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BURMA RELATED NEWS - August 06,
2001.
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HEADLINES
------------------------------------------------------------------ Kyodo News - Myanmar
man dies in late Sunday night fire
Bernama - Myanmar Reviews Cooperation Programmes
With Singapore
Bkk Post - Policemen
arrested for smuggling aliens
Bkk Post - Editorial -
Is Burma becoming a divided nation?
The Nation - Experts
call for urgent removal
Xinhuanet - Myanmar Exports Less Teak, Hardwood
in First Quarter
Kyodo News - Myanmar
junta unlikely to go without guarantee: Mahahir
------------------------------------------------------------------ Myanmar man dies in late Sunday night
fireTOKYO, Aug. 6, Kyodo - A
37-year-old Myanmar man died late Sunday night in a fire that broke out in his
third-floor room of a three-story building in Tokyo's Kiyose, police said
Monday.
Firefighters found Win Nyinyi lying in the room after the 10:55 p.m. fire
and rushed him to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival due
to severe burn injuries, the police said.
The fire partially destroyed the ceilings and walls of Win's room, they
said.
------------------------------------------------------------------ Malaysian National News Agency
August 06 , 2001 12:43PM
Myanmar Reviews Cooperation Programmes
With Singapore
YANGON, Aug 6 (Oana-Xinhua) -- Myanmar has held a coordination meeting here to review the economic and technical cooperation programs being implemented with Singapore initiated through the visit to that country in 1995 of Myanmar top leader Senior-General Than Shwe, chairman of the State Peace and Development Council. The meeting, held on Sunday, covered discussions on cooperation programs
pertaining to development of hotels and tourism, training courses on air and
maritime technology development, agriculture and livestock breeding, economic,
trade and communication technology development, and human resources development,
official newspaper The New Light of Myanmar reported today.
The cooperation programmes include allowing Myanmar's private sector to
attend the technical training courses offered by Singapore in addition to the
state sector.
------------------------------------------------------------------ Bangkok Post - August 06,
2001.
Policemen arrested for smuggling
aliens
Two policemen have been arrested on a charge of smuggling aliens into the
country in a police truck.
Mae Sot district chief Samart Loyfa said Pol L/Cpl Kittiphum Kongchaona and
Pol Sen Sgt-Maj Phud Phaowana of Tak police station were apprehended at a
checkpoint with nine Burmese nationals in their six-wheel truck.
Mr Samart said he was tipped off by an informant that a businessman in
nearby Kamphaeng Phet had paid 5,000 baht for each Burmese worker.
Both policemen denied the charge.
------------------------------------------------------------------ Bangkok Post - August 06,
2001.
Editorial - Is Burma becoming a divided
nation?
The abduction of seven Thai officials in Burma ended well. By all
indications, Rangoon acted correctly to free and release them. Burmese officials
were both slow and secretive, but that is probably because the dictators are
always suspicious and uncommunicative. In the event, the generals defused an
anxious and potentially delicate situation. The six male and one female Thai
drug officers are safe and home. Thai-Burma relations had survived their first
minor crisis since Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra visited Rangoon nearly
seven weeks ago.
The incident unmasked the difficulties Rangoon faces with its Wa allies in
the northeast. The Wa, and particularly the United Wa State Army, are extracting
a huge price from Rangoon for the 1989 agreement to stop the anti-Burmese
rebellion. Last week's abduction of seven Thai officials indicates that the Wa
intend to press for the independence they failed to win on the
battlefield.
Remarkably, Thai and Burmese officials agree entirely on the details of the
abduction. The Thai drug officials had attended a seminar and brainstorming
session in Chiang Rai. The head of the Thai-Burmese co-ordinating committee from
the Third Army volunteered to take his six colleagues into Burma for
sight-seeing. The group crossed the busy Tachilek-Mae Sai bridge. Despite the
suspicions of cynics in Bangkok, all those involved agree that the trip was
entirely legal, entirely above-board and entirely overt.
Their seizure by armed Wa forces is yet another indication that Burma has
no control over this group. With 20,000 men and women under arms, the 1.1
million ethnic Wa have long posed a real threat to the security and integrity of
Burma. And to pound salt into the Rangoon wounds on this occasion, the UWSA
refused to release the abducted Thais until the generals dispatched a senior
official to "request" the Wa free them to the Burmese.
Thai drug officials and army officers have properly minimised the
kidnapping. Kitti Limchaikit, secretary-general of the Office of Narcotics
Control Board, will conduct an internal inquiry to ensure his staff acted
correctly. The army has debriefed its officers who were involved, with the same
aim.
When Rangoon finally broke its silence on the incident, spokesmen were
clearly unhappy. Maj-Gen Kyaw Win, the deputy intelligence chief, described the
abduction as an unfortunate incident. But he said the detention of the Thais was
"inappropriate". His highly unusual criticism of Rangoon's drug-dealing allies
ended with a specific public warning that such an event should not be
repeated.
It was a remarkable media briefing, which showed that Rangoon is well aware
of the potential for trouble with the Wa. The group has grown wealthy on drugs,
and has more than doubled its area in the past decade. In return for fighting
and defeating Khun Sa's army, the Wa demanded and received land next to the Thai
border. The group has continually stockpiled weapons, including small arms,
anti-aircraft missiles and, recently, artillery pieces.
The Wa thus pose a double threat to the region. In addition to their
growing trade in methamphetamines and heroin, the Wa openly display their
ability to act as their own law. Most governments would have tracked down and
arrested anyone who abducted visitors.
Burma has created a difficult situation for itself. It needs the cease-fire
with the Wa, and has grown dependent upon revenue from the drug trafficking. But
the group clearly threatens the national unity that has been the policy of every
Burmese government, including the democrats who won the 1990 election. The
abduction of the Thai visitors ended peacefully but the Wa continue to grow
bolder towards Rangoon.
------------------------------------------------------------------ The Nation - August 06,
2001.
Experts call for urgent removal
Don Pathan
All nine heads of the United Nations relief agencies in Burma have made a
collective plea to their respective organisations and the international
community to urgently lift sanctions against the junta on humanitarian
grounds.
With more than 500,000 people HIV-positive and a high maternal mortality
ratio ranging between 230-580 per 100,000 live births, Burma is on the brink of
a humanitarian crisis, they said in a letter sent to all chiefs of UN agencies
operating in the country.
The groups include the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees,
Unicef and the World Health Organisation.
The letter said half of the maternal deaths in Burma were due to unsafe
abortions, while about 25 per cent of new-born babies were underweight. One in
three of all Burmese children would be malnourished by the time they reached the
age of five.
"This is compounded by the fact that about 3.6 million children and 1.1
million pregnant women live in areas considered to be at high or moderate risk
for malaria transmission," according to the letter.
The nine UN representatives said humanitarian assistance to Burma was a
moral and ethnical necessity and to deny the country the aid would cause
unnecessary suffering.
They called for a dramatic overhaul of budget allocation to Burma, as well
as a cohesive approach between the activities of the UN organisations operating
in Burma and the political initiatives launched from within the UN system.
Moreover, said the representatives, delayed assistance may also have an
escalating effect on the illicit drug business, resulting in negative impact on
the region as a whole in a wide range of other areas - including
human-trafficking, illegal migration and population displacements.
"The current peripheral or piecemeal assistance provided to Myanmar [Burma]
is not
adequate to reverse or even slow down certain negative trends," the letter
said. Burma receives about US$1 (Bt45) per capita annually, compared with $35
for Cambodia and $68 for Laos.
The representatives pointed out HIV/Aids, illicit drugs and food security
as the top three areas that needed utmost attention.
Although the representatives agreed that a common humanitarian approach
towards Burma must be viewed in the context of the country's political
environment, they said: "the nature and magnitude o the humanitarian situation
does not permit delaying until the political situation evolves".
The statement from the nine UN agency heads came amid ongoing secret talks
between the ruling junta and the opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991
Nobel Peace Prize winner whose National League for Democracy won a landslide
general election in 1990 but was denied the fruit of victory by the
army. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Myanmar Exports Less Teak,
Hardwood in First Quarter
Xinhuanet 2001.08.06 10:11:57 YANGON, August 6 (Xinhuanet) --
Myanmar exported 86,456.5 cubic- meters of teak in the first quarter of this
year, 1.92 percent less than the same period of 2000, according to the
latest figures released by the country's Central Statistical Organization.
Meanwhile, during the period, the country exported 54,619 cubic- meters of
hardwood, a 64.7-percent reduction from the corresponding period of
2000.
Export earning from teak and hardwood totaled 51 million U.S. dollars
during the three-month period.
In 2000, Myanmar exported a total of 302,810 cubic-meters of teak and
494,259.5 cubic-meters of hardwood with their total earning amounting to
201 million dollars.
Timber has become Myanmar's second largest export goods after
agriculture products and foreign exchange earned through the export of
timber accounted for about 20 percent of Myanmar's total export earning.
Myanmar's forest covers 50 percent of its total land area, a 7- percent
reduction from 1962 reportedly due to indiscriminate felling of trees. Of
the forest area, 18.6 percent are reserved and protected public forest,
the percentage of which is being targeted to increase to 30.
Besides, Myanmar has established 30,375 hectares of forest
plantations including 8,100 hectares of teak plantations.
------------------------------------------------------------------ Myanmar junta unlikely to go without
guarantee: Mahahir
KUALA LUMPUR, Aug. 6 Kyodo -
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on Monday told former Japanese Prime
Minister Yoshiro Mori that he believes the Myanmar military is unlikely to hand
power to a civilian government unless there is guarantee there would not be
reprisals in the future. (01 :37)
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