|
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Burma Related News - February 17,
2002.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Headlines
----------------------------------------------------------------------- AFP - Thai police arrest six Russians over huge
methamphetamines haul
AFP - Fortunes pouring out of Thailand at glitzy
border casinos
TI - Myanmar celebrities to record anti-drugs
anthem
The Nation - One Night In Rangoon
DVB - UN envoy, Shan leader discuss
political activities, national convention
----------------------------------------------------------------------- Sunday February 17, 1:59 PM
Thai police arrest six Russians over huge methamphetamines haul BANGKOK, Feb 17 (AFP) - Thai
police have arrested six Russians accused of attempting to smuggle 700,000
amphetamine pills out of the kingdom, the customs department said Sunday.
The six Russians were arrested when they checked in for a flight to Germany
late Friday night. Custom officials found 700,000 pills worth 10 million baht
(227,000 dollars) on them.
They were charged with possessing the drugs, known here as "ya baa" or
crazy medicine, and face being sent to jail for up to five years.
The Nation newspaper also reported Sunday that police seized another 1.0
million ya baa pills on the outskirts of the capital Bangkok Saturday.
One Thai national and a Taiwanese suspect were arrested, while a third man
managed to flee the scene, the daily said.
Thailand's government has declared a "war on drugs" since coming to power a
year ago, in an attempt to stem a massive addiction crisis that has more than
four percent of Thais in its grip.
An estimated 800 million tablets of amphetamines, a cheap and highly
addictive drug, will be trafficked across the border from military-run Myanmar
this year, Thai army experts say.
Two other seizures of more than a million pills have been reported over the
past few months.
----------------------------------------------------------------------- Sunday February 17, 11:16 AM
Fortunes pouring out of Thailand at glitzy border casinos POIPET, Cambodia, Feb 17 (AFP) - Banned from most forms of gambling in their own country, cashed-up Thais are frittering away tens of millions of dollars every year at gaudy border casinos. After roaring up the highway from Bangkok, they park their luxury German or
Japanese sedans in tightly guarded car parks opposite miserable frontier towns
like Poipet, in Cambodia.
During this month's Chinese New Year celebrations, Poipet's seven casinos
were lavished with red and gold decorations, ready to receive thousands of
Thais, mostly ethnic Chinese who dominate the economy.
They flocked across the border and into the casinos, trailed by dozens of
skinny child beggars, and ignoring stern Thai government warnings posted on
signboards which advised: "crossing the border for gambling purposes may not be
safe for your personal life".
"More than 1,000 Thais cross the border every day," said Wanchai Topan,
police force commander in Aranyaprathet, the Thai district facing Poipet whose
casinos lie just 10 metres (yards) into Cambodian territory.
Thailand's government has publicly lamented the mania for the 18 border
casinos strategically situated next to busy checkpoints, which have contributed
to alarmingly high capital outflows.
The National Intelligence Agency last year said an estimated 500,000 Thais
were collectively wagering some 7.0 billion baht (156 million dollars) each year
at the casinos -- 13 in Cambodia, four in Myanmar and one in Laos.
Despite Thais' abiding passion for gambling, on home territory they are
only legally allowed to have a flutter on horse racing and the government-run
lottery.
As a result, illegal betting on everything from football, cock fights and
street card games is rampant, and hundreds of clandestine casinos do a thriving
trade.
But in the late 1990s, dozens of legal casinos mushroomed on the borders
with its poorer neighbouring nations, to cater for the huge number of Thais keen
to gamble legally in glamourous surroundings.
Poipet, which in more troubled times was a famous transit point for
Cambodian refugees, opened its first casino in 1999. The seventh began trading
last December and the eighth is under construction.
The gambling enclave, situated in Cambodia but off-limits to most of its
citizens, consists of a solid strip of casinos sited along a one-kilometre (half
a mile) strip.
"Legally speaking we might be in Cambodia, but practically speaking it is
in fact Thailand," said one of the casino managers.
Just about everyone milling around the Holiday Palace, the Golden Crown
Casino and the Star Vegas is Thai and the only currency accepted is the baht.
The 5,000 Cambodian employees are expected to only speak Thai.
The casinos are owned by investors from Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia,
Indonesia and China. The management task force also counts Americans, Britons,
Australians and French -- in all more than a dozen nationalities.
They have built gigantic gambling rooms decorated in eye-popping style with
lashings of fake marble, fake hardwood and kitsch chandeliers that illuminate
the crowds pressed around the blackjack and baccarat tables.
At one table, a businessman decked out in a mauve silk shirt, plastic
sandals, a large ruby ring and chunky gold jewellery, throws down wads of 1,000
baht (22 dollar) notes at the roulette wheel.
"I can play all night," he declared as the croupier raked another pile of
high-denomination chips off the table.
In front of the poker machines, a family applauded as the one-armed bandit
commanded by their small son poured a few hundred baht into his hands.
Special gambling rooms are reserved for high-stakes clients who have at
least one million baht (22,700 dollars) to burn, and who are lured to Poipet
with offers of free accommodation at the hotels attached to the casinos.
"We will soon open more tables with a minimum bet of one million baht to
cater for very rich people, said of the managers at the Holiday Palace.
Meanwhile outside the iron gates, ordinary Cambodians eke out a living by
working as porters and motorbike-taxi riders, or peddling fruit and vegetables
from wooden carts.
Average income in Cambodia is just 300 dollars a year, eight times less
than in Thailand and 40 times less than its capital Bangkok.
"The contrast between rich and poor here is really quite shocking," said
one Westerner working on the border.
"I would like to see the Cambodians receiving more revenue from the casinos
but the money goes to private pockets," said another humanitarian worker.
----------------------------------------------------------------------- The Times of India Myanmar celebrities to record
anti-drugs anthem
AFP [ SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2002 2:40:54 PM ] RANGON: Celebrities in Myanamar, the world's biggest opium-producing country, are to record a song aimed at raising awareness about the dangers of drug abuse, the Myanmar Times newspaper reported. The group includes non-smoking rock star, Zaw Win Htut, who said the song
would also be made into a video, the weekly said in its edition to be published
on Monday.
"We are now composing the song, to which many singers have contributed," he
said.
The move follows the "Stars Against Drugs" initiative organised by the
United Nations Drug Control Programme in 2001 in which a number of celebrities
agreed to lend their names to awareness and prevention campaigns.
The initiative in military-ruled Myanmar has also attracted the support of
a prominent modelling agency, which is planning to feature posters which warn
against the dangers of drug abuse during its fashion shows.
"We have to create awareness of drug abuse in indirect ways," said Tin Moe
Lwin of the Talent and Models Agency.
Myanmar has become the world's biggest opium producer, after Afghanistan's
now-defunct Taliban regime banned the growing of opium poppies.
----------------------------------------------------------------------- The Nation
One Night In Rangoon Published on Feb 17, 2002 Drug trades and polticial intrigue in Burma yield a perfect backdrop for a thriller that is hard to put down Midnight in Burma: A Golden Triangle Thriller By Alex O'Brien Midight in Burma lives up to its subtitle: "A Golden Triangle Thriller".
The prose is terse and minimalist with the occasional clunker of a sentence but
the engine of the plot roars along on twelve cylinders. Chapters are short,
jumping back and forth among a dozen major characters. No sooner are we
introduced to a Russian assassin or a Burmese call girl than they have murdered
a couple of Burmese generals and are murdered themselves. Who are the bad guys
and what do they want?
Peter Henderson is the protagonist, an American business lawyer who lives
in Burma because he likes it. In this, the novel is refreshingly non-PC.
Aung San Suu Kyi - fictionalised as "Phyu Winn" or "The Lady" - is not
canonised and some characters are actually sympathetic Burmese military men.
Author Alex O'Brien's background is American Foreign Service, which takes a
more nuanced view of Burma than your standard human rights NGO. There are
diplomats who see Burma as a convenient whipping boy for the West while the
abuses of larger, more powerful nations are overlooked. The time of the novel is
the present, after Burma's doors had swung open and investors had walked through
and right back out again.
Henderson has just arrived in Rangoon by steamer from upcountry when he
meets a lovely Chinese American at the Strand Hotel. Julie Yao is a high-powered
consultant based in Hong Kong. She asks him for legal advice on a trade deal
that doesn't seem to compute but what the hell, he winds up in her bed at The
Strand that night: "They had touched, gently at first, the moment they reached
her room. Somehow each passing moment had revealed another layer of both of
them, and increased the intensity of the shared experience."
That's one of the clunkers.
Next afternoon, Julie is kidnapped from a Rangoon restaurant and, advised
by a friend in the Burmese army, Henderson sets off for the Golden Triangle to
find her.
Midnight in Burma kicks into high gear now. There are murders galore,
torture sessions, decapitations, escapes, recaptures, helicopter crashes, and
guerilla night attacks. There's a Wa warlord with a heart of gold, a sinister
Chinese drug kingpin, a soft-spoken doctor trained in foot torture, a Brit
colonial expat, a dragon-lady brothel owner, a French gourmet chef stranded in a
jungle base, a plucky Burmese policewoman and a gentlemanly Burmese general,
swashbuckling DEA honchos and an American charge d'affaires who becomes an
unlikely hero.
In time, the reader learns the reasons behind all the fireworks, tangled up
in ethnic insurgencies and the heroin trade, and the real mission of Julie Yao.
All the characters tumble together into a final cataclysm at a Wa jungle base,
but the chief bad guy escapes to Rangoon intent on assassinating Phyu Winn (The
Lady).
This bam-bam-bam approach to thriller writing might not appeal to fans,
say, of John LeCarre, given to lush physical descriptions and long interior
monologues, but for others this page-turner is just the thing for a long plane
trip or a day on the beach.
----------------------------------------------------------------------- UN envoy, Shan leader discuss
political activities, national convention
Text of report by Democratic Voice of Burma on 16 February Mr Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, the visiting UN special rapporteur for human
rights, met again with U Khun Tun Oo, chairman of Shan Nationalities League for
Democracy [SNLD], in Rangoon [Yangon] this evening. U Khun Tun Oo told DVB Mr
Pinheiro inquired about the activities of the nationalities parties and the
National Convention.
[U Khun Tun Oo] He asked about the National Convention and the activities
of the nationalities parties. He inquired whether the nationalities parties have
the same permission as the NLD [National League for Democracy] and whether the
parties were active in party activities. I said that legally-standing parties
have the permission to participate in party activities but due to various
reasons especially the fear of local authorities, the parties were not
functioning including us. I told him that we are not as active as the NLD. The
NLD is active in Mandalay and are planning activities in other regions as well.
I also told him that we have no activities whatsoever in the districts.
[Htet Aung Kyaw] What did you talk about the National Convention?
[U Khun Tun Oo] He asked about the procedures and why it had stopped. I
told him that I did not know why it had stopped. He inquired whether we continue
with any discussion and I told him that it had stopped since 1995.
[Htet Aung Kyaw] When you talked about the release of political prisoners
including U Tha Ban, what did he say?
[U Khun Tun Oo] I think he asked for their release. Of course we asked for
the release of political prisoners including U Tha Ban and Nai Ngwe Thein.
[Htet Aung Kyaw] I believe he will be leaving soon. Are you satisfied with
your discussions with him?
[U Khun Tun Oo] Well, I have even talked to De Soto [former UN special
envoy Alvaro De Soto] and others so for him some things might be new and he
would have to catch up to grasp the situation. When someone is changed then the
policy changes too and I think he never had time to study thoroughly so I have
to explain it to him in detail.
[Htet Aung Kyaw] What I mean is when he returns he will have to submit a
report. Will it be better than before?
[U Khun Tun Oo] He will present his report on the fourth [April]. He gave
copies of his last report to the nationalities parties and told us to make
necessary amendments.
[Htet Aung Kyaw] Since this is his third trip do you think it is much
better than the previous trips? Are you more satisfied?
[U Khun Tun Oo] Yes. It was much better and more active and I believed he
understood the situation more. He was more frank and better understanding.
NLD spokesperson U Lwin told DVB that Mr Pinheiro has planned to meet with
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi on Monday and many NLD leaders are expected to attend the
meeting.
Mr Pinheiro will visit Insein central jail and the prisoners' ward at
Rangoon General Hospital. He is also expected to visit a labour camp for
prisoners outside of Rangoon. Mr Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, a Brazilian diplomat,
was appointed as UN special rapporteur for human rights in Burma in February
2001. This is his third trip to the country and he will be leaving Burma on
Tuesday, 19 February. He will present his report to the UN secretary-general and
the UN Human Rights Commission in April.
----------------------------------------------------------------------- |