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BURMA RELATED NEWS
- August 30 - 31, 2002.
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HEADLINES
------------------------------------------------------------------------ Reuters - Italian doctors get
suspended Thai jail term
AFP - TotalFinaElf faces forced
labour claims in Myanmar
Reuters - Myanmar's Suu Kyi returns to site of
stand-off
Asia Pulse - Asean Information
Seminars Launched in Philippines
Hindustan Times - EU team to visit
Myanmar in Sept
Daily Star - Myanmar
supportsDhaka-Yangon road
------------------------------------------------------------------------ Saturday August 31, 1:07 PM
Italian doctors get suspended Thai jail term TAK, Thailand (Reuters) - Eight Italian doctors and medical assistants arrested near the Myanmar border and charged with entering Thailand illegally were given two-month suspended jail terms, police said on Saturday. The six men and two women, all in their thirties, were arrested by soldiers in the northwest of Thailand on Friday after travelling from Myanmar, where the medical team said it had been treating ethnic Karen people. In July, Thailand banned aid workers and foreign journalists from areas close to the Myanmar border after a series of skirmishes between Thai and Myanmar troops and ethnic guerrillas. Police Colonel Rachata Sipsaion, an immigration officer, told reporters the Mae Sot court near the Myanmar border ruled on Friday that the eight had entered and departed Thailand without permission and sentenced them to four months in jail. But the court lowered the term to two months, suspended, and deportation since all defendants had confessed, Rachata said. "They will be under a house detention in Tak while we are getting the immigration police in Chiang Mai to check their backgrounds before deporting them," Rachata said. The medical team was arrested by soldiers in the town of Phobphra, 650 km northwest of Bangkok, after travelling from a part of Myanmar held by Karen National Union (KNU) guerrillas. Francesco Delobell, 37, a doctor, told reporters he had led a team of three other doctors and four medical assistants into Myanmar from Thailand on Wednesday to treat almost 500 Karen people. He said he was not aware he was in an area controlled by the KNU, an ethnic minority rebel group fighting the Myanmar government for greater autonomy. The Thai government has accused non-government organisations of supporting Myanmar rebel groups and has suggested foreign reporters have been stirring up trouble in the area. Delobell said he was the president of a non-government organisation called Popoli, which aimed to help treat poor people in all parts of the world. "If the Thai authorities would allow us, we'll continue to do that in a better way to help people that don't have any other means to be taken care of," Delobell told reporters. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Friday August 30, 12:50 PM
TotalFinaElf faces forced labour claims in Myanmar (AFP) - TotalFinaElf faces accusations it used forced labor in Myanmar after a Paris lawyer filed a complaint on behalf of workers who said they had to help build a pipeline there for the French oil giant. On Thursday, TotalFinaElf categorically denied claims it had used forced labour in the impoverished Asian country, after Paris-based lawyer William Bourdon said he filed a complaint Monday with investigating magistrates in Nanterre, west of Paris. The action charges TotalFinaElf chairman Thierry Desmarest with holding workers against their will, a crime which carries a 20-year sentence under French law. It is the first time TotalFinaElf, the fifth largest oil company in the world, has faced a formal complaint on the Myanmar charges in France. "It is unimaginable that a company like ours could have used forced labour at any time," a spokesman for the oil group told AFP Thursday. "Neither we nor our service suppliers have used forced labour," he stressed, adding: "We have not been notified (by judicial authorities) of anything". The complaint was brought on behalf of two Myanmar citizens who say they were forced to work on a pipeline begun by TotalFinaElf in 1994, and comes three months after the French firm was accused in Belgium of providing active support to Myanmar's military junta. Meanwhile, TotalFinaElf faces other legal actions linked to the September 2001 explosion of a chemical plant in southern Toulouse, and the December 1999 sinking of a decrepit oil tanker off France's northern Atlantic coast. On Thursday, Bourdon told AFP that he had been "hired to file the complaint by former Myanmar workers forced to work on the pipeline", which the French oil group built from an offshore Myanmar site to Thailand. The workers were now staying in an unspecified south-east Asian country for security reasons, but are prepared to testify before a French court, the lawyer added. In May, refugees filed a suit in a Belgian court alleging that TotalFinaElf was actively collaborating with the ruling military junta in Myanmar. In June, Myanmar workers initiated legal action in the United States against Unocal, a partner of TotalFinaElf on the Yadana pipeline project. TotalFinaElf and British independent Premier Oil exploit gas fields in the Andaman Sea that power Thai electric generating stations via two 60-kilometer (35-mile) pipelines that cut across southern Myanmar. But Action Birmanie, a human rights group representing the Belgian refugees, said TotalFinaElf was aware Myanmar's military regime was "systematically" committing crimes against humanity. The group also claims TotalFinaElf has provided "overall moral and financial support" to the regime, and that the company had "excellent knowledge" of the use of forced labor by partners responsible for pipeline security. On Thursday, Bourdon received support for the latest judicial action from the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Friday August 30, 11:08 AM
Myanmar's Suu Kyi returns to site of
stand-off
By Aung Hla Tun
DALA, Myanmar (Reuters) - Myanmar pro-democracy opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi visited a township south of Yangon on Friday, two years after her last attempt to travel to the area sparked a confrontation with military rulers. The 57-year-old Nobel Peace laureate, who was released from 19 months of house arrest in May, left her home early on Friday and travelled to the township of Dala by ferry from Yangon. At the new Dala office of her National League for Democracy (NLD) she was greeted by hundreds of cheering supporters, chanting: "Long Live Aung San Suu Kyi!" In August 2000, Suu Kyi and other senior NLD members tried to travel to Dala by car but were blocked en route by police. After a nine-day roadside stand-off, which sparked international condemnation of the junta, Suu Kyi was forcibly returned home. Soon afterwards, Suu Kyi attempted to travel by rail to Myanmar's second city, Mandalay. The authorities again prevented her from travelling, and placed her under house arrest. But since her release on May 6, Suu Kyi has been allowed to travel without restrictions. NLD officials say she has been informing the military of her trips outside Yangon in advance. She made a long political trip upcountry to Mandalay in June, and another trip to southeastern Mon state in July. "We once tried to come here with the same purpose, but we could not fulfil our intentions," Suu Kyi said in a speech at the Dala NLD office. She said the junta should not fear opposition. "There must be strong opposition in democracy," she said. "Only when the opposition is strong can democracy be strong." The military government began sporadic meetings with Suu Kyi in October 2000, and since then it has eased its hardline stance towards the NLD, which won Myanmar's last election in 1990 by a wide margin but was never allowed to govern. The junta has freed hundreds of political prisoners over the last two years, including more than 300 NLD members. But the military government has held no talks with Suu Kyi since her release from house arrest, and her demands for a substantive dialogue on the country's political future have so far gone unanswered. Earlier this month the U.N. special envoy to Myanmar, Razali Ismail, said meaningful talks would begin soon. But since then, hopes of an imminent breakthrough have faded. Diplomats say the main reason the junta has eased its stance towards Suu Kyi is the dismal state of the economy -- the ruling generals want to get international sanctions lifted. But they say the junta hopes to avoid making any further concessions to Suu Kyi and the NLD. ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Friday August 30, 12:34 PM ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hindustan Times
EU team to visit Myanmar in Sept
Agence France-Presse Bangkok, August 30 A European Union (EU) delegation is to visit Myanmar next month, returning after a March trip when it campaigned for democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's release from house arrest, officials said on Friday. The delegation will have representatives from the Danish presidency, the future presidency Greece, the European Commission, and the Council Secretariat which services the Council of Ministers, said a Danish embassy spokesman. The spokesman said the delegation's itinerary in Yangon during the September 8-10 trip was not yet finalised but they would be hoping to meet Aung San Suu Kyi as they had done on previous visits. "We hope and expect them to meet a significant representation of relevant political players in Rangoon (Yangon ) like last time," he said, adding they could include United Nations agencies and non-governmental organisations. The delegates also plan to see the other top members of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD). During the last EU mission, the delegation pushed for the release of political prisoners including the opposition leader herself who had been confined to her lakeside home since October 2000. After she was freed in May, Aung San Suu Kyi said the release of all political prisoners in the country was her party's top priority. She has recently hinted that a mass prisoner release, to clear the jails of an estimated 1,500 dissidents, would be a precondition to her beginning a long awaited dialogue with the regime. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Daily Star - Fri.
August 30, 2002
Myanmar supportsDhaka-Yangon
road
BSS, Dhaka The Myanmar government supports direct road communications between Dhaka and Yangon through Teknaf-Sitwe border points to help improve economic and trade relations between Bangladesh and Myanmar. "This highway will also greatly help towards further developing the bilateral relations as well as establishing link with the South Asian and South East Asian countries," Communications Minister Nazmul Huda said this while he was talking to newsmen at the airport after his return from an official visit to Myanmar and Thailand. During his separate meetings with several ministers of the Myanmar government in Yangon, they supported his proposal for 'Bangladesh-Myanmar Friendship Highway' or 'Bangladesh-Myanmar Friendship Bridge,' he said. He held meetings with Secretary-1 of the State Peace and Development Council Lt. Gen Khin Nyunt, Foreign Minister U Aung Win, Minister for Economic Development and National Planning U Soe Tha, Construction Minister Major General Saw Tun and Commerce Minister Brigadier General Pyi Sone. "When I placed my proposal before them in support of increased bilateral relations for mutual benefit in trade and commerce between the two countries, Lt Gen Khin Nyunt and other ministers welcomed it," he said. Huda during his meeting with the Myanmar Commerce Minister stressed increasing the trade volume and supply of goods on reduced rates through establishing direct road link between the two countries. "The Myanmar Commerce Minister reciprocated the same," he told the journalists. He also proposed launching a ferry service across the Naaf River and said his visit to Myanmar from August 25 to 27 was a grand success. "This visit will in fact bring about a fruitful outcome in establishing Dhaka-Yangon direct road link to promote the bilateral trade and economic relations between the two countries," he said. Communications Secretary Syed Rezaul Hayat, Chief Engineer of Roads and Highways Division Md Fazlul Huq and concerned senior officials of the ministry of communications accompanied him. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ |