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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BURMA RELATED NEWS - NOV - 7, 2000. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HEADLINE
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AFP - Myanmar junta makes last-ditch attempt to
head off ILO sanctions
AFP - Indian foreign minister holds talks with
Vietnamese PM
The Independent (UK) - 'Why didn't I cry when my father died?'
Bkk Post - Influx predicted
Tuesday, November 7 7:44 PM SGT
Myanmar junta makes last-ditch attempt to head off ILO sanctions YANGON, Nov 7 (AFP) - The
Myanmar government said Tuesday it had issued a powerful directive banning
forced labor, in a sign of its deep concern over sanctions threatened by the
International Labor Organisation (ILO).
The decree from the feared State Peace and Development Council (SPDC)
represents the highest level order available in the military-run country and
backs a Home Ministry directive on the same issue.
Deputy Foreign Minister Khin Maung Win said the SPDC handed down the
directive on November 1 in line with a request from the ILO team which visited
last month to assess Myanmar's progress in stamping out forced labor.
"There are some points that the ILO wanted spelled out in detail -- that
forced labor is illegal and an offence under existing law," he told AFP.
"This order has been circulated right down to the village level and posted
in every police station," he said.
"It states that all responsible persons including the armed forces, police
and local authorities should not requisition forced labor."
The ILO's governing body is now meeting in Geneva to consider the team's
report and decide how far Myanmar has gone towards complying with
recommendations it laid down two years ago.
If Myanmar is found not to have done enough, the ILO could bring down a
range of measures, including further sanctions from its member nations that
could deal a mortal blow to the already decrepit economy.
The deliberations come at a time when the junta is already under intense
pressure from the United Nations to fall into line with the international
community or risk being permanently branded a pariah state.
By all accounts, the military government is taking the ILO's threat very
seriously and has repeatedly said it is willing to cooperate.
Khin Maung Win said that with the decree from the SPDC, Myanmar had now
done everything possible to convince the ILO it was serious about eliminating
forced labor.
"I am convinced that the government is showing the necessary political will
to ensure there are no more instances of forced labor," he said.
"But how the governing body will decide is hard to forecast. We hope for
the best but we are prepared for the worst."
The minister said another cause for concern was that Myanmar was not even
sure what punishment it could face if the ILO decision went against it.
"No one in the ILO really knows what the implications are because there is
no precedent for such a resolution," he said.
Myanmar still refuses to officially admit that forced labor is a problem,
despite reams of evidence from rights groups and a 1998 ILO committee of inquiry
which found the practice was "widespread and systematic".
Refugees who escape over the border in Thailand tell depressingly
consistent accounts of military raids on villages, where even the old and infirm
are rounded up and put to work carrying weapons and supplies.
While their crops wither and livestock die, they are forced to work long
hours for no pay and insufficient food. And in the worst cases, those who are
unable to keep up are beaten or killed.
The SPDC directive is seen as speaking directly to the powerful military
commanders fighting insurgencies in Myanmar's north that the brutal practice
will not be tolerated.
Some commanders have argued that "portering" is a traditional practice that
has been going on for centuries and which is vital to the operations of the
cash-strapped military.
Tuesday, November 7 8:38 PM SGT
Indian foreign minister holds talks with Vietnamese PM HANOI, Nov 6 (AFP) - Indian
Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh held talks here Tuesday with Vietnamese Prime
Minister Phan Van Khai after co-chairing a full-day meeting of the two
countries' joint commission.
"Developing long-term relations with India is our long-term policy and
strategy because they are comprehensive relations in many sectors such as the
economy, culture and science," Khai told reporters after the meeting.
Singh was due to give a press conference Wednesday on the results of his
talks, but they were expected to cover boosting defence and trade ties as well
as traditionally close diplomatic relations.
Hanoi on Monday gave strong support to New Delhi's bid for a permanent seat
in an expanded UN Security Council as well as its membership of the Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation forum (APEC), the official media reported.
A planned meeting between Singh and Vietnamese Defence Minister Pham Van
Tra was postponed until the third and final of his visit, the first by an Indian
foreign minister since 1995.
The two sides want to build on a visit here in March by Indian Defence
Minister George Fernandes.
The two countries' armed forces are overwhelmingly Russian-supplied and
Vietnam is keen to purchase cast-off equipment from the Indian armed forces as
New Delhi buys new arms from Moscow, Vietnamese defence sources told AFP.
Singh's visit here is the first leg in a regional tour which will also take
him to Vientiane on Wednesday.
There he will join the foreign ministers of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and
Thailand for the inaugural meeting of a new Ganges-Mekong Linkage group, seen as
a major effort by New Delhi to boost its ties with southeast Asia.
There was no word whether any representatives of India's regional rival
China, which normally takes part in Mekong regional meetings through its Yunnan
province, had been invited to the talks.
Chinese President Jiang Zemin is due to arrive in the Lao capital for a
three-day visit Saturday just as Singh leaves.
The Independent (UK)
'Why didn't I cry when my father died?' What do you do when your father is hailed around the world as a saint, and
you can't bear to talk to him? When freedom fighter Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed,
his son took on the fight – in public. In private, he was angry and bitter
By Jojo Moyes
7 November 2000
I first met Ken Saro-Wiwa junior in 1992, when we were both students.
He was one of the lads; a good laugh, most notably passionate about sport and
his girlfriend, Olivia. Not being particularly politically aware, I didn't
understand the significance of his name – and he didn't enlighten me.
But when his father, the writer and freedom fighter, was sentenced to death
by the Nigerian authorities in 1995, that all changed. Ken metamorphosed into an
international spokesman for the Nigeria's persecuted Ogoni people, careering
around the world in the company of presidents and mandarins, desperately trying
to save his father's life. He was, as the nightmare unfolded, the epitome of the
loyal son, fighting against extraordinary circumstances for the sake of his
father. What I didn't know was that this visible battle was only one of many Ken
Wiwa had fought as a result of being his father's son – the greatest ones being
against his father himself.
"He envisaged that I would be part of the struggle. He felt he was doing it
for us," he says now. "But I didn't want to fit into the straitjacket of what he
wanted for me."
The problems of growing up with a famous parent are well documented –
celebrity addiction clinics are full of those offspring unable to live in a long
shadow. But what if your father is considered a saint? How do you cope with his
legacy, when you can only see his flaws? How do you separate yourself from him,
if you share his very name?
It has taken five years, and the shared experiences of the children of
other freedom fighters, among them Zindzi Mandela, Nathi Biko and Aung San Suu
Kyi, for Ken Wiwa, as he is now known, to come to terms with his father's legacy
– and to work out how to live in its shadow. His struggle, and theirs, are
revealed in his book: The Shadow of a Saint, published this week.
Even as a schoolboy, Saro-Wiwa's role in the struggle prompted conflicting
emotions. While proud of his father's standing in Nigeria, his resolve ("I could
genuinely boast "my dad is stronger than yours") and of his own position as
first – or "Saro"– son, Ken resented the lengthy absences his position imposed.
His loyalties were also strained by his father's womanising. But the real
tensions began when Saro-Wiwa began to apply pressure on his son to embark on
his chosen career path: notably Oxford, the law, and a return to Nigeria. "I
didn't want any of that... I was growing more and more alienated from my
country," he says. "But I was rejecting it because I was rejecting him."
When his younger brother, Tedum, died suddenly of a heart attack, Ken was
determined to protect his mother from further hurt. His father was jailed in
1994, and the fractures in this complex relationship were not put aside, but
actually worsened. While Ken mounted a fierce campaign to save his father, the
differences between the public and private faces of the loyal son were as wide
as ever.
"During the campaign I was so caught up in events I barely had time to
think about its implications," he says. "I was becoming Ken Saro-Wiwa junior, I
was being the dutiful son. In some ways, it was nice – people were listening to
what I had to say, I was meeting presidents... Having never been very sure of
myself, I fitted that role very well. Yet that was for the public. In private, I
was full of bitterness and anger, but I didn't have time to deal with it."
Struggling with this dichotomy of feeling, he found himself isolated. Who could
bear to hear that the son of a jailed saint felt angry enough with him not to
reply to his letters?
Saro-Wiwa was hanged on 10 November, 1995. For the next two years, Ken
tried to distance himself from the whole event, embarking on a life more
ordinary – he got married to his British girlfriend, bought a house in London,
and fathered his first son, Felix. "All these questions began to gnaw at me. Why
was I not taking on my father's struggle? Did that make me a coward? Why didn't
I cry when he died? Then there was the anger I felt at him, because his life had
so compromised my life that now I could barely say my name without people saying
'that's Ken Saro-Wiwa's son'.
"Everyone's making out he's a saint, but you're angry with him. There are
all these stories about him, and you're the only one who can defend him because
you know the truth – but telling the truth would drag you back into it. I got to
the point where I had a breakdown and I had to do something."
That something turned out to be a book.He travelled the world to meet
children of other freedom fighters – and discovered relationships that were just
as complex, but ultimately resolvable.
Zindzi Mandela, daughter of Nelson, had been held up by Saro-Wiwa as a role
model for his son. When her father was in detention, she was his mouthpiece.
"She said she had same thing, of publicly defending him, but in private being
angry", he says.
Zindzi said that she grew up not knowing Mandela because of his
incarceration. "When I first began to understand who he was", Zindzi told Ken,
"I could only relate to what he stood for". In his book, A Long Walk To Freedom,
Mandela, in turn, wonders whether "politics is merely a pretext for shirking
one's responsibilities".
It was a sentiment echoed by anti-apartheid leader Steve Biko's son, Nathi,
who described himself as being "trapped in his history". "It's a blessing and a
curse that he's learned to live with. He's still involved politically, but he
has learned to do it in his own image, and at the same time he's involved with
efforts to preserve his father's memory, because like mine, he didn't have a
proper burial", says Ken.
"The other aspect is how to live with the name.There are things that come
with it to compromise your own identity – he will always be known as Steve
Biko's son."
But perhaps the most liberating exchange of all came with Ken's meeting
with Aung San Suu Kyi, whose father Bogoyoke, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize,
died trying to gain independence for Burma. She is now known primarily as
someone who has been separated for years from her own children, due to her house
arrest in Burma, and Ken wanted to know what had compelled her to further her
father's struggle, at such personal cost.
In going to her house in Burma and smuggling in a video camera, he said, he
was also testing himself, half feeling, in the face of these revered parents,
that he, too, had to be incarcerated to prove his authenticity. "She said that
no matter how often she tried to tell her son Alexander she didn't expect him to
follow in her footsteps, or in her own father's, he never believed her," he
says. "I heard this and I thought, that's exactly what my father said to me."
It was at this point, he says, that he started to believe his destiny could
be different from his father's, yet forged with his approval. "When I looked
back at letters my father had sent me, I found one where it said he didn't
expect me to do what he had done, he thought my contribution was to write. When
he had said the greatest honour was to die for your country, I had thought, 'I'm
supposed to die for my people, too'. But re-reading that letter liberated me."
Ken Wiwa has finally "stopped arguing" with his father. He now considers
handling his father's legacy a labour of love. He even accepted having to
"share" his father's burial, earlier this year, with the thousands of others who
also considered Saro-Wiwa father. Now, as senior resident writer at the
University of Toronto, he considers his father's greatest gift to be his
education, enabling him to tell a story. "Telling stories is important in Ogoni
culture. The whole point is to counter death. In storytelling, I've been able to
confront my father's death and to transcend it, to take something positive from
it."
A father of two sons, Felix and Suanu, he is also conscious of not letting
his own first son's identity become subsumed by the long shadows preceding him.
"With this book, I've left a record, explaining who I am and who his grandfather
was. He can read it if he wants to."
Most importantly, he has come to terms with the way his own life will
always be inextricably linked with his father's. He recalls a conversation he
had with Nathi Biko. "We harbour this fantasy that our fathers will be known
simply as our fathers, but we all know that we are going to have to go a long
way to achieve that", he says. "They were rare individuals and what you learn is
that it doesn't matter if you can't beat them."
'In the Shadow of a Saint', by Ken Wiwa, is published by Doubleday priced
£16.99. An 'Everyman' programme of the same name will be broadcast on BBC 1 on
Tuesday November 28
Bangkok Post - Nov - 7,
2000.
Influx predicted Burmese and ethnic people may take advantage of fighting between junta
forces and Karen to escape into Thailand, Pol Maj-Gen Chanvut Watcharabukka said
yesterday.
The deputy chief of the Immigration Bureau said his personnel are
co-ordinating with local and border patrol police to prevent the possible
influx.
Once arrested, these illegal immigrants would be deported or remanded in
temporary camps on the border.
A crackdown on illegal workers will be launched at the end of this month,
he said. Most are employed as cheap labour in the fishing industry, garment
manufacturing and construction.
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