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BURMA RELATED NEWS
- October 18, 2002.
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HEADLINES
-------------------------------------------------------------------- AP - U.N. human
rights expert begins Myanmar mission
AFP - French oil giant faces probe of
Myanmar forced labour claims
AFP - Human Rights Watch pushes
Myanmar on child soldiers
AFP - Aung San Suu Kyi
rallies supporters on trip to northern Myanmar
AFP - UN rights envoy meets junta
leaders, UN agencies in Myanmar
Reuters - UN rights envoy in Myanmar
to investigate abuses
Human Rights Watch - Burma's Denial
of Child Soldier Use "Not Credible"
BKK Post - Bangkok to host political
convention
BKK Post - Myawaddy rocked by spate
of bombings
The Nation - Burma crackdown spurs
refugee alert
The Nation - BURMA-THAI BORDER: Panic
as 10 more bombs discovered
Asia Times - Uncertainty haunts
Thai-Myanmar border deal
BT Online - Australian
travel warning cites S'pore, 8 neighbours
-------------------------------------------------------------------- U.N. human rights expert
begins Myanmar mission
Thu Oct 17,10:39 AM ET YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - A United Nations expert arrived in Myanmar Thursday on his latest mission to assess the human rights situation in the military-ruled country, including allegations that its army uses rape to terrorize opponents. Paulo Sergio Pinheiro told reporters that he will visit political prisoners he saw on his last trip as well as meet with government and opposition leaders. Pinheiro, who is making his fourth visit to Myanmar, is expected to present his report on Myanmar to the U.N. General Assembly in November. He last visited Myanmar in February. Myanmar's military regime has been criticized by Western nations and U.N. agencies for its poor human rights record, including forced labor and the detention of political prisoners. Pinheiro told reporters a focus of his visit would be to look into allegations that Myanmar's army used rape as a weapon of terror against women of the Shan ethnic minority, which is fighting for autonomy. The government on Wednesday said it welcomed such an investigation by Pinheiro, who will be in the country for 12 days. "The government of Myanmar looks forward to an independent third party review of the situation since false reports of a systemic government policy of rape have been distributed," said a statement from Myanmar's junta, received in Bangkok. Myanmar has repeatedly denied allegations that its soldiers raped ethnic Shan women to retaliate against Shan guerrillas. The allegations were made in a June report by the Shan Women's Action Network and the Shan Human Rights Foundation, two Thailand-based rights groups. Their report, which claimed to document 173 cases of rape and sexual violence against girls and women, received widespread publicity in July when the U.S. State Department took note of it. In a preliminary report to the United Nations last month, Pinheiro said that Myanmar's people are suffering from severe economic hardship and continuing human rights violations that can only be solved with government cooperation. He warned that political and economic factors in the country were leading to a humanitarian crisis and said the situation would not improve until there was "substantive progress in the process of national reconciliation and political transition." Speaking Thursday, he said he was especially interested in assessing what had changed after the release from house arrest in May of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. In his report last month, he said her release was an important development and a test of confidence-building. -------------------------------------------------------------------- French oil giant faces probe of
Myanmar forced labour claims
Thursday October 17, 15:59 PM
PARIS, Oct 17 (AFP) - A French state prosecutor's office has begun investigating accusations that the giant TotalFinaElf oil company used forced labour to build a gas pipeline in Myanmar, legal sources told AFP on Thursday, confirming a report by the state-owned RFI radio station. The inquiry, into possible charges of sequestration, follows a complaint by two Myanmar citizens who say they were forced to work on a pipeline begun in 1994 by a consortium that included the French company. A spokesman for TotalFinaElf refused Thursday to comment on the inquiry by the prosecutor's office in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, saying the company had not been informed of the legal proceedings. He added that TotalFinaElf's position on the claims had "not budged an inch" since the initial complaint was filed in August with investigating magistrates in Nanterre. Then the company categorically denied the claims that it had used forced labour in the impoverished Asian country, which was formerly known as Burma. The complaint specifically named the oil giant's chief executive, Thierry Desmarest, and the former head of the Total company's operations in Myanmar, Herve Madeo. However it was not known whether the prosecutor's office was considering charging the two men specifically, the company as a whole, or laying charges against persons unknown. The charge of sequestration carries a possible 20-year jail sentence under French law. It is the first time TotalFinaElf, the fourth largest oil company in the world, has faced a formal complaint on the Myanmar charges in its home country. However a complaint over the same affair was brought before a court in Belgium last April, alleging crimes against humanity, and a US company involved in the same pipeline project, Unocal, is facing possible federal action in the United States. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Human Rights Watch pushes Myanmar on
child soldiers
Thursday October 17, 20:07 PM
NEW YORK, Oct 17 (AFP) - Human Rights Watch pressed its case Thursday against Myanmar's military regime, insisting a report claiming more than a fifth of the soldiers serving in its national army were children was accurate. "We're very disappointed that, despite ample evidence to the contrary, the government continues to deny the military's use of children as soldiers," said Jo Becker, children's rights advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, a New York-based watchdog group. "It is the widespread forced recruitment of children by Burma's army that tarnishes the image of the country, not efforts to bring these abuses to light." The report released Tuesday revealed children as young as 11 were being forcibly recruited into the army where they were made to participate in human rights abuses. The regime in Yangon slammed the report as a smear campaign. "It is no accident that the report appeared on the eve of the visit by a high-ranking UN official and at a time the UN General Assembly is starting to consider human rights questions," it said. UN special rapporteur on human rights Paulo Sergio Pinheiro was due to arrive here for an 11-day visit -- his fourth to the country. The government had asked the Brazilian academic to investigate allegations made in another report released in July which said the military used rape as a weapon of war against the Shan ethnic minority. Myanmar's army has doubled in size since 1988, and with an estimated 350,000 soldiers, it is now one of the largest in Southeast Asia. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Aung San Suu Kyi rallies
supporters on trip to northern Myanmar
Friday October 18, 4:45 PM
YANGON, Oct 18 (AFP) - Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has returned from a trip to northern Myanmar where she met thousands of supporters and promised to do her utmost to achieve political change, her party said Friday. Aung San Suu Kyi drove into Yangon late Thursday shortly after UN rights envoy Paulo Sergio Pinheiro arrived for an 11-day mission during which he is expected to meet the National League for Democracy (NLD) leader. The four-day journey to Pyay in Pago division, some 180 kilometres (110 miles) north of Yangon, took in many towns and settlements along the way. "There were no less than 500 to 1,000 townspeople on hand to greet her at every stop," an NLD official monitoring the trip told AFP. On Wednesday night she stopped at Min Hla, a town roughly halfway between Yangon and Pyay she was prevented from entering in 1998 by military authorities. Speaking to a crowd of 800 supporters waiting to greet her there, she promised to do everything she could to bring about political change in the military-ruled country. "Taking time to do something is very different from wasting time going about it," she said in an apparent reference to her stalled dialogue with the junta, which began in October 2000. The party official said in impromptu speeches to large groups of party members and supporters gathered along the route, she discussed issues like high food prices, electricity shortages and bad roads. "This shows the country needs political change," she was quoted as telling the crowds, while emphasising reform could only be achieved with the support of the people. The political trip was one of a series Aung San Suu Kyi has undertaken since May when she was released from 19 months of house arrest with a promise from the ruling junta that she would be free to travel throughout the country. Previous attempts to defy a ban on leaving the capital Yangon had ended in stand-offs with the government. During the latest trip, she also took the opportunity to pay homage at famous Buddhist shrines along the route, the NLD official said. Plainclothes security officers were present throughout the journey, where she was accompanied by NLD vice chairman Tin Oo and 15 members of the party's youth wing, eyewitnesses said. -------------------------------------------------------------------- UN rights envoy meets junta leaders,
UN agencies in Myanmar
Friday October 18, 4:51 PM
YANGON, Oct 18 (AFP) - United Nations human rights envoy Paulo Sergio Pinheiro met leaders in Myanmar's military junta and UN agencies operating here Friday as he began his fourth mission to the country, officials said. The Brazilian academic is expected to see democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi before leaving Myanmar on October 28, but no date has been set for the talks. After arriving in Yangon late Thursday Pinheiro was greeted at the airport by Deputy Foreign Minister Khin Maung Win and the pair met again for an hour on Friday morning. He also held a conference with the heads of six UN agencies operating in Myanmar including the World Health Organisation and the Food and Agriculture Organisation, officials said. According to an official schedule, he is expected to see Foreign Minister Win Aung and Home Minister Colonel Tin Hlaing later Friday. On Saturday he is slated to see influential military intelligence chief General Khin Nyunt. Khun Tun Oo, chairman of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD) told AFP that his party and others representing ethnic minorities were also due to see Pinheiro on Saturday. The UN envoy's visit comes as the ruling junta faces a series of damning human rights allegations. The US-based watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Tuesday it believed more than a fifth of the soldiers serving in Myanmar's army could be under the age of 18. And in July, two Thai-based rights organisations representing the Shan ethnic minority released a report claiming the military used rape as a weapon of war against their people. Myanmar's government has repeatedly denied the rape allegations and said this week that it had invited Pinheiro to make an "independent review" of the claims. Pinheiro is due to make a three-day visit to Shan state beginning on October 22, but Shan groups have said they have little faith the military government will allow him to investigate the issue thoroughly. "The mission was at the invitation of Yangon's military regime and they will show him only what they want," said Hseng Noung from the Shan Women's Action Network (SWAN) which helped compile the rape report. Hseng Noung said Thursday that Myanmar authorities had already taken steps to cover up the truth in many areas where major human rights and sexual abuses were taking place. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Friday October 18,00:08 AM
UN rights envoy in Myanmar to investigate
abuses
YANGON, Oct 18 (Reuters) - A United Nations envoy was in Myanmar on Friday at the start of a 10-day visit to probe alleged human rights abuses by the ruling military and spur stalled talks between the generals and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, special representative of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, told reporters he would visit eastern Shan State to investigate reports of the systematic rape of ethnic minority women and girls by government troops. ``The (rape) report is one point of the agenda,'' he told reporters after arriving late on Thursday night. He said he would meet several junta leaders, including Secretary One General Khin Nyunt, and pro-democracy icon Suu Kyi. ``I would like to know the prospect of dialogue between several political interlocutors in this country,'' he said. Suu Kyi, who heads the National League for Democracy (NLD), was released from 19 months house arrest in May, sparking hopes of political talks between the opposition and the military. But so far those hopes have been disappointed, despite repeated calls from Suu Kyi for dialogue. The NLD won 1990 elections in Myanmar by a landslide, but has been denied power by the military who have ruled the country in various guises for four decades. The Myanmar government said on Wednesday it invited Pinheiro to make his fourth visit to the country in a bid to dispel allegations its troops used rape as a weapon of war against ethnic minority girls and women. The invitation to Pinheiro followed criticism by Washington and a report from two minority rights groups saying Myanmar troops had raped at least 625 girls and women between 1996 and 2001 in Shan state in the east of the country. On Wednesday, pressure group Human Rights Watch accused the Myanmar military of widespread use of force to recruit an estimated 70,000 child soldiers. It said many of them had been forced to commit atrocities against ethnic minority civilians. Analysts are sceptical Pinheiro will see an accurate picture of the human rights situation during his trip to Myanmar. U.N. officials told Reuters on Friday that Pinheiro would also visit two prisons and meet a number of prominent political prisoners before leaving on October 28. The United States and several European countries have imposed political and economic sanctions on the regime, demanding that it clean up its rights record and move Myanmar toward democracy. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Human Rights
Watch
Burma's Denial of Child Soldier Use "Not Credible" (New York, October 18, 2002) The Burmese government?s claim that it does not use child soldiers is contradicted by the evidence, Human Rights Watch said today. Burma has claimed a recent Human Rights Watch report is "just another example of attempts to tarnish the image of Myanmar and the Myanmar Tatmadaw (military) in the eyes of the international community." "We're very disappointed that, despite ample evidence to the contrary, the government continues to deny the military's use of children as soldiers," said Jo Becker, Children's Rights advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "It is the widespread forced recruitment of children by Burma's army that tarnishes the image of the country, not efforts to bring these abuses to light." On October 16, Human Rights Watch released a report based on numerous first-hand testimonies of children who had been forcibly recruited by Burma's military. The report found that boys as young as 11 are forced into the army, brutally treated, and forced to commit human rights abuses and fight against armed opposition groups. Although the vast majority of Burma's child soldiers are in government armed forces, armed opposition groups were found to include children as well. The government claimed on Thursday that the military is purely voluntary and that national laws setting the enlistment age at 18 are "strictly enforced." "Burma's denial of the use of child soldiers is not credible," said Becker. "We urge the government to take positive steps to confront the problem. These include demobilizing all children from its forces and putting effective systems in place to ensure that children are not recruited and that those responsible are held accountable." The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in Myanmar, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, is currently in Burma for his fourth visit to the country. Human Rights Watch has urged him to raise the recruitment and use of children as soldiers with the government of Burma and to report on this issue to the United Nations General Assembly. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Bangkok Post - Friday
18 October 2002
Bangkok to host political convention Achara Ashayagachat Thai political parties will co-host a meeting of Asian political parties in Bangkok next month. The second international conference of Asian political parties, scheduled for Nov 22-24, is expected to be attended by representatives of 40 parties in 17 countries The first conference took place in Manila, the Philippines, two years ago with more than 100 participants from 19 countries. The Bangkok conference, aimed at promoting democracy, will address economic issues, regional security issues, and define mechanisms for regional political and economic cooperation at the level of political parties, the Thai Rak Thai party said. To date, 42 political parties from 17 countries _ in both government and opposition camps _ have confirmed their participation. Among leading politicians to join the conference are Philippine President Gloria Arroyo, who will give a luncheon speech on Nov 23, Prince Norodom Rannariddh of Cambodia's Funcinpec party, Sam Rainsy of Cambodia's opposition Sam Rainsy party, and former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Safina of the Awami League party. Sonia Gandhi, president of India's Congress party, has also confirmed her attendance. Representatives of North Korea's ruling Workers party will be sitting next to their counterparts from South Korea's Grand National party at the Bangkok conference. Gen Than Shwe, chairman of Burma's ruling State Peace and Development Council, and Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of Burma's opposition National League for Democracy party, have yet to confirm their participation. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Bangkok Post - Friday
18 October 2002
Myawaddy rocked by spate of bombings Tak _ Burmese authorities have warned Myawaddy people to stay home from 10pm-6am following a series of bombings in and around the town. On Wednesday, six bombs were found planted in and around the town and three of them went off, but no injuries were reported. A Thai border official said a concrete bridge on the Asian Highway near the 356th Infantry Battalion, 18km west of Myawaddy, was also damaged by a bomb about 7am yesterday. No casualties were reported. A secondary school in Myawaddy was ordered closed after a home-made time bomb was found nearby and traffic was diverted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- The Nation
Burma crackdown spurs refugee
alert
Published on Oct 18, 2002 The use of torture, rape, forced labour, extortion and summary executions in eastern Burma by government soldiers is continuing, and Thailand can expect a steady flow of internally displaced persons (IDPs), according to a recent assessment by Refugees International (RI). "This year has seen a marked increase in the frequency of counter-insurgency operations in ethnic minority areas, leading in turn to an increase in the level of internal displacement," RI said. IDPs' food stores are routinely destroyed or confiscated by the Burmese army, and the additional threat of starvation and illness is especially common. High rates of malnutrition and deaths from preventable illness have been reported by those able to secretly access IDPs, the refugee group said. The report said the number of internally displaced people (IDPs) increased this year due to the frequency of counter-insurgency operations in ethnic-dominated areas, and the fact a solution is nowhere in sight. "Since 1996, an estimated minimum of 1 million people living in the ethnic states that border Thailand have been displaced," RI said. "The fact that 42 per cent of IDPs in eastern Burma choose to live on the run and in hiding rather than move to government-run relocation sites adds credence to the fact that many relocation sites resemble concentration camps," it said. RI representative Veronika Martin and human rights lawyer Betsy Apple recently completed an assessment mission to the Thai-Burmese border, according to a statement given to The Nation yesterday. The RI report said IDPs inside Burma can be divided into two categories: those living under the strict control of the Burmese government in "relocation sites", and those living in hiding in the jungle from the Burmese army. "Both options present a high risk of human rights abuses, a lack of food, and limited or no access to healthcare and education," it said. RI quoted a recent report compiled by the Burma Border Consortium (BBC), saying more than 2,500 villages have been either destroyed, relocated, or abandoned, affecting 633,000 individuals over the last five years in eastern Burma. The RI report also said that there are no guarantees that the IDPs will be protected from abuse by Thai authorities or receive humanitarian assistance. The Thai government has tightly circumscribed the UN High Commissioner for Refugees' role in protecting refugees so that, in effect, the agency is unable to carry out its protection mandate along the border with Burma, RI said. -------------------------------------------------------------------- The
Nation
BURMA-THAI BORDER: Panic as 10 more bombs discovered Published on Oct 18, 2002 Rangoon blames KNU; others believe splinter group behind terror campaign Ten more bombs were found planted around the Burmese border town of Myawaddy yesterday, spreading fear among the local community and prompting town residents to nervously look through their yards for more explosive devices. Myawaddy authorities are still searching for more explosives, they said.The 10 bombs were found in separate searches throughout the small frontier town, which sits across the river from Tak's Mae Sot district. There were no reports of any arrests. The officials conducted the searches after two separate bombs exploded in Myawaddy on Tuesday and Wednesday. No one was injured in the blasts. The explosion on Tuesday coincided with the re-opening of the Myawaddy border checkpoint and two other gateways, which Rangoon had ordered shut in May. The Burmese government blamed the bombings on the rebel Karen National Union (KNU), which has not yet reached a peace agreement with the junta. "The KNU terrorist group was systematically scheming to commit terrorist acts to panic the people, to delay the flow of commodities, and to jeopardise Myanmar-Thai normalised relations," the government-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper said. The KNU denied any involvement, saying its armed units don't target civilians. Thai officials suspected that the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, a splinter group that broke away from the KNU and re-aligned with the Burmese government, might be behind the terror campaign. They said the DKBA had benefited tremendously from the five-month-long border closing because they controlled the area where illegal crossing were carried out. Local Burmese residents in Myawaddy, on the other hand, said the Wednesday explosion may have been caused by leftover ordinance from fighting between KNU and Burmese government troops. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Asia Times - Oct 18,
2002
Uncertainty haunts Thai-Myanmar border deal By Marwaan Macan-Markar BANGKOK - This week's opening of the Thailand-Myanmar border after a five-month dispute is a key step in normalizing ties between the neighbors, but the lack of transparency in the negotiations that led to the opening has caused concern in some quarters. "The opening is a clear sign that both governments want normalcy, and that is good," said Somchai Homlaor, secretary general of Forum-Asia, a Bangkok-based regional human-rights watchdog. "The economic, social and political benefits that will arise from this opening cannot be minimized," added Chayachoke Chulasiriwongs, head of the international relations department at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University. However, human rights activists and other Myanmar watchers say the lack of openness in the negotiations that resulted in Tuesday's opening of the checkpoints along the 2,400-kilometer border means there is no assurance that border tensions will not happen again. According to Somchai, the need for transparency on the deal to open the checkpoints four cross-border points in the Thai provinces of Chiang Rai, Talk, Ranong and Kanchanaburi is important for two reasons. First, he said, there is a need to know what terms prompted Yangon to change its mind and open the border after the five-month standoff that saw several failed attempts to settle the problem. Second, he added, more information on the latest border tensions would help explain how such border closings could be avoided in the future. "We are not aware about the terms that both governments agreed on to open the border, and that can be troubling," said So Aug, external affairs director at the Network for Democracy and Development, a Thai-based group made up of Myanmese living here in exile. In fact, the senior Thai diplomat involved in the negotiations provided little information to the media about what had persuaded Yangon's military government to open the many checkpoints along the border. Signs of a thaw in the dispute were evident in recent weeks, particularly when Myanmese Foreign Minister Win Aug visited Bangkok and met with his counterpart, Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai, this month. The talks came after Surakiart visited Yangon last month on a fence-mending exercise. Myanmar closed its border with Thailand in late May after accusing the Thai army of giving support to Shan ethnic rebels. Yangon said this assistance included the Thai forces' firing of shells as the rebel troops advanced on the Myanmese army along the Thailand-Myanmar border. But Bangkok denied the charge, saying its troops only fired warning shots to prevent the conflict from spreading into Thai territory. Myanmar's arbitrary closure of the border not only soured relations between the two Southeast Asian countries, but was seen by Thais as a breach of an agreement the two countries had earlier arrived at on how to avoid sudden closures. The last time Myanmar's military rulers behaved in such a unilateral manner and ordered the border's closure was two years ago, after Myanmese dissidents took control of the Myanmese Embassy in the Thai capital. According to Myanmar watchers, the two countries had come to an agreement in recent years to work out any border problems through special committees that would avoid unilateral closures that harm commerce at cross-border points. Myanmese and Thai officials were to be part of these committees, including one for the military and another for civilians. The lack of evidence that such an agreement was discussed prior to this week's border opening may come back to haunt Thailand in the future, said Somchai. "It may mean they ignored talking about the available mechanisms to prevent sudden border closings." That, according to Somchai, could result in the Myanmese junta closing the border again, "since there were no guarantees made this time to find mutually agreeable solutions". Already, security alerts have been raised along different border points between Thailand and Myanmar, after six bombs were found planted in and around the Myanmese town of Myawaddy, opposite Mae Sot district in western Thailand. The first bomb exploded on Tuesday, and a second and third went off on Wednesday. The rest were disarmed. Traders on both sides of the border felt the economic effect of its closure in the last few months, especially Thai traders who move a high volume of goods. The customs chief at Mae Sot border district said the border closure cost Thai traders the opportunities to export 1.8 billion baht (US$42.8 million) and Myanmar more than 300 million baht in revenues, according to the English-language daily Bangkok Post on Wednesday. According to some estimates, the value of border trade can often exceed 140 million baht per day. The border tourism trade is estimated at 400 million baht per day. But a drop in another thriving trade across the border - illicit drugs - would not have troubled Bangkok, since it has been trying to curb the flow of millions of methamphetamine pills that regularly go into Thailand from Myanmar. "During the closure, the amount of amphetamines entering Thailand dropped drastically, but now with the opening, the drug flow will increase," said So. For Somchai, however, there is another larger concern: the Thai government is trying to restore normalcy with Myanmar at the expense of ignoring Yangon's notorious human-rights record. "It is not getting any better, although the international community thinks that the situation is changing," said Noung, spokeswoman for the Shan Women's Action Network (SWAN), a rights watchdog. (Inter Press Service) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The Business Times
Online
October 18, 2002
Australian travel warning cites S'pore, 8 neighbours By Vince Chong (SINGAPORE) Singapore, along with eight South-east Asian countries, was cited in a high-level travel warning issued yesterday by the Australian government to its citizens in the wake of the Bali bombings. Insiders in the local hospitality industry are concerned about how this would affect their business, though there were no last-minute hotel cancellations as of yesterday evening. 'Threats against Australians and Australian interests in Singapore are high given possible terrorist action,' said Australia on its foreign affairs ministry website. 'Australians should exercise extreme caution and monitor developments that might affect their safety.' The warning on the website followed Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer saying yesterday that 'disturbing new information of generic threats' in Indonesia had been received, though no further details were given. The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) said that the situation would be monitored. Reuters quoted Mr Downer as attributing the new information to intelligence sources, which was serious enough to warrant a significant upgrade of its travel warnings to Indonesia as well as other South-east Asian countries. These are Singapore, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Phillipines and Thailand. A new high-level travel advisory was also issued against Brunei. The only South-east Asian nation whose travel advisory was not affected yesterday was Vietnam. According to STB figures for the months of January to August, Australia accounted for the fourth largest number of visitor arrivals, about 360,000 or 7.2 per cent of total arrivals. Indonesia accounted for the bulk of about 870,000 arrivals, or 17.3 per cent, while Japan was second with about 472,000, or 9.4 per cent. Visitor arrivals from China totalled 450,000, or 8.9 per cent. A total of just over five million visitors was posted in this period, representing a dip of 2.4 per cent from the same period in 2001. Local hotels told BT yesterday that while there had been no drastic cancellations from Australia yet, there are worries that the warning may result in poorer business. Marina Mandarin director of marketing Ailynn Seah said: 'The situation is already bad enough and with such a warning put out, it's quite sure that there will be cancellations, but we will have to wait a while more to get a clearer picture.' Fullerton corporate communications manager Rennie Loh concurred that business was as usual yesterday, and that the situation would have to be monitored for the next few days. Jones Lang Lasalle corporate advisory vice-president Corinna Toh, on the other hand, felt that the travel warning may not hit Singapore as hard given that Australians are comfortable with the Republic. Yesterday's wire report quoted Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer as saying in parliament: 'We have been concerned for a long time about the activities of organisations in the region, such as Abu Sayyaf in the southern Philippines.' 'It is a part of the world where there have been considerable problems with terrorist organisations.' The Australian government's warning follows the flak it received after the Bali blast in which most of the victims were Australians. The government has been accused of not warning its citizens sufficiently about the risks in Indonesia. Meanwhile, two bombs went off yesterday in southern Philippines, killing at least six people. It was said to be the work of terrorists. -------------------------------------------------------------------- |