Shan refugee pushback raises high-level Thai concerns...SPDC manipulating women in Burma using MWAF ["...On 18 July, 2005, the Woman and Child Rights Project - Southern Burma and the Human Rights Foundation of Monland released a new report Catwalk to the B a r r a c k s exposing official conscription of ?comfort women? by Burma Army troops and other evidence of systemic sexual violence in Mon areas of Burma...Ironically, the report came out soon after speakers at a ceremony held by the Myanmar Women?s Affairs Federation (MWAF) to mark ?Myanmar Women?s Day? in Moulmein were reported as stating emphatically ?There is no sexual crime in Mon State.?..."]...?Ready for Action? at a SWAN school ["The Danish Foreign Ministry is supporting a project of the Danish Burma Committee (DBC) to raise funds for SWAN?s education program during the 2005 Christmas and New Year holiday season in Denmark. The project involved the production of a docudrama about the situation of children of Shan refugees surviving as migrant workers in northern Thailand..."]...Poisoned refuge ["Tens of thousands of Shan refugees have ended up working as migrant labourers in tangerine orchards in northern Thailand. The tangerine industry has boomed in the past ten years, now spreading over 125,000 acres of land in northern Chiang Mai province alone. Concerns have increasingly been raised about the environmental impacts of these orchards, particularly the overuse of highly toxic chemical pesticides, many of which are banned in other countries. However, most data has focussed on the impacts on the Thai villagers living around the orchards, who have suffered health problems mainly from chemical pollution of water sources. There have been no studies of the impacts of the chemicals on the Shan workers actually living in the orchards. SWAN interviewed a Shan refugee woman from Fang district of Chiang Mai about her experience working in a tangerine orchard..."]...News Briefs: Four women from Burma among nominees for Nobel Peace Prize; Concerns raised over expansion of WFP programs; China urged to reveal Salween dam impact studies.