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BURMA RELATED NEWS - JULY 28,
2002.
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HEADLINES
------------------------------------------------------------------- Reuters - ASEAN-US anti-terrorism
declaration ready to sign
Reuters - ASEAN seeks to help
its poor members catch up
Hoover's online - Burma, China discuss
tourism cooperation
The Telegraph(UK) - Burmese army 'massacred ethnic
villagers'
Bkk Post - Two held for smuggling B1m worth of timber
BBC - The forgotten war
Xinhua - Myanmar's foreign investment drops sharply in fiscal
2001-02 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday July 27, 8:02 PM
ASEAN-US anti-terrorism declaration
ready to sign
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, July 27 (Reuters) - Officials from Southeast Asian nations on Saturday agreed a joint declaration on counter terrorism to be signed with the United States next week as the centrepiece of a regional forum on security and defence. Indonesia's senior official Makarim Wibisono said the wording had been finalised and all the ASEAN members were committed, scotching reports his country had any difficulty signing the joint declaration with Washington. "We are going along with that. There is some adjustment of the wording, it is very normal. I think everybody is on board," he told reporters on Saturday, after two days of talks by ASEAN senior officials to lay the ground for ministerial meetings that start on Monday. "Right now, we are joined together to sign declarations that involve not only ASEAN members but also the United States." The 10 members of the Association of South East Asian Nations -- some confronting terrorist threat from Islamic militants -- will host that ASEAN Regional Forum on July 31. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell will attend, along with foreign ministers from 11 others countries, including Russia and China, plus the European Union. ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Wibisono said the declaration would focus on efforts to build up the capability of security forces in the region to combat terrorism, cooperate in operations and track and block the flow of terrorist funds. He dismissed ideas that the document could provide a foot in the door for U.S. troops in Southeast Asia in same way that the Philippines had invited U.S. military advisers to help track down Abu Sayyaf guerrillas. "This is not (about) dealing with terrorism with the deployment of troops. It is dealing with terrorism with all aspects," he said. Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines signed a three-way counter-terrorism accord earlier this year. Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore have all arrested members of a militant group called Jemaah Islamiah, which wants to carve out a pure Islamic state in Southeast Asia, where nearly a quarter of a billion Muslims live. They suspect at least one of the Jemaah Islamiah's ringleaders had links with the al Qaeda network in Afghanistan, and contact with hijackers responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States. They have also given Indonesian police leads to track down JI members, but have been disappointed so far by the lack of followthrough from Jakarta. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Friday July 26, 5:56 PM
ASEAN seeks to help its poor members
catch up
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, July 26 (Reuters) - Southeast Asian foreign ministers are likely to discuss an initiative between ASEAN and China to form what would be the world's biggest free trade zone uniting 1.7 billion people, the grouping's secretary general said on Friday. The ministers of the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nation (ASEAN), to meet in Brunei, are also due to endorse an initiative aimed at boosting economic integration between poorer economies like Vietnam and wealthier members like Singapore, Rodolfo Severino told reporters. Preliminary meetings between senior ASEAN officials got underway on Friday in Brunei's capital Bandar Seri Begawan, and the foreign ministers' meeting will start on Monday. In terms of the China-ASEAN free trade area, meetings had been held to map out the parameters, but progress has been slow and would remain so, Severino said. "It's very preliminary. We expect in November at the summit (in Cambodia) there will be some kind of announcement on what has so far been agreed upon, but it is a long process. It's very difficult," he said. China is likely to raise the issue in its meetings with ASEAN later next week, said a western diplomat Beijing. Severino also said ASEAN's core members sought to narrow the gap with their newer and poorer partners -- Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar -- by supporting development of their infrastructure, human resources and information technology. While part of the plan to assist Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos involved critical infrastructure spending, many of their needs involved more basic policy advice -- including how to negotiate trade pacts or how to set up regulatory agencies. "It's not all about transferring resources. It's about working together and sharing technical expertise, advice on policy measures," Severino said. The differences in the ASEAN economies is stark. Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, the longest-standing members of the group dating back to the 1960s, account for some 90 percent of regional trade, while their poor neighbours make up the rest, Severino said. Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia have already made some steps to help improve ASEAN economic integration, as have the U.N. Development Programme and Japan, but the group would have to seek donors from its members as well as other partners, like the United States. The grouping also hopes to enlist support of the private sector, Severino said, noting help could come from some 400 top American corporations in a U.S.-ASEAN business forum. "A company like IBM , for example, they have agreed to participate and will certainly have a role in information technology," he said. Ministers will give formal endorsement to the programme as part of a declaration they are due to issue next week. -------------------------------------------------------------------
Hoover's
online
Burma, China discuss tourism
cooperation
July 27, 2002 8:43am
Source: Radio Myanmar, Rangoon, in Burmese 1330 gmt 26 Jul 02
The Leading Committee for Promotion of Tourism Industry between the Union of Myanmar [Burma] and the People's Republic of China [PRC] held its second meeting at the Meeting Hall of Zeyarthiri Beikman on Konmyinttha in Yangon [Rangoon] at 0900 today. Lt-Gen Khin Nyunt, secretary-1 of the State Peace and Development Council [SPDC] and chairman of the Leading Committee, attended the meeting and delivered an address. First, SPDC Secretary-1 Lt-Gen Khin Nyunt said that the Leading Committee and the committees at different levels have been formed for the promotion of tourism industry between the Union of Myanmar and the PRC. He added tourists from the PRC have been entering Myanmar via Yangon and at the entry points at the border of the two countries. As there are a number of Chinese tourists who wish to visit Myanmar, the PRC has proposed cooperating with Myanmar in promoting tourism industry between the two countries. He noted, as a result, measures are being systematically taken after the relevant committees have been formed. He said, the two countries have achieved success by cooperating in border trade and in building factories, mills and economic infrastructures in Myanmar. He added measures are to be taken by the two countries to practically promote tourism industry. He urged the committees concerned for constant coordination and cooperation in working towards the plans and objectives. Then, Minister for Finance and Revenue U Khin Maung Thein, U Win Aung, Foreign Minister and chairman of Foreign Relations Committee for Promotion of Tourism Industry between the Union of Myanmar and PRC; Maj-Gen Saw Lwin, Hotels and Tourism Minister and chairman of Domestic Work Committee for Promotion of Tourism Industry between the Union of Myanmar and PRC; and responsible personnel presented reports. They reported on matters related to broadcasting facts about Myanmar which appeal to tourists and measures to be taken for tourist entry into Myanmar from Yangon, Mandalay, and the entry points at the border of the two countries. Next, Lt-Gen Khin Nyunt, SPDC secretary-1 and chairman of the Leading Committee, explained related matters and gave necessary instructions. The meeting later ended. -------------------------------------------------------------------
The Telegraph (UK)
Burmese army 'massacred ethnic villagers' By Alex Spillius in Mae Sot Sunday 28 July 2002 Disturbing new photographs obtained by The Telegraph - many of which are too shocking to print - contain compelling evidence of atrocities by the Burmese army during the recent forcible relocation of 5,000 ethnic Karen villagers. Although there are regular accounts of attacks on
civilians, it is extremely rare for pictures to be smuggled out of Burma's
remote tribal regions in the jungles near the Thai border.
The photographs show the scene after 12 villagers had been shot dead and
nine injured by Burmese soldiers who sprayed their huts with machine-gun fire.
The victims had been hiding in the jungle because they feared that they were
going to be press-ganged as army porters.
Survivors described the brutal incident and passed on the photographs to a medical team of Americans and Thais who secretly crossed into Burma to treat tribespeople. The attack - carried out by a light infantry battalion -
was part of a military campaign that ended in Kya Inn Seik Kyi district last
month. Villagers were forced to move at gunpoint to distant relocation camps in
an effort to undermine support for Karen rebels ahead of a new offensive
designed to crush their 50-year insurgency.
Six villages, six schools and five churches were
destroyed, according to an American member of the Free Burma Rangers medical
agency. Three pastors - many Karen are Christian - were captured and are still
being held.
Last week also, three young deserters from the Burmese
army offered horrifying personal accounts of life inside the country's
notoriously brutal armed forces. Their testimony confirmed that the ruling
generals were conducting a reign of terror in ethnic areas near the Thailand
border even as they negotiated with Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy leader,
to end her house arrest and lobbied the outside world for
support.
Razali Ismail, the United Nations special envoy to Burma,
will arrive in Rangoon this week to tell the government that it must
dramatically improve its human rights record or the international sanctions that
are cripplingthe economy will not be lifted.
One of the deserters, a 26-year-old named Tun Tun, arrived
10 days ago in Mae Sot, a Thai town 20 miles from the border crawling with
smugglers, drug dealers, Burmese spies and Thai counter-intelligence
officers.
He freely acknowledged that he had killed a fellow soldier
before deserting. He had attempted to shoot his warrant officer, who had badly
beaten him for returning after dark from bathing in a jungle stream, but missed
and killed another soldier.
He was arrested and held with his feet placed in stocks,
his hands tied behind his head and a noose around his neck. After two weeks, he
was freed by his guard, Ko Kyaw, 20, who escaped with him.
"I still can't believe I killed the soldier, but I had so
much anger. I wish I had known about life in the army before I became a
soldier," he said.
Each year there were at least four to five suicides in his battalion of 150 to 200 men, he said, and the same number of murder attempts on senior officers by privates ready to mutiny. The army, once the envy of south-east Asia for its
expertise and training, has become a haven for criminals after the government
made an offer a decade ago to wipe out offenders' records if they
enlisted.
Half the new recruits, he said, were forced conscripts,
rounded up by troops for not carrying their identity cards. About 30 to 40 were
children aged between nine and 12, some of whom served on the front line. In his
battalion, three children committed suicide in a year, shooting themselves after
reaching the limits of exhaustion and suffering.
"We had been marching all day and were then ordered to dig
a trench. This 12-year-old was just too tired. The sergeant shouted at him and
kicked him. But he just slumped down, put the barrel in his mouth and put his
toe on the trigger," Tun said.
A 13-year-old fell behind a column marching up a mountain.
"After a few minutes we heard a shot and went back to find him dead. He was
buried there."
All three deserters served in the eastern Karen state.
They said that ethnic villagers were routinely rounded up to serve as unpaid
porters, a practice that a senior official in the regime last month insisted had
been stopped. The porters were commonly forced to carry loads of food and
ammunition weighing 130-150lbs in straw baskets strapped around their
heads.
The runaways estimated that if 50 porters were
press-ganged to serve a battalion on a march, four or five would die of malaria
or exhaustion. Their underfed bodies were left where they fell in the jungle,
they said.
They saw convicts drawn from prisons to work as porters
being sent to the head of a column along paths where it was feared rebels had
laid anti-personnel mines.
The regime has dismissed reports accusing the army of
systematically raping women from the ethnic minority groups but Kyaw Min Naing,
another of the army deserters, described being made to guard a civilian
settlement with nine other privates while a captain raped a woman in her house
repeatedly for two days.
The brutality, poverty and corruption of the army in Burma
are chillingly encapsulated in Kyaw Min Naing's statement: "We heard the woman
screaming," he said. "The captain paid us each 1,000 kyat [80 pence] each not to
say anything."
------------------------------------------------------------------- Bangkok Post - Sunday 28 July 2002
Two held for smuggling B1m worth of timber Panel clears staff of illegal logging Supamart Kasem Two men have been charged with smuggling timber worth more than one million
baht into the country from Burma.
Manit Nuanhong, 35, of Suphan Buri, and Sithit Thongkhao, 43, of Kamphaeng Phet, were arrested yesterday after police stopped a 10-wheel truck on the Asian highway in Mae Sot district and found 3,826 pieces of timber, worth about 1.08 million baht. The men said they were hired to take the timber from a border area in Mae Sot to Bangkok. Meanwhile, forestry staff of Huay Hin Fon in Mae Sot district have been cleared of allegations they cut down more than 100 teak and other trees in a reserve forest. Conservationists and villagers from Huay Ya-u village in tambon Phra Wo made the claims in a latter to the Forestry Department and Interior Ministry. They said forestry workers went into Pha Charoen national forest reserve with a tractor, fired gunshots into the air and told villagers to keep away. The complainants said they heard the sound of motored chainsaws and trees falling. On May 29 Vachira Muangkaew, chief of Tak forestry zone, led Forestry Department chief Plodprasop Surasawadi into the reserve to seize the logs, which were taken from the forest for auction by the Forest Industry Organisation. No-one was arrested. After getting the complaint, Tak governor Tiraboon Buddee set up a 15-member committee, chaired by Mae Sot forestry chief Panyarat Raksilp. Kanop Pinthong, assistant district chief and deputy committee chairman, said the committee found there were no grounds to support the allegation as the complainants did not submit any evidence. ------------------------------------------------------------------- BBC -
Friday, 26 July, 2002, 14:28 GMT 15:28 UK
The forgotten
war
Democracy was not to last long in Burma
following independence from the British in 1948. A military junta soon took
power, crushing any dissent. A country torn by ethnic differences, independence
brought with it mass insurgency. The source - a deep rooted divide over national
identity.
The country's largest ethnic group is the Burman people. Their dominance over the minorities such as the Karen and the Shan has long fuelled massive resentment. The minority groups took up arms and for over 50 years have been fighting for a state of their own. The generals that run Burma are intent on a country defined by a muddle of Buddhist and Marxist principles. The government proclaims its intention to "preserve and understand the culture and good traditions of the national races". Yet ethnic minorities are deprived of their economic, social and cultural rights on a massive scale. The regime has forced most minorities into various forms of cease-fire, but the Karen are still holding out. Correspondent joined them on a trip behind Burmese lines. Our aim was to find evidence of the regime's brutality. According to Amnesty International; the military regime commits a wide range of human rights violations including forcible relocation, torture, and extra-judicial killings. For the last 13 years Amnesty has documented the widespread use of forced labour of ethnic minorities by the army. The Karen have borne the brunt of this repression. American volunteers Early one morning we crouched in the undergrowth with a small group of people on the Thai - Burma border. They call themselves "Free Burma Rangers". As soon as the sun came up they were to sneak past the Burmese checkpoints and into Karen State. Their plan - to smuggle thousands of dollars of medical aid past the Burmese army lines to their own people. We joined two men who were waiting in the shadows. They are American, middle-aged volunteers in the war against Rangoon. Shannon's a dentist from Louisiana. He's a veteran of the trips. An ex-Special Forces soldier, he loves the adrenaline rush. His partner Don isn't so sure. Don is a Probation Officer in middle America. It's his first trip here and he knows the risks are high: "I am not here as a soldier of fortune or as a mercenary, I am here to help these people. But I will not sacrifice my life; I will defend my life, in anyway possible." Free Burma Rangers The Free Burma Rangers are a strange mix - young medics, soldiers and nurses. All trained by ex-American soldiers, running missions behind Burmese lines helping the internally displaced. Highly dangerous and illegal, the humanitarian assistance they give keeps the dream of Karen identity alive. I couldn't understand why the Americans were here - it's not their war. Shannon and Don's response was simple - somebody should do something. Shannon ignores the political dimensions of this conflict - for him it's a simple matter of good versus evil. "If they give up their arms, and give up their right to freedom all of a sudden the Karen tribe will exist no more. When you see that happening in front of your eyes in the modern day that is scary. It's the same thing the Nazis tried to do to the Jews. It is what was happening in Kosovo." Survival at great cost The regime denies a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing. It claims the war is against the rebels not the civilian population. But a few miles away the Burmese army was on the offensive, burning and looting its way through the Karen villages. From what we could see the aim was simple - to force the civilian Karen out towards Thailand and strangle any support for the rebels. It works - already 100,000 Karen are in refugee camps over the border. One of the nurses and team leaders Paw Htoo was reserved, hardly speaking to me. It took two weeks before she would tell me her story. Burmese soldiers attacked her village, killed her husband and threw her in prison. She was forced to give up her baby son so that he would survive. She escaped but returns to the jungle every year to give support to others in the same position. "Yesterday one woman told me her story and tears were flowing down her face but I didn't cry. If they cry, I don't. As a medic, I have to be strong. If I cry everyone would breakdown." Her tale was echoed by nearly everyone we met on our journey. Living in fear It's a forgotten war here. There are no bodies or mass graves - the regime knows better than to leave evidence of murder for outsiders to see. But the weapons it uses - starvation, terror and forced labour are just as effective. As we proceeded through the jungle on a journey of over 200 kilometres, we found pocket after pocket of frightened villagers hiding in the jungle, their homes destroyed by army raids. The Karen guerrillas are hardly an effective force anymore - they cannot protect the people from the attacks. It is only outside groups like the Rangers who can make a difference to help the civilians. And even they can do little more than administer basic medical aid and encouragement. As we travelled through Karen State the most they could do was administer malaria pills and tend to simple illnesses like dysentery or wounds from landmines. By the time we left Burma, pro-Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi had just been released from house arrest and it seemed the regime had begun to show a willingness to talk to the outside world. But in the jungle itself the army was still on the move. The danger is - by the time the world wakes up to the plight of the Karen it will be too late. -------------------------------------------------------------------
Myanmar's foreign investment drops sharply in
fiscal 2001-02 ------------------------------------------------------------------- |