AFP, 5 March 2000US adventurer packs up balloon after failed round-the-world bidYANGON, March
A US adventurer was Sunday packing up his balloon and recovering from
slight injuries in a Myanmar hospital after failing in his bid to fly solo
around the world.
Kevin Uliassi, 36, landed his balloon, the J. Renee, in the centre of military-ruled Myanmar on Friday evening, after a 10-day odyssey half way around the globe. Authorities here said he spent Friday night in hospital near the landing site in the town of Bagan being treated for cuts and bruises sustained when the balloon returned to earth. On Sunday an official website tracking Uliassi's record attempt reported that he had started to recover his craft, with the help of the only balloon port in southeast Asia. "The repacking of the balloon was proceeding well under Kevin's supervision and the condition of the historic balloon was good," the website said. There is still no indication of what caused the Uliassi to bring the balloon down in Myanmar. His website said he still had plentiful supplies of food, oxygen and fuel on board. On Wednesday, he reported a loss of electrical power, but was able to repair the problem. Witnesses at the landing site at a village 30 kilometres (18 miles) from Bagan, reported hearing a loud noise when the craft was still airborne. "There was a loud bang, and then the balloon started to descend quickly," said a witness, who quoted officials as saying the J. Renee had suffered a malfunction. The report could not be independently confirmed. In all, Uliassi was in the air for 242 hours and travelled 13,246 miles in its semi-circumnatigation of the globe. It was his Uliassi's third bid to circle the globe. He took off February 22 from a park west of Chicago, cruised southeast to the Caribbean and across the Atlantic to Africa. He had crossed the Atlantic Ocean and India before he was forced down. It was not the first time that a round-the-world trip had ended in failure in Myanmar. In February 1998, a three-man crew led by Swiss pilot Bertrand Piccard touched down in the country in their Breitling Orbiter 2. Piccard was later a member of the first crew to circumnavigate the globe in a ballon in the Breitling Orbiter 3. The trip took 20 days. Uliassi's last solo round-the-world attempt, in 1998, sailed into trouble just 160 kilometers (100 miles) away in Knox County, Indiana, when his balloon developed a leak and plummeted to the ground. Undeterred, he had been in training since December, sleeping in an altitude chamber to get acclimated to the thinner air he had to contend with flying at 5,400 meters (18,000 feet) and above. Washington, 5 March 2000 Same Sad Burma By Fred Hiatt But any journalism teacher could tell you that's no lead; who's going to read about nothing new? So you might try this: Nothing much changed last year in Burma; one of the world's bravest women remained, after an entire decade, under virtual house arrest. You'd be talking about Aung San Suu Kyi. You'd hope your readers might remember the serene woman with the long black braid and the flower in her hair--who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. Who led the National League for Democracy to a smashing, 80 percent triumph in peaceful elections in 1990, even though she was under house arrest even then. And who, when the military junta refused to acknowledge the election results, herself refused to submit quietly to their theft of democracy, embarking instead on a path of nonviolent defiance. Aung San Suu Kyi, who is continually vilified in the junta's official press as a race-mixing mongrel-producer, because she married a gentle British don. A don who, when he was dying of cancer, requested from the junta a visa to travel from Britain to Burma to say goodbye to his wife, whom he had not been permitted to see in years. And who was refused, and died in England last March without having said farewell. Very sad, your journalism instructor might say; but honestly, the world is full of sad stories. So you might begin instead like this: Nothing much changed last year in Burma; the Southeast Asian nation remains one of the most oppressed in the world. Thousands have been killed, tortured and imprisoned by the military regime. "The government's extremely poor human rights record and longstanding severe repression of its citizens continued during the year," the U.S. State Department concluded in its annual human rights report 10 days ago. The details in the report are stark. Soldiers who kill and rape; forced child labor; trafficking in women and girls to China for prostitution; 1,300 political prisoners; universities closed since 1996 for fear of political dissent; a "pervasive security apparatus" that specializes in "intimidation, arrest, detention and physical abuse." And all of this in a country of 48 million people, which is to say more than the populations of North Korea and Iraq combined. Which raises the question of why, despite a despotism comparable to that of North Korea and Iraq, Burma is almost never in the news, or in the minds of policymakers. Perhaps it is because, unlike North Korea, Burma is not building nuclear weapons, and so President Clinton appoints no high-level envoys, and the United Nations delays and delays on the appointment of a mediator. And because, unlike Iraq, Burma wages war only against its own citizens (particularly its ethnic minorities), and so the U.N. Security Council wastes little time pondering its misfortunes. And because, unlike Kim Jong Il or Saddam Hussein, the dictators of Myanmar (as they call their country) are a colorless, corporatist bunch of generals: evil without charisma. So you come back to this: Nothing much changed last year in Burma, except that its people grew ever poorer and more miserable. In a lush and resource-rich country, once among the most literate of Southeast Asia, the average per capita income was estimated at $300. The business of choice was illegal drugs, tolerated and supported by corrupt army officers. "Burma is the world's second largest source of illicit opium and heroin" after Afghanistan, according to the State Department's annual report on drug policy, also just released. "Drug profits formed the seed capital for many otherwise legitimate enterprises." One of these years, things in Burma will change. Aung San Suu Kyi or her
democratic principles will prevail, just as democratic principles have in such
Asian nations as South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and now, haltingly,
Indonesia. Until then, there is not much new to say, except that Aung San Suu
Kyi and her compatriots should be kept in our thoughts and (if your journalism
instructor would let you say so) in our prayers. |