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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HEADLINE -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- AFP - Myanmar rejects US charge of religious
intolerance
USA Today - Hackers shut down Myanmar govt.
site
AP - Myanmar Currency Reaches 2-Year Low
Xinhua - Myanmar's Customs Duties Income
Drops Slightly
BKK Post - Relocation of Burmese
postponed
The Japan Times - ASEAN slowly embraces
human rights
The Straits Times - Malaysia denies
abusing Myanmar refugees Reuters - China says finds, returns stolen
Japan cargo ship
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- INTERNATIONAL
PROTEST AGAINST JAPANESE GOVERNMENT ON AUG 8.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Friday, August 4 1:21 AM SGT
Myanmar rejects US charge of religious
intolerance
YANGON, Aug 3 (AFP) - Myanmar's
military junta on Thursday rejected a US Commission's criticism of the state of
religious freedom allowed by the Yangon regime.
The reaction came in a press release from the foreign ministry to the
recommendation on July 28 by the US Commission on International Religious
Freedom that this predominantly Buddhist nation of nearly 50 million be
designated as a "country of particular concern (CPC)."
"The US Commission's characterization of the ... country as a land lacking
in religious freedom is a misrepresentation of the highest degree and the
Myanmar government completely refutes the allegation," the foreign ministry
statement said.
"Even though nearly 90 per cent of the population are devout Buddhists,
Christians, Muslims, Hindus and others are free to practice their faith without
let or hindrance," it said adding religious tolerance was a "recognized hallmark
of Myanmar society."
"The people and government of Myanmar attach great importance to promoting
harmony among religious in the country and are proud of their achivement," the
press release said.
Pagodas, churches, and Hindu temples coexisted peacefully side by side in
cities and towns across the country, it noted.
"The government works closely with leaders of different religious and
strives to ensure that harmony is maintained," it said.
"To allege otherwise, as the US Commission on International Religious
Freedom does, is to turn a blind eye to reality."
The State Department report, however, found that "the Burmese (Myanmar)
government ... coercively promotes Buddhism over other religions and violates
the religious rights of people in some minority areas," Larry Goodrich,
spokesman for the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, told
AFP.
The inclusion of Myanmar on a list of the world's religious persecutors was
corroborated in the department's annual human rights report, he said.
"The Commission's review of the evidence indicates that sadly, nothing has
changed and that Burma (Myanmar) should again be listed as a country of
particular concern, subject to sanction under the International Religious
Freedom Act of 1998.
"The Burmese junta's commitment to religious freedom and tolerance is as
phony as its so-called commitment to democracy," he said.
USA today - Aug 3,
2000.
Hackers shut down Myanmar govt. site YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Myanmar telecommunications engineers were trying
Thursday to restore the military government's Web site after hackers shut it
down, a military intelligence officer said.
An officer of the Directorate of Defense Services Intelligence said
myanmar.com was closed down by hackers Wednesday, but declined to elaborate. He
spoke on customary condition of anonymity.
The Web site gives the military regime's side in a propaganda war dominated
by overseas supporters of the democratic opposition led by Nobel laureate Aung
San Suu Kyi, whose party won general elections in 1990 but was not allowed to
take power.
It also gives information in English, French and Japanese to visitors to
Myanmar, also known as Burma.
Only government ministries and some business organizations in Myanmar have
access to the Web, and just a few hundred domestic users have e-mail. The
government keeps tight control on all media.
Friday, August 4 8:37 PM SGT
Myanmar Currency Reaches 2-Year Low
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - Myanmar's kyat currency hit a two-year low Friday in black market trading, dealers said. The exchange rate in Yangon slipped to 385 kyat to the U.S. dollar from 382 kyat the previous day. It was the lowest rate since August 1998. The kyat has slipped from 320 kyat since the start of the year for a combination of reasons, dealers said. A sudden drop came after government servants were given a fivefold pay raise in March, a weakness compounded more recently by a decline in the value of the baht currency in neighboring Thailand. A commentary in the state-run Kyemon newspaper Friday also noted that there were false rumors circulating that new high denomination kyat bank notes were to be issued. There are only 10 licensed foreign currency traders in Yangon. Most deals are done on the black market, which offers a better rate. The official fixed exchange rate of 6 kyat to the dollar is disregarded in day-to-day transactions. Myanmar's Customs Duties Income Drops
Slightly
YANGON (Aug. 4) XINHUA -
Myanmar received 861.75 million U. S. dollars from customs duties in the fiscal
year 1999-2000, which ended in March, a drop of 0.1percent from the previous
year, according to the latest figures released by the country's Central
Statistical Organization.
The main source of Myanmar's customs duties income comes from import
through normal trade and border trade.
Of the customs duties income obtained in 1999-2000, that from import
through normal trade amounted to 746.38 million dollars, accounting for 86.6
percent of the total, while that from import through border trade was 114.5
million dollars, representing 13.28 percent.
In recent years, Myanmar made relatively large adjustments to the rate of
customs duties. One of these is that to promote the development of its
agriculture, the Myanmar government exempted import duties on agricultural
implements, pesticide, improved varieties and fertilizer.
Myanmar mainly trades with Singapore, China, Thailand, Japan, Malaysia,
Indonesia and South Korea, having border trade with China, Thailand, India and
Bangladesh.
Bangkok Post - Aug 4,
2000.
TAK
Relocation of Burmese
postponed
Officials say locals don't know all facts Yuwadee Tunyasiri
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has postponed the
relocation of Burmese nationals from Bangkok to Tak following a protest by local
people.
Over 100 residents of Mae Sot opposed the move because they believed 85
Burmese students were to be moved to their province.
However, UNHCR officials said only four "persons of concern" were due to be
relocated to the Umpium camp.
Deputy permanent secretary for interior Veerachai Naewboonnian, the head of
the Burmese Students' Centre at Ban Maneeloy, said the four were actually ethnic
Karen people who had illegally entered the country.
He said they were among a group of 86 illegal immigrants required to report
to the Interior Ministry and the UNHCR on Wednesday. The other 82 are still at
large.
National Security Council chief Kachadpai Burusapatana said local people
also wrongly believed the 400 Burmese due to be moved to a Tak refugee camp were
former Burmese students.
He said these people were war refugees who had fled their shelters.
- A permanent agency is likely to be set up to deal with the hiring of
foreign workers.
Deputy Prime Minister Korn Dabbaransi said the proposal had the backing of
the National Security Council and academics and would be submitted to the
cabinet.
It had also been agreed that the number of alien workers should be limited
to 106,684, employed in 18 types of business in 37 provinces until Oct 31 this
year.
The Japan Times: Aug. 5,
2000
ASEAN slowly embraces human rights By PETER ENG
Special to The Japan Times BANGKOK -- When ASEAN agreed in 1993 to consider creating a regional
human-rights monitoring body, some member countries that weren't really
enthusiastic about the idea probably thought they were safe. At the time, there
seemed no way it could ever happen. For ASEAN, human rights was so sensitive
that it was rarely discussed publicly, and one of ASEAN's cardinal principles
was that members must not meddle in the "internal affairs" of other members.
Major obstacles remain, and a human-rights body won't be formed any time
soon by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. But the effort has been
making headway as the ASEAN agenda opens up, and officials interviewed at last
week's annual ASEAN foreign ministers meeting in Bangkok said the question is
not whether the body will be formed but when.
"Probably it will take a few years, but I think it's inevitably coming,"
said Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, whose country joined the
meeting as a regular "dialogue partner" of ASEAN. "In the time that I've been
foreign minister, 4 1/4 years, it's extraordinary how human-rights issues have
worked their way up the agenda of ASEAN countries. . . . Even Myanmar is talking
about establishing an independent human-rights commission."
After meeting in Singapore in 1993, ASEAN foreign ministers issued a joint
statement that "stressed the importance of strengthening international
cooperation on all aspects of human rights" and "agreed that ASEAN should also
consider the establishment of an appropriate regional mechanism on human
rights." The ministers were under some pressure when they wrote those words. The
previous month, the World Conference on Human Rights, which all ASEAN members
attended in Vienna, urged all regions to set up human-rights bodies.
Such bodies exist in the Americas, Europe and Africa, but not Asia. The
effort to establish an ASEAN body has been made more difficult by ASEAN's
expansion since 1995 to include Communist-ruled Vietnam and Laos as well as
military-ruled Myanmar, one of the world's worst violators of human
rights.
On the other hand, in recent years, Thailand and the Philippines have
pushed for ASEAN to be more open and more active in resolving social,
environmental and civil problems. At ASEAN forums, concepts of "universal
rights" as enshrined in United Nations declarations and international treaties
compete more strongly than before with the "Asian values" notion that the rights
of state and society outweigh those of the individual. ASEAN Vision 2020,
adopted in 1997, sees ASEAN's future as "a community of caring societies." The
Hanoi Plan of Action, adopted in 1998 to carry out this vision, called for
increased cooperation to combat the trafficking in, and violence against, women
and children, and to exchange information on human rights to promote and protect
those rights in accordance with international treaties.
And while it does not publicly admit it, in recent years ASEAN has been
softening its principle of noninterference in the internal affairs of member
states. For example, knowing that international isolation of Myanmar was hurting
ASEAN as a whole, some ASEAN members have been quietly pressing Myanmar to
improve its human-rights record and open talks with opposition leader Aung San
Suu Kyi. In 1997, after a bloody coup in Cambodia, ASEAN told strongman Hun Sen
that he must restore elected rule if the country wished to join ASEAN.
Optimism prevails among the human-rights advocates in government
institutions and civil-society groups in several ASEAN countries who have formed
a regional "working group" to lobby for an ASEAN human-rights body.
ASEAN ministers met with the working group for the first time in 1996. In
1997, ASEAN dropped its insistence that national human-rights commissions be
formed in each ASEAN country before a regional body could be formed. (That
removed a major barrier: Even today, the only ASEAN members with national
commissions are the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, while Thailand is
setting one up.) The working group's meeting with ASEAN officials in 1999 had a
new flavor, said Carlos P. Medina, Jr., a Filipino academic who is the working
group's secretary general. "Before, it was not a dialogue," he said in an
interview last week. "We just made a presentation and they noted it. In 1999 it
was a genuine exchange of ideas."
Last week in Bangkok, the working group gave ASEAN officials a draft
agreement on establishing a permanent ASEAN Human Rights Commission. The
document envisions a commission that would represent all contracting states but
act independently to promote and protect human rights. The commission would
accept complaints of violations from individuals, groups and contracting states,
and recommend to the governments measures to resolve those complaints. It would
also investigate alleged violations on its own initiative.
Questioned by reporters, Myanmar's Foreign Minister Aung Win claimed his
country did not oppose the creation of an ASEAN human-rights body. But he
repeated his government's arguments that the granting of political rights
depended "on stages of evolution, on the political situation," and that the
government must take action when political parties break the law -- a reference
to Suu Kyi's prodemocracy party. In an interview, a senior Vietnamese Foreign
Ministry official also did not openly oppose the idea, but added that, "You
know, human rights is a very sensitive issue in Vietnam."
The working group said one way around the lack of consensus may be to have
some ASEAN members form the commission among themselves first and then invite
other ASEAN members to join when they are ready.
Peter Eng, a former Associated Press correspondent, is a freelance
journalist specializing in political issues in Southeast
Asia. The Straits Times - Aug 4,
2000.
Malaysia denies abusing Myanmar refugees
KUALA LUMPUR -- Malaysia has criticised a US-based human rights group for
alleging it abused thousands of Myanmar immigrants in the country.
We are always condemned for a lot of things,'' Foreign Minister Datuk Seri
Syed Hamid Albar said.
These people should look into their own shores and see how immigrants are
treated there.''
Speaking to reporters yesterday, he said his government treated illegal
immigrants, including those from Myanmar, quite well.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch, in a statement released on Tuesday,
said thousands of Rohingya Muslims, who fled Myanmar to escape alleged military
persecution, faced abuses in Malaysia.
These include beatings, extortion, and arbitrary detention,'' it said.
The refugees are forced to live in poverty and constant fear of expulsion
from the country.''
The group said it had released a 78-page report entitled Living In Limbo:
Burmese Rohingyas In Malaysia, which it said detailed the treatment of the
exiles.
Denied legal recognition as refugees, Rohingya children are often not
permitted to attend school and many are denied health care. They are also at
constant risk of arrest,'' it said.
Datuk Seri Syed Hamid denied the allegations.
In Malaysia, illegal immigrants enter the country, we feed them, we clothe
them, we give them shelter and some even make their babies here,'' he said.
And we negotiate for them to go back peacefully. We treat them quite
well.''
Human Rights Watch said out of nearly 1,600 applications by Rohingyas for
refugee status in 1999, only 43 were granted.
The Rohingyas have been in Malaysia for the past few years. --Reuters
WIRE:08/04/2000 04:20:00 ET
China says finds, returns stolen Japan cargo ship BEIJING, Aug 4 (Reuters) - China has found and
returned to its owners a Japanese cargo ship commandeered by pirates in
February, state media reported on Friday. The Guangzhou Daily confirmed shipping
industry speculation that the 6,594 deadweight tonne chemical tanker Global Mars
was intercepted by Chinese authorities on May 30. The Panama-registered ship
with 17 people on board and carrying 6,000 tonnes of palm oil left Malaysia on
February 22, the day of its last contact some 385 km (240 miles) north of
Indonesia. The Chinese newspaper said the vessel, which China had taken to the
southern port of Zhuhai, had been repainted and named Bulawan. The original crew
of seven South Koreans and 10 from Myanmar -- who were found in mid-March on an
island off Phuket, Thailand -- had been replaced by 11 Filipinos and nine
Myanmar seaman, it said. The report said police had not determined the identity
of those who hijacked the ship or those who claimed to be its new owner. It was
not clear why authorities waited more than two months to publicise the incident.
Zhuhai police refused to comment on the case and local officials referred
reporters to the Guangzhou Daily account. The newspaper quoted investigators as
saying the Global Mars was boarded on February 22 by dozens of armed pirates,
who ordered the crew to keep sailing. After several days, the pirates told the
crew they had learned how to operate the ship and had no further use for them.
The pirates then set the crew adrift on a wooden raft, it said. According to the
South Korean government and shipping sources, the vessel was owned by Japan"s
Global Marine Service Co Ltd. The Guangzhou Daily and other Chinese newspapers
said it belonged to a Japanese company called Alavanca. The International
Maritime Bureau (IMB) said in an annual report released in February that world
piracy worldwide surged 40 percent to 285 in 1999, with Indonesia accounting for
113 of the attacks. Most of the attacks -- 217 of 285 -- involved pirates
boarding ships. ------------------------------------- (Send your protest letter to Japanese Government and Japanese Bussiness Companies before August 8. Stage demonstration in front of Japanese Embassies around the world on Aug 8.) |