject to much greater scrutiny. 

Mawdsley believes his actions are being guided by an unseen hand and 
that his life was never seriously at risk. He argues he could not 
disappear without trace because he'd made sure enough people knew of his 
movements and intentions to deter the Burmese from killing him. "I may 
appear reckless but I am actually an extremely careful person. The 
reason I am out in one piece is careful preparation and a lot of support 
from good people." 

But his father believes the threat was real. "There's no question about 
it," says David Mawdsley, "these people are quite capable of murdering 
anybody. Trying to dissuade James was not easy. So we sent him away with 
our blessing. Our biggest fear was that he would be tortured again." 

Inevitably, he was. Perhaps if he had been a more compliant prisoner, 
this would not have happened, but Mawdsley was hell-bent on making a 
nuisance of himself. He went on a 20-day hunger strike to get a 
transcript of his trial. He inscribed democracy slogans on his cell wall 
with a nail. Most aggravating to the prison authorities, he took to 
banging on the door of his cell with his fists, shouting about human 
rights at the top of his voice. 

"Any show of dissent is absolutely not tolerated in Burma," he says. 
"The threat of violence had been building up throughout the year. They 
had been coming in with sticks and firing catapults close to my face. 
They were getting more and more angry because they could not control me. 


"The threats weren't working. The beatings weren't working, either. 
After each beating, I immediately got up and continued talking about 
human rights to make it clear that they can't shut us up through 
violence." 

When 15 men shouldered their way into his cell, equipped with 3ft wooden 
batons and gravel-filled socks, Mawdsley knew he was in for the mother 
of all beatings and admits to feeling nervous. He was left with internal 
injuries, a broken nose and bleeding face. "Some of the bruises didn't 
come up for weeks because the batons were wrapped in rubber. It actually 
takes away a lot of the pain." 

He assures me that his hunger strike was "quite painless" after the 
first eight days. "No worries. I used to get boiled water, which was 
almost as satisfying as a meal. It was gorgeous to feel so warm inside. 
I used to drink buckets of it." 

Mawdsley rates his sufferings as insignificant compared with what other 
prisoners this century have endured - though he's not sure how much 
longer he could have held out. 

In his third month of freedom, Mawdsley has no obvious means of 
financial support and dodges questions on this subject with whimsy. 
"Money comes, money comes," he says. "God provides money, as much as I 
need." 

How is He making sure Mawdsley is getting it this week? "Magic ways. I 
do not have to worry about where the next meal is coming from. If I 
worry, I count it as a sin, as distrusting God. He will give me as much 
money as I need for as long as I'm putting it to good use. If I start 
spending it on fancy clothes and fast cars, then it will dry up." 

A number of organisations could be helping Mawdsley, but he remains 
vague, talking about money coming from "unexpected places", just as 
morsels of decent food - a banana, or a piece of bread - would arrive to 
cheer him up in prison. He could, of course, be eking out the fee paid 
to him by a Sunday newspaper for his account of life in jail. He raised 
pounds 20,000 from the sale of a booklet he wrote in jail, Real Freedom, 
but that is being used to rebuild the burnt-down school, Pyo Pan Wai, 
where Mawdsley used to teach. 

Before his ordeal, Mawdsley was a Catholic in name only. He gave up 
going to church when he was 14 because he found it boring. "I was 
airy-fairy. I believed in God, but I didn't know what that meant." His 
only mission was to have a good time. "All I cared about between the 
ages of 18 and 22 was beer and cigarettes. And girls, yes." 

His twin brother, Jeremy, left school at 16 to join the Army, but James 
stayed on to get brilliant A-levels and a place at Bristol University to 
read physics and philosophy, with the intention of making a career in 
particle physics. At the end of the first year, he got straight As in 
his physics and maths papers. "This felt odd to me because I had spent 
the whole year drinking." He dropped out of university ("I became more 
interested in people than particles") and went travelling round 
Australia, where his eldest brother, Jonathan, was working. 

In New Zealand, he met his first Burmese exiles. By now, any thought of 
a conventional career path had gone out of the window. Inspired by Aung 
San Suu Kyi's biography, Freedom from Fear, he went to Burma to see 
whether the human rights reports of massacres, slave labour and torture 
were true. 

Mawdsley admits that, by the end of his prison term, the information he 
could glean from fellow prisoners and guards had almost dried up and his 
parents, visiting him every month, probably knew more about Burma than 
he did. 

Diana and David Mawdsley are separated but worked together for their 
son's welfare and freedom - she from Durham and he in London. To their 
relief, James has ruled out any further attempts to infiltrate Burma. "I 
won't be going back. Not to prison. I had to do it and I'm glad I did 
it, but I'm not going to hammer away at something that wouldn't be 
effective in the future." 

He has other ideas, other strategies. But, says his friend and 
organiser, Mark Rowland: "I think he would do well to keep his immediate 
plans to himself." 




_______________ ECONOMY AND BUSINESS _______________
 

The Times (London): : Oil firm's secret deal to free Burma prisoner 


December 7, 2000, Thursday 



Carl Mortished 




Premier Oil, the British company vilified for helping to prop up Burma's 
dictatorship, was instrumental in securing the release of the human 
rights activist James Mawdsley, it was disclosed yesterday. 

The company, which has been singled out by the Government for attack, 
initiated secret talks with Burma to free Mr Mawdsley, who was serving 
17 years in jail for distributing leaflets critical of the country's 
brutal military junta. The company acted as an intermediary between the 
Burmese regime and Mr Mawdsley's supporters in Britain. He was released 
in October after 415 days in solitary confinement. 

Premier Oil is the largest British investor in Burma and has been 
accused of using forced labour, a charge it denies. It intervened after 
Mr Mawdsley endured a three-day punishment beating for daubing slogans 
on his cell walls. Fifteen-strong gangs of men wielding wooden clubs 
attacked him repeatedly, leaving him bruised and bleeding internally. He 
rarely had more than one hour out of solitary confinement. A fluorescent 
light in his 27ft by 23ft cell, with only bare boards to sleep on, was 
never turned off. 

The first approach to the Burmese Embassy in London was made by Richard 
Jones, the social responsibility manager at Premier Oil. The company 
exploited its lucrative commercial contracts in Burma to apply pressure 
on the Government, which had defied international opinion in keeping Mr 
Mawdsley in jail. 

Charles Jamieson, chief executive of Premier Oil, said it was able to 
help because of its trading contacts. "We are not a campaigning 
organisation but we are in a unique position," he said. "We are the only 
British organisation which has access at all levels. Without 
interfering, we can sometimes facilitate things." His company is now 
supporting a women's health project against Aids and a human rights 
training programme. 

Premier's role was praised last night by Mr Mawdsley's father, David, 
who said: "They made the Burmese Ambassador realise how seriously this 
was being taken by our Government." But gratitude did not temper his 
criticism for the company's continued support for the dictatorship. "I 
still think they are wrong in supporting the junta," he said. 

The company's Yetagun project, an offshore gasfield and pipeline through 
which gas is exported to Thailand, is a major source of income for the 
Burmese regime. 





______________OPINION/EDITORIALS_________________


The Washington Post: For the Record?President Clinton?s remarks upon 
awarding Medal of Freedom to Aung San Suu Kyi


December 7, 2000

>From President Clinton's remarks upon awarding the Presidential Medal of 
Freedom to Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi yesterday: 

Aung San Suu Kyi . . . sits confined . . . in her home in Rangoon, 
unable to speak to her people or the world. . . . 

Twelve years ago, she found herself at the helm of a popular movement 
for democracy and human rights. A decade ago, she led her persecuted 
party in parliamentary elections that were neither free, nor fair; yet 
they still won 80 percent of the seats. Her victory has never been 
recognized by the government of Burma, but her hold on the hearts of the 
people in Burma has never been broken. 

 . . . She has seen her supporters beaten, tortured and killed, yet she 
has never responded to hatred and violence in kind. All she has ever 
asked for is peaceful dialogue. She has been treated without mercy, yet 
she has preached forgiveness. . . . 

No one has done more than she to teach us that the desire for liberty is 
universal. [In accepting her Nobel Peace Prize, her son] said she would 
 . . . accept such an honor only in the name of all the people of Burma. 
I imagine she would say the same thing today . . . that for all she has 
suffered . . . nothing compares to what the Burmese people . . . have 
endured: years of tyranny and poverty in a land of such inherent 
promise. . . . 

This medal stands for our determination to help them see a better day. 
The [Burmese people's] only weapons . . . are words, reason and the 
example of this . . . brave woman. Let us add our voices to their 
peaceful arsenal. 

________________


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