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BURMA RELATED NEWS - August 13,
2001.
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HEADLINES
------------------------------------------------------------------ Asia Pulse - Korean Ministry to Send Delegation
to Vietnam, Myanmar
Reuters - Asia's growing sex market underlines
AIDS risk
Asia Pulse - Indonesia to Play Greater Role in
Asean: Foreign Minister
Asia Pulse - Taiwan's Trade Council to Explore
Five New Foreign Markets
BBC - Burma frees two more opposition
activists
Kyodo News - Myanmar junta releases 2 more
political prisoners
Xinhua - Myanmar's Rubber Export Declines in
First Quarter
Bkk Post - Thais caught for illegal fishing
jailed
The Times(UK) - Burmese duo cry
freedom
------------------------------------------------------------------ Monday August 13, 2:42 PM Korean Ministry to Send Delegation to
Vietnam, Myanmar
SEOUL, Aug 13 Asia Pulse - The
Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy said Monday it will dispatch a
delegation to Vietnam and Myanmar to consult with both the private-sector and
government officials concerning the exchange of natural resources.
The delegation comprised of both business executives and government
officials will participate in the first South Korean-Vietnamese Natural
Resources Committee session in Hanoi Tuesday to discuss the sale of liquefied
natural gas produced in Vietnam and issues related to cooperation between South
Korea and Vietnam on the advancement of South Korean nuclear power plant
construction in Southeast Asia.
The delegation will also meet Pyi Sone, Myanmar's energy minister, to
discuss the formation of a South Korean-Myanmar Resources Cooperation
Committee.
The ministry plans to send a similar delegation to Indonesia, China and
Mongolia this year. (Yonhap)
------------------------------------------------------------------ Monday August 13, 1:29 PM
Asia's growing sex market underlines
AIDS risk
By David Brunnstrom HANOI (Reuters) - Asia may have
beaten the worst of the AIDS epidemic with condoms, but the region's growing sex
industry highlights the need to promote wider usage to prevent new infections,
WHO experts say.
In media releases issued at the start of a five-day conference in Hanoi on
Monday, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said the numbers of people in
Thailand and Cambodia with HIV -- the virus that attacks the immune system and
leads to AIDS -- had dropped steadily thanks to the wider use of condoms.
But 800,000 people were still expected to die of AIDS every year in Asia by
2005 and the course of the epidemic depended on how heavily populated countries
like China and India responded.
"If we use the lessons learned in Thailand and Cambodia, we have a real
chance to stop the growth of the epidemic in this part of the world," said
Shigeru Omi, WHO director for the Western Pacific, in a media statement.
The reports warned the sex industry in Asia was expanding rapidly and most
commercial sex in the region still took place without condoms.
Greater mobility and changing attitudes had contributed to this and the sex
industry was also extremely profitable -- accounting for an estimated two to 14
percent of GDP in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand.
Even in rich and highly developed Japan, the sex industry accounted for one
to three percent of GDP, the WHO said.
PART-TIME PROSTITUTION
Many parts of Asia are witnessing an increase in part-time prostitutes,
working in bars, health clubs, massage parlours, karaoke bars, restaurants and
hotels.
The WHO said these women included students who did not see themselves as
sex workers at high risk and therefore did not insist on condom use.
The WHO said while the percentage of the adult population in Asia with HIV
remained relatively small, the region's large population meant this translated
into huge numbers infected.
An estimated 3.9 million people were infected with HIV in India, more than
any country in the world except South Africa.
The WHO said HIV infection was on an upward trend in Myanmar and some
Indian states. The infection had continued to spread among needle injecting drug
users, with more than 50 percent infected in Nepal, southern China and northeast
India.
Cambodia was the worst-hit country outside Africa, with 2.8 percent of its
adult population aged between 15 and 49 infected, while Thailand, Myanmar and
some Indian states also had rates of 2-3 percent among adults, it said.
However, new infections each year in Thailand had dropped to 20,000 in 2000
from 143,000 in 1991, while in Cambodia, new infections among sex workers under
20 had fallen to 23 percent last year from more than 40 percent in 1998.
Sales of condoms in Cambodia, meanwhile, jumped to 11.5 million in 1998,
from about 100,000 in 1994.
"Both Thailand and Cambodia managed to turn the tide of rising HIV by
focusing on the main driving force of the epidemic -- commercial sex workers and
their clients," the WHO said.
Thailand's 100 percent condom use programme directed at sex workers and
their clients prevented millions of HIV infections in the 1990s, it said.
Even so, 50,000 Thais were expected to die from AIDS every year up to 2006
and a similar number would develop their first serious AIDS-related illnesses
each year.
Vietnam's Permanent Vice Minister of Health Pham Manh Hung said in the
opening session of the conference that Hanoi's own efforts to promote condom use
had been slower than in Thailand or Cambodia.
He said a total of 38,599 people had been diagnosed with HIV in Vietnam,
more than 3,136 of whom had died of AIDS.
By 2005, Vietnam could have 52,000 cases of AIDS and 46,000 fatalities as a
result of the disease and programmes to promote 100-percent condom use were
essential, he said.
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Monday August 13, 11:36 AM
Indonesia to Play Greater Role in Asean:
Foreign Minister
JAKARTA, Aug 13 Asia Pulse -
Indonesia will seek to restore its role and existence in the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations [ASEAN] that have so far been dwindling,
newly-inaugurated Foreign Minister Hasan Wirayuda said at the
weekend.
Indonesia will give ASEAN priority, he said. He said Indonesia had so far considered ASEAN a basic character of its
foreign policy.
"As what President Megawati Soekarnoputri said on Thursday we would be
consistent with the basic policy," he said.
"So far we have been consistent for 34 years in referring to ASEAN as a
'cornerstone' of our foreign policy," he said.
The Indonesian role and relations with other ASEAN member countries lately
especially during former president Abdurrahman Wahid have been considered by
some quarters less spiritful than during former president Soeharto.
Some had even worried about the country's relations with the ASEAN after
former president Wahid proposed the formation of a West Pacific Forum with
members consisting of Indonesia, East Timor, Papua New Guinea, Australia and New
Zealand.
He admitted that Indonesia's role in the ASEAN tended to decline but denied
that it would some day leave the association.
"The role has declined because we are just facing heavy problems
particularly economic crisis so that we could not play the role maximally," he
said.
Hasan said he thought the idea of a West Pacific Forum would not threaten
Indonesia's role in the ASEAN.
"It is normal for a country to develop a sectoral cooperation to increase
its economic activities," he said.
Hasan said he hoped with recent development in the country's condition
Indonesia could maximize its role in the association.
Indonesia was one of the founders of the association. Other founding
countries include Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.
The ASEAN set up on August 8, 1967 now has ten members namely Indonesia,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei Darussalam, Vietnam,
Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar. (ANTARA)
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Monday August 13, 9:27 AM
Taiwan's Trade Council to Explore Five
New Foreign Markets
TAIPEI, Aug 13 Asia Pulse - The
China External Trade Development Council [CETRA] will send officials to explore
new markets in five foreign countries, CETRA's chairman said Friday.
Shea Jia-dong said that two officials will be assigned to each of the five
countries -- Myanmar, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, the Ukraine, and Iraq. No Taiwan
trade officials have been stationed in any of the five countries in the
past.
The officials will remain in the respective countries for two to three
months, gathering business information and helping Taiwan traders.
Taiwan businesspeople who are interested in trading in any of the five new
markets are encouraged to contact CETRA to get more information.
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BBC - Monday, 13 August, 2001, 12:04
GMT 13:04 UK
Burma frees two more opposition activists The military authorities in Burma have released two more opposition
activists from detention - Duwar Zaw Aung and Daw San San.
About 150 political prisoners have been freed so far this year.
The releases come amid long-running talks between the military government
and the opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.
She is still under virtual house arrest.
The opposition National League for Democracy won elections in Burma in
1990, but the military has never allowed it to take power.
From the newsroom of the BBC World Service
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Myanmar junta releases 2 more political
prisoners
YANGON, Aug. 13, Kyodo -
Myanmar's junta released two more members of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League
for Democracy (NLD) who were elected to parliament in 1990 from prison Monday,
an official press release said.
NLD sources said the released members, Duwar Zaw Aung and San San, had been
jailed at Insein Prison near Yangon on security-related charges.
In recent weeks, 159 political prisoners, most of them NLD members and 32
of them elected members of parliament, have been released from various prisons
and confinement centers.
The NLD won the 1990 election by a wide majority, but Myanmar's generals
refused to cede power or allow the new parliament to meet.
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Myanmar's Rubber Export Declines in
First Quarter
YANGON, Aug 13, 2001 (Xinhua via
COMTEX) -- Myanmar exported 4,700 tons of raw rubber in the
first quarter of this year, a 56-percent decrease from the same period of 2000,
the latest data of the official Economic Indicators show Monday.
The earning through the export of raw rubber during the period was
registered at 2.4 million U.S. dollars, reducing by 58.4 percent compared with
the corresponding period of 2000.
Meanwhile, during the three-month period, the country imported rubber goods
worth 7.3 million dollars.
According to official statistics, Myanmar exports 26,300 tons of raw rubber
annually, earning 22 million dollars of foreign exchange.
Myanmar has been striving to extend the cultivation areas of rubber which
is one of its major industrial crops and one of its major foreign exchange
earners.
A latest report said the country has extended the rubber plantation area
from two divisions and states to four with the increase of the hectarage from
81,000
in 1994 to 182,250 at present. In Myanmar, 2.62 million hectares are reportedly suitable for rubber
growing.
Of the country's present rubber plantations, 13 percent is owned by the
state and 87 percent by the private sector, while of the rubber production, 15
percent is by the state and 85 percent by the private enterprises.
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Bangkok Post - August 13,
2001.
Thais caught for illegal fishing
jailed
Imprisoned for six months in Bangladesh Over 190 Thai and Burmese nationals have been jailed in Bangladesh for
fishing illegally in the Bay of Bengal close to the southern Bangladeshi
coast.
Home (interior) ministry sources yesterday said a court in the coastal town
of Bagerhat convicted 72 Thai fishermen for unlawful fishing in Bangladeshi
waters and sentenced them to six months in prison in a verdict handed down at
the weekend.
Another court in the same town, 270km south of the capital Dhaka, sentenced
121 Thai and Burmese nationals to a maximum of seven months in prison last
Tuesday on identical charges of poaching fish.
The judges ordered the prison authorities to deport all the 193 fishermen
after the completion of their sentences.
The convicted fishermen were arrested and their trawlers seized by the
Bangladesh navy from the Bay of Bengal last year.
The fishermen, who were also fined, were reportedly fishing in Bangladeshi
territorial waters when they were detained after a chase by naval boats.
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The Times (UK)
MONDAY AUGUST 13 2001
Burmese duo cry freedom BY OUR ARTS CORRESPONDENT
COMEDIANS at the Edinburgh Festival are celebrating the release of two Burmese comics who were sentenced to seven years’ hard labour for telling jokes about the military regime. For five years Amnesty International campaigned for the release of U Pa Pa Lay and U Lu Zaw with events at the Festival. Amnesty had planned to highlight their case again with a benefit
performance tonight. But news of the comics’ release filtered through from
sources in Burma and the Stand Up for Freedom event at the Assembly Rooms will
now be a celebration.
Andy Hackman, of Amnesty UK, said he had been contacted by a former Burmese
prisoner of conscience who works for the BBC World Service. She told him that
comedians at the Edinburgh Festival, and others worldwide, had had a definite
impact on the prisoners’ release.
Through the Red Cross, Amnesty was told that Lay’s spirits had been raised
in jail when he heard of an Eddie Izzard show for Amnesty.
Lay, 49, and Zaw, 45, were arrested during the 48th Independence Day
commemorative ceremony in 1996. The Government accused them of spreading “false
news”.
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