Burma Related News - Sep 9, 2000.

Asiaweek
Politics: Ten Years After
It's time to think of another way to set Myanmar free
By RICARDO SALUDO
September 7, 2000

The chorus of condemnation was swift, if predictable. No less than the U.S. State Department deplored the stopping and turning back of pro-democracy heroine Aung San Suu Kyi during her Aug. 24 attempt to leave Yangon for a suburban political assembly. As in her first roadside confrontation with Myanmar's uniformed bosses two years ago, the Nobel Peace Prize winner succeeded in getting the world's attention back on her nation's pitiful plight. Nearly four decades of socialism and military dictatorship have impoverished, shackled and brutalized the Burmese and ethnic minorities in Myanmar. Now they face the prospect of seeing Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), which was robbed by the junta of its 1990 landslide parliamentary election victory, snuffed out in a sweeping crackdown. Rightly, the U.S. and Britain have condemned the repression and called for greater democracy.

They've been doing that for a long time, of course, and in the 10th year since the NLD's voided triumph, it's time to ask the question: Is international pressure on Yangon working? The answer isn't a simple yes or no. The country remains under the gun and in the dumps, but things could have been much worse if Myanmar hadn't been under the global spotlight all that time. Yet all the outside attention hasn't made life any easier for Aung San Suu Kyi and her fellow democracy campaigners. Nor has it stanched the junta's most destructive policy -- the indefinite closure of universities to avoid protests -- which has stunted the minds of a generation of young people. Such forced starvation of the mind is even more pernicious in today's increasingly wired world, where know-how is king.

Ten years on, the levers to pressure Myanmar remain weak and limited. While it is in dire straits, thanks in large part to Western economic sanctions, the country has subsisted that way for decades, so there is little reason to think the economic malaise would unseat the generals anytime soon. Nor is there any chance of foreign military action; unlike, say, Iran and Iraq, Myanmar does not seriously threaten the security interests of any major power . Besides Beijing will almost surely come to Yangon's aid if other countries actually came close to bringing its government down. The last thing China wants on its border is a country friendly to the West and fired up by democratic fervor. (For the same reason, Beijing isn't keen to see North Korea's Stalinist regime fall and its lands taken over by a pro-American South.)

What to do? Well, for starters, review the anti-SPDC (State Peace & Development Council) policy with a view to allowing Myanmar more exchanges with the rest of the world, including commerce. Turning Myanmar into a Cuba or an Iraq, where sanctions have done more damage than any socialist or autocratic ideology, is not the only route toward greater personal, political and economic freedom. There is also the China option of extensive and growing contacts with the world, which has done more for democracy than any isolationist measures.

But won't giving Myanmar the China treatment make it even less likely to change? Indeed, it could be encouraged by the thought that it could get away with murder if it stuck to its guns long enough. And who wants to trade and invest in a country where, as reported last week, soldiers allegedly massacred hilltribe people, including women and children? Well, all that applies to an even more ruthless autocracy, North Korea, which has been feted with U.S., Japanese and South Korean aid on the promise of shelving its nuke-building program. More to the point, isolation has done little to promote freedom and development in Cuba, Iraq and Myanmar. Isn't it time to think of another approach that will at least give a better material and intellectual life to people?

Saturday, September 9 6:37 PM SGT
Myanmar Junta Accuses Opposition
By AYE AYE WIN, Associated Press Writer

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - A senior member of Myanmar's military government accused the pro-democracy opposition of conspiring with Western countries to undermine the education system.

``A group of destructive elements ... is conspiring with nationals from Western nations to create disturbance and jeopardize the present peaceful pursuit of education,'' Lt. Gen. Khin Nyunt said in remarks published in all three government-owned daily newspapers Saturday.

Myanmar's state-run press on Friday had accused opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi of being power-hungry and blamed her for pushing the country toward ``utter devastation.'' For the past few weeks, it has kept up a drumbeat of criticism of Suu Kyi's movement and its foreign supporters.

The military government launched a new crackdown on Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy on Sept. 2, following a nine-day confrontation in which authorities blocked her from traveling to the countryside to engage in political activities.

The NLD headquarters have been closed and senior party officials confined to their homes.

Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her nonviolent pro-democracy work, has long been a target of the state-controlled press. News media echo the military government's claim that she and her party are impeding progress toward democracy and prosperity.

Khin Nyunt, Secretary-One of the ruling State Peace and Development Council, made his accusations at an International Literacy Day ceremony Friday in Yangon.

Khin Nyunt claimed NLD leaders and youth members, along with 15 foreigners, held a discussion on education at the party's headquarters last month.

``This trumped-up discussion was videotaped and distributed to other countries to dampen the enthusiasm and spirit of the students and jeopardize the continuing education,'' he said.

Myanmar's universities and colleges, hotbeds of activism since the days of British colonial rule, were reopened in July after being closed in 1996 following student demonstrations in Yangon.

They had been open only 30 months since 1988, when the government crushed an uprising against a quarter-century of military rule.

Pro-democracy leaders and foreign human rights organizations have cited the closing of schools as one of many human rights abuses inflicted by the military on the population in Myanmar, which is also known as Burma.

A commentary in the Kyemon newspaper Saturday accused Western nations of meddling in the internal affairs of the country by criticizing the restrictions imposed on NLD leaders.

``This is a matter between the ruling government and a political party. it is our internal affair and not the concern of others and they are meddling in our internal affairs,'' the paper said.

Myanmar's government has kept the NLD on a tight leash since 1988, when Suu Kyi helped lead pro-democracy demonstrations. The military allowed national elections in 1990 but refused to honor the results when the NLD achieved a landslide victory.

The Dallas Morning News
Letters for Friday
09/08/2000
Myanmar junta is as entrenched as ever

To say, quoting your Sept. 2 headline, that "Myanmar's leaders may be moving closer to accepting change" is giving the ruling military junta credit for making changes that have never, and may never, be made.

The treatment of Aung San Suu Kyi in the recent standoff shows us something. If the junta is unafraid to flex its undemocratic and abusive muscles when the whole world is watching, what are they doing when the only witnesses are terrified villagers?

While it is true that the junta has invited some international monitoring organizations into the country, readers should realize that such programs are little more than junta-approved whitewashes. True, the International Committee of the Red Cross has been granted admission to some prisons, but all visits must be pre-approved and all Red Cross teams are chaperoned by Burmese intelligence. The prisons are cleaned up, prisoners are given clean uniforms, better food and ordered to present a smiling face. The prison interviews are private, but you can imagine the climate of fear for the prisoners as they are threatened with severe punishment if they speak ill of prison conditions.

Other programs, like the Australian government's human rights training, are toothless at best. At worst, they give the international community the wrong impression that Yangon is moving toward change. But the junta is making virtually no progress and many problems are getting worse. State-sanctioned forced labor, torture, forced village relocations, summary executions, theft and rape are still very prevalent.

Accepting these programs as "breakthroughs in Myanmar's relationship with the world" rather than junta-controlled shams, contributes to the appearance of change. And that is very dangerous when there is really no change at all.

It's time we realized that it will not work to engage a regime whose only interests lie in protecting its own brutal hold on power.

T. ADAM MACKEY, Mae Sot, Thailand

Myanmar Makes Efforts to Bring Down Illiteracy Rate

YANGON (Sept. 8) XINHUA - Myanmar makes efforts to bring down its illiteracy rate to 9 percent this year from 21.4 percent in 1983, according to Friday's official newspaper The New Light of Myanmar.

The paper attributed this to the Education for All Program. The literacy rate in Myanmar has reached 91 percent and endeavors are being made for the remaining 9 percent to be literates in the 21st century, the paper said hailing the International Literacy Day which falls on Friday.

In its efforts to turn illiterates into literates under the basic literacy program, Myanmar, along with 12 other nations in Asia and the Pacific region, established in March this year the Literacy Resources Center (LRC) in cooperation with the Asia Pacific Cultural Center (LRC) for U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

The LRC is to undertake the tasks of production of teaching aids, literacy training and communication networks with non- governmental organizations at home and abroad.

Besides, Myanmar is also making efforts to enable neo-literates to be life-long learners under the reading skills promotion programs and become members of learning society in the knowledge age of the 21st century.

Myanmar's illiteracy rate declined to 57 percent from 65 percent after regaining independence in 1948 due to first attempt of public education and making new life through education from 1948 to 1964.

From 1964 to 1983, the country's literacy mass movement was launched for the second time with illiteracy rate decreasing to 21. 4 percent.

Washington File
07 September 2000

Text: U.S. Rejects Burmese Junta's Misinformation Campaign
(Burma should release Aung San Suu Kyi, other NLD leaders) (330)

The Burmese Government's claim that American and British diplomats somehow orchestrated recent events involving National League for Democracy (NLD) leader Aung San Suu Kyi in order to embarrass that regime is a self-serving fabrication, according to a September 7 statement by State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher.

"It represents a cynical attempt by Burmese authorities to deflect attention away from its blatant violation of Aung San Suu Kyi's human rights," Boucher said.

Following is the text of Boucher's statement:

(begin text)

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Office of the Spokesman
(New York, New York)

September 7, 2000

STATEMENT BY RICHARD BOUCHER, SPOKESMAN

U.S. REJECTS CLAIMS OF BURMESE JUNTA

Aung San Suu Kyi and several other leaders of the National League for Democracy have been held incommunicado in their homes since Saturday. The headquarters of the National League for Democracy in Rangoon was entered by government security forces, searched and padlocked. Despite repeated requests, foreign diplomats and the international news media have been denied access to Aung San Suu Kyi by government authorities.

The Burmese Government now claims that American and British diplomats somehow orchestrated recent events in order to embarrass the regime. This is a self-serving fabrication. It represents a cynical attempt by Burmese authorities to deflect attention away from its blatant violation of Aung San Suu Kyi's human rights. We reject these ridiculous claims and call upon the Burmese Government to end its policy of misinformation. It should immediately release Aung San Suu Kyi and all other National League for Democracy leaders. The United States, the United Nations, and other countries around the world remain committed to Aung San Suu Kyi and the cause of freedom and democracy for the people of Burma.

(end text)

(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

The Straits Times - Sep 8, 2000.
How long will Myanmar stalemate last?

MYANMAR'S crackdown on pro-democracy dissidents confirms many observers' worst fears -- that there is virtually no hope of peaceful change and reconciliation to break the political stalemate.

Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and other leaders of the National League for Democracy are now under house arrest after the stand-off she staged last week to draw world attention to the country's plight.

Her party headquarters has been raided and she has been held incomunicado after being escorted home forcibly on Sept 2 and prevented from travelling outside Yangon to meet her supporters.

Yangon's clampdown has, predictably, drawn protests and condemnations, but aside from these, what can the rest of the world do to influence Myanmar's behaviour?

Not much, really.

Asean, hamstrung by the non-interference principle, has been largely silent. Even Thailand, which bears the brunt of housing Myanmar's Karen refugees and illicit drugs flowing across the border, is muted in its criticism because it carries ""the burden of proximity''.

So it is left to the likes of the US and Britain to hammer away at the military regime.

The sceptics say Yangon is a soft target for the Americans, British and Scandinavian countries because they do not have extensive economic interests in Myanmar.

Basically, there are two ways to deal with Yangon's military rulers: Use punitive sanctions to isolate and squeeze the generals, as the US and Britain have done, or try constructive engagement the Asean way.

But both, the carrot and the stick, have not been terribly effective in getting the regime to change its repressive policies towards its domestic opponents.

In fact, Western sanctions have driven Myanmar deeper into the embrace of China, which, arguably, has the most influence on Yangon.

But China is hardly expected to take up Western cudgels and lecture Myanmar on human rights.

For strategic reasons, India is now making friendly overtures to Yangon in a bid to counter-balance Myanmar's heavy dependence on Beijing for trade, aid and arms sales at friendship prices.

In this light, Asean's softly, softly approach of constructive engagement remains a practical option. It carries with it the hope that the generals will at least listen to friendly advice.

Loud though the condemnations have been, no Western country has more leverage than the little that Asean has over Myanmar by using diplomatic back-channels.

Which is why Australia has opted to engage the generals by coaching them on human rights.

Japan, after a hiatus, is quietly resuming its development aid to Yangon, despite Western objections.

The European Union, on the other hand, remains unconvinced. Earlier this year, the EU agreed to resume ministerial talks with Asean it suspended in 1997 because of differences over Myanmar.

The Asean-EU meeting scheduled to be held in Laos in December should not be derailed again, even though Myanmar's repressive policies strengthen the case of those who want to take a tougher stand against it.

It bodes ill for Asean-EU relations, but this need not be the case. The lesson of the suspended Asean-EU ministerial talks is that it did both sides no good.

Asean-EU cooperation should not be held hostage to Myanmar's domestic politics. This is a bilateral issue which the EU can take up with the generals without making the other Asean countries pay for it.

Ms Suu Kyi timed her stand-off to coincide with the United Nations Millennium Summit so as to put more pressure on Yangon, but the regime is deaf to foreign entreaties.

The generals have shown no sign that they will moderate their policies, not when they perceive Ms Suu Kyi as a mortal threat to their survival.

Myanmar's long-suffering people have grown used to deprivation under military rule. Intimidated into submission at gunpoint, they suffer in silence for fear of retribution.

It is debatable whether Ms Suu Kyi, an unyielding opponent of the junta, is better placed politically now than before the stand-off, because the generals are just as unyielding.

In the end, it is a question of who outlasts whom. A really depressing thought.

The writer is the Chief Regional Correspondent of The Straits Times.

Sep 8, 2000.

TotalFinaElf criticised by French parliament on Myanmar activities

PARIS (AFX) - The head of the parliamentary foreign affairs commission, Francois Loncle, criticised TotalFinaElf for its activities in Myanmar, and urged the company to clarify its relationship with the country's military junta in a letter made public today.

Loncle told the oil firm's president Thierry Desmarets that he was worried by the "very negative effects of Total's presence in Myanmar."

"I wish to know the measures your company plans to take so that its presence in Myanmar is not interpreted as implicit support for the dictatorial regime," Loncle wrote.

"Recent events in Myanmar - impeding the freedom of movement of Aung San Suu Kyi, placed under house arrest - forces me to ask you to review your position," Loncle said.

Bangkok Post - Sep 9, 2000.
Postbag - Farouk, you're egocentric

Perhaps Omar Farouk of Darwin was too preoccupied with anti-American hypocrisy. Or he might be too fat with pro-junta opportunism when he tried to aim one stone at two heads, viz, the Western policy makers and Burma's NLD leaders (Postbag, Sept 1). Had he been sufficiently reasonable, as he seemingly assumed, he would have realised that all his words of wisdom were nothing more than a pseudo-advocacy favouring military rulers thereby giving an eggshell protection over its latest but not the last oppression against their own people who dared to oppose.

As he correctly mentioned, the democratically-elected government along with one of earliest democratic establishments in Southeast Asia was demolished once and for all in Burma in 1962. The military has since notoriously wiped out all reputable democratic figures as well as nipped those younger generations inspired with different ideology in the bud. Two generations have passed and it would be too imaginative to expect crystal-clear history in today's democracy elements in Burma.

Nor would it be so wise to point out the world powers' changing attitudes towards a specific issue without reflecting other global developments.

A Burmese dictator wining and dining with the US president in 1965 should not be the reason why the present US government should be scoffed at for supporting democratic changes in Burma. The fact is more distinguished when the same dictator and his successors effectively pulled the country down from a leading to least developed status within two decades and let her drift further to level zero in the new millennium.Worse still, they shamelessly deny the result of the election they themselves sponsored.

Some of today's prominent oppositionists may have their hands stained with blood.What's in it? If people like them to pay for their crimes,let them be tried in an orderly and democratic manner when justice prevails.

Even the internationally acclaimed Aung San Suu Kyi should not be exempted for that matter (do not mix this with the current junta's accusations under their homemade slingshot laws). The point is to set a genuine political system that assures every citizen of his/her basic rights and the freedom to apply them. No dictator in any form is qualified for this task. A case in point was the denial by the junta of the NLD's right to organise even a trip.

The people of Burma are poor, for they have been made so. They are not stupid to not know who is a friend and who is not. And they deserve more than egocentric rhetoric.

Myo Win

South China Morning Post
Saturday, September 9, 2000

BURMA - Junta: opposition undermining education
ASSOCIATED PRESS in Rangoon

In the latest attempt to discredit Burma's pro-democracy movement, a senior member of the country's ruling junta has accused the opposition of conspiring with Western countries to undermine the education system.
''A group of destructive elements ... is conspiring with nationals from Western nations to create disturbance and jeopardise the present peaceful pursuit of education,'' Lieutenant General Khin Nyunt said in remarks published in all three government-owned daily newspapers on Saturday.

Burma's state-run press on Friday had accused opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi of being power-hungry and blamed her for pushing the country toward ''utter devastation''. For the past few weeks, it has kept up a drumbeat of criticism targeting Suu Kyi's movement and its foreign supporters.

The military government launched a new crackdown on Ms Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy on September 2 following a nine-day confrontation in which authorities blocked her from travelling to the countryside to engage in political activities.

The NLD headquarters have been closed and senior party officials confined to their homes.

Ms Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her non-violent pro-democracy work, has long been a favourite target of the state-controlled press. News media echo the military government's claim that she and her party are impeding progress toward democracy and prosperity.

General Khin Nyunt, Secretary-One of the ruling State Peace and Development Council, made his attack at an International Literacy Day ceremony in the capital, Rangoon, on Friday.

General Khin Nyunt claimed that NLD leaders and youth members, along with 15 foreigners, held a discussion on education at the party's headquarters last month.

''This trumped-up discussion was videotaped and distributed to other countries to dampen the enthusiasm and spirit of the students and jeopardise the continuing education,'' he said.

Burma's universities and colleges, hotbeds of activism since the days of British colonial rule, were reopened in July after being closed in 1996 following student demonstrations in Rangoon.

They had been open only 30 months since 1988, when the current generation of generals came to power after crushing an uprising against a quarter-century of military rule.

Pro-democracy leaders and foreign human rights organisations have cited the closing of schools as one of many human rights abuses inflicted by the military on the population in Burma.

A commentary in the Kyemon newspaper on Saturday accused Western nations of meddling in the internal affairs of the country by criticising the restrictions imposed on NLD leaders.

''This is a matter between the ruling government and a political party. it is our internal affair and not the concern of others and they are meddling in our internal affairs,'' the paper said.

Burma's government has kept the NLD on a tight leash since 1988, when Ms Suu Kyi helped lead pro-democracy demonstrations. The military allowed national elections in 1990 but refused to honour the results when the NLD achieved a landslide victory.

South China Morning Post
Saturday, September 9, 2000

BURMA - UK envoy prevented from seeing activist
WILLIAM BARNES in Bangkok

A senior British diplomat in Rangoon was prevented from seeing opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi yesterday.
This further attempt to breach the security wall around her shows up the determination of the military regime's most vociferous critics, led by the United States and Britain, not to let this latest round of repression pass unmarked, even if many neighbouring countries remain mute.

Diplomats in Rangoon said "several" countries were toying with the idea of taking up an Australian suggestion that they deliver diplomat protest notes to the Government. The original idea that it be a "joint" statement appears to have broken down, however, partly because some countries wanted to strengthen Australia's wording of the protest.

British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook warned last weekend that Britain was searching for a suitable response "with European Union colleagues and other international partners".

Ms Aung San Suu Kyi has not been seen by outsiders since riot police broke up a nine-day, roadside stand-off by forcing her and 15 colleagues back into the town centre. The opposition leader has been trying to break out of the authorities' informal, but strong, political quarantine that confines her to the city.

Diplomats in Rangoon said the next step was likely to come from the United Nations Millennium Summit in New York where US President Bill Clinton described Burma as a "moral test" for the world.

Burma's Foreign Secretary, Win Aung, rebuffed such talk in a speech to the UN late on Thursday when he said the situation was trying in "a most humanitarian manner to prevent anarchy and the disintegration of the country".

The impossibility of obtaining wide Asian support for stepped up sanctions was underlined when Vietnam said restricting Ms Aung San Suu Kyi to her house was Burma's internal affair.

As the current chairman of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), Vietnam also chairs the new emergency "troika" designed to deal with crises. "For Asean this is simply not a crisis," said a Western diplomat.

The first secretary at the British Embassy, Frank Marshall, was barred from Ms Aung San Suu Kyi's house at about 8.30am yesterday. Earlier, the British Government called in the Burmese Ambassador in London to protest that Britain's Ambassador in Rangoon, John Jenkins, was "grabbed and pushed" when he tried to see senior National League for Democracy officials.

Although it would be difficult for Britain and the US to apply more pressure on the regime - substantial sanctions are already in place - without the support of countries such as Japan and India and those in Asean, the current row should not be underestimated, said a senior Bangkok-based diplomat.

"When the regime starts to bend or give way, then you really know it has reached a crisis. We never thought this stand-off affair would achieve that," he said. "But no one should underestimate the effect of the negative publicity being generated. Some countries might be sliding a bit closer to the regime, but this kind of sleazy repression shows how big a gap the regime has to jump to obtain international respectability."