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BURMA RELATED NEWS - April 14,
2001.
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HEADLINES
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- JT - EU demands
Myanmar grant rights to opposition
AP - US Troops To Join Thai Fight Against
Myanmar Drugs-Report
Kyodo - Myanmar
democracy leader Suu Kyi's aunt dies at 93
Bkk Post - Burma's
support for scheme sought
Kyodo - EU submits
Myanmar resolution to U.N. human rights commission
The Nation - Five
inmates shot dead in attempted prison breakout
The Nation - US
Special Forces join drugs war
Bkk Post - Give credit
to the Shan State Army
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The Japan Times: Apr. 14,
2001
EU demands Myanmar grant rights to
opposition
GENEVA (Kyodo) The European Union on Thursday demanded freedom of movement
for opposition leaders in Myanmar, including Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi,
and criticized the human rights record of the military government in
Yangon.
An EU draft resolution submitted to the United Nations Human Rights
Commission currently meeting in Geneva, called on Myanmar's government to
release political prisoners and those detained in "government guest houses" and
to permit "unrestricted communication with and physical access" to Suu Kyi and
other political leaders.
It noted that human rights violations such as "extrajudicial, summary or
arbitrary executions, enforced disappearances, rape, torture, inhuman treatment,
mass arrests" have continued in Myanmar.
Such human rights abuses have had "a significant adverse effect on the
health and welfare of the people of Myanmar," the draft said.
The EU also said the Myanmar government "has failed to cease its widespread
and systematic use of forced labor of its own people" and called on its military
rulers to work with the International Labor Organization. The labor group
imposed sanctions on Myanmar last year.
"Concrete legislative, executive and administrative measures to eradicate"
forced labor should be adopted, the EU said.
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Saturday April 14, 1:43 PM
US Troops To Join Thai Fight Against
Myanmar Drugs-Report
BANGKOK (AP)--About 20 U.S.
soldiers will train a special Thai task force in anti-drug operations in the
most important U.S. involvement in the fight to stem the enormous flow of drugs
from Myanmar, a news magazine reported.
The U.S. soldiers from the 1st Special Forces Group will join the Thai Task
Force 399 as instructors from October, the Far Eastern Economic Review said in
its latest April 19 issue made available Saturday.
In addition to the U.S. soldiers, the task force will comprise 100 Thai
Special Forces men, two infantry companies of about 100 men each and 100 Border
Patrol Police, the Review said, quoting unidentified Thai and foreign security
officials.
Bangkok's Nation newspaper also published a similar report Saturday,
quoting an unidentified officer of the 3rd Army, which operates in northern
Thailand bordering Myanmar, or Burma.
Thai and U.S. Embassy officials couldn't be immediately reached because of
the weekend and the Thai New Year national holiday.
Thailand has declared drugs, especially the synthetic stimulant
methamphetamines smuggled from Myanmar, as the biggest national security
problem. Anti-narcotics officials estimate that up to 800 million
methamphetamines tablets are expected to flood the country this year.
The formation of the task force with U.S. involvement is likely to further
strain the uneasy Thai-Myanmar ties. Thailand accuses Myanmar of not doing
enough to stop the United Wa State Army, an ethnic rebel group in Myanmar known
to operate drug laboratories along the Thai border. The Wa, which once used to
fight for independence, signed a cease-fire with the Myanmar government and is
now aligned with the ruling military junta.
The Review said Task Force 399 will confront drug traffickers in Thailand
only and the U.S. Special Forces men will only be instructors.
"The U.S. military has mounted low-level military training missions in
Thailand under a program called Baker Torch for several years. But the new, more
secretive Task Force 399 involvement will be its most important in the kingdom,"
the Review said.
It quoted Thai security officials as saying that the task force will have
the latest night-vision and radar equipment, backed by two U.S.-made Black Hawk
helicopters.
According to the U.S. State Department, Myanmar currently accounts for
approximately 80% of Southeast Asia's opium production, and 20% of the world's
production, second only to Afghanistan.
It says 20% of the heroin sold in the U.S. comes from Myanmar, principally
from "autonomous" areas of Myanmar controlled by groups such as the United Wa
State Army.
Myanmar says it has its own national masterplan aimed at eliminating drugs
by 2014, and that a significant decline in opium production has already been
achieved.
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Myanmar democracy leader Suu Kyi's aunt
dies at 93
YANGON April 14 Kyodo - A
funeral was held Saturday in Yangon for Khin Gyi, elder sister of Myanmar
democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's mother Khin Kyi.
Khin Gyi died Thursday, aged 93.
Friends and relatives attended the funeral at the Yayway cemetery, but Suu
Kyi was not seen.
Khin Gyi's husband Thakin Than Tun, a communist leader, went underground in
March 1948 and rose up in arms against the government three months after Myanmar
gained independence from Britain.
He died in the jungle in September 1968, assassinated by an aide.
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Bangkok Post - April 14,
2001.
Burma's support for scheme
sought
The International Organisation of Migration is seeking Thai help to secure
Burma's support for a micro-financing scheme for the resettlement of refugees in
Burma.
Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathiarathai said the IOM was also interested in
expanding work with hundreds of thousands of Burmese refugees in Thailand.
Brunson McKinley, the IOM director-general, had asked Thailand to help
raise the issue of micro-credit schemes with Burmese authorities before the IOM
broached the issue with them directly.
"Burma should trust the IOM since they are neutral, professional and
non-political," Mr Surakiart said.
The minister would inform Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra before raising
the issue with his Burmese counterpart Win Aung during his visit to Rangoon on
May 1-2.
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EU submits Myanmar resolution to U.N.
human rights commission
GENEVA April 12 Kyodo - The
European Union on Thursday demanded freedom of movement for opposition leaders
in Myanmar, including Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, and criticized the human
rights record of the military government in Yangon.
An EU draft resolution submitted to the United Nations Human Rights
Commission currently meeting in Geneva, called on the Myanmar government to
release political prisoners and those detained in ''government guest houses''
and to permit ''unrestricted communication with and physical access'' to Suu Kyi
and other political leaders.
It noted that human rights violations such as ''extrajudicial, summary or
arbitrary executions, enforced disappearances, rape, torture, inhuman treatment,
mass arrests'' have continued in Myanmar.
Such human rights abuses have had ''a significant adverse effect on the
health and welfare of the people of Myanmar,'' the draft said.
The EU also said the Myanmar government ''has failed to cease its
widespread and systematic use of forced labor of its own people'' and called on
the country's military rulers to cooperate with the International Labor
Organization, which imposed sanctions on Myanmar last year.
''Concrete legislative, executive and administrative measures to eradicate
the practice'' of forced labor should be adopted, the draft resolution said.
U.N. sources said the draft resolution is scheduled to be taken up by the
human rights commission on Wednesday.
At a meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Commission on Thursday, Chinese
exiled dissident Wei Jingshen, who currently lives in the United States, was
given time allocated to an Italian non-governmental organization to make a
speech.
Wei criticized authorities in Beijing for corruption and called for legal
reforms to upgrade the standing of ordinary citizens in China.
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The Nation - April 14,
2001.
Five inmates shot dead in attempted
prison breakout
FIVE inmates were killed and two wardens seriously injured in a failed
jailbreak attempt by Thai and Burmese drug detainees at the Bangkok Remand
Prison yesterday, Corrections Department officials said.
A senior prison official said preliminary investigations showed that a
suspected Burmese drug king detained in the jail's exclusive section for
defendants in drug trafficking cases arranged the jailbreak from behind bars by
promising to pay outside accomplices Bt5 million to help him and his friends
escape.
While wardens were subduing the chaos inside the jail yesterday, prison
guards and police intercepted a van outside and arrested three men suspected to
be waiting to pick up the drug detainees.
The melee broke out at about 12 pm when five inmates in the Central
Correctional Ward attacked wardens with iron chains and metal sticks, prison
officials said.
The five men were joined by 15 other detainees but were subdued by wardens
who rushed in to help. Gunfire broke out and five of the inmates in the
break-out attempt were found dead with gunshot wounds when the 20-minute
skirmish was over, the officials said.
Two wardens, Wichian Tanalert and Chaleo Chujan, were reportedly seriously
injured in the attack and later underwent emergency operations in hospital.
The names of the five dead inmates as released by the prison were Newin (a
Burmese national), Vorapot Amkham, Krong Sae Nam, Pramote Neungsuwan and Visarut
Lamtee.
They had been held at the prison on charges of trafficking amphetamines in
quantities numbering from 1,020 to 205,000 pills. Their cases were pending in
court.
Corrections Department Director General Siwa Saengmanee said yesterday that
interviews with the recaptured inmates had revealed that one of the detainees
trying to break out, Cheng Long Wien, a Burmese drug suspect with the alias Ah
Lieng, was the mastermind of the attempted jailbreak.
The suspected drug king was arrested with more than 1 million amphetamine
pills and had been detained at the prison for about 20 days, Siwa said.
Director of the Central Correctional Ward Sopon Thitidhammapruek said
investigations showed that Ah Lieng had hatched the jailbreak plan from behind
bars and offered outside accomplices Bt5 million to help him and his friends to
escape.
He said the suspect and the other inmates might have tried to flee after
they heard news about the first execution of a convicted amphetamine trafficker
during the term of the current government earlier this week.
The three suspects arrested in the van waiting outside the centre,
Thossapon Lertnimitmongkol, a former member of the national Taekwando team, and
brothers Wichian and Wichai Amkham, were detained at Prachachuen police station
for questioning.
Sopon said the recaptured inmates claimed that there were six vehicles
waiting to pick them up but prison guards said they spotted only a sedan and a
pick-up speeding away when they intercepted the van with the three men
aboard.
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The Nation - April 14,
2001.
US Special Forces join drugs
war
CRACK troops from the United States will join Thailand's war on drugs in
the coming months, in a new bid to stem the enormous flow of drugs from Burma.
About 20 soldiers from the US First Special Forces Group will train
Thailand's newly formed Task Force 399 starting from October, a senior Third
Army officer said yesterday, on condition of anonymity.
The secretive task force - made up of 100 members of the Thai Special
Forces, two infantry units with about 100 soldiers each and a 100-strong unit of
Border Police - will be based out of Chiang Mai's Mae Rim district, the officer
said.
The American Special Forces will arrive here next month along with 5,000
other American soldiers to take part in the annual joint-military exercise,
Cobra Gold, with their Thai counterparts.
Creating the anti-drugs taskforce is the latest tactic by authorities to
curb the flow of illicit drugs, mostly methamphetamines, from areas under the
control of Burma's armed ethnic rebels, particularly the United Wa State Army
(UWSA), which operates with little hindrance in Burma's Shan State.
Anti-narcotics cooperation between Thailand and the US has a long but
relatively unpublicised history, Panitan Wattanayagorn, a security expert at
Chulalongkorn University, said.
Past operations were pretty much focused against opium-poppy cultivation
and heroin trafficking, which Thailand sees as mainly affecting other countries.
But because growth in synthetic stimulant abuse has become a local issue
detrimentally impacting just about every corner of Thai society, said Panitan,
news about the American Special Forces working with local troops was likely to
attracted great attention.
Up to 800 million speed pills produced in Burma's north were expected to
flood into Thailand this year, the officer said, adding that the UWSA was
responsible for most of the illicit drug production.
The UWSA came into being in 1989 shortly after the fall of the Communist
Party of Burma (CPB). It soon signed a cease-fire with the military government
in Rangoon. The bulk of the UWSA's troops served as infantry for the CPB, which
was backed by the Chinese Communists before it fell apart.
Under an agreement with the Burmese junta that allows it some degree of
autonomy, the 20,000-strong outfit has extended its power base in Burma's Shan
State from along the Chinese border southward to areas across from Thailand's
Mae Ai and Fang districts. New towns such as Mong Yawn and Mong Mai, built by
hundreds of Thai labourers and Thai construction companies, have sprung up in
recent years as millions of methamphetamine tablets, known locally as yaa baa,
have been sent across the border and sold in Thai cities.
The trade proceeded relatively unperturbed until two years ago when the
bodies of nine Thai nationals from Chiang Mai's Fang district were discovered by
the border near the Wa area. All fingers pointed to Mong Yawn for the murderers.
Thai authorities were forced to impose economic sanctions against the Wa by
closing the border crossing to their territory.
The Burmese regime, on the other hand, has come under strong criticism from
both Thailand and Western countries for turning a blind eye to the Wa's illicit
activities.
Thailand's Third Army commander, Lt General Wattanachai Chaimuanwong, has
accused a number of top Burmese military chiefs of taking bribes from the
Wa.
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Bangkok Post - April 14,
2001.
(Letters to the Editor)
Give credit to the Shan State
Army
I WOULD like to commend you for telling the story of the Shan State Army
(SSA). There are those in the media and other sources who have been attempting
to tell of the changes in direction, especially in the area of drug production,
brought about by Colonel Yaud Serk of the SSA. These have been laughed off by
United States operatives, who have preached an allied effort with Burma while on
the surface, keeping the country where it belongs, on the drug-producers' list.
None of these US operatives ever went to the SSA area to see if changes had in
fact taken place.
Do not look for any changes in the US State Department position. Secretary
Powell has named Richard Armitage, who Khun Sa named as his "US connection", his
number-two man and most trusted assistant. Khun Sa, with the multimillion-dollar
reward on his head, resides in splendour beside his new Burmese allies. The Wa
have joined the Burmese Army in attacks on all ethnic groups, especially the
SSA. These have been repulsed time and again.
The drug labs and caravans hit by the SSA were joint Wa/Burmese operations.
No pat on the back from the USA for that. You did a great service by showing the
Shan on the march against drugs and dictatorship. But I would not hold my breath
waiting for US State Department recognition of these changes. It's so much
easier to have a drink in Rangoon, Bangkok or Washington than to get out there
where the truth really lies, in the jungle. Your reporters did that.
Mark A Smith MAJOR, USA, RETIRED
BANGKOK
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