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BURMA RELATED NEWS - June 23,
2001.
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HEADLINES
---------------------------------------------------------------- Reuters - Australia welcomes Myanmar's prisoner
releases
AP - Thai Official: Myanmar to Reopen Border
Checkpoint Sunday
AFP - Six countries added to money laundering
blacklist
Asia Times - Myanmar feels sting over farm labor
BERNAMA - Japan Welcomes Freeing Of Political
Prisoners By Myanmar
Bkk Post - Tachilek checkpoint to reopen
tomorrow
Bkk Post - No action from
historians
Bkk Post - Exports to Burma dip but imports
jump
Bkk Post - Editorial -
A harder bargain with Burma needed
The Nation - Border
joy after long closure
Times of India - THE SPEAKING TREE
Prospect (UK) - Aung San Suu
Kyi
---------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday June 23, 11:32 AMAustralia welcomes Myanmar's prisoner
releases
SYDNEY, June 23 (Reuters) - Australia has welcomed the release of pro-democracy politicians in Myanmar, saying it hoped the landmark talks between the country's military and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi would lead to political reconciliation. "The Australian government has long called for the release of all political
prisoners in Burma and this is an initial step in that direction," Australian
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said in a statement received on Saturday.
"We hope the dialogue leads to genuine progress towards promoting both
human rights and reconciliation in Burma," said Downer, adding Australia
welcomed the re-opening of 18 opposition National League for Democracy (NLD)
offices in Rangoon.
Myanmar's military government released five opposition politicians, all
members of Suu Kyi's NLD who had been elected at the last democratic poll in
1990, from detention on Thursday.
Last week eight political prisoners were freed and several opposition party
offices were allowed to reopen.
The NLD won the 1990 election by a landslide but has never been allowed to
govern. Myanmar's ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) has never
recognised the result of the election and has detained dozens of opposition
politicians since.
Tension between the military and NLD has eased since the start in October
of secretive talks between Suu Kyi, winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, and
the country's ruling generals.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan this week also wlcomed the latest release
of political prisoners.
Saturday June 23, 5:33 PM
Thai Official: Myanmar to Reopen Border
Checkpoint Sunday
BANGKOK (AP)--Myanmar will
reopen early Sunday a key border checkpoint with Thailand that was shut five
months ago after a military clash between the two countries, a Thai official
said Saturday.
The reopening of the crossing between Tachilek in eastern Myanmar and the
Thai town of Mae Sai, 680 kilometers north of Bangkok, would be a gesture of the
"good understanding" between the two countries, said Decha Satapol, the Mae Sai
district chief.
He was speaking after a Saturday meeting of the local Thai-Myanmar Township
Border Committee in Tachilek.
Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra visited Myanmar last week to patch
up bilateral relations which hit their lowest point in years after the clash in
February that killed at least five civilians.
Thailand was willing to reopen its side of the border months ago but
Myanmar refused to until Thaksin agreed to lift a ban on exports like fuel, rice
and construction material through Mae Sai.
The ban was put in place in February to deny supplies to the Myanmar
military and ethnic Wa rebels accused of smuggling vast amounts of illegal drugs
to Thailand.
Friday June 22, 10:22 PM
Six countries added to money laundering
blacklist
PARIS, June 22 (AFP) -
Industrialised nations, in a fresh onslaught against money laundering, added six
countries Friday to a blacklist and said they would punish Russia and others for
failing to improve.
The inter-government Financial Action Task Force (FATF) said its list of
money laundering havens would now include six new members: Egypt, Guatamala,
Hungary, Indonesia, Myanmar and Nigeria.
Three countries already on the list, Russia, the Philippines and the tiny
Pacific island of Nauru, had also taken insufficient steps to fight the
recycling of illicit gains, said an annual FATF report.
That judgement will likely come as a shock to Russia, which with the two
others now faces the threat of sanctions that would make it an outcast in the
business world.
Russia held an anti-money laundering conference this month, after which
Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov voiced hope it would be removed from the
blacklist altogether during the FATF meeting.
Four others countries -- the Bahamas, Caymans, Liechtenstein and Panama --
were judged to have taken sufficient action to close money laundering loopholes
and were taken off the list.
The blacklist, drawn up during a meeting of FATF members in Paris, now has
19 countries.
The new members of the list of non-cooperative countries and territories
were cited for various failings, including lack of proper legislation or
supervision.
Myanmar "lacks a basic set of anti-money laundering provisions," the task
force report said. In Indonesia, "money laundering is not presently a criminal
offence".
The task force, which has 28 goverment members, called for surveillance to
be stepped up against Russia, the Philippines and Nauru, deemed to have made
"inadequate progress" to fight money laundering.
Russia faced many obstacles in combating money laundering but the biggest
was a lack of legislation, it said. Russia lacked comprehensive customer
identification requirements and a system to report suspicious deals.
The task force threatened to bring in stringent measures to identify
clients from the three countries and to launch tough scrutiny of their banks'
applications to opening overseas bank branches
Normal businesses may also be warned that deals with those countries could
involve money laundering, it said.
Counter measures would be begin in September to give the trio time to
rectify the problems, said the task force.
"The FATF looks forward to adequate progress being made by Nauru, the
Philippines and Russia so that the coming into force of the counter measures can
be avoided," it said.
The task force sought to put the focus on the four countries that were
removed from the list.
"We see that this initiative has triggered significant improvements in
anti-money laundering systems throughout the world," said FATF president Joe
Maria Roldan.
Liechtenstein, for example, had sharply increased anti-money laundering
investigations and introduced a raft of legislation.
In the same vein, a report in Germany's Stern magazine said Thursday that
Liechtenstein authorities believed they had found the trail of tens of millions
of dollars the French oil company Elf-Aquitaine allegedly used for bribes in the
purchase in 1992 of the Leuna refinery in the former East Germany.
Asia Times - June 23,
2001.
Southeast Asia
Myanmar feels sting over farm labor
By Gustavo Capdevila GENEVA - The International Labor Conference concluded on Thursday with the
approval of the "Convention Concerning Safety and Health in Agriculture" and
imposed sanctions against Myanmar, as well as five other nations for labor
rights violations.
The other five were Belarus, Colombia, Ethiopia, Sudan and Venezuela.
The new accord on farm laborers, the result of an understanding reached by
workers, employers and governments, covers half of the world's workers,
estimates Juan Somavia, director-general of the International Labor Organization
(ILO).
The agreement will require the ratifying countries to establish "adequate
systems of inspection of agricultural workplaces". Currently, just 5 percent of
the 1.3 billion farm workers are subject to monitoring and have access to legal
protections. In addition, "the employer shall have a duty to ensure the safety
and health of workers in every aspect related to their work".
Alongside mining and construction, farming is one of the three most
dangerous work activities in developing and industrialized countries alike.
Nearly half the 1.2 million work-related accidents reported each year occur in
the agricultural sector.
The ILO Committee on the Application of Standards studied the situation of
the six countries and dictated special sanctions reserved for serious violations
of labor rights.
With respect to Myanmar, the ILO committee expressed "profound regret for
the persistence of serious discrepancies between national legislation and
practice and the provisions of the convention on freedom of association and
protection of workers' rights to organize".
The military regime in Myanmar has been the target in the past few years of
sharp accusations that it engages in practices of forced labor. The 17-day
International Labour Conference, which ended Thursday, voted to send a
high-level observers mission to assess the situation of this Asian country.
At the conclusion of the conference, Somavia underscored the spirit of
consensus that predominated throughout the event and had allowed delegates to
reach agreement on "matters that years ago would have seemed impossible, such as
the case of Myanmar". In general, Asian countries had previously blocked any
attempt to sanction Myanmar.
In the case of Belarus, the ILO expressed its deep concern about the
instructions given by the chief of the presidential administration to "interfere
in the labor union elections".
The climate of impunity in Colombia represents a serious threat to the
exercise of union freedoms, said the standards committee after evaluating the
situation of the South American country. Julio Roberto Gomez, of the Colombia's
General Confederation of Democratic Workers (CGTD), denounced the continued
violence against labor leaders. In just the last five and a half months, he
stated, 45 unionists have been assassinated, he said.
The sanction against Ethiopia is based on accusations of government
interference in labor union activities. The president of the Ethiopian Teachers'
Association was "convicted, after three years of preventive detention, on
charges of conspiracy against the state and sentenced to 15 years in prison".
The committee on standards also penalized Sudan due to its verification of "the
extreme gravity" of cases of forced labor.
For Venezuela, the committee urged the government "to amend its legislation
to ensure that workers and employers can form organizations and freely elect
their representatives".
The conference participants also debated the problem of social security,
which Somavia considers one of today's most complicated issues. The outcome of
the discussion was a "very balanced" document that insists "we must not forget
that social security is a key element for the stability of any society", said
the ILO chief.
Willy Thys, secretary-general of the World Confederation of Labor (WCL),
commented that the resolution on social security was vague and that "employers
and certain labor sectors are opposed to a binding text in this area". An
estimated 1 billion workers around the world lack social security, observed the
leader of the WCL, one of the two leading international union organizations. But
the approved document is also insufficient because it fails to choose between
capitalist and distributive systems, maintained Thys, who said his organization
is inclined to the latter option because capitalization "maintains and
increases" social inequalities.
The conference, said the ILO's Somavia, consolidated the "decent work
agenda", an initiative the organization launched with strategic goals in the
areas of employment, social security, safety, employee rights and social
dialogue. With the backing of the conference, the Decent Work program passes
from mere aspiration to action, and from vision to policy, stated the ILO
director-general.
Malaysian National News Agency
June 22 , 2001 17:18PM
Japan Welcomes Freeing Of
Political Prisoners By Myanmar
TOKYO, June 22 (Oana-Kyodo) -- Japan welcomes the freeing of five political prisoners by Myanmar's military junta Thursday and hopes more will follow to boost dialogue between the junta and pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said today. "We welcome the development as a step that would nurture trust between the
(Myanmar) government and Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and further promote dialogue
between the two sides," the top government spokesman said at a news conference.
The release of the five prisoners, as well as 10 others last week, is the
result of "constructive involvement by the international community," such as
Japan and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Fukuda said.
Bangkok Post - June 23,
2001.
Tachilek checkpoint to reopen
tomorrow
FM sees the return of spirit of brotherhood Achara Ashayagachat
Thailand and Burma have agreed to reopen the Tachilek border checkpoint
tomorrow and reactivate two structures for bilateral co-operation later this
year, their foreign ministers said yesterday.
The Joint Commission for Bilateral Co-operation, which last met in Rangoon
two years ago, will meet in Phuket in August or October, Foreign Minister
Surakiart Sathirathai said.
The Joint Boundary Committee, which deals specifically with demarcation
issues, will meet later in the year, he said.
"Our relationship is now resuming in the spirit of brotherhood. Problems
will be solved by existing mechanisms," he said, citing the Township Border
Committee and Regional Border Committee as the proper places for addressing the
question of compensation for damage in border clashes.
"Our relations are now back on track. Borders will now be open and become
friendly and peaceful with mutual understanding," said Burmese Foreign Minister
Win Aung.
Asked what would guarantee an end to border clashes, Mr Win Aung simply
said, "We are now pee nong (brothers)."The Burmese minister told Prime Minister
Thaksin Shinawatra during a courtesy call that the Township Border Committee
would meet today to prepare for the Tachilek checkpoint's opening tomorrow at 6
am.
Mr Thaksin said Thailand would set no conditions for reopening the
checkpoint. Thailand also would lift the export ban on strategic items including
fuel, rice, vehicles, auto spare parts and medicines.
Ministers of finance were encouraged to meet soon to discuss payment
arrangements for account trade, agreed upon by the nation's leaders this week,
Mr Surakiart said.
The Bank of Thailand would tell commercial banks of Rangoon's eagerness to
see a resurgence of Thai banking operations in their country, he said.
Burma would consider hosting a meeting of senior officials in the next two
months ahead of the four-country drug summit in Kunming.
Mr Surakiart emphasised the need for Thais and Burmese to have positive
attitudes towards each other. The two sides assigned ambassadors to discuss a
list of activities to promote cultural and technical co-operation, including
setting up cultural associations in the two capitals, he said.
The two ministers also discussed promotion of transportation links with
potential routes including Mae Sai-Tachilek-Kengtung-Jinhong, the east-west
corridor at Mae Sot-Myawaddy, and Kanchanaburi-Tavoy, where Burma is developing
a deep-sea port.
In Chiang Rai, Thai and Burmese customs and immigration officials were seen
preparing for the opening of the Mae Sai-Tachilek checkpoint on both sides of
the border.
Rays of hope reappeared on the faces of vendors in Mae Sai.
"About 90% of vendors on the Tachilek side of the border are Thai. They
have been waiting for the day to come. What they earn will return to Thailand,"
said one vendor.
Meanwhile, members of the Rak Mae Sai group which opposes Burma's plan to
open a lignite-powered electricity plant in Tachilek yesterday lodged a
complaint with district police.
Sumeth Promchaisa, leader of the group, said about 20 cloth banners put up
along the road in Mae Sai to oppose delivery of parts of a Chinese-made power
generator and other equipment across the border to Tachilek had been taken
away.
Pang Polchai, a group member, said: "We don't oppose opening of the
checkpoint. But we oppose the power plant which will cause air pollution in Mae
Sai."A convoy of 44 trucks took the generator parts to Mae Sai in April, but the
Third Army did not allow them to cross. At the same time, a protest launched by
Mae Sai residents forced the convoy to return to Bangkok.
Bangkok Post - June 23,
2001.
No action from
historians
Department won't recommend protest Sirikul Bunnag
The Curriculum and Instruction Development Department said it was
unnecessary to protest a Burmese school textbook after Thaksin Shinawatra's
visit to Rangoon.
A seminar of historians organised by the department stopped short of
pinpointing parts of the textbook which could be damaging to Thailand.
"All of them said the matter was closed since the prime minister visited
Burma. They also believe the premier's visit would solve problems between the
two nations," said Prapatpong Senarit, the department's director-general.
Mr Prapatpong said the department would not recommend an official protest
to Rangoon.
The textbook upset many people because it was critical of Thai foreign
policy and the monarchy.
The matter would be brought up in October at the Southeast Asian Ministers
of Education Office (Seameo) in Rangoon, where the Seameo Regional Centre for
History and Tradition is located.
If understanding and co-operation can be reached at the meeting,
improvements of textbooks in each country would follow without protest, he
said.
"Historians agree history books of each country were based on the
information available. It's hard to establish the facts. Some parts are not
facts. But readers can differentiate between facts and opinions in such
statements as those which accuse Thais of being lazy," he said.
Bangkok Post - June 23,
2001.
Exports to Burma dip but imports
jump
Businesses hope for warmer relations Supamart Kasem
The value of Thai exports to Burma through the Mae Sot-Myawaddy border
crossing fell year-on-year by 14% to 911 million baht from 1,058.8 million in
the first five months of this year. In the same period, imports from Burma
almost tripled to 747.7 million baht from 261 million.
Trading sources in Mae Sot attributed the substantial drop to Burma's
increased restrictions on products imported from Thailand to stem tax evasion
since last November.
More than 10 Burmese officials based in Myawaddy had been transferred for
allegedly having vested interests in border trade, said the sources.
Several Burmese traders had been jailed and their products smuggled from
Thailand were either impounded or destroyed, the sources said.
On top of the stringent restrictions, Rangoon also launched a concerted
campaign urging Burmese people to boycott Thai goods. Many shops in Burma
reportedly carried signs telling their customers that no Thai products were
available on sale.
As relations between the two countries worsened following clashes between
the two armies, trade restrictions were tightened further.
In retaliation, Thailand put a ban on the exports of rice, medicines, fuel,
vehicles and auto parts categorised as strategic products to Burma. All
temporary border checkpoints in Tak province bordering Burma were also
closed.
Suchart Triratwattana, vice-president of the Tak chamber of commerce, said
Thai products that used to command a 30-40% share in the Burmese market had
almost completely lost out to goods from China, South Korea and Malaysia.
Mr Suchart expressed hope that Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's visit to
Burma early this week would help mend fences with the Rangoon government and
contribute to the resumption of border trade between the two
countries. Bangkok Post - June 23,
2001.
Editorial - A harder bargain with Burma
needed
The offer of trade privileges to Burma showed amazing lack of perspective
and disregard for political strategy. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra seemed
so blinkered in his bid to restore relations that he deliberately avoided
looking back to sores in recent history, sideways to repercussions, or forward
to the country's future. As Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai put it, the
prime minister offered Burma breaks in import tariffs because he believed the
two countries should maximise trade.
The prime minister also offered to exchange Thai semi-industrial products
with Burmese farm goods, and to let Burma pay the difference in kyat or US
dollars. Burma could not but welcome such generosity. The country's economy is
in shreds, with the kyat dropping by 50% in value since April, energy costs
rising, and supply irregular. Gen Than Shwe, the prime minister and chairman of
the ruling State Peace and Development Council, plainly asked for help to
develop the economy and battle poverty. But what has Burma done to deserve any
help, let alone generous trade terms?
While our offer will help Burma treat its worst injury in the state of the
economy, is Burma doing the same to help solve our worst plight in the drug
problem that is wasting our youth and threatens national security? The
memorandum of understanding signed on Wednesday provides a structure for
drug-busting.
Officials of both sides will man co-ordinating posts to be set up at three
border checkpoints, drug liaison officers will be stationed at embassies in
Bangkok and Rangoon, and respective drug agencies will take turns to host annual
meetings. But the structure deals with the symptoms of the problem rather than
the root cause, which is the production of lethal drugs by the United Wa State
Army inside Burma. Gen Than Shwe reiterated to Mr Thaksin Rangoon's line that no
support was being extended to the UWSA in the illicit activity, adding that the
ethnic army had been warned against it on several occasions.
But he stopped short of saying he would root out the activity, which would
not be an impossible mission, in view of the leverage some generals enjoy over
the UWSA. Instead, he invited the prime minister to allay any doubts by sending
representatives to check out the situation at Mong Yawn. To most people, this is
more of a challenge than an invitation, given the mobility of laboratories on
the border.
The prime minister cannot now back out of the offer but he can turn it into
an opportunity for making Burma more compliant on questions of drug co-operation
as well as boundary demarcation, both of which resulted in the military clashes
in February and March. For example, Thailand could extend trade privileges to a
minimum number of products, set tough conditions for eligibility to them, and
dangle the promise of broader inclusion if Burma co-operated on these two key
questions. By no means should Thailand be as generous to Burma as it is to
Cambodia and Laos, who enjoy tariff reductions on 23 and 40 products,
respectively. Comparatively, Cambodia and Laos have been much more friendly
although there have been rough patches.
Burma could also be brought to yield on drugs and boundary issues through
further postponement of the sixth meeting of the Joint Commission, which deals
with economic and other bilateral co-operation. Thailand has set Phuket as the
venue but the time-frame remains loose, at within the next two to three months.
Thailand should push for the Joint Boundary Committee, which deals specifically
with the demarcation issue, to meet first. Also due to host the boundary
meeting, Thailand long ago proposed terms of reference for demarcation but Burma
has simply stonewalled.
Mr Thaksin made much of the fact that he was the first prime minister to
visit Burma since Gen Chavalit Yongchaiyudh did in May 1997, but he quietly
indicated some disappointment with the results by also noting that this lapse
had caused Burmese leaders to be less attentive to Thai concerns. The way
forward is to drive a harder bargain.
The Nation - June 23,
2001.
Border joy after long closure
An air of celebration isexpected to mark the reopening of the Mae
Sai-Tachilek border crossing this morning and trade - including banned strategic
goods - should again be in full swing by noon.
The reopening will signify renewed ties between Thailand and Burma, which
until very recently have been marred by months of clashes, said Thai officials
attending the Township Border Committee yesterday.
The meeting also agreed that three temporary checkpoints at Sai Lom Choi,
Tha Sai and Tha Pangha would also be opened to facilitate cross-border trade and
the movement of people.
Thailand agreed to lift its ban on rice, medicine, fuel and vehicle parts
imposed after an outbreak of cross-border shelling in February.
The issue of 27 Thai products banned by the Burmese authorities was not
discussed in detail, but the Burmese promised to relax the measure so that trade
could return to its normal level.
Before the TBC met, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra sent a letter to the
Thai delegation stressing the need to strengthen relations in order to solve the
border and drugs problems. Thaksin also instructed the TBC to meet more
regularly to improve mutual understanding.
During his recent visit to Burma, Thaksin reached an agreement with his
Burmese counterpart that the Mae Sai-Tachilek checkpoint should be opened within
a week without any conditions attached.
Domesak Kamsaisaeng, head of the Thai TBC coordinating team, said the
meeting could not take place in Mae Sai out of concern for a protest by local
villagers about the lignite electricity plant in Tachilek. Meanwhile, a press
van was abruptly stopped at the middle of the bridge connecting the two
countries by Burmese security officials citing an order from the Tachilek
district chief.
After three hours of discussion, officials from both countries put on a
rare show of amity by gathering for a group photograph at the checkpoint holding
hands and cheering.
The move stunned villagers on both sides, who had had to endure over four
months of tense border conflict.
"It is a good starting point for the bilateral relationship ," said Colonel
Wanthip Wongwai, who co-chaired the TBC with Lt-Colonel Aye Soe from Burma. "We
have agreed to meet more often".
Mae Sai district chief Decha Satthapol said the opening ceremony of the
checkpoint would be marked by cultural shows and musical performances.
Chairman of Chiang Rai Chamber of Commerce Sermchai Kittirattanapaibul
expressed optimism about the resumption of full border trade, saying that the
ties would improve in the long term.
The Times of India - June 23,
2001.
THE SPEAKING
TREE
Myanmar's Custodian Of the Buddhist Way By THELMA MENEZES SOME years ago, I made a trip to Yangon to visit members of my family. It
was April and the timing was perfect. Star flowers exuded fragrance; the golden
pa-dauk was in full bloom and Myanmar was about to celebrate Thin-gyan, a Water
Festival, to usher in the Burmese New Year. According to legend, Tha-gyar-min,
King of the Celestials, comes down to the human world during this period to
grace the event.
As the story also goes, a hermit living in a forest saw a huge flower,
which he brought home. It gave birth to a beautiful girl Me-Lamu whom he raised
as his daughter. Tha-gyar-min saw her and knew that she was destined to be the
mother of a great king who would found the city of Dagon (now Yangon) and that
king would be sired by him. Disguised as a handsome young man he asked for her
hand and out of the union was born King Okalapa, who later built Dagon. This
city today has a satellite town to commemorate his name while the memory of
Me-Lamu is enshrined in a pagoda.
When I arrived in Yangon, preparations were already under way. Celebration
committees had been formed. Teenagers were raising funds, selling picture
postcards and souvenirs, servicing vehicles to transport celebrants.
Festooned mandats (pandals) were coming up along the roads with provision
for storage of water for the revelry. Food stalls provided traditional fare.
Bu-thi-gyaw, white gourd crisps fried in sizzling hot oil, to be eaten with
lettuce and chilly sauce. Mo-hin-ga rice noodles in a rich gravy of curried
fish. Glutinous rice steamed in hollow bamboo served with sesame seeds, peanuts
and grated coconut. Light, unsweetened tea in bowls, hot and refreshing.
For four days people thronged the streets, some in open trucks, everyone
dancing to the reverberating beat of drums, cymbals, bamboo clappers and flutes,
squirting, splashing water on each other, quelling the summer heat. It was an
explosion of gaiety overflowing with goodwill.
However, Tha-gyar-min's annual visit is not just to initiate a period of
merry making. He is regarded as the Custodian of Buddhist teachings, responsible
for ensuring that people live in accordance with the Buddhist way.
Khin Myo Chit in her book, Colourful Burma, writes that children are told
by elders that they should not steal, hurt or kill anyone. Names of the good
would be inscribed by Tha-gyar-min on a plate of gold while the bad ones would
be relegated to a parchment of doghide, which he would carry with him to
dispense justice. It was a blueprint for good behaviour equally applicable to
adults.
Emphasis is also laid on Dha-na, acts of giving through meritorious
works.The spirit of Dha-na is humility, selflessness, expecting no reward, not
even recognition. The quality or quantity of the gift does not matter as much as
the spirit in which it is given - feeding monks, giving alms, sharing food and
sweets, fetching water for the aged, washing their hair and bathing them with
home-made concoctions of soap nuts, acacia and bark of the linden tree.
Under the watchful eyes of Tha-gyar-min, it is also time for novitiations
into the Buddha's Order of the San-gha when boys are sent to the kyaung
(monastery) for a week or more, where they have their head shaven, don yellow
robes, do their early morning rounds collecting their meals in black lacquer
bowls, all the while learning and adhering to the Buddhist precepts imparted to
them by phon-gyis (monks).
Parents consider it an act of omission in they fail to follow this ritual.
If they do not have sons, they help those with limited means through mass
novitiations. For the boys, it is a renunciation of worldy pleasures of a life
of austerity and discipline and to experience the essence of Buddha's teachings
even if it is for a short while.
Ceremonial processions to the monastery added colour, with the
novices-to-be in richly embellished princely costumes astride caparisoned horses
shaded by golden umbrellas, followed by family members and damsels carrying
offerings of robes, bowls and flowers. And always, with the Burmese love for
fun, the pageants were enlivened by dancers and music troupes.
It was four days of an unforgettable blend of religion and revelry, with
water symbolically cleaning and purifying, and Tha- guar-min reigning supreme
over the country as Custodian of the Buddhist Way.
Prospect magazine (uk)
Aung San Suu
Kyi
July 2001 She is the west's favourite political prisoner, a seraphic woman
destined to lead her country. But have her unwavering moral standards now become
an obstacle to political progress in Burma, asks Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian
Levy
veryone knows that Burma is in a mess. A nation once called the Golden Land
in tribute to its giant gem pits has sold them off to the Chinese in return for
guns and tanks. Thousands of miles of ancient hardwood forest have been torn
down and replanted with opium fields. The once lush rice bowl of Asia can no
longer feed itself. Millions of Burmese are addled by drugs and hundreds of
thousands infected with HIV, while the general who serves as health minister
assures them that "Aids is a foreign disease." The regime has launched dozens of
military campaigns against its people and more than 1m of Burma's 46m-strong
population are unaccounted for.
Most people also know that Burma is the setting for an extraordinary
political morality tale--Asia's beauty and the beast. While the world's most
famous political prisoner, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been forced to fight for
democracy behind the locked gates of her home in University Avenue in Rangoon,
the country has been slowly strangled by a secretive junta whose fiscal policies
are drawn up by astrologers.
There was thus great excitement on 9th January this year when the UN
special envoy, Razali Ismail, announced that the State Peace and Development
Council which runs Burma had agreed to talks with Suu Kyi. Western newspapers
debated whether the talks--the first in five years--meant that she would finally
be permitted to play a role in Burma's future. Some reports even speculated that
the junta had decided to recognise the results of the last election, held in May
1990, when Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) won 392 out of 485
seats.
Six weeks after the special envoy's announcement, another news item emerged
from the news-shy country that appeared to bolster Suu Kyi's position. A
helicopter carrying 29 of Burma's senior military men had plunged into the
jungle north of Rangoon. Among the dead was one of Suu Kyi's harshest critics
who had called for her to be "crushed without mercy"; Lt Gen Tin Oo was a
leading member of a hard line faction that opposed weakening the military's
grip.
What the state media did not reveal was that the crash on 19th February was
no accident. According to US intelligence, there had been a gunfight inside the
helicopter, one general firing upon another. Until then there had been only
glimpses of a rumoured power struggle within the military elite--such as the
letter bomb that killed Tin Oo's daughter in April 1997. In any case, Suu Kyi's
supporters took heart. Tin Oo's death removed an obstacle to dialogue, leaving
the junta's reformist faction in command.
But another more startling story that has gone barely reported in the west
is now beginning to emerge because of these same talks. Within the NLD and
without, in pro-democracy newspapers, in Rangoon diplomatic circles and in the
offices of NGOs that were previously unflinchingly loyal to Suu Kyi, it is now
being said that she has failed to give direction to the democracy movement and
lacks policy ideas or strategic grasp. She is even accused by some of her own
MPs of being too committed to pacifism and western-style democracy to cut a deal
in what are bound to be murky negotiations. There is growing concern that her
years in isolation have made her haughty, distant and unwilling to listen.
Some of those who have raised these concerns have been ostracised and
expelled from the NLD. But this has only prompted others to express their doubts
in public. One of Suu Kyi's former aides has accused her publicly of squandering
the democracy movement's momentum and of missing critical opportunities.
Another, the party's elder statesman and architect of the 1990 election victory,
has followed suit. Moreover, Burma's myriad ethnic groups--the Shan, Karen,
Karenni, Chin, Arakanese amongst others--who rallied to Suu Kyi's side in 1990,
have also begun to turn their backs on the NLD, putting their case through their
own jungle coalition.
The recent internal and external dissent follows years of persecution
by a vindictive junta--known as the SLORC until advised to change its name by an
American public relations consultancy. In Suu Kyi's own 12 years of formal or
informal house arrest, hundreds of party workers have been killed and her own
husband, Michael Aris, died of cancer in England in 1999 having been refused a
last visa to see her. (If she had left Burma to see him, she would never have
been let back into the country.) Since 1990, more than 65 per cent of the NLD's
elected MPs and party members have resigned, been imprisoned or gone into exile.
Tens of thousands of exhausted NLD supporters have just faded away. Now many in
Rangoon privately fear that Suu Kyi will be unable to convince the generals that
she still wields the kind of popular backing that has forced change so recently
in Indonesia, Serbia and the Philippines.
When in July 1989 the Burmese junta first placed Aung San Suu Kyi under
house arrest, they thrust her onto the international stage. Amnesty
International declared her a prisoner of conscience and the following May, when
the junta failed to honour the election result, international accolades rained
down, including the Nobel peace prize. The democracy movement was bound together
by global good will and by Suu Kyi's ability to endure.
Then on 10th July 1995 the junta relaxed the terms of her confinement and
pictures of Suu Kyi surrounded by her jubilant supporters were beamed across the
world. "The forces for democracy remain strong and dedicated," she told an
impromptu rally. But now that Suu Kyi was freer to move around she would be
judged on something more tangible than suffering: her leadership skills.
Divisions soon began to emerge. In November 1995, Suu Kyi announced that
she was boycotting the junta's National Convention, a committee formed to devise
a blueprint for democratic government and something of a sop to the
international community. Her decision was influenced by clauses in the
convention that guaranteed the generals a leading role in any future civilian
government and barred from domestic politics anyone with foreign relatives. But
what shocked some NLD MPs and party workers was the fact that their leader had
severed their sole line of communication with the junta without consulting them.
Two NLD MPs, who had spent many years in prison while Suu Kyi was under
house arrest, publicly accused their leader of acting unilaterally. One of them,
Than Tun, recalled: "I objected openly, partly because we had no idea what to do
after the walkout. Suu Kyi just shouted at me and Thein Kyi." While the NLD
debated what would replace its involvement in the National Convention, Suu Kyi
stuck to her belief that economic sanctions--which she had lobbied for since
1988--would break the regime. Her lobbying had met with some success. Although
no large country had formal legal sanctions, the US and the EU had discouraged
trade and since the early 1990s trade with the west has fallen sharply. Several
big companies, including Land Rover and Coca Cola, have closed their operations
in Burma.
In the summer of 1996 Than Tun and Thein Kyi challenged their leader again.
They presented Suu Kyi with a ten-page report, signed by seven NLD MPs, that
called on her to adopt "more realistic policies." Not only was the NLD refusing
to negotiate with the junta but it was also advocating a strategy that cut the
Burmese people off from the outside world. The economic embargo had failed to
bring the junta to its knees but, the dissenters claimed, it had scared off
progressive foreign investors who would have introduced tools for democratic
dissent such as fax machines, e-mail and mobile phones and access to the ideas
of the democratic world.
A meeting of the NLD executive was convened to address the report. "They
weren't happy," Than Tun recalled. "They said they wouldn't expel us as long as
we didn't try to organise other members. I told Suu Kyi 'you must be more
tolerant, we're only ten people--we're not a threat.'"
The NLD leadership closed ranks. A resolution was passed that gave Suu Kyi
and her chairman, Aung Shwe, complete control over decision-making. They argued
that this was made necessary by the junta's outlawing of NLD party congresses.
"If there had been a secret vote, a lot of MPs would have voted against her.
They know that if we go on like this the party will wither away. The NLD does
not tolerate any dissent," Than Tun said.
On 6th January 1997, he and his colleague Thein Kyi were expelled from the
NLD, accused of "disobeying policy" and "creating disunity." Suu Kyi broadened
her sanctions call to include NGOs stationed in Burma, who she accused of
prolonging the life of the junta. "No aid, trade or investment," went the new
slogan. One aid worker told us how his Burmese staff, who had risked arrest to
meet Suu Kyi, were reduced to tears after she accused them of being stooges.
According to Suu Kyi all aid had to be funnelled through the NLD but, as the NLD
now barely existed outside Rangoon, that policy prohibited all undercover condom
giveaways, HIV education campaigns, malnutrition studies and rice distribution
programmes. A second international NGO that was in the midst of delicate
negotiations to set up an HIV project in the north, where there is an HIV
problem of gigantic proportions, told us how they were ridiculed and lambasted
by Suu Kyi at a diplomatic function. A minute from an aid conference the
following year in Amsterdam records how one representative from a well-known
organisation "ruefully conceded that it was easier for international NGOs when
Aung San Suu Kyi was imprisoned."
In April 1997, Suu Kyi's campaign for sanctions scored a formal victory
when the US imposed an official ban on new investment in Burma. But soon after
the NLD was hit by an internal tremor. U Kyi Maung, a founder member of the NLD,
and the man who drew Suu Kyi into politics in 1988, withdrew from politics.
Friends talked of his concerns about the party's inability to countenance
dissent. Certainly, self-imposed exile was a radical move for a man who had
written the NLD manifesto. While U Kyi Maung stayed silent, Suu Kyi publicly
belittled his contribution, stating that the man she had once called her "guide,
mentor and friend" had never been "my key adviser."
This storm had barely settled when another of Suu Kyi's close aides broke
ranks. In February 1998, the Far Eastern Economic Review published an
extraordinary article entitled "The Burmese Fairy Tale" written by Ma Thanegi,
who had served three years in prison after joining the democracy movement. "My
fellow former political prisoners and I are beginning to wonder if our
sacrifices have been worthwhile," Ma Thanegi wrote. "Almost a decade after it
all began we are concerned that the work we started has been squandered and the
momentum wasted... Suu could have changed our lives dramatically. With her
influence and prestige, she could have asked major aid donors, such as the US
and Japan, for help. She could have encouraged responsible companies to invest
here, creating jobs and helping to build a stable economy. She could have struck
up a constructive dialogue with the government and laid the ground for a
sustainable democracy...We had hoped that when she was released from house
arrest that the country would move forward again," she wrote. "Suu's approach
has been moral and uncompromising, catching the imagination of the world.
Unfortunately, it has come at a real price for the rest of us."
Ma Thanegi said that in Burma "any public criticism of the NLD is met with
accusations of treachery." In the months following her outburst, democracy
campaigners laid siege to Burmese chat-rooms and websites, denouncing her as a
traitor and suggesting that her article was written by the generals.
On 16th September 1998, the NLD finally announced a policy to fill the void
created by its withdrawal from the National Convention three years earlier. Suu
Kyi unveiled a ten-member Committee Representing the People's Parliament (CRPP)
that "annulled" all laws enacted by the regime, a gesture which provoked a harsh
response: 110 NLD MPs were jailed and 43 NLD offices closed.
The following spring 28 NLD MPs, including Tin Tun Maung, a central
committee member, and Kyi Win, a former student leader, said the unsayable and
called for the NLD to hold talks with the regime without Suu Kyi. In May 1999,
Tin Tun Maung, Kyi Win and two others were berated by Suu Kyi as "lackeys,"
accused of "colluding with military intelligence" and suspended from the party.
It is inevitable that an opposition movement such as the NLD will have
disagreements and even splits. Many of these schisms will be engineered by the
regime itself, a sophisticated exponent of the politics of divide and rule. But
even outside the closed world of NLD politics, support for Suu Kyi is beginning
to fracture. Student campaigners who had triggered the mass democracy uprisings
of August 1988, in which thousands were shot by the junta, are frustrated at the
lack of progress. For the past decade, many of them have taken up arms against
the Burmese regime from malarial jungle bases or campaigned for her from squalid
camps on the Thai border. Their families back in Burma have been persecuted,
while they have forfeited the right to return home.
In October 1999 a breakaway student group called the Vigorous Burmese
Student Warriors laid siege with automatic weapons to the Burmese Embassy in
Bangkok. It was a desperate measure, the students claimed, to raise the
democracy struggle from where it had slumped. Their action was dismissed by the
NLD as inflammatory. But then a magazine published by exiled Burmese students in
Chiang Mai, northern Thailand, warned Suu Kyi last year that she was running out
of time. Unless her party consolidated its victory of 1990 very soon, she would
be remembered as "a victim of history."
The breach that has opened up between Suu Kyi and Burma's ethnic
groups matters even more. They make up 30 per cent of the population and until
now have fought alongside the NLD. Yet last year, in Shan State in north-eastern
Burma, a senior officer of the Shan State Army (a rebel force fighting to expel
the Burmese regime from the region) said to us, "I have met Aung San Suu Kyi and
all she ever talks about is democracy for the Burmese people. She never has
anything to say about the needs of ethnic groups like the Shan. 'Democracy
first,' she tells us 'and then I'll consider your demands.' We're sick of
waiting." Now the Shan and others have broken away, dividing the front pitted
against the junta into various micro-nationalist struggles which are probably
hopeless.
What does Suu Kyi have to say about the ethnic groups? "I have not studied
the culture of the other ethnic peoples of Burma deeply enough to comment," she
told an interviewer in 1999, "apart from the fact that my mother always taught
me to think of them as very close to us, emphasising how loyal they were." A
patrician response that provides little encouragement to the Shan State Army and
others like it.
Suu Kyi often says that free debate is the barometer of a healthy
democratic movement but, questioned in 1999 by Asiaweek about internal dissent,
she said this about her critics. "We have had a few people leave but they were
working with the authorities... Not everyone has the staying power." To which
her critics reply that not everyone has the patience of a saint or wants to see
Burma's costly struggle for democracy descend into an endless battle of wills.
Whenever questioned about her achievements, the NLD leader cites the numbers of
her supporters who have been murdered or imprisoned by the regime, as if to say
that suffering is an achievement in itself. Suu Kyi's international supporters
stress her personal sacrifice: two sons growing up in Oxford without her, the
tragic death of her husband, thousands of miles away. No one can deny that this
is a brutal regime, but where is all this tremendous suffering leading?
Suu Kyi has stifled debate within her own party and appears to have no
domestic strategy beyond her opposition to armed conflict, mass demonstrations
or civil disobedience. Her belief is that personal freedom is curtailed inside
Burma to such an extent that only a powerful external lobby will force the
generals to change. "The opinion of the international community cannot be
ignored. No country is an island unto itself," Suu Kyi has reassured her
supporters. When she called for sanctions in 1990, she cited their success with
South Africa, where Nelson Mandela had been released in February of that year.
But she is not a Mandela--her pacifism rules that out. Indeed, when it
became clear that the Burmese regime was not going to honour the election
results of May 1990, Suu Kyi instructed her hundreds of thousands of supporters
to end their demonstrations. "I do not want to encourage this tradition of
bringing about change through violence," she said.
Can a nation like Burma, forged by thousands of years of conquest,
annexation and bloodshed, be reformed through peaceful means alone? How can a
state that has had no independent judiciary since 1948 resolve issues of
internal dissent unless it is forced to do so? The brief lull in 1990 created by
Suu Kyi's retreat was all the generals needed to regroup and in the months that
followed, one of the most significant eras in Burmese history, post-independence
from the British, passed.
Having made what some claim was a critical error of judgement, Suu Kyi was
now entirely reliant on her sanctions strategy. But Burma, unlike South Africa,
does not participate in the global economy and it can endure years of western
boycotts. And there are many Asian businesses and organisations, angered by what
they see as neo-imperialist meddling, who will invest where Britain and the US
will not. The Burmese economy is in shreds, the 41st poorest country in the
world--despite being more industrialised than Malaysia in the 1950s. Western
sanctions have simply pushed the generals into the arms of the drug barons and
forged closer ties with the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean).
After the last round of talks between Suu Kyi and the generals broke down
in 1994 and she reiterated the need for sanctions, Asean invited the Burmese
regime to join it as an observer. Three months after the US imposed a ban on new
investment in Burma in April 1997, Asean responded by admitting the country as a
full member. And when the talks were announced this year, it was Asean who
brokered the meeting. Razali Ismail, the UN special envoy, is an adviser to the
Malaysian Prime Minister Mohamad Mahathir, the Burmese regime's strongest
supporter.
So what has Suu Kyi's alliance with the west brought to the struggle in
Burma? It has made her into the world's most prominent spokesman for "freedom
and democracy" after Nelson Mandela. One of Bill Clinton's last acts as
president was to confer upon her the Presidential Medal for Freedom, the highest
civilian honour in the US. And we in the west have adopted Burma as our pocket
pariah, regarding its people as passive victims in need of salvation.
But surely the time has come for the west to face the limits of sanctions:
they have achieved very little and have cost us little. This empty gesture is
echoed in the actions of an army of international travellers, some of them with
messianic aspirations. James Mawdsley, the British student who was released from
prison last October, was one of those who "fell in love with the jungle, the
people and their culture" and couldn't wait to lead the Burmese to freedom. In
August 1999, Mawdsley stood in Tachilek market in Shan state for nearly half an
hour, handing out cassettes and leaflets highlighting human rights abuses. He
was then whisked off to jail, where he found "rapture" with the help of the
spiritual exercises of the 15th-century monk Thomas a Kempis.
Mawdsley was released 14 months later and passed directly to Broadcasting
House. He was saved by the colour of his skin (and passport) and his romanticism
served only to salve his own conscience. "It is we Burmese who pay the price for
these empty heroics," says Ma Thanegi, Suu Kyi's former aide.
Aung san suu kyi was the preordained leader of Burma's opposition even
though she resisted the mantle for many years. When she returned to the country
in March 1988, after almost 20 years of absence in Europe, it was to see her
sick mother, Daw Khin Kyi, and not to join the demonstrators protesting at the
collapse of the economy.
On 22nd July 1988, Michael Aris and their sons Alexander and Kim, flew to
Rangoon to join the vigil at Daw Khin Kyi's house in University Avenue. A
surprise news broadcast the next day drew Suu Kyi away. General Ne Win, Burma's
dictator since his 1962 coup, announced that he was standing down and calling an
election. Chillingly, he also warned "if the army shoots it hits--no firing in
the air."
As thousands of protesters were shot, Suu Kyi sought out the old allies of
her father General Aung San, the man who led Burma to independence in 1947.
Among them was U Kyi Maung, a 69-year-old former colonel and the man who Suu Kyi
would dismiss later as a minor influence. It was U Kyi Maung who advised Suu Kyi
on her first tentative political steps. On 26th August, with her husband and
sons by her side, Suu Kyi addressed a rally of 500,000 at Rangoon's Shwedagon
Pagoda. "My family knows best how tricky Burmese politics can be and how much my
father had to suffer on this account," she said.
She was referring to the assassination of her father, murdered along with
six cabinet colleagues on 19th July 1947, six months after he had obtained
Clement Attlee's signature on an independence charter. Many suspected that the
man who ordered the killings was Ne Win, a hard-drinking, womanising former
post-office clerk who had clashed with Aung San from the day he enlisted in the
independence struggle in 1940.
This (presumed) act of vengeance ensured the beatification of Burma's
untested warrior statesman Aung San. And it explains the excitement that rippled
through Rangoon when his daughter took the platform more than 40 years later.
One of Suu Kyi's aides wrote of that day: "The way she talked, her complexion,
her features and gestures, were strikingly similar to those of her father. She
resembled him in almost every way. I thought she was a female replica... She was
the lady to carry on his work." Millions agreed but for Ne Win she must have
been an apparition from his past.
It was the death of Daw Khin Kyi on 27th December 1988 that elevated Suu
Kyi and U Kyi Maung's fledgling party, the NLD, to national consciousness. A
state funeral that wound its way through the streets of Rangoon attracted
thousands of protesters to University Avenue. The house with the blue gates
became a shrine to a dynasty: the main meeting room dominated by a portrait of
Aung San, its walls pasted with his writings. Burma's Camelot was emerging and
the generals were appalled.
Outside the country, the romance of an Oxford mother taking on the
barbarous generals in a little known Asian nation proved irresistible. Her
life-story was embossed with a fable-like quality. The scion of a fated family,
separated from her young sons who, back in Britain, waited for glimpses of their
mother on television. Her childhood spent riding with Rajiv and Sanjay Gandhi;
university years at St Hugh's, Oxford; a marriage on New Year's Day 1972 to a
brilliant young academic to whom she had been introduced by Lord Gore-Booth. An
inscrutable, beautiful land stalked by Kipling. Vanity Fair put Suu Kyi on its
cover; "Burma's Saint Joan," the magazine declared. The west transformed her
into a martyr.
Suu Kyi has written of holding on to dharma and metta (loving kindness) in
the face of the generals who demonstrate "the banality of evil," damning Ne Win
as a man "who my father disapproved of and despised." The junta has talked of
"annihilating the foreign whore married to a British Jew" and the army chief has
said: "I will never deal with those who would have us hung."
What began as a miracle, the reincarnation of Aung San through his
daughter, has degenerated into a kind of recurring nightmare; the Burmese waking
up every morning to be reminded of the fear and guilt felt by Ne Win's heirs
towards Aung San's daughter. Burmese politics are incestuous, with dissidents
and ministers often coming from the same elite families. But it seems unlikely
that anyone sitting around the table when talks begin will be able to clear the
first hurdle--that of Burma's history. This is why many in the NLD and the
democracy movement are calling for talks without Suu Kyi. Only political horse
trading can enable progress, by ensuring that neither side loses face. With her
unwavering moral standards and western sensibilities this seems to be something
that Suu Kyi will never accept. It is possible that Burma could adopt a
power-sharing agreement, a peculiarly Asian form of democracy not unlike that
which thrives in Thailand, where army generals have abandoned their khakis for
pin-striped suits. Would Aung San Suu Kyi be able to cope with this small
shuffle towards the light?
Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark are writers based in Asia. Their
book Stone of Heaven is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
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