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BURMA RELATED NEWS - MAY 19,
2002.
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HEADLINES
----------------------------------------------------------------- WP - Tiniest of Openings in a Closed
Society
AFP - US to watch and wait before changing Myanmar
policy
Reuters - Myanmar hands over Chinese "Golden Triangle"
smuggler
AFP - Myanmar to sell million dollars in teak wood to
India
Reuters - Thai arms smuggling web threatens Asian
stability
Reuters - Malaysia says East Timor should join
ASEAN
Toronto Star - Burma's Suu Kyi challenges West
Reuters - Minister says no political prisoners in
Myanmar
AP - Myanmar official: no date set for talks with Suu
Kyi
----------------------------------------------------------------- The Washington Post
Tiniest of Openings in a Closed
Society
Stifling Dissent, Burma's Military Junta Keeps Outside Influences to a Minimum By Rajiv Chandrasekaran Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, May 18, 2002; Page A20 RANGOON, Burma -- The troika of generals who rule this tightly controlled
nation decided recently to permit ordinary people to do something long deemed
subversive: access the Internet.
But as with so many other aspects of daily life here, they imposed stiff
conditions. E-mail is banned. So, too, is almost all of the Web. Users can view
about 1,000 technology-related sites that have been screened by an army major
and copied onto a file-storage device at a government-owned company.
"It's useless," sniffed an employee at a trading company who went online a
few times before giving up in frustration. "But that's the way the government
wants it. They're scared of anything that might threaten their power."
Burma's military junta has taken a similar attitude with other outside
influences it considers seditious. Western books are available, but anything
with political content is censored. Mobile phones are legal, but restricted to
those approved by the government. There is cable television, but it does not
carry CNN or MTV. Tourists are allowed into the country, but it is a crime to
invite a foreigner into a private home.
"After North Korea, Burma is probably the world's most closed-off society,"
said a Western diplomat here. "It's been almost completely untouched by the
forces of globalization that have helped to change other repressive
governments."
The generals, who seized power in 1988 after killing hundreds of
pro-democracy demonstrators, brook no domestic threats. They have destroyed
their only political opposition, the National League for Democracy (NLD),
through a campaign of arresting its leadership and persecuting rank-and-file
members.
The generals, after pressure from a U.N. envoy, have released from house
arrest the country's prominent pro-democracy leader, Nobel peace laureate Aung
San Suu Kyi. But diplomats and political observers here said the junta's efforts
to wall off the country and hobble her party will make it difficult for her to
rebuild a viable opposition movement.
"She hasn't been left with much to work with," an Asian diplomat here
said.
For Suu Kyi, the diplomat said, reinvigorating the opposition will be
essential to gain concessions in future negotiations with the military.
One of the NLD's first tasks was to draft a statement to its members
announcing Suu Kyi's release, a fact conspicuously omitted by the Burmese
state-controlled media. On May 6, the day she was freed, newspapers printed the
junta's guiding principles in large type, as they do every day. Among them:
"Crush all internal and external destructive elements as the common
enemy."
The NLD used to have offices in almost every town across this Southeast
Asian nation of 42 million people, which the military has renamed Myanmar. Now
the government allows fewer than two dozen to operate.
The NLD headquarters in Rangoon looks like a building about to be
condemned. The hand-painted sign has faded. The wood siding is falling off. The
gate has rusted. Inside, the floor is bare, the furniture plastic, and the walls
covered with portraits of Suu Kyi and her father, Burma's late independence
leader, Gen. Aung San. Prevented by the government from posting handbills or
organizing rallies, volunteers sew arm bands and assemble buttons, which are
distributed discreetly to members. The office has one phone line and no
computer.
"The conditions are very difficult for us," said U Lwin, a top NLD leader
who is part of a trio of elderly men who run the party with Suu Kyi. "There is
so much we need to build up our party."
The NLD leadership is dominated by septuagenarians. On most days, only a
handful of middle-aged members are in the office, and there are fewer who are
younger.
For Suu Kyi, 56, who has been kept under house arrest for more than six of
the past 12 years, the problem of signing up new members stems partly from her
inability to travel. After her release from detention in 1995, and before her
re-arrest, she was forbidden to leave Rangoon. She was confined to her house on
the shores of Rangoon's Inya Lake after she tried to board a train to Mandalay,
the country's second-largest city, to visit an NLD office in October 2000.
When she was freed, the military said she was permitted to travel.
Yesterday, Suu Kyi ventured just outside the capital, testing her freedom for
the first time since she was released.
Even if NLD recruitment activities were increased, several young people
interviewed in a popular Rangoon nightspot said they would have little interest
in joining the party.
"I'd like to be a member, but if I did, there could be trouble for me,"
said Hpyo, 23, a student who, like others, asked that his full name not be
published for fear of government retribution. "Some of my family works for the
government. They could lose their jobs," he said.
At the Guitar Cafe, an underground pub with a live band and record covers
stuck to the ceiling, a fellow student of Hpyo's at Rangoon University said two
of her cousins were jailed and tortured a few years ago for being NLD members.
"They became insane," said the 22-year-old economics major named Suu. "I worry
that might happen to me."
Few uniformed policemen are on the streets, but Suu said people still are
afraid to talk about politics in anything but the most hushed tones.
It is impossible to find a Coke or a McDonald's or pack of Marlboros on
Rangoon's wide, freshly paved boulevards. The government has sought to keep
foreign businesses out, and democracy activists have pressured multinational
corporations not to invest here in an effort to choke off the military.
To compensate, Burmese businessmen have gone for trademark-violating
knockoffs. There's the Kmart food shop and the Target mini-mart. The interior of
J'Donuts is indistinguishable from a Dunkin' Donuts. And MacBurger has
emblazoned its windows with a golden, arched M.
Zaw, a 28-year-old teacher and patron at the Guitar Cafe, said he
occasionally listens to shortwave radio broadcasts to get uncensored news
reports, which have made him acutely aware of what his countrymen are
missing.
"We like our traditions," Zaw said, "but we don't want to be shut out from
the rest of the world."
Sunday May 19, 9:44 AM
US to watch and wait before changing Myanmar policy (AFP) - The United States will watch and wait before changing its hardline stance towards Myanmar, refusing to lift sanctions, and to shed its repugnance of the ruling military without clear steps towards civilian rule. After years of agony for Myanmar's impoverished people, there is at last a
glimmer of hope and Washington is strongly backing UN envoy Razali Ismail's
painstaking effort to foster dialogue between democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi
and the military government.
But conversations with US officials reveal no evidence that the United
States, Yangon's chief critic, plans to offer the military inducements for
reform.
Firstly, no one here can read the minds of Yangon's generals, and no one
knows where the ultra-secretive dialogue will lead.
Furthermore, policymakers absorbed in the global anti-terror fight are
loath to spend political capital on Myanmar in Congress which is a hotbed of
opposition to the junta.
Myanmar, the former Burma, has never been a strategic priority for the
United States, and as a small state with little influence, is the ideal foil for
politicians keen to burnish human rights credentials with warm support for the
opposition.
So the administration would face a fight even if it changed tacks and
decided to lift investment sanctions imposed in 1997 any time soon.
"I think that the administration is not going to use up any ammunition with
Congress on Burma, it is just too low a priority, there are some many things
going on Asia," said David Steinberg, a Georgetown University professor and
author.
US officials are privately sceptical of the previously raised idea of a
carrot and stick strategy to prod the generals into reform.
Such an approach was in vogue several years ago but foundered when details
leaked to the media of a secret meeting at Chilston Park in Britain of donors
who discussed an "aid for reform" initiative.
Still, the administration has told Myanmar's State Peace and Development
Council as the government is known, that genuine steps towards ending military
rule will stir a positive US response.
A small step came Wednesday, a week and a half after Aung San Suu Kyi was
released from house arrest.
The State Department pledged to work with Congress to provide aid for NGOs
not linked to the military which are tackling Myanmar's explosive HIV/AIDS
crisis -- a measure some observers say is way overdue.
If Aung San Suu Kyi and the SPDC were to make clear progress, the United
States would have a number of options -- short of lifting sanctions -- what one
US official this week described as a "full diplomatic toolbag."
Steinberg said a first step might be to lift the ban on Myanmar officers of
the rank of general and above travelling to the United States.
A second step could be to fill the vacant ambassador's post at the embassy
in Yangon.
If progress leads to a fundamental shift in Myanmar's political climate,
the United States may consider easing prohibitions on lending to the military
government by international financial institutions.
US officials privately reject the idea that they might establish a "road
map" which the Myanmar government could follow to gain rewards.
However, careful reading of administration statements on the issue over the
last week reveals the next steps that Washington would like to see.
"We urge the Burmese regime to release all prisoners unconditionally to
take advantage of the historic opportunity it now has to move forward together
with the democratic opposition to create a better life for all of Burma's
people," said State Department spokeswoman Lynn Cassel on Wednesday.
Another barrier to a rapid change in policy towards Myanmar, is the
repugnance with which Myanmar's generals are viewed in the State Department and
diplomatic corps.
Many officials see them as no more than a bunch of xenophobic thugs who
have raped their land politically and ruined the economy.
Any future changes to US policy are dependent on just how free Aung San Suu
Kyi is to continue the work of political opposition, 12 years after the
opposition's election landslide which was never honored by the military.
And optimism on Myanmar is a commodity in short supply here.
"According to what I hear from Razali and others, they haven't reached
agreement on any of the critical issues, that's why it is going to be a very
dicey business," Steinberg said.
Sunday May 19, 4:02 PM
Myanmar hands over Chinese "Golden Triangle" smuggler BEIJING (Reuters) - Police in
Myanmar recently handed over a Chinese heroin smuggler to police in the
southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan, state media said on Sunday.
Myanmar police had arrested Liu Quan, a key member of a Myanmar smuggling
ring, on April 13 based on claims made by Chinese authorities, national
broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) said on Sunday.
Video footage showed Liu delivered in a Myanmar police pick-up truck and
handed over to Chinese police waiting at the border. CCTV did not give the date
for the hand-off and said only that it happened recently.
Yunnan also borders Laos, which along with Myanmar, also called Burma, and
Thailand make up the "Golden Triangle," a leading source of heroin.
A Yunnan native, Liu had entered Myanmar in 1999 and has smuggled 241.5
kilograms (531 lb) of heroin to Guangzhou, Qingdao and other Chinese cities
during 2000, CCTV said.
China has intensified its crackdown on drugs as sweeping economic reforms
have boosted incomes and caused the number of known drug addicts to jump in
recent years.
China has about 900,000 registered drug addicts -- most of them hooked on
heroin -- up from 148,000 in 1991. However, some foreign experts say the number
of addicts in the country of 1.3 billion people may be as high as seven
million.
Sunday May 19, 1:58 PM
Myanmar to sell million dollars in teak wood to India (AFP) - Cash-strapped Myanmar,
one of the world's largest exporters of teak, has inked a deal to sell one
million dollars worth of the highly prized wood to neighbouring India.
An Indian business delegation visiting Myanmar struck the agreement with
Yangon's ministry of forestry last week for 1,000 tonnes of the wood, according
to the Myanmar Times.
"This is the biggest achievement of our visit to Myanmar," G.L. Goenka,
president of the Indo-Myanmar Chamber of Commerce and Industries, was quoted
saying by the weekly newspaper in its edition to be published Monday.
Seventy percent of Myanmar's timber is exported to India, Goenka said,
although large shipments are known to be made to countries such as Thailand and
Japan, a major importer of hard woods.
Military-ruled Myanmar, which mainly controls the exploitation of the
country's vast teak forests through state-owned enterprises, has been accused by
international environmental groups of rampant deforestation.
Teak is among Myanmar's largest exports, with hundreds of millions of
dollars worth of the wood exported each year, according to the commodity group
International Tropical Timber Organization.
Last month India, Myanmar and Thailand agreed to forge ahead with plans for
a "highway of opportunity" linking the three nations and boosting regional trade
and development, particularly the exploitation of natural resources.
Myanmar's export value to India was 240 million dollars in fiscal year
2000-2001, while imports from India stood at 40 million dollars, Goenka told the
newspaper.
Sunday May 19, 4:31 PM
Thai arms smuggling web threatens Asian stability By Dan Eaton BANGKOK (Reuters) - As Thailand
prepares to host talks between the Sri Lankan government and Tamil Tiger rebels
next month, analysts say its own role as a global arms smuggling hub is fuelling
instability in the region.
Thailand is refusing to acknowledge a growing nexus between criminal gangs
and militant groups and risks becoming the destination of choice for Asia's
hounded extremists, say analysts and intelligence officials.
Thai police last month uncovered an arms cache in southern Thailand
reportedly destined for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the latest in a
series of similar finds and a reminder Thailand needs to get its own house in
order.
"It's a global shipping network, but Thailand is a main centre," says Sri
Lankan analyst Rohan Gunaratna, a research fellow at the Centre for the Study of
Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.
For more than a decade, the Tigers have exploited lax law enforcement and
Thailand's status as Southeast Asia's freewheeling tourist hub to funnel arms to
an insurgency which has cost the lives of more than 50,000 people.
"You only have to look at a map to see why, it's just a short jump to Sri
Lanka's coast," says a senior Bangkok-based Asian diplomat on condition of
anonymity.
Adds one Thai police general: "They are here, mainly supporters, not the
fighters. But look at America, al-Qaeda can go inside the United States easy.
This is a world wide problem."
"ONE STOP SHOP"
Access to the former war zones of Indochina in Cambodia and Vietnam and
leakage from Thai military stockpiles makes Thailand an ideal base of operations
for arms merchants.
Weapons are also sourced from as far afield as the Czech Republic and North
Korea and transferred from sea-going vessels to smaller craft and fishing boats
to make the final dash for Sri Lanka, intelligence sources say.
The same networks also supply a flood of pistols, assault rifles, rocket
launchers and ammunition to other Asian insurgencies, pirate gangs operating in
the Straits of Malacca and criminal syndicates throughout Asia.
"Thailand is the main source state in the region of illegally smuggled
small arms," said Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan, regional director of the Geneva-based
monitor Non-violence International.
Thai networks have a well established gun-running history.
Weapons feeding ethnic strife and drug barons in Myanmar have long been
carted across northern Thailand from Cambodia, a country awash with
decommissioned arms from decades of civil war.
And in the 1970s an arms pipeline was set up by the United States and China
with the help of senior Thai military officers to supply Cambodia's Khmer Rouge
rebels battle a regime backed by the Vietnamese.
"Many other things travelled in that network, because there is
countertrade, arms-for-drugs, arms-for-people, people-for-drugs," said
Puangsuwan.
"All the black trades come together as a package. They tend to use the same
border crossings, the same banks to launder their money. There are very tight
links between them."
Clive Williams, an expert in terrorism and domestic violence at Australia's
Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, says the convergence of criminal elements
is now a major global trend.
"What we are seeing more of now is a nexus between organised crime and
terrorism," he said. "Organised crime has been putting money into travel, buying
travel agencies and so on, but it's not necessarily for terrorism but for human
smuggling. But that could be used by terrorists on the other hand as a one-stop
shop."
OUT OF AFGHANISTAN
Driven out of Afghanistan in the wake of the U.S.-led war on terror, and
with the heat turned up in Malaysia and Singapore, where dozens of alleged
militants have been rounded up, many groups are now eyeing Thailand, Gunaratna
says.
Thailand has become home to small numbers of radical Muslim Hizbullah, Gama
'a al-Islamia, and al-Qaeda agents, he says.
"That is the trend we are seeing, not only with the Tamil Tigers, but so
many other groups."
American warnings that Southeast Asia may become home to new militant bases
saw Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines ink an anti-terror pact earlier this
month.
Thailand has reluctantly agreed to become a fourth partner in the pact, yet
fears damaging its lucrative tourism industry, key to recovery from the 1997
economic crisis.
But repeated denials from Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra that there are
any militant groups on Thai soil risks turning the country into a "soft spot for
terrorist groups", says Gunaratna.
"Until Thailand improves its surveillance of foreign terrorist
organisations actively using its soil, Thailand is in many ways breeding
insecurity for the countries in the region."
Sunday May 19, 4:07 PM
Malaysia says East Timor should join ASEAN KUALA LUMPUR, May 19 (Reuters)
- Malaysia on Sunday urged newly-independent East Timor to join the Association
of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
"I think they should. I welcome them into ASEAN," Mahathir told reporters
after attending a political function in Kuala Lumpur, the capital.
East Timor will become the world's newest nation at the stroke of midnight
(1500 GMT) on Sunday, ending decades of violent struggle for freedom from
foreign occupation.
ASEAN, the foremost political, economic and diplomatic grouping for
Southeast Asia, counts Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Malaysia, the
Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam as members.
Toronto Star - Sun May 19, 2002
Burma's Suu Kyi challenges
West
Urges Canada to curb investments Martin Regg Cohn Asia Bureau RANGOON ? Discipline, struggle, perseverance and, above all, duty. These are the values that have ruled the life of newly released democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi. And these are the values that she says the people of Burma must embrace if
they are to reclaim their heritage. "Things have to be different, we must make
things different ? that's how we go about it," she says.
In an interview just two weeks after being freed from house arrest, the
woman who is viewed as the mother of her country has issued a challenge, not
only to the people of this South Asian country but to the nations, including
Canada, that have co-operated with Burma's military dictatorship.
Unlike in the United States, which has banned new investment in Burma and
whose companies have largely pulled back, Canadian investors have conspicuously
ignored her calls for economic sanctions against the rogue regime. Early last
year, Canada became the second-biggest foreign investor in Burma, thanks to the
activities of Ivanhoe Mines Ltd., which runs the country's biggest copper mine
in a joint venture with the military.
Ivanhoe issued a news release two week ago saying it is a "conscientious,
judicious enterprise (that) delivers practical, wide-ranging benefits to people,
while at the same time facilitating the relief of human suffering."
But Suu Kyi says foreign capital merely lines the pockets of the generals.
"It doesn't come as a surprise to us; we've gotten used to some pretty strange
things," she says of Ivanhoe's boasts. "What's the benefit in it for the
ordinary Burmese?"
She appeals to Canadians to join other Western nations in a more concerted
attempt to pressure the government.
"It's much more effective than if they just do their own thing. We have not
yet achieved democracy, so we still have a lot of work to do and I'd like them
(Canadians) to be aware of that."
Minister says no political prisoners in
Myanmar
KUALA LUMPUR, May 19 (Reuters)
? There are no political prisoners in Myanmar after the release of opposition
leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar Home Minister Colonel Tin Hlaing was quoted as
saying on Sunday.
The Malaysian national news agency Bernama quoted Tin Hlaing as saying 200
supporters of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) still in prison were
common criminals associated with terrorism and insurgency groups.
''There is no political prisoner now... these 200 so-called NLD members
were actually involved in criminal activities such as bombings in public places
and working with insurgency groups,'' he was quoted as saying ahead of a
southeast Asian ministerial meeting on terrorism on Monday.
Suu Kyi, set free from 19 months' house arrest on May 6, has said her top
priority is the release of NLD party members who are still detained. More than
1,000 are still in Myanmar's jails, according to Amnesty International.
Nobel laureate Suu Kyi is the leader of the NLD, which won the country's
last general elections in 1990 by a landslide, but has never been allowed to
govern.
Tin Hlaing said Myanmar's ruling generals will bring in democracy, but not
yet.
''Our government's intention is to establish a democratic society and there
is lot of development taking place... but we cannot say when democracy will be
fully restored,'' the minister was quoted as saying.
Suu Kyi last week declared herself impatient for change in the
military-ruled country, saying she hoped for substantive political talks with
the junta within weeks.
Myanmar official: no date set for
talks with Suu Kyi
Sun May 19, 6:36 AM ET By JASBANT SINGH, Associated Press Writer KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Conciliation talks between Myanmar's military
rulers and freed pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi would be held "as soon as
possible" ? but no date has been set ? a Myanmar official said Sunday.
"Our government intention is to establish a democratic society," Myanmar's
Home Affairs Minister Col. Tin Hlaing told reporters. "We will fully cooperate
with her (Suu Kyi) ... we will conduct the talks as soon as possible."
Hlaing was speaking in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where interior ministers
from the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations were gathering for a
counterterrorism meeting, which starts Monday.
Hlaing said no date had been set for talks because Suu Kyi had been "very
busy" since her release from house arrest on May 6 after 19 months of detention.
She was detained after defying a travel ban and trying to venture outside the
capital, Yangon.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Suu Kyi has spent time since her release meeting
diplomats and officials of her National League for Democracy.
Myanmar's ruling junta called elections in 1990, but refused to honor the
results when Suu Kyi's party scored an overwhelming victory.
Asked if the planned talks with Suu Kyi would pave the way for elections,
Hlaing said there was "a long process" involved before elections could be held.
He did not elaborate.
Hlaing also said the junta did not expect economic sanctions imposed on
Myanmar by the United States and its allies to be lifted because of Suu Kyi's
release.
"The government released her and many of her party members for the benefit
of the nation," he said. "We are not hoping for reciprocal acts from the United
States or other countries."
Donor nations blocked virtually all development aid to Myanmar, also known
as Burma, after the military violently suppressed pro-democracy demonstrations
in 1988, killing hundreds of people.
Hlaing denied claims by activists that about 1,500 political prisoners
remain behind bars. He said the junta had detained about 500 people, but had
freed 300 of them over the years. None were detained for political reasons, he
said.
"Myanmar does not have political prisoners," he said. "These people are
detained for cooperating with insurgent groups and carrying out terrorist
attacks." |