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BURMA RELATED NEWS - NOV - 10, 2000. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HEADLINE
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AP - Karen Rebels Overrun Myanmar Camp In Dawn
Raid
AP - Minister's defection exposes cracks in Laos'
secretive regime
AFP - ASEAN seeks united front to present to
APEC
AFP - Laos throws up tight security for Asian ministers
ahead of EU meet
AFP - India in Southeast Asian diplomatic push on eve
of Jiang visit
Asia Pulse - India to Work With Asean for Mekong Basic
Development
AP - Laos' Secretive Regime Exposed
AP - Rebel Troops Invade Myanmar Camp
CNN - U.N. agency still questions Myanmar stance on use
of forced labor
ABC 0nline - U-N Assembly criticises Burma's junta
Friday, November 10 7:47 PM SGT
Karen Rebels Overrun Myanmar Camp In Dawn Raid TOJO MOUNTAIN, Myanmar (AP)--Some 125 Karen rebel troops overran a Myanmar
military camp after heavy fighting Friday near the Thai border in their most
significant victory in recent months.
About 30 Myanmar government forces of the 116th
Battalion fled the mountaintop camp, leaving a trail of blood and one dead
behind them. Guerrillas of the Karen National Union were in pursuit.
An Associated Press reporter accompanied the Karens
during the raid, which was preceded by a two-hour exchange of heavy mortar and
gunfire.
"Maybe before you thought the KNU was small, now you
know we are big," said Tennyson, a senior soldier in the KNU's 201st Battalion.
Like many of the KNU's armed volunteers, he uses only one name.
The Myanmar government wasn't immediately available for
comment.
The assault on Bianaw Camp, about 3 kilometers from the
border opposite Waley Key, the Karen name for a village in Thailand's northern
Tak province, was the 201st battalion's first major operation of this dry
season, which heralds fresh fighting each year.
The KNU has been battling for more autonomy inside
Myanmar, also known as Burma, for five decades. They last overran a Myanmar
camp, killing four soldiers, four months ago.
WIRE:11/09/2000 12:39:00 ET
Minister's defection exposes cracks in Laos' secretive regime BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) _ For 25 years, the government in Laos
presented itself as one big happy family, a unifying force in an ethnically
diverse country. But the unprecedented defection of a government minister and a
series of bombings in recent months, including one Thursday, have exposed
simmering discontent and cracks in the communist regime, one of the world"s last
one-party regimes.
At least three people were injured, one of them critically,
when a homemade bomb placed on a parked bicycle exploded Thursday outside the
airport in the capital, Vientiane, police and diplomats said. No one claimed
responsibility for the attack, which followed a pattern of similar unexplained
and unclaimed bombings in Vientiane and provincial towns that have injured
dozens of people.
The bombing came days after Khamsay Souphanouvong, a minister
in the prime minister"s office and the son of Laos" first communist president,
arrived secretly in New Zealand and sought political asylum. On Wednesday, a
senior New Zealand official confirmed Khamsay was in his country and said it
could take weeks to make a final decision about his future. Khamsay had not been
seen in public in Laos for months.
Observers linked his disappearance to a power struggle between
the old guard and younger leaders, to which Khamsay is aligned. "The competition
(among them) will be very serious now," said Sunai Phasuk, a Laos analyst at the
Bangkok-based Forum Asia human rights group. "It may not be violent, but it may
lead to a very serious internal purge of the younger generation," he said. The
turmoil comes as the communist government prepares to celebrate its 25th
anniversary on Dec. 2. Later in December, it will play host to European and
Southeast Asian foreign ministers at a two-day meeting seen as a coming out
party for the socialist rulers as they pursue capitalist ambitions by seeking
foreign investments.
The economy of Laos, a landlocked, agriculture-based country
with virtually no natural resources, is in a shambles, surviving largely on
foreign aid. Sunai said that the old guard, to appease foreign investors, might
keep the purged younger leaders in powerless positions "as puppets in
showcases." The communist government came to power in 1975 in a
Vietnamese-backed revolution that ousted a U.S.-supported government and a
constitutional monarchy. The communists have since ruled the nation of 4 million
people with an iron fist, allowing no dissent.
The old guard has long controlled the government, but a
minority of younger members reportedly has pushed for a larger decision-making
role. "It is about the division of spoils. It is as simple as that," said Grant
Evans, a Laos expert who teaches sociology at Hong Kong University. He said
there is no conflict of ideology as all factions are committed to communism.
Khamsay, a former finance minister and a member of the former aristocracy, also
is a staunch communist.
He fell from grace in 1996, when he was dropped from the
communist party"s 49-member central committee. Evans said Khamsay"s sidelining
was part of the old guard"s effort to rewrite Lao history to obliterate the
royalty"s positive image. Khamsay"s father, Souphanouvong, belonged to the
now-exiled royal family of Laos and was known overseas as the Red Prince.
He later adopted communism and was president from 1975 until
1986. He died in 1995. But despite the dictatorial rule, Laos has never
attracted international anger, largely because civil rights violations and
suppression of individual rights are not as harsh as in other dictatorships,
such as Myanmar. "It is the darling of the foreign community because it does not
push anyone. It keeps to itself," said Evans.
Friday, November 10 11:39 AM SGT
ASEAN seeks united front to present to APEC BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Nov 10 (AFP) - ASEAN nations set aside niggling
differences Friday to present a united front at an Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC) senior officials meeting here.
"We don't want to disagree among ourselves in the meeting,"
said Bhuthong Thongyai, an economic adviser to the Thailand ministry of
commerce, as the officials gathered ahead of a ministerial meeting and a leaders
summit.
Key issues to be raised at the APEC forum in the Brunei
capital include globalisation, regional free trade agreements and the "digital
divide" separating the information technology haves and have nots.
Delegates from the seven Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) which are members of APEC met privately on Thursday to "find
common ground," Bhutong said.
"ASEAN is for a new round of WTO (World Trade Organisation)
talks but we need to resolve a couple of issues," he said, but did not elaborate
further.
While most APEC nations are pushing for a new round of global
trade talks within the WTO, of the ASEAN grouping Malaysia notably has expressed
reservations about globalisation.
"Developed countries consider globalisation as something good
but it may not be so for us," said Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad,
who has frequently expressed fears unregulated globalisation could usher in a
new era of economic colonisation by the West.
Goh Chok Tong, the prime minister of high-tech savvy Singapore
has warned that while the world is moving into a global technology-driven
economy, globalisation was making the world more fragmented.
"Technological advances have brought the world closer. But
they have also opened up divides between those who are able to cope with the
resultant challenges, and those who lack the capacity to do so," he said in a
recent speech calling for the benefits of globalisation to be
spead.
Malaysia, too, has been holding back on the regional ASEAN
free trade agreement, delaying the lowering of tariffs in its domestic auto
market, sparking unhappiness among fellow ASEAN nations Thailand and Indonesia,
which also have a developing vehicle sector,
Of the 10 ASEAN members, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the
Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam are members of APEC. Laos, Cambodia
and Myanmar are the three ASEAN countries not in the Pacific-rim
bloc.
Friday, November 10 4:53 PM SGT
Laos throws up tight security for Asian ministers ahead of EU meet VIENTIANE, Nov 10 (AFP) - Police were out in force here Friday for a
meeting of Asian ministers, in a security operation seen as testing ground for
key European Union talks here next month.
Uniformed police mounted roadblocks round the city centre
hotel where Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh met with five Southeast Asian
ministers to launch a new Ganges-Mekong regional grouping.
An AFP correspondent saw armed plainclothes men patrolling the
hotel car park after a bomb attack hit the main international airport on
Thursday as ministers gathered in Vientiane.
A large police presence also dotted the city centre
particularly outside the bigger hotels and along the banks of the
Mekong.
The seven-month-old bombing campaign in which more than 40
people have now been injured has raised security fears for the breakthrough
December 11-12 meeting between ministers of the European Union and the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations, their first since 1997.
The authorities here have repeatedly insisted there is no
security reason why the meeting should not go ahead as planned.
"There is no problem -- all the things have been prepared, all
the security measures have been done," Information Minister Sileua Bounkham told
reporters on the sidelines of an ASEAN meeting in Hanoi last month.
Five people were wounded at the capital's Wattay international
airport, an official newspaper reported Friday, in the first confirmation from
Laos's ultra-secretive Communist authorities of the previous day's
bombing.
"The bomb was left on a bicycle in the parking area" outside
the domestic terminal, the twice-weekly Vientiane Times said.
"Four people were treated for minor injuries at the hospital
and were sent home ... A cleaner who was more seriously injured has been kept
overnight at Mahosot hospital."
Witnesses had told AFP that two people were killed in the
attack which struck just an hour and a half before Vietnamese Foreign Minister
Nguyen Dy Nien flew in for Friday's meeting.
Ten foreigners were among 100 people inside the terminal at
the time of the attack, state airline officials told the Vientiane
Times.
Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh said he was "very happy"
with the arrangements the Lao authorities had made for Friday's
meeting.
"They have been done very well. I am very happy. This has been
very ably and elegantly done," he told reporters on the sidelines.
Cambodian, Thai and Vietnamese delegations all travelled in
escorted motorcades to a working dinner hosted by Lao Foreign Minister Somsavat
Lengsavad Thursday evening.
But Singh pointedly walked the short distance across the city
centre from his official hotel to the National Cultural Hall venue.
Asked if he was worried by the morning's blast at the airport,
Singh told AFP: "I'm walking."
Next month's EU-ASEAN meeting is to use the same venues as
Friday's Ganges-Mekong Linkage group.
The opening ceremony will be held at the National Cultural
Hall while the plenary session and other meetings will be held in the same Lao
Plaza Hotel.
Security fears are not the only doubts about next month's
meeting -- mounting outrage over the Yangon junta's September decision to place
opposition leader Aung Sung Suu Kyi under effective house arrest has prompted EU
officials to review their decision to renew meetings with ASEAN.
But Lao officials have insisted that EU ambassadors are still
working closely with them to prepare the meeting, the first since Brussels
suspended ministerial contacts over ASEAN's 1997 decision to admit Myanmar as a
member.
Friday, November 10 7:55 PM SGT
India in Southeast Asian diplomatic push on eve of Jiang visit VIENTIANE, Nov 10 (AFP) - Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh
joined five Southeast Asian ministers here Friday to launch a new regional
grouping on the eve of a state visit by Chinese President Jiang
Zemin.
The Vientiane Declaration adopted by the ministers links India
with Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam in a new Ganges-Mekong
Cooperation organization dedicated mainly to boosting transport links, culture,
education and tourism.
But analysts saw the new grouping as an effort by Southeast
Asian countries and Vietnam in particular, to engage India more heavily in the
region as a counterbalance to the mounting influence of China.
"We are here from the six countries as a new family in a new
get-together because of the historical affinities between our peoples and lands
and the promise that they see in our strengthened cooperation," Singh told
delegates.
"In the past five years, India has become a dialogue partner
of the Association of South East Asian Nations ... Both trade and investment
between India and Southeast Asia is on an upward swing."
Singh said New Delhi was keen to boost its cooperation with
Southeast Asia in the fields of space and information technology, advanced
materials and human resource development.
Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Dy Nien noted that both
India and the Mekong basin countries still had average incomes of less than two
dollars a day.
"We believe that given our current financial constraints, we
should welcome the cooperation of other countries within and outside the
region," he said.
The new grouping was originally a Thai proposal, but Bangkok
sent Minister in the Prime Minister's Office Adisai Bodharamik in place of its
foreign minister, and Phnom Penh and Yangon only sent their tourism
ministers.
Thai embassy officials said the upcoming general elections in
Thailand and a meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference had forced
the change.
"It is the Thai government's desire to bring the Mekong basin
countries closer to ... India," Adisai told the meeting.
Myanmar minister Major General Saw Lwin said Yangon was
"prepared to pave the way in our position as the strategic gateway to
India."
The final declaration dealt mainly with joint marketing of
tourism and handicrafts, and easing visa restrictions for travellers, as well as
boosting air and land links, including a proposed trans-Asian
highway.
Analysts said the presence of both the Indian and Vietnamese
foreign ministers at a meeting dealing mainly with culture showed the two
countries' desire to use the organization as a counterbalance to the mounting
influence of long-time rival China.
India insists the new grouping is not directed against outside
countries, including China.
"This is not directed against anyone, it challenges nobody,"
Singh told reporters in Hanoi Wednesday.
But Vietnamese President Tran Duc Luong told Singh during his
three-day visit to Hanoi that Vietnam regarded its relationship with India as of
"strategic importance."
And Singh announced that Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari
Vajpayee would visit Hanoi early next year following a visit there by Defence
Minister George Fernandes in March.
Analysts said Vietnam, the traditional powerbroker both here
and in neighbouring Cambodia, is keen to see New Delhi more involved in the
region amid a new diplomatic push by Beijing announced by Jiang's visits here
and to Phnom Penh.
"China and Vietnam have a long-time rivalry and they don't
want each other to dominate influence in this region," said Pranee Tsiparat of
the Bangkok-based Institute for Security and International
Studies.
Friday, November 10 3:07 PM SGT
India to Work With Asean for Mekong Basic Development VIENTIANE (Laos), Nov 10 Asia
Pulse - India has underscored its relations with ASEAN countries
and said it was committed to jointly work with the grouping for the development
of Mekong basin countries.
Addressing the inaugural Ministerial meeting of Ganga- Mekong
Cooperation between India, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar,
External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh said intensity of cooperation among
these countries would lead to the economic development of South East Asia and
India.
For India, he said its relationship with South East Asia was
significant and a valued aspect of its international relations.
"In the last five years, India has become a dialogue partner
of the ASEAN, has robust cooperative work programme in biotechnology, space
& information technology, advance material and human resource development.
Both trade and investment between India and South East Asia is on the upward
swing despite having suffered a small reversal during the recent financial
crisis," Singh said.
He said India had committed itself to jointly working with
ASEAN on the Mekong Basin development programme.
Thursday November 9 12:46 PM ET
Laos' Secretive Regime Exposed By VIJAY JOSHI, Associated Press Writer BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - For 25
years, the government in Laos presented itself as one big happy family, a
unifying force in an ethnically diverse country.
But the unprecedented defection of a government minister and a series of
bombings in recent months, including one Thursday, have exposed simmering
discontent and cracks in the communist regime, one of the world's last one-party
regimes.
At least three people were injured, one of them critically, when a homemade
bomb placed on a parked bicycle exploded Thursday outside the airport in the
capital, Vientiane, police and diplomats said.
No one claimed responsibility for the attack, which followed a pattern of
similar unexplained and unclaimed bombings in Vientiane and provincial towns
that have injured dozens of people.
The bombing came days after Khamsay Souphanouvong, a minister in the prime
minister's office and the son of Laos' first communist president, arrived
secretly in New Zealand and sought political asylum.
On Wednesday, a senior New Zealand official confirmed Khamsay was in his
country and said it could take weeks to make a final decision about his
future.
Khamsay had not been seen in public in Laos for months. Observers linked
his disappearance to a power struggle between the old guard and younger leaders,
to which Khamsay is aligned.
``The competition (among them) will be very serious now,'' said Sunai
Phasuk, a Laos analyst at the Bangkok-based Forum Asia human rights group.
``It may not be violent, but it may lead to a very serious internal purge
of the younger generation,'' he said.
The turmoil comes as the communist government prepares to celebrate its
25th anniversary on Dec. 2. Later in December, it will play host to European and
Southeast Asian foreign ministers at a two-day meeting seen as a coming out
party for the socialist rulers as they pursue capitalist ambitions by seeking
foreign investments.
The economy of Laos, a landlocked, agriculture-based country with virtually
no natural resources, is in a shambles, surviving largely on foreign aid.
Sunai said that the old guard, to appease foreign investors, might keep the
purged younger leaders in powerless positions ``as puppets in showcases.''
The communist government came to power in 1975 in a Vietnamese-backed
revolution that ousted a U.S.-supported government and a constitutional
monarchy.
The communists have since ruled the nation of 4 million people with an iron
fist, allowing no dissent. The old guard has long controlled the government, but
a minority of younger members reportedly has pushed for a larger decision-making
role.
``It is about the division of spoils. It is as simple as that,'' said Grant
Evans, a Laos expert who teaches sociology at Hong Kong University.
He said there is no conflict of ideology as all factions are committed to
communism.
Khamsay, a former finance minister and a member of the former aristocracy,
also is a staunch communist. He fell from grace in 1996, when he was dropped
from the communist party's 49-member central committee.
Evans said Khamsay's sidelining was part of the old guard's effort to
rewrite Lao history to obliterate the royalty's positive image.
Khamsay's father, Souphanouvong, belonged to the now-exiled royal family of
Laos and was known overseas as the Red Prince. He later adopted communism and
was president from 1975 until 1986. He died in 1995.
But despite the dictatorial rule, Laos has never attracted international
anger, largely because civil rights violations and suppression of individual
rights are not as harsh as in other dictatorships, such as Myanmar.
``It is the darling of the foreign community because it does not push
anyone. It keeps to itself,'' said Evans.
Friday November 10 11:19 AM ET
Rebel Troops Invade Myanmar Camp By NELSON RAND, Associated Press Writer TOJO MOUNTAIN, Myanmar (AP) -
Some 125 Karen rebel troops overran a Myanmar military camp after heavy fighting
Friday near the Thai border in their most significant victory in recent
months.
Some 30 Myanmar government forces fled the mountaintop camp, leaving a
trail of blood and one dead comrade behind them. Guerrillas of the Karen
National Union were in pursuit.
An Associated Press reporter accompanied the Karens during the raid, which
was preceded by a two-hour exchange of heavy mortar and gunfire.
``Maybe before you thought the KNU was small, now you know we are big,''
said Tennyson, a senior soldier in the KNU's 201st Battalion. Like many of the
KNU's armed volunteers, he uses only one name.
The Myanmar government was not immediately available for comment.
The assault on Bianaw camp, about two miles from the border opposite Waley
Key, the Karen name for a village in Thailand's northern Tak province, was the
201st battalion's first major operation of this dry season. The season heralds
fresh fighting each year.
Mahn Sha, general-secretary of the KNU based at the Thai-Burmese border,
put the Burmese death toll at two in Friday's assault, and said one soldier was
captured alive and was being interrogated. Mahn Sha was contacted by telephone
from Bangkok, Thailand.
The KNU has been battling for more autonomy inside Myanmar, also known as
Burma, for five decades. They last overran a Myanmar camp, killing four
soldiers, four months ago.
Supported by about 75 porters, the KNU troops had sneaked to within 1,500
feet of Bianaw camp late Thursday after days of reconnaissance. The advance drew
no response from the government forces other than three rounds of sniper fire by
suspicious soldiers.
The KNU launched its attack before sunrise with 81mm mortars, heavy machine
guns and rocket-propelled grenades, triggering mortar and other fire from the
Myanmar forces. Two KNU attack groups with assault rifles then climbed to the
mountain camp.
After 11/2 hours of sporadic exchanges, the KNU attackers made their final
assault to cheers from their backup. After 30 minutes of heavy fire, the Myanmar
troops fled. Two KNU forces suffered minor injuries.
The AP reporter saw the KNU troops looting thousands of assault rifle
rounds and dozens of rocket propelled grenades from the camp, and sifting
through the personal effects including letters left behind the fleeing Myanmar
forces.
They dumped rice supplies in the camp before torching it. Eight or nine
rebels followed the path taken by the escaping troops. A trail of blood showed
at least one of the Myanmar soldiers was wounded.
The KNU forces are believed to number 2,000-3,000, a fraction of their
armed strength in their heyday more than one decade ago, when they controlled
huge tracts along the Thai-Myanmar frontier.
In recent years, Myanmar's military regime has gained the upper hand.
U.N. agency still questions
Myanmar stance on use of forced labor
November 8, 2000 CNN - Web posted at: 8:45 PM HKT (1245 GMT) GENEVA, Switzerland (AP) -- Myanmar has made progress in improving its laws
but it is less clear what is actually being done to stop the use of forced
labor, a U.N. labor agency report said Wednesday.
The 52-page report followed a weeklong visit to Myanmar last month by a
five-member delegation from the International Labor Organization.
It was unclear whether findings in the report will help stave off proposed
unprecedented action against Myanmar next week by the ILO's governing body.
ILO delegates voted in June to recommend that ILO members _ governments,
workers and employers -- "review their links with Myanmar and take appropriate
measures to ensure (Myanmar) cannot take advantage of such relations to
perpetuate or extend the system of forced or compulsory labor."
But the resolution, which was opposed by Asian nations, put off action
until the governing body's meeting.
Myanmar, also known as Burma, has long been assailed by the United Nations
and Western countries for suppression of democracy and its human rights record
-- including use of unpaid civilian labor on infrastructure projects.
Its government has said civilians contribute their labor voluntarily to
promote development of the nation.
Much of the ILO's effort has focused on amendment of provisions in
Myanmar's Village Act and Towns Act, which bind residents to perform any "public
duties" requested of them or face punishment.
"Progress has been made" on that front, the ILO report said. "Progress is
far less in evidence in terms of appropriate executive measures and the
accompanying administrative and budgetary measures."
Myanmar officials in Geneva were not immediately available for comment.
The military has ruled Myanmar since 1962. The current regime organized a
general election in 1990 but refused to yield power to the victorious party of
pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
ABC 0nline - Nov 10,
2000.
U-N Assembly criticises Burma's junta A U.N. human rights committee has adopted a draft resolution slamming
Burma's human rights situation and seeking more freedom of movement for
pro-democracy supporters in the country.
The resolution, submitted by 23 countries, reflected the stronger position
of European countries in their opposition to continued suppression in Burma.
It states the General Assembly is gravely concerned by the deterioration of
the human rights situation.
It deplores the junta's treatment of pro-democracy supporters, particularly
the new obstacles that have been placed on Aung San Suu Kyi and other National
League for Democracy members.
The Assembly also deplores the systematic policy of suppression of
political economic and social rights by the Burmese government. |