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BURMA RELATED NEWS - October
06, 2001.
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HEADLINES
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- AFP - ILO team wraps up Myanmar mission on
forced labour
AFP - Pakistan given key to post-Taliban
scenario
Reuters - Experts say AIDS could spread
exponentially in Asia
Kyodo News - ILO
delegation meets Myanmar leader Than Shwe
Kyodo News - ILO
delegation meets Suu Kyi for 2nd time
Free RealTime - Myanmar to Put 31.66 Mln U.S.
Dollars' Gems on Sale
Bkk Post - Security forces to get tough
Bkk Post - Out of
control
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday October 6, 9:45 PM
ILO team wraps up Myanmar mission on forced labour YANGON, Oct 6 (AFP) - A
high-level International Labour Organisationteam on Saturday completed a
three-week mission to Myanmar to investigate the military regime's efforts at
eradicating forced labour.
The four-member team led by former Australian governor general Sir Ninian
Stephen set out to make a grassroots assessment of the problem for a report to
be presented to the ILO governing body in Geneva in mid-November.
While the ILO has released few details about the trip, local sources said
the team met for two hours early Saturday alone with opposition leader Aung San
Suu Kyi, who has been under virtual house arrest at her lakeside home for the
past year.
On Friday, ILO representatives held talks with junta leader Than Shwe at
the Yangon People's Assembly Hall, TV Myanmar said in a dispatch monitored
here.
For the mission, the ILO insisted its four-member team of eminent jurists
be given total freedom to carry out its survey, and the junta promised to give
them unlimited access, even in the unstable border regions.
The group reportedly visited Kayah State, Shan State, Kachin State, Arakan
State and Tenasserim Division, but did not go to Karen State as had been
planned.
During the visit the ILO team held talks with government ministries dealing
with labour issues, UN representatives and Aung San Suu Kyi.
They also called on Myanmar-based non-governmental organisations as well as
senior members of ethnic minority groups.
"This is the first time that the ILO has had an opportunity to travel
around the country to make its own direct assessment of the forced labor
situation," the UN organisation said earlier in a statement.
The ILO mission comes after the Geneva-based organisation last year made an
unprecedented censure of Myanmar, and threatened to heap more sanctions on the
country if it failed to curb forced labour.
In a bid to fend off further sanctions, the junta in November declared
forced labour illegal for the first time. But it remains unclear how the ban is
being enforced, and how effective the junta has been in eradicating the
problem.
Rights groups say nearly a million Myanmar people have suffered from the
practice, which has helped build roads, ports and tourist resorts as well as
assisting in military manoeuvres on the unstable borders.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday October 6, 5:20 PM
Pakistan given key to post-Taliban scenario ISLAMABAD, Oct 6 (AFP) -
Western powers appear ready to grant Pakistan a major stake in any post-Taliban
administration in Afghanistan, but Afghan opposition forces are fiercely opposed
to Islamabad playing a kingmaker role.
For Pakistan, the main backer of the Taliban for more than seven years, a
friendly regime in Kabul is crucial to the country's regional strategic and
economic interests.
And while President Pervez Musharraf has pledged "unstinted support" to the
international war on terrorism, he has also made it abundantly clear that
Pakistan will not allow those interests to be sacrificed.
"Pakistan comes first," the general said in a recent television broadcast
to the nation.
Pakistan's claim to a seat at the high table of diplomatic discussions on
the future of Afghanistan was acknowledged Friday by British Prime Minister Tony
Blair following talks with Musharraf in Islamabad.
Blair said the two leaders had agreed that, should the Taliban fall, its
successor must be "broad-based" and include every key ethnic group, including
Afghanistan's dominant Pashtun community. The Taliban leadership is almost
entirely Pashtun.
Pakistan has "a valid interest in close involvement with the arrangements
for any such successor regime," Blair said.
Pakistan is the only government that still recognises the Taliban, which
the United States and Britain have targeted for protecting Osama bin Laden, the
Saudi-born Islamic militant accused of masterminding last month's terrorist
attacks in New York and Washington.
Pakistan has a large Pahstun community and its foreign policy towards
Afghanistan has always been dictated by support the ethnic group.
The dramatic rise of the Taliban began in 1994, after Pakistan had seen its
efforts to install a friendly regime in Kabul and enjoy the fruits of trade with
Central Asia blocked by an unruly mish-mash of warring factions who inherited
post-Soviet Afghanistan.
Initially hired to guard a convoy of goods destined for Turkmenistan, the
self-styled 'religious students' quickly seized control of the southern city of
Kandahar, boosted by their mysterious acquisition of a heavy arsenal, cash and
first-rate military intelligence.
Pakistan's powerful Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) agency was the prime
suspect for the Taliban's windfall.
Rapidly extending their grip over the country by buying up commanders and
blitzing their divided opponents, Taliban ranks were swelled by increasing
numbers of foreign volunteers from countries as diverse as Pakistan, Algeria,
Egypt and Myanmar.
But this injection of radical volunteers set the Taliban on a course going
far-beyond the Saudi-style and subservient regime that analysts say Pakistan was
seeking to create.
The rift between Islamabad and the militia grew with the latter's nurturing
of bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network, but strategic necessities prevented
Pakistan from turning against its allies in Kabul, analysts said.
That all changed with the September 11 terrorist attacks and a US
declaration of war against bin Laden and his Taliban protectors.
With the days of Taliban rule seemingly numbered, Pakistan's new priority
is to ensure an equally "friendly" successor regime.
A "broad-based" government poses serious challenges to Islamabad as it
would have to include representatives of the Uzbek, Tajik and Hazara ethnic
groups who make up the bulk of the northern opposition alliance that has been
fighting the Taliban for years.
The alliance has in the past been aided by New Delhi -- and Islamabad is
alarmed by the prospect that it could be sandwiched between India on one front
and a government indebted to its rival on another.
The Afghan opposition holds Pakistan repsonsible for the rise of the
Taliban and is bitterly opposed to continued Pakistan interference in
Afghanistan's internal affairs.
"A single neighbouring country should avoid playing such a role especially
if that country is Pakistan, a country which created this problem. Pakistan
should forget about playing the role of a kingmaker," said the alliance's chief
spokesman, Dr Abdullah Abdullah.
Sayed Najeeb Hashimi, the spokesman for deposed Afghan president
Burhanuddin Rabanni, also warned of widespread popular resentment towards
Pakistan.
"The Afghan people know Pakistan was involved in creation of the war,"
Hashimi said.
Pakistan is now getting involved in moves to build a transitional
government around the figurehead of exiled former Afghan king, Mohammed Zahir
Shah, a moderate Pashtun.
Islamabad will seek to ensure that the Pashtun component is large enough to
ensure that any new administration views friendly ties with Pakistan as being in
its own best interests.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday October 6, 1:51 PM
Experts say AIDS could spread exponentially in Asia By Victoria Thieberger MELBOURNE (Reuters) - The
spread of AIDS in Asia risks rising exponentially unless renewed prevention
efforts are undertaken in the next few years, health experts told a regional
conference on Saturday.
At the opening of the five-day International Congress on AIDS in Asia and
the Pacific, around 3,000 delegates were told that a substantial proportion of
the male population was at risk, mainly from sex with prostitutes, and that
existing prevention programs still have not reached huge numbers of people in
the region.
A lack of awareness of AIDS and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and the
fear of disclosure meant many infected people only sought medical attention when
other opportunistic infections such as tuberculosis had set in.
"The course of the epidemic in Asia in the next decade is largely going to
be determined by the prevention that is undertaken in the next few years," said
Tim Brown, of the UNAIDS centre of the East/West Center in Hawaii.
"There is serious potential for further and extensive spread of HIV," he
told the gathering in the southern Australian city.
Some health experts have said the potential maximum infection rates are
around 2-3 percent of Asian populations, well below the rates of around 10
percent seen in sub-Saharan Africa.
But Brown said this could rise much higher given that men who visited sex
workers were the largest group at risk, and studies have shown 5-20 percent of
men across Asia go to prostitutes.
"This is a very substantial proportion of the male population we are
dealing with, and should they become infected their wives and girlfriends are
potentially exposed to HIV," Brown said.
Around seven million people in Asia live with HIV/AIDS, while an estimated
500,000 people die of the disease each year. This is estimated to rise to
800,000 by 2005, according to figures from UNAIDS, the coordinating UN body.
INCREASING RISKS
Across countries, the highest rates of infection were in Cambodia at 2.7
percent of the general population, Myanmar at 2.0 percent and Thailand at 1.8
percent. These three countries also have the highest rates of heterosexual
transmission.
Surveys have found 15 percent of married men and 21 percent of unmarried
men in Cambodia had sex with prostitutes in 2000, compared with a total of 11
percent in Japan and 10 percent in Thailand.
Still, the spread of AIDS across Asia has been relatively contained to
high-risk groups including sex workers, intravenous drug users, and homosexuals.
In Myanmar, 62 percent of injecting drug users and 38 percent of female sex
workers were HIV positive according to a study taken last year.In three
provinces in Vietnam, infection among intravenous drug users ranged from 30 to
60 percent.
"There is an enormous lack of awareness out there," said the University of
Malaya's Dr Adeeba Kamarulzaman, saying late diagnosis of HIV was one of the
greatest problems.
"The fear of disclosure is very real, the social stigma that continues in
these countries, contributes to the late presentation of patients," she told
Reuters.
At a time when sophisticated and expensive anti-retroviral medication is
widely used in OECD nations to treat people with HIV, the drugs remain a luxury
in developing Asian countries.
Meeting the cost of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the developing world will be
the most challenging imperative of this century, said Professor Stefano Vella,
president of the International AIDS Society.
He estimated the cost, including the increasing availability of generic
drugs, at around US$7-9 billion a year.
"This cost should be met by wealthy countries," Vella said.
"It is still a relatively young epidemic in Asia/Pacific, which could rise
exponentially if appropriate interventions aren't put in place."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- ILO delegation meets Myanmar leader Than
Shwe
YANGON, Oct. 5, Kyodo - A
visiting high-level delegation from the International Labor Organization (ILO)
on Friday called on Myanmar leader Sr. Gen. Than Shwe after completing a
three-week visit to investigate allegations of forced labor in the country,
official television reported.
Also present at the meeting were Gen. Maung Aye, deputy chairman of the
ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), SPDC first secretary Lt. Gen.
Khin Nyunt and Foreign Minister Win Aung.
The four-member delegation, led by former Australian Governor General
Ninian Stephen, met acting Labor Minister Tin Win and Deputy Foreign Minister
Khin Maung Win earlier in the morning separately.
The team, dispatched by the Geneva-based ILO, arrived in Yangon on Sept.
17.
Myanmar's ruling junta passed a degree in September 1999 declaring forced
labor illegal. However, opposition groups outside the country claim that forced
labor continues in the country despite the official decree.
The delegation spent one week in Yangon meeting government leaders
including Khin Nyunt, Win Aung and Tin Win.
The delegation also held talks with pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi
and senior members of her National League for Democracy, representatives of
ethnic groups and diplomats of foreign embassies and U.N. agencies.
It spent nearly two weeks visiting various locations of their choice in the
country to interview people before returning to Yangon on Thursday.
Members of the delegation are expected to meet ambassadors of foreign
missions in Yangon on Saturday before departing Myanmar later in the day.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- ILO delegation meets Suu Kyi for 2nd
time
YANGON, Oct. 6, Kyodo - A
delegation from the International Labor Organization (ILO) met pro-democracy
leader Aung San Suu Kyi for the second time at her residence Saturday.
The delegation led by Ninian Stephen, former governor general of Australia,
arrived in Myanmar on Sept. 17 for a three-week investigation into forced labor
in the country.
The delegation also met Suu Kyi on Sept. 19 for more than one and half
hours.
The team returned to Yangon on Thursday after two weeks visiting various
places of their choice and conducting interviews throughout the countryside.
They traveled around the country in their own light aircraft.
The delegation met junta leader Senior Gen. Than Shwe on Friday.
The team is expected to brief the ambassadors of foreign missions before
leaving Myanmar in the evening.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- FreeRealTime
Myanmar to Put 31.66 Mln U.S. Dollars' Gems on Sale YANGON, Oct 6, 2001 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Myanmar's 10th Mid-Year Gems
Emporium is due to start on Sunday with a total of 31.66 million U.S. dollars'
worth of locally-produced quality gems, pearl and jewelry to be put on sale
through competitive bidding, tender or at fixed price.
About 260 merchants of 98 companies from nine countries and regions, mostly
from China, China's Hong Kong and Thailand, are expected to attend the eight-day
state-sponsored emporium introduced in addition to the annual one, said Myanmar
Deputy Minister of Mines U Myint Thein at a press briefing here Saturday, one
day ahead of the event.
Local private gem traders are also allowed to sold their gems at the
emporium as in the previous years, he said.
At the last annual Myanmar gems emporium, which was the 38th held in March
this year, a total of 10.12 million U.S. dollars were earned.
The March gems emporium attracted a total of 674 merchants from 15
countries and regions, mostly from China's Hong Kong, Thailand and China's
mainland.
Myanmar, a well-known producer of jade, ruby and sapphire in the world, has
fetched over 330 million dollars from its 38 annual and nine mid-year gems
emporiums, according to official statistics.
The annual events, which are usually held in March, started in 1964, while
the mid-year ones, which used to take place in October, were introduced in
addition since 1992 to boost the country's gems sale.
Myanmar enacted the New Gemstone Law in September 1995, allowing national
entrepreneurs to mine, produce, transport and sell finished gemstones and
manufactured jewelry at home and abroad.
Since April 2000, the government has reportedly started mining of gems and
jade in joint venture with 10 private companies under profit sharing
basis.
Meanwhile, Myanmar's sapphire production reached 2.643 million carats in
the first half of this year, down by 5.2 percent from the same period of 2000,
while ruby production went to 1.184 million carats during the period, up 13.19
percent
from the year-ago corresponding period. The production of jade over the six-month period marked 69.645 tons, according to the official Economic Indicators. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bangkok Post - October - 06,
2001.
Security forces to get tough Supamart Kasem Security forces will be strict about stopping illegal immigrants moving
inland after foreign labour registration ends on Saturday, says National
Security Council chief Kachadpai Buruspatana.
The NSC secretary-general met officials from five border districts to
prepare them for the regime after registration.
Mr Kachadpai urged employers to have Burmese, Lao and Cambodian workers
registered before Oct 14 when nationwide crackdowns begin. He said the NSC,
Interior and Defence ministries and police had been told to get serious about
stopping inward migration.
Over 20 checkpoints and patrol teams would be set up along the border from
Chiang Rai to Ranong by the army, navy and the Immigration Bureau, Mr Kachadpai
said.
``For border districts of Tak where labour smuggling is a big issue, the
army has sent another 400 soldiers,'' he said. About 100,000 alien workers have
been registered since Monday.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bangkok Post - October - 06,
2001.
FOCUS / AIDS IN BURMA
Out of control
Burma is facing an epidemic that will soon eclipse the
worst situation in Africa, according to experts dealing with Acquired Immune
Deficiency Syndrome.
LARRY JAGAN
The tragedy, said an Aids expert in Thailand, is that Burma's military
rulers continue to pretend Aids is not a problem.
Even the United Nations has acknowledged that Burma is on the brink of an
epidemic.
According to their figures, 2% of adults have human immuno-deficiency virus
or HIV _ and those figures are at least two years out of date.
The World Health Organisation's figures understate the true picture by at
least half, according to Aids specialist Dr Chris Beyrer, a US researcher at
Johns Hopkins University.
From his research, using the Burmese government's own figures, he estimated
the true extent of Aids in the country is nearer 4%.
His research used the government's figures for pregnant women and young men
about to enter the army and found that there were some 3.5% with HIV.
He said if you added the vulnerable groups _ drug users and itinerant
workers _ to this, the figure more than doubles, with more than 7% of the
population suffering from Aids.
The explosion of the disease in Shan state, however, is even more
frightening. There, he estimates, more than 10% of the adult male population is
now suffering from HIV.
``That's the worst ever incidence of the disease in the region,'' he said.
``It's on the level of that which hit northern Thailand a decade ago. The
difference then was the government recognised it and did something about it,
whereas the military junta are allowing this one to rage out of control.''
Burma's health minister, Maj-Gen Ket Sein, continues to defend his
country's efforts to combat Aids.
``Contrary to the gloomy picture presented in some reports in the Western
media, HIV/Aids is not rampant in Myanmar [Burma],'' he told a WHO meeting
earlier this month.
The government was committed to fighting the disease, he said, and was
spending a hundred times more than in 1988 on Aids prevention.
In recent weeks, the military intelligence chief Lt-Gen Khin Nyunt and the
head of state Gen Than Shwe have both defended the military government's record
on Aids.
The international community _ especially the press _ Gen Than Shwe said did
acknowledge the efforts the government was making to combat the spread of
HIV/Aids.
Despite this rigorous defence in public, diplomats and UN officials in
Rangoon believe the Burmese generals have in fact begun to recognise that the
country is facing a major Aids problem.
While for years they have denied it existed at all, now they do admit it,
at least in private.
Diplomats believe that more and more soldiers are being diagnosed as
HIV-positive, especially those who have been deployed in the border regions
neighbouring China and Thailand.
The sea-change in the government's attitude, according to aid workers in
Rangoon, started more than a year ago.
Privately at least they recognise the problem and were prepared to discuss
it more openly with diplomats and UN agencies.
At the beginning of this year, Lt-General Khin Nyunt told the Myanmar Times
that HIV/Aids ``is a national cause. If we ignore it, it will destroy entire
races''.
He said culturally it was difficult for the government to adopt the WHO
policy of encouraging the use of condoms, but instead had introduced a mass
prevention campaign.
``I personally felt,'' he said, ``that many more needed to understand the
warning clearly, so I insisted that they put this on all posters: Aids kills, no
cure, no hope.''
A leading Rangoon-based businessman, Michael Pun, said the campaign is
really beginning to work. ``There are small towns in Burma where the words HIV
and Aids have been recognised; they say it, they joke about it. They know
it.''
UN officials and Aids experts, however, fear that this is still not the
case. In a study to be published shortly, Dr Beyrer found the level of ignorance
among Burmese itinerant factory workers of how Aids was transmitted and how to
prevent it ``abysmally low''.
Dr Beyrer interviewed Burmese workers and refugees along the Thai-Burmese
border and found that only 12% of married men and 3% of women knew what a condom
was.
``This is unbelievable,'' he said. ``Thais would certainly have got 100% on
this test.''
There is no doubt that a burgeoning Aids epidemic is sweeping across parts
of Burma, not only Shan state. UN aid officials admit privately that there is a
major cause for concern around Burma's border areas where drug use and the
movement of labour is high.
Along the eastern border with Thailand and the northern border with China,
the incidence of HIV has already reached epidemic proportions.
In some parts of Kachin state, particularly where the men-folk have been
working in the gem mines, there's been a massive death toll.
According to local Aids workers there are some villages where every family
has lost someone to the disease.
`` This is only going to escalate,'' said Dr Beyrer, ``unless the
government takes it more seriously than it has done.''
EU officials are keen that the Burmese authorities realise that the extent
of the disease in Burma already is a time-bomb that will explode in the near
future if something is not done immediately.
``It's not like other infectious diseases,'' said one official. ``Once HIV
gets out of control in the population and spreads, it can't be cured and the
genie can't be put back into the bottle.''
Acting on HIV is also not so much a matter of money as changing attitudes
and taboos. Burma's generals may be beginning to grapple with this _ but if they
don't make a more concerted effort it will be too late.
The author is the BBC's regional editor for Asia and the Pacific.
He is currently based in Bangkok.
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