|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BURMA RELATED NEWS - OCT - 22, 2000. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HEADLINE
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- AFP - UN celebrates 'end of an era' in Cambodia
with a warning
Asia Pulse - Asem Mulls Proposal for Third
Category Members
The Independent - 'Reptilian' Burmese junta can be beaten, says freed Briton
ABC online - Human
rights campaigner tells of torture
The Sunday Times - Faith and press-ups saved Briton
The Observer - Fugitives tell of Burma's jungle reign of terror
The Daily Express - I'll keep up campaign against killer junta
The Independent(Bangladesh) - Special envoy
calls on Samad Azad: Myanmar urged to take back refugees
Sunday, October 22 12:25 PM SGT
UN celebrates 'end of an era' in Cambodia with a warning SAMLOT, Cambodia, Oct 22 (AFP)
- The United Nations refugee agency celebrated the "end of an era" in Cambodia
over the weekend, announcing it had completed the task of returning nearly
500,000 refugees displaced during three decades of bloody conflict and
genocide.
At a celebration Saturday in northwest Cambodia in heavily mined former
rebel Khmer Rouge territory near the border with Thailand, the UN agency handed
over operations to the government, expressing a hope "never to return," but
warning returnees faced ongoing danger from landmines and malaria.
"It is the end of an important era in the long history of Cambodian exile
and return," said Johanshad Assadi, regional representative of the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
"Nearly half a million Cambodians have returned home during this past
decade. To say that this is the end of an era is not an exaggeration."
But he warned that although the UN refugee agency was officially wrapping
up its refugee assistance in Cambodia, there remained huge refugee problems in
other parts of southeast Asia, mainly Indonesian West Timor and the tens of
thousands fleeing the oppression of military rule in Myanmar.
"There are still a number of pressing refugee issues in this region apart
from the repatriation and return of Cambodians," Assadi said.
"I think from what we know probably one of the more compelling refugee
issues would be the one in Indonesia in West Timor ... The Burmese in Thailand
are quite important, (as are) the remainder going back from Bangladesh to
Myanmar."
The UNHCR has managed two major returns of Cambodian refugees mainly from
Thailand -- some 400,000 in 1992 and 1993 ahead of UN-sponsored elections, and
nearly 50,000 after 1997 unrest.
In the past two years the UN has been assisting the return of those who
fled to Thailand after Prime Minister Hun Sen's bloody ouster of co-premier
Prince Norodom Ranariddh in 1997, and violence ahead of 1998 elections.
The country's three-decade civil war also ended in 1998 with the capture by
government troops of the Khmer Rouge's last stronghold on the Thai border and
the death of ex-dictator Pol Pot.
The Khmer Rouge are blamed for the deaths of nearly two million people
during their brutal 1975-1979 rule.
"For these people, peace has finally come to Cambodia for the first time in
30 years. They are looking forward to a new era of development," said the
UNHCR's Geneva-based director for the Asia Pacific, Francois Fouinat.
He said the post-1997 repatriation had been a "model" one, but that much
work remained to be done by the government and international community -- namely
the task of demining and the fight against malaria.
Fouinat said the UNHCR had begun the task of reintegration but that
Cambodia must continue it.
Several thousand returnees and provincial officials from the Samlot area,
as well as Interior Minister Sar Kheng attended the ceremony, during which a
UNHCR-built school was officially opened.
The UN said it had channeled some 5.9 million dollars of assistance into
the main areas of return in the northwest.
Saturday, October 21 6:10 PM SGT
Asem Mulls Proposal for Third Category Members SEOUL, Oct 20 Asia Pulse - A
score of countries, including Russia, Australia and New Zealand, hoping to join
the Asia-Europe Meeting (Asem), will be able to do so should the third Asem
beginning here tomorrow approve "third category membership" of the
inter-regional body.
Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said Thursday that while
"countries which cannot fit into Asia or Europe" could join the forum, any
decision on the proposal must be based on consensus.
The third category membership proposal is incorporated in the Asia-Europe
Cooperation Framework (AECF) 2000, the draft of which the Seoul Asem summit
would adopt.
Asem members concurred with the four principles on entry into Asem, one of
which calls for potential members to secure support from the relevant region
before applying for the approval of all members.
The four principles pertains to step-by-step expansion of membership,
possible contributions to Asem in the future, a two-staged affiliation procedure
and final determination by the Asem summit.
Speaking to Malaysian journalists on arrival here Thursday to attend the
Asem ministerial preparatory meeting ahead of the two-day Asem Friday, he said:
"This is a new thinking.If these countries are acceptable and they will
subscribe to the Asem cause, I think there should not be any problem."
He said the proposal would allow for the entry of such countries without
strictly adhering to the geographical footprint requirement.
Currently, Asem consists of the seven Asean countries namely Brunei,
Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
The other Asean members -- Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar -- are not part of
Asem yet.
Other Asian countries in Asem are China, Japan and South Korea while the
European side is made up of Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany,
Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden,
United Kingdom and the European Commission.
Asem members have now allowed non-members to participate in their
cooperation projects via agreements by the whole body.
Syed Hamid also explained Malaysia's position relating to Myanmar's entry
into Asem which faced opposition from some European members because of Yangon's
human rights violations.
Malaysia's position was that "if a country can subscribe to the objective
of Asem without us interfering into their internal system, then countries should
be encouraged to join the Asem," he said.
"But at the same time you must also be conscious that whatever new
membership that we want to include, it must be by way of consensus.
"If there is no acceptance by all (Asem members on Myanmar's entry), we
cannot push it," he added.
The Independent
'Reptilian' Burmese junta can be beaten, says freed Briton By Chris Bunting and Mark Rowe 22 October 2000 James Mawdsley, the human rights campaigner released from a Burmese jail,
arrived back in Britain yesterday and described the military regime that held
him prisoner for 415 days as stupid "reptiles".
Mr Mawdsley, looking exhausted but in good spirits, called on the British
government and the international community to force the Burmese junta to resign.
"The international community can move that junta. My case showed that," he said.
"They are terrified of anything they cannot control, of people who tell the
truth. When the international community comes down on them they will panic and
respond. The characteristic of the junta is their stupidity. They are reptiles.
"I have not apologised for what I have done because I haven't committed a
crime."
Mr Mawdsley was sentenced to 17 years in jail for handing out pro-democracy
leaflets and for speaking out against the military junta's slaughter of ethnic
groups. It was the third time the Burmese authorities had detained him in two
years. He spent over 23 hours daily in a small cell in Keng Tung jail, tortured,
refused pen and paper and, apart from his parents, having outside contact only
with the British vice-consul. He was beaten by guards, his nose was broken, and
his food was contaminated after he wrote slogans on his wall.
"It is the mental conditions that are hardest," he said. "You think about
everything you are saying, thinking, will this get me a beating?"
Earlier this month the United Nations ruled he was held unlawfully. He has
no intention of returning. "I have seen what I wanted to see. I have learnt what
I wanted to learn. I want to build on that in other ways. I'm not a man if I let
that junta continue to persecute its people and not do anything about it."
His mother, Diana, a retired nurse from County Durham, said: "Obviously I'm
proud of him. It's been a painful year." "
Mr Mawdsley called for the Burmese regime to be prosecuted for genocide,
citing reports that 30,000 of the minority Karen people have been killed since
1992, and 300,000 forced to flee. Amnesty International says the government has
killed, tortured, raped, imprisoned and forcibly relocated hundreds of
thousands. There are an estimated 1,500 political prisoners in Burma and human
rights organisations have repeatedly condemned the regime, the State Peace and
Development Council.
A pro-democracy rally in 1988 ended in the massacre of 10,000 and elections
in 1990 were annulled after opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi got 80 per cent
of the seats.
ABC online - Oct 22,
2000.
Human rights campaigner tells of torture Human rights campaigner, James Mawdsley, has told of a regime of beatings
and mental torture in a Burmese jail, as he arrived back home in Britain.
27-year-old Mawdsley was released after serving 415 days of a 17-year jail
sentence for distributing pro-democracy leaflets.
On his arrival he called for the Burmese military junta to be prosecuted
for genocide, over the deaths of 30-thousand of the country's ethnic minority
since 1992.
Mr Mawdsley said his time in Burma's notorious prison was hard, but he was
encouraged by the growing international support for his stance against human
rights abuses.
and international support was growing and you can't trace the effect of
these things but i think what's one more day for me in this room I'd think its
nothing compared to the effect that's out there that's echoing around and
growing.
The Sunday Times - Oct 22,
2000.
Faith and press-ups saved Briton Michael Sheridan STILL shaken by his ordeal, the young British human rights campaigner freed
from a Burmese jail spoke for the first time yesterday about the beatings and
violence that marked his imprisonment.
James Mawdsley, 27, from Ormskirk, Lancashire, said his Roman Catholic faith and the example of St Paul sustained him through three days of beatings and the suffering of solitary confinement in a remote corner of northeast Burma. "All the time in prison has been an education, but it was beginning to get
repetitive," he said. "It may sound strange after 400 days in one room, but I
didn't waste a day. The beatings were bad, but not like the Burmese get, of
course. They were just refusing to listen to my protests about solitary.
"Five guys came in, I got a crack on the back of the head and I was a bit
dizzy so I went down. Two of them carried on, but the other guys stopped."
Mawdsley had defiantly told a prison official that the prisoners were
treated like dogs and that it had to be stopped. "I'm not going to obey any man
- I obey God," he told the official.
That was when the decision was taken to beat him if he caused any more
trouble, he believes, "because they didn't know how to control me".
The assaults were the worst moments in more than a year of imprisonment
after Mawdsley entered Burma to stage his second one-man demonstration against
the military regime that has suppressed the National League for Democracy,
winner of elections in 1990.
He was moved by the fate of the ethnic Karen people, allies of Britain in
the second world war, who face a military onslaught that critics claim amounts
to genocide. Asked what inspired him to single out Burma, Mawdsley replied:
"Aung San Suu Kyi." He said the opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate,
under effective house arrest, was "not just a treasure to Burma, but a treasure
to the world".
Mawdsley has paid for his devotion with two spells in a prison system
described by the US State Department as "harsh and life-threatening". He will
not be going back.
Prison days started before dawn with loudspeakers blaring Buddhist chants
in a show of official piety. He ate rice and local fish paste. His diet improved
after visits by British diplomats, who took food parcels. He was let out of his
cell to walk round by himself for one hour every day. But he kept up a regime of
2,000 exercises from press-ups to stretches.
The Burmese may have opted to let him go to mark a top-level meeting
between Asian and European nations in South Korea last week.
Mawdsley learnt only last Friday morning that he would be released. But
there was one moment when the realisation dawned that he was free. It came in
the shabby airport at Rangoon, watching the sun sinking over the horizon as he
waited for the Thai Airways flight to take him to Bangkok. "That's the first
sunset I've seen for 14 months," he told Karen Williams, the British vice-consul
who had escorted him from Keng Tung prison that morning.
Shattered by exhaustion and stress, Mawdsley and Diana, his mother, were
taken through a scrum of journalists at Bangkok airport to a quiet corner of the
British Airways lounge to await their flight to London.
"Honestly, I'm so shattered I'm just going to crash out," he said. But as
the jumbo jet lifted off through a thunderstorm he could not stop talking to his
mother, pouring out his feelings and recollections of Burma long into the night.
He had an alcoholic drink for the first time in more than a year. The
stewardesses pampered him with chocolates and snacks. He wept every so often at
the thought of those he had left behind. Eventually he slept.
He had been allowed to have a few books, subject to prison censorship, said
his mother. His two mainstays had been a Bible and The Imitation of Christ, a
set of spiritual exercises by Thomas à Kempis, the mystic 15th-century monk.
Widely read in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, this modest work was
once considered the most influential book in Christendom after the Bible itself.
It teaches fortitude, saying of Jesus: "If you share his suffering, you will
also share his glory."
Famous devotees of the work included General Charles Gordon who died
defending Khartoum, Sir Thomas More, St Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the
Jesuit order, and the preacher John Wesley. A copy is said to have been found in
the hands of Pope John Paul I after he died in his sleep in 1978.
The book's calm and resonant prescriptions for a decent religious life have
been studied by academics and secular readers who see in it a Christian echo of
the stoic personal philosophy spelt out by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius.
The work, with chapters including Avoiding False Hope and Pride, and The
Value of Adversity, has been translated into at least 50 languages.
Kempis is said to have been born near Cologne around 1380 and to have died
in Holland in 1471. He was one of the great manuscript copiers who preserved
western learning in the monasteries, and was also a noted spiritual director of
young novices.
Kempis was renowned for his writings that advocated patience, balance and
serenity. One of his more famous sayings is: "Be not angry that you cannot make
others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to
be."
The meditations appear to have set Mawdsley well on the road to recovery
from his ordeal. "He regrets nothing," said his mother. "Of course, he will have
a struggle in the next few days. But we don't need professional counselling. I
want to take him home."
She told her son that in Rangoon she had laid flowers on the grave of Major
Hugh Seagrim, one of Britain's most gallant officers of the last war, who led a
guerrilla unit of Karen tribesmen against the Japanese. Aghast at enemy
atrocities against the Karen, he gave himself up to save them from further
horror and was executed after refusing to plead for his own life.
Remembered for his selfsacrifice in Burma, Seagrim was awarded a posthumous
George Cross but is today a forgotten hero. When Mawdsley heard of his mother's
gesture, he wept again.
A joyful welcome awaited him at Heathrow at dawn yesterday as exiled
Burmese and British supporters waved banners and cheered. "To be back in the UK
and to be able to talk to people freely without fear - it's magic," he
said.
The Observer - Sunday October 22,
2000
Fugitives tell of Burma's jungle reign of terror ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Idealistic young Britons have risked their freedom to campaign against Rangoon's repressive regime. Yesterday James Mawdsley flew home after his release from jail. Last month another former prisoner, Rachel Goldwyn , returned to the region to record the destruction of a persecuted hill tribe. This is her poignant account ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ As I scrambled through the mud towards the refugee camp, the sounds and scents overwhelmed me. I could hear logs being chopped, children playing, pigs squealing, cockerels squawking, and could smell the woodsmoke and the wet jungle. Memories came flooding back and I found myself terribly anxious. Would people remember me? Would they be happy to see me? But my welcome at the camp in Thailand, near the Burmese border, could not have been warmer. Many of the students I had taught English now had children. One was named after me, born while I was in jail. 'Gold Rachel' was delightful and, unlike most Karenni babies, didn't scream at the sight of a white face. And then there were the new arrivals, with terrible tales of persecution
and suffering. They had been living in the jungle for several years, having fled
the relocation decreed in the Nineties by Burma's military dictatorship, one
called 'Slorc' and now known as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC).
Their individual stories formed a picture of genocide. In the jungle they
had to move five or six times a year, and slept without a roof over them. Their
hiding place was discovered when their fifth child had just been born. Samuel is
a skinny, unusually tall Karenni. 'The placenta hadn't even come out yet. I was
terribly worried about my wife, I carried her through the streams as I was
afraid about her walking through the cold water. But when we got to the border I
couldn't carry her as we had to walk in the stream a long way. Now she gets
migraines all the time.' The family walked for three weeks. They had to evade
not just troops but mines and had to rely for guidance either on hired guides or
resistance army soldiers.
The Karenni are among the many persecuted ethnic minorities in Burma. Those
that have no ceasefire agreement with the dictatorship have had their areas
declared free-fire zones. Human rights abuses are rampant and hundreds of
villagers victimised in an attempt to turn them against the resistance. The
so-called 'Four Cuts' campaign tries to stop food, recruits, information and
money reaching the resistance armies.
Forced relocation began in 1974 in Karen and Chin State. In 1996 the scale
of relocations increased dramatically, with 25,000 people forced into
'relocation centres' within Karenni State: roughly one eighth of the Karenni
people torn from their ancestral lands in 12 months.
Many areas of Karenni State, as well as other parts of Burma, have been
cleared: 30,000 people used to live in an area approximately 100 miles by 30
miles in eastern Karenni, now it is completely depopulated. Escapees described
to me the appalling conditions in relocation sites. There was no access to clean
water, no land to cultivate, no materials for housing. Troops were everywhere.
The old villages were burnt down and the remains mined to stop people
returning, animals were slaughtered, and those determined to stay in their homes
were burnt alive. Torture, beating and arbitrary execution accompany the SPDC
soldiers wherever they go.
When Paw Moo, now in her thirties, decided to go to a relocation camp, they
had five days to vacate their own village four kilometres away. They had to do
forced labour at the military base.
She said: 'About six months ago the soldiers called all the villagers
together, and arrested all the men. They took some as forced porters and others
to Loikaw - the capital of Karenni State. Some managed to escape, others were
put in jail, about 20 men disappeared. My husband hid in the jungle, many men
did. After they arrested the men, they called the women together and said "if we
hear gun shots or that rebel groups are in the area, then we will kill you".'
When she and her family made the treacherous journey to Thailand, many of the
men were still in jail.
Sonny, from the same village as Paw Moo, confirms her story. 'The SPDC
arrested 32 men and one woman because of fighting near the border. The
resistance troops came near to our village, but they didn't come in or get
food.'
As we sat in the early-morning mist, Mee Reh told me his painful story. He
was a subsistence farmer relocated from a village called Wha Lo. 'In 1995 the
SPDC burnt down our village. Some people were killed, we ran away.' The years of
sleepless nights and desperate poverty were written on his face. His youngest
child, now two but the still the size of a six-month-old baby, will never fully
develop, physically or mentally.
They dodged troops, hiding in the jungle or in a cave. Often the sound of
shooting kept them awake all night. They drank rice water and ate bamboo shoots.
Because of malnutrition a child died. 'I became very depressed.'
Mee Reh's wife breastfeeds her underdeveloped child. His infant features
sit uncomfortably on his baby-sized face. She describes the story of her
cousin's family, also in hiding, camped on the riverbank. They were hit by a
flash flood.
'All the children and Htoo La Paw were washed away, but two children were
thrown to safety on the land. Htoo La Paw was badly injured. Later they found
the elder girl under a log, her feet were sticking out from the freshly
deposited sand and mud. They dug out her body, her head was crushed. The
youngest daughter they found hanging in the bushes, dead, after the flood
receded. They have been internally displaced people for five years, and want to
come here. Everything they had was washed away, so they have no money to pay for
a guide, or to be able to buy food on the way.'
Mee Reh's wife reflects on how lucky they are that her eldest child is
attending school. The village school in Wha Lo was closed by the SPDC before the
village was burnt down, and there are no schools in the jungle for those in
hiding.
Villagers are forced to work without payment on government 'development
projects' like building roads and barracks, farm clearance and cultivation.
Mary was only 19 years old. She had been forced to work for the soldiers 20
days per month, mainly in digging and building projects. She was terrified,
particularly after two women in her village were raped by soldiers. They asked
her father, an old man, to fetch bamboo and beat him with their gun butts. They
had to leave him behind because he was too old and frail to walk. Mary was
clearly depressed by her feelings of helplessness. 'I'm not happy here, but I
feel better than in my village. Our life is just waiting and eating donated
rice.'
For villagers asked to carry arms and supplies, it was a terrifying
prospect. Tired porters are beaten or killed. Many of them never return. One
escaped porter showed me the scars on his shoulders from the tremendous weight
he was forced to carry. Porters are often marched in front of advancing
battalions as human minesweepers. Gang rape of women porters is common.
Bor Reh was forced to be the village headman, as he was the only person who
could speak Burmese, and so translate the labour demands of the SPDC to the
locals. The village head was once a pres tigious post to hold, now it is a
responsibility better avoided.
The SPDC's General Aung Gyi, head of Light Infantry Battalion Number 54
operating in this area, is infamous for his cruelty in punishing villagers, and
for administering the punishments personally. Brutality against ethnic
minorities is commonplace. Regular taxes, in the form of money and rice, are
collected by SPDC troops, who also demand free food and alcohol when passing
through the village. Curfews are often imposed.
Deforestation, initially from low-impact logging by the Karenni but now
widescale by the SPDC, has led to decreasing rainfall, which also has had
impacts on rice yields. All these compound major food shortages for even those
who still have land.
Kyaw Te's trembling hands spoke of his life of fear in hiding. 'When we
stayed there we were afraid all the time. The Burmese government, they want to
destroy our people, to kill us all off.'
The refugee camp is an increasingly insecure haven. Thailand's attitude to
the ethnic minorities is changeable. Previously considered as a necessary buffer
zone between Thailand and its aggressive neighbour, Burma, the resistance forces
and the asylum-seekers are now deemed a nuisance in the growing closeness
between the two nations.
Hundreds of asylum-seekers have been forcibly repatriated, and new arrivals
find it increasingly difficult to enter. Thailand and Burma have brokered a
number of huge cross-border projects, fostering closer relations through
economic ties. Two major gas pipeline projects, Yadana and Yetagun, including
Total (France) and Premier Oil (Britain), are already complete and functional in
an area south of Karenni State.
Their impact on the local area has been devastating. There are plans afoot
to dam and divert the Salween river that flows through Karenni State, feeding it
into Thai waterways and starving three million people in downstream Burma of
water. Among them are the Karenni.
Last year I went to Burma to make a solidarity action for the many peoples
of Burma. It was a simple act of defiance: to sing songs about democracy and
freedom. The military response was rapid. I was arrested within 13 minutes.
The Daily Express - Oct 22,
2000.
I'll keep up campaign against killer junta HUMAN rights activist James Mawdsley called on the international community to prosecute the Burmese military junta for genocide. BY LOUISE JONES Mr Mawdsley, 27, vowed to continue his campaign against the regime as he
arrived back in Britain from Burma, where he was released from jail after
serving 14 months of a 17-year sentence for distributing pro-democracy leaflets.
Looking exhausted but in good spirits - despite enduring a regime of
beatings and torture in notorious Keng Tung prison - he said at Heathrow: "I'm
too numb to be elated by my release. I will probably be elated in a week.
"The prison was hard, but physical conditions you can adapt to. It is the
mental conditions that are hardest. You have to think about everything you are
saying, thinking, 'Will this get me a beating?'" He remembered looking out of
the window of his cramped, rat-infested cell to see 200 shackled prisoners who
were riddled with disease.
But he said it was the courage, not the suffering, of the Karen people and
other ethnic minorities that gave him the strength to continue his protest.
Mr Mawdsley, from Ormskirk, Lancashire, fought back tears when he told how
two Karen soldiers were killed as he crossed illegally from Thailand into Burma
with them - and ran into a military patrol.
He said he was relieved to be able to speak freely now he was back in
Britain. He said: "To be back in the UK and hear people talking without fear is
magic. It's a magic we forget."
Mr Mawdsley joked that the large gin and tonic he enjoyed on the plane was
one of the best things about returning home. He said: "I only drank alcohol
three times when I was in prison and it was like tasting rocket fuel.
"Except on Millennium Eve, when I smoked a fat cigar that was sent to me
and drank Christmas champagne behind the guards' backs."
Mr Mawdsley's mother Diana, who was with him on the journey home, wiped
away tears as she said: "It's been a very painful year and there have been times
in the last weeks that I became pessimistic because James's conditions seemed to
be getting harsher.
"But it's also been a very enriching time for us. There has been tremendous
support from the general public. Obviously I'm proud of him."
The pair were met by Mr Mawdsley's father, David, 57, his sister, Emma, 29,
and twin brother Jeremy. Burmese campaigners waved banners saying: "James, we
honour your courage."
Mr Mawdsley said: "I am out, but there are more than 1,500 political
prisoners still in Burma."He said the junta had killed 30,000 Karen people and
he urged Britain to take action against the regime for its human rights abuses
and for suppressing the democracy movement led by Nobel Prize laureate Aung San
Suu Kyi.
The Independent(Bangladesh) - Oct 22,
2000.
Special envoy calls on Samad Azad: Myanmar urged to take back refugees Foreign Minister Abdus Samad Azad yesterday urged the Myanmar government to
expedite the process of repatriation so that the residual Rohingya refugees can
return to their home in Myanmar at an early date, reports BSS.
The Foreign Minister made this appeal when the visiting special envoy and
Deputy Foreign Minister of Myanmar called on him at the state guest house Padma
here this morning. Khir Maung Win, during the meeting, handed over a letter to
Samad Azad for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina from Myanmar Prime Minister General
Than Shwe.
At the end of the meeting, the Foreign Minister told BSS that he had asked
the Myanmar Special Envoy to expedite the process of clearance for repatriation
of the remaining 20,867 Myanmar refugees. The Myanmar government has already
repatriated two lakh refugees, he added. Samad Azad said that the next meeting
of the senior officials of the two countries is expected to be held soon to
resolve the refugee issue once for all.
The Myanmar Special Envoy on behalf of the Myanmar government has expressed
deep sympathy for the flood victims in the south-western Bangladesh, Azad said.
Both sides stressed the need for increasing bilateral trade between the
neighbouring countries to the benefit of the two peoples.
The also emphasised the need for developing road links between the two
countries facilitating border trade. Replying to a question regarding the
content of the letter from the Myanmar Prime Minister, Samad Azad said that the
letter has been addressed to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and he would soon hand
over the letter to her.
The Special Envoy of Myanmar told BSS that the purpose of his visit to
Bangladesh was for further strengthening the existing bilateral relations to the
benefit of the two peoples.
Replying to a question regarding the visit of the Myanmar Prime Minister to
Bangladesh, Win said the visit which was scheduled on May 20 this year was
postponed due to ill health of General Shwe.
Once General Shwe is physically fit to undertake any foreign visit, he
would come to Bangladesh at convenient time to be fixed through consultations in
the diplomatic channel, the special envoy said. |