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BURMA RELATED NEWS
- January 30, 2003.
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HEADLINES
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Asia Pulse - Asean Ministers Launch
New Travel Initiative
Reuters - Myanmar lets Amnesty probe
rights situation
AFP - Bangladesh, Myanmar start
shipping service
AP - 600 refugees from Myanmar
return home
The Guardian - Amnesty allowed to
visit Burma
The Nation - Asean fair to be held in
Chiang Mai
Asian Tribune - No plan for Burmese
Junta to talk with National League for Democracy.
Asian Tribune - Touch of nobility
dies with a Shan princess :Former first lady of Burma shattered many feudal
taboos
Asia Times - Dark days
for Asian journalism
-------------------------------------------------------------------- Thursday January 30, 9:46 AM
Asean Ministers Launch New Travel Initiative PHNOM PENH, Jan 30 Asia Pulse - Tourism ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have made a tough stand against terrorism even as it launched a new initiative to counter the effects of negative travel advisories at the just-concluded 6th ASEAN Ministers meeting held here. The meeting coincided with the 22nd ASEAN Tourism Forum (ATF). The Ministers meeting committed to implement the ASEAN Tourism Agreement signed by ASEAN leaders also in Phnom Penh last November. Attendees were Pehin Dato Abdul Rahman Taig, Minister of Industry and Primary Resources, Brunei Darussalam; Veng Sereyvuth, Senior Minister and Minister of Tourism, Cambodia; Sapta Nirwandar, Executive Secretary to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Indonesia; Somphong Mongkholvilay, Minister to the Prime Minister's office, Minister GMS, Lao PDR; Dato Paduka Abdul Kadir Shiekh Fadziem Minister of Culture, Arts and Tourism, Malaysia; Brigadier General Thein Zaw, Minister of Hotels and Tourism, Myanmar; Richard J. Gordon, Secretary of Tourism, Philippines; Raymond Lim, Minister of State for Trade and Industry and Foreign Affairs, Singapore; Sontaya Kunplome, Minister of Tourism and Sports, Thailand; Pham Tu, Vice-Chairman of Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, Vietnam; Tran Duc Minh, Deputy-Secretary General of ASEAN Secretariat; Gu Zhaoxi, Vice Chairman of the China National Tourism Administration; Satoshi Iwamura, Vice-Minister for Transport and International Affairs, Ministry of Land, Infrastr Also in attendance were DOT Undersecretary Oscar Palabyab; Phineas Alburo, Tourism Attache in Singapore and Dinno M. Oblena, Third Secretary & vice Consul, Philippine embassy. The Ministers outlined a series of measures, including a dedicated website aimed at boosting tourism to the region, and enhancing the region's competency in dealing with threats of terrorism. Gordon said the ASEAN +3 groupings, which also included China, Japan and South Korea, might in the future find itself in a position to observe countries such as the United Kingdom were prone to terrorism and gassing. "The spectre of retaliation looms. I don't want it to happen, this is some time off and we're not planning anything," Gordon said in a veiled threat to European nations reliant on tourism. It will be recalled that the Philippines, which organized 2002 anti-terrorism conference that brought together for the first time international security and tourism officials, is a strong advocate for such tenure. One of the measures is the creation of an ASEAN webpage to provide precise and timely information on tourism safety and security. The webpage will provide the official information on safety and security for public and private, media as well as foreign governments. The plan is that each of the ASEAN countries +3 to allocate two tourism officials to monitor any troubled spots" in the region that might impact tourism, from newspapers, their own intelligence networks. The "on time, all the time" information will then be disseminated on the new Tourism Safety" webpage that can be linked to the ASEAN Secretariat based in Jakarta, Indonesia. Gordon, who is also the incoming chairman of the Pacific Asia Tourism Association (PATA), said that such a "source bank" will help counter any reaction on banning travel to ASEAN, as had happened in the past. He said tourism must continue to undertake security measures, saying "there has been a paradigm shift, having suffered the impact from 9-11 and the Bali bombing, each of ASEAN country recognizes the needs to protect tourism, which provides livelihood to many people. The terrorists don't just kill people; more hideous is they kill livelihoods. At the meeting, Gordon called on his counterparts to put in action "security protectiveness," saying that they must continue to engage the other relevant government bodies in combating terrorism to ensure safety and security of travelers in the region. With regards to advisories, Gordon said, "an advisory is very damaging. It's usually just a way to protect the butt of the ambassador concerned." Other commitments made during the conference are: - Encourage private sector such as travel agencies, airlines, hotels and tourism-related establishments to work in partnership with member-countries to implement their safety and security measures, including information sharing and cooperation. - Work closely to build capacity throughout the region by enhancing human resources competency in tourism safety and security. - Cooperate with law enforcement agencies to ensure the strengthening of security in airports, seaports, and all tourist sites. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Myanmar lets Amnesty probe
rights situation
YANGON, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Military-ruled Myanmar, keen to break out of its economic and political isolation, allowed representatives from human rights watchdog Amnesty International into the country on Thursday for the first time. Government officials told Reuters two Amnesty representatives had arrived in Yangon for a 10-day stay, but gave no further details of their visit. The United Nations says Myanmar has around 1,200 political prisoners, many of whom were detained when the army refused to accept a 1990 landslide election victory by nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy. Human rights groups and Western governments also accuse the Myanmar military of the systematic rape of women and girls in a war against ethnic minority separatists, using forced labour and forced conscription of child soldiers. The ruling generals, under intense international political pressure, released Suu Kyi from house arrest in May last year but have so far been reluctant to talk with the NLD about political transition in the impoverished country. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Bangladesh, Myanmar start
shipping service
CHITTAGONG, Bangladesh, Jan 30 (AFP) - A shipping service began Thursday between Bangladesh and Myanmar, marking the first legal sea vessel between the neighbours since a 1988 coup in Yangon. The Singapore-flagged container ship left Bangladesh's main port at Chittagong for a two-day journey to Yangon. "The launching of this service would reduce cost and save time," said Nelum Attanayake of Orient Express Lines, the ship's owners. Earlier, most sea trade between the neighbours was routed via Singapore, a 10-day journey, said Ahsanul Huq Chowdhury, Orient Express Lines' local representative. The step comes a month after Myanmar Senior General Than Shwe came to Bangladesh, becoming the first leader of the Yangon junta to visit since the 1988 coup. The two countries agreed to boost trade. Myanmar, then known as Burma, was one of the first countries to recognise Bangladesh after it won independence from Pakistan in 1971. But relations were strained in the early 1990s when around 250,000 Rohingya Muslims flooded into Bangladesh from Myanmar, claiming atrocities by the junta. Ties have improved since then, with the repatriation of most of the refugees under a United Nations agreement, but more than 20,000 still live in camps in Bangladesh. The neighbours have a small amount of bilateral trade, with Myanmar exporting timber, maize, rice and fish and Bangladesh selling fertiliser, cement and medicine. -------------------------------------------------------------------- 600 refugees from Myanmar
return home
YA PHAW, Thailand (AP) _ About 600 villagers from Myanmar who recently crossed the border into Thailand to flee fighting between government troops and ethnic Karen rebels returned home voluntarily Thursday, Thai officials said. The refugees, who fled the villages of Lay Khaw and U Ru Hta during the last two weeks of January, said they would rather return home than live in a refugee camp in Thailand. They had temporarily stayed at a Buddhist monastery in Lay Khaw village in Thailand's Tak province, 370 kilometers (230 miles) northwest of Bangkok. Usually, such refugees are moved into one of several long-established camps along the border housing more than 100,000 people The request by such a large group of refugees to return home, so soon after the fighting that drove them out, was unusual. ``The return of the people fleeing from fighting is their own wish,'' said Yanyong Kunakum, secretary of Tak province's Phopphra district office, who said they chose a safe route for the short journey back. Nongovernmental organizations gave the group food for the trip, he said. The refugees stepped back onto Myanmar territory via a small wooden bridge over a creek marking the border, and were monitored by representatives of the Thai army, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Phopphra district and humanitarian groups. Most of the villagers fled to Thailand on Jan. 23, after Myanmar government troops attacked an outpost of the Karen National Union ethnic guerrilla group near Lay Khaw village. The villagers are also mostly Karen. The Karen have been fighting for autonomy since Myanmar _ then called Burma _ gained independence in 1948. Myanmar's current military government has signed cease-fire agreements with more than a dozen other ethnic groups since 1988, but the Karen continue to fight. Villagers interviewed Thursday said they had on previous occasions stayed in Thailand's Umpiem Mai refugee camp, but felt they had no freedom to move around there, and so preferred to return home. They said the Myanmar army commander in the area as well as an officer of a pro-government ethnic Karen militia, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, had guaranteed their safety. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Amnesty allowed to visit Burma
John Aglionby, South-east Asia correspondent Thursday January 30, 2003 The Guardian After two decades of having visa applications rejected by the military junta, the human rights organisation Amnesty International is to begin its first visit to Burma tomorrow. "This is primarily a visit to start a dialogue with the authorities so we can come back and conduct thorough research there in the future," said an Amnesty spokeswoman, Lesley Warner, but she refused to give many details of the two delegates' 10-day trip. "We can't say before we go there who we are speaking to or what we are going to find." In its most recent Burma report, published last July, Amnesty claimed torture, murder, forced labour and forcible relocation are still common tactics used by the Burmese military. It said some progress had been made on the human rights front, particularly with the release of several hundred political prisoners including the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, but stressed that more needed to be done. Ms Warner would not discuss Amnesty's attitude towards the legitimacy of Burma's military regimeor the organisation's thinking on the current human rights situation. However, she sought to reassure the Burmese people that the researchers would not compromise anyone who told them anything. "Amnesty is always extremely careful to protect its sources and monitor situations carefully and has been doing so for over 40 years," she said. The director of the Burma Campaign UK, John Jackson, welcomed the Amnesty visit but warned that the world should not believe the army rulers are turning over a new leaf as a result. "Whenever they think the pressure is rising against them in the West the junta will throw out a little nugget of constructiveness or compromise," he said. "But the reality is that the human rights situation is as bad now as it was last year and the year before." The junta, officially known as the State Peace and Restoration Council, declined to comment on Amnesty's visit. -------------------------------------------------------------------- The
Nation
Asean fair to be held in Chiang Mai Published on Jan 30, 2003 The Culture Ministry is to host a cultural exchange fair for Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) member countries next week, said the ministry's permanent secretary yesterday. MR Jakkarot Jitpong said that from February 2-8 the ministry will host the "People-to-People Exchange Programme: Asean Cultural Interactions at the Grassroots Level" fair in Chiang Mai's Mae Chaem district. People from Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Burma, Malaysia, the Philip-pines, Singapore, Vietnam and Japan will be there to exhibit their artworks and crafts, Jakkarot said. Representatives from Japan, a non-Asean country, joined the fair as a counterpart country to Asean, he said. Thai representatives will demonstrate different local craft techniques at the fair. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Asian Tribune
Date : 2003-01-30 No plan for Burmese Junta to talk with National League for Democracy. It is reported that the SPDC?s Council member, Lt-Gen Soe Win said that the SPDC has no plan to talk to the NLD. The comment was made at a meeting of USDA members, local authorities and civil servants on the 21st of this month in Prome [Pyi]. He emphasised that the SPDC not only won?t talk to the NLD but also would never handover power to the NLD. He then urged and directed the civil servants to do what they have to do and not to contact the NLD. General Soe Win was the Commander of the Northwest Command and he became a member of the SPDC in November 1997. He was promoted to the position of Commander of Air Defence in November 2001 and he is also an honorary member of the USDA. General Soe Win and group toured Pegu and Irrawaddy Divisions to rally people during last week and on Tuesday; he arrived at Hinthada and met the local USDA members. On Friday, he met members of the USDA at the City Hall of Bassein. The details of the meetings are not known but he told them that the situation in Burma has improved since the SPDC took over the country by building roads and schools. He also guaranteed that there would be no military intervention against Burma by the American government like it is doing against Iraq. The SPDC won?t accept that either. He also added that as Burma is friendly with China, this kind of scenario could be protected against. Source: Democratic Voice of Burma, Oslo, in Burmese 1430 gmt 28 Jan 03 - -------------------------------------------------------------------- Asian Tribune
Date : 2003-01-30
Touch of nobility dies with a Shan princess :Former first lady of Burma shattered many feudal taboos William Barnes in Bangkok The former first lady of Burma, who was cremated at the weekend, started life as a Shan princess. Sao Hearn Hkam was sold into marriage to become the minor wife of a local princeling. Through tremendous force of personality she vaulted into the position of chief wife to her older husband. Later, she was his tough, charming, outspoken first lady when Prince Shwe Thaike was president. "I didn't come here to be your concubine," she firmly told her prince soon after their marriage, when she decided that she would sit beside him on his throne. "She was the strongest and most fearless woman I have ever known, but then she had to be," said Patricia Elliot, her biographer. Sao Hearn Hkam, who was 87 when she died, possessed some of the old decency that permitted some people to hope that the country, now known as Myanmar, would somehow finesse a successful society after independence from Britain in 1947. Last weekend's funeral was a relatively humble affair in a distant land - but how much better and honourable it was than coup leader Ne Win's hasty and unmourned passing late last year. Sao Hearn Hkam was one of a generation or two of Shan noblewomen who were able to punch above their weight because, through marriage, they made themselves linchpins in the often prickly relations between a myriad of old Shan principalities. Most of them were relatively well educated, and they seized any opportunity open to them. Given that they emerged from a feudal society of multiple wives, violent family quarrels and inequality, a surprising number showed themselves to be worldly, straightforward and sensible. It is no coincidence that her surviving sons Tiger, Chao-tzang and Harn, together with Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of Myanmar's independence hero Aung San, have helped broker dialogue with the ruling military junta. The coup that overthrew a chaotic civilian government in 1962 saw Sao Hearn Hkam's husband taken into military custody, never to reappear. Her youngest son Myee Yawnghee - executed in the first hours of the takeover - may have been the first victim of the new military dictatorship. Sao Hearn Hkam escaped with little more than the clothes on her back to Thailand, where she went on to lead a Shan resistance group. Her final years were spent cooking Myanmarese curries in a little flat in a "senior citizens"' high-rise in Canada. Her biographer, Elliot, said: "General Ne Win's coup interrupted a conversation [between the majority Myanmarese and the ethnic minorities]. It was not all sweetness and light when she and her contemporaries were running the show - but at least most of them were trying to sort it all out in a constitutional fashion." She added: "Hope never died for her. She always wanted to go back - and she could have - but she refused because she feared the regime would use her return for propaganda. It was very painful for her." Prince Shwe Thaike shared a vision, with Aung San, of participatory democracy and respect for the aspirations of other races. But Sao Hearn Hkam was able to say things frankly that her husband could not or would not. For example, she did not see her first ethnic Burmese until she was six years and firmly believed until her dying breath that the Shan needed and deserved autonomy. Aung San was assassinated by a rival for power six months before independence, leaving a void that has never been satisfactorily filled. - South China Morning Post - -------------------------------------------------------------------- Asia Times - Jan 31,
2003
Dark days for Asian journalism By Alan Boyd Globalization pressures and the war against terrorism have brought an abrupt end to the new information age that accompanied the democratic revival of 1997-98 in much of Asia. Human rights groups have charted a steady tightening of media controls since the Asian economic tigers emerged from their worst financial upheaval with an enhanced commitment to individual liberties, including free _expression_. There are more reporters behind bars than ever before. Newspapers are being closed at an accelerating rate and radio and TV stations gagged in the name of national unity. Even the cyber jockeys are being pulled from their seemingly unassailable pedestals. Media watchdogs fear that the brazen manner of the latest purge could point to a hardening of official attitudes toward information flows in both the established democracies and their less-developed neighbors. "The situation in many parts of Asia remains bad, with China confirming its position as one of the biggest jailers of journalists, Bangladesh continuing to prove extremely dangerous, Vietnam still giving no place for press freedom, North Korea being as closed a society as one can imagine, Nepal ranking first in the wake of the harsh crackdown on the Maoist insurgency... Burma [Myanmar] still a highly repressive regime, and regular attacks on press freedom in the Philippines ... ," the World Association of Newspapers warned in its annual review of press freedom. Only five years ago, new magazines and newspapers were hitting the streets daily in Indonesia, as _expression_ flowered under the patronage of interim leader Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie following the ousting of hardline president Suharto in May 1998. Evergreen political weekly Tempo was allowed to reopen, with founder and chief editor Gunawan Mohamad pledging to "develop a culture of transparency and accountability in the government [and] become a place that will help defend and expand our freedoms". Malaysia's muted opposition media bloomed in the same year, as the persecution of fallen deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim triggered a massive backlash against state-owned newspapers and broadcasters. Reporters took a rare political stance, resigning en masse from the official media to set up boisterous internet sites that were able to circumvent the government's information laws by exploiting regulatory gaps. Cyber networks proved equally difficult to contain in socialist China and Vietnam, posing a bigger threat than traditional radio broadcasts from the BBC and Voice of America, hitherto the main source of external news. External opposition groups took full advantage of the initial indecision over how to control the Internet. Myanmese exiles were able to reach their repressed compatriots through alternative websites. Right-wing Laotian emigres in France and Australia vented their displeasure with the communists in Vientiane. Only in South Asia, with its perpetual security overtones, did conditions worsen. Pakistan suspended all constitutional safeguards after detonating a nuclear bomb, while Sri Lanka imposed military censorship on reporting of its civil war. The liberal breeze elsewhere was not felt only at a consumer level. Lured by International Monetary Fund (IMF) cash offers for their beleaguered financial systems, East Asian states began to alter the entire culture of suppressing official data. Thailand became the first Asian country to incorporate freedom of personal information in its constitution, establishing a public channel for accessing government documents and dismantling state communications monopolies. Indonesia scrapped security laws that had been used to silence reporters for four decades. South Korean president Kim Dae Jung, a former political prisoner, loosened operating restrictions and installed a long-time critic as head of the government news agency. Taiwan legislators launched a campaign for the review of criminal libel statutes that were hampering the island's 300 newspapers, four TV networks and 74 radio stations from offering one of the freest information sources in Asia. But there were signs as early as 1999 that it wouldn't last. As the IMF and other lending agencies shifted their gaze to new challenges in Russia and Argentina, the reluctant hand of Asian autocratic reform stilled and was replaced by a jarring note of political realism. "The flow of information became a crucial variable as governments responded to the social and political dislocations of the economic crisis; some leaders lifted virtually all restrictions on freedom of _expression_, while others tightened their hold on what was reported and how it was presented," noted the Committee to Protect Journalists. By 2001 the trend was definitely towards the latter, as reporters learned, often at heavy personal cost, that pluralism and politics do not mix. Nor could the media remain impervious to the nationalist outpouring that followed the IMF's departure, as critics took aim at the ostensible foreign bias of the structural reforms packages it had demanded in exchange for financial bailouts. Globalization became an emotive issue as multinationals bought up ailing financial institutions in fire sales, transformed retail markets and forced the dismantling of state cartels across East Asia. Newspapers, the only media to gain a large measure of independence in the reformist spring, were cowed by an insidious strategy that now viewed commentary critical of the authorities as an attack on the national interest. With the onset of the global terrorism alert, reporters found their access to state information blocked on flimsy security grounds. "Many governments stepped up and justified their repression of opposition or independent voices using anti-terrorism as an excuse," reported Reporters Without Borders, the French-based media watchdog. "This included journalists accused, often without proof, of supporting Maoist 'terrorists' in Nepal ... Chechen 'terrorists' in Russia and Tibetan and Uighur 'terrorists' in China." Indonesia, widely viewed as the litmus test of press freedom due to its transformation since 1998, drew heavily on the security card as conservative Megawati Sukarnoputri brought a pro-military platform to the presidency. In November 2001 the Indonesian parliament established a national broadcasting commission with the power to revoke licenses or censor content, and stopped TV and radio stations from re-broadcasting foreign programs. With its provincial insurgencies in Aceh and West Papua, Indonesia had ample scope to use these laws. Media monitors were worried that some of the more liberal governments in the region might follow suit. "In some countries of Southeast Asia where press freedom is usually respected, there is a fear that restrictions might come back, like in Indonesia," noted the World Association of Newspapers. "In the Philippines, journalists are especially vulnerable in the island of Mindanao where separatist Muslim guerrilla groups are battling the Philippine army. Three journalists have already been killed there [in 2002] and the Philippines, which has an outstanding tradition for investigative journalism is, at the same time, a very dangerous place to practice this discipline," the association reported. Philippine newspapers have been at the forefront of Asia's liberal media since they played a pivotal role in the overthrow of dictator Ferdinand Marcos and helped block his attempted comeback in the mid-1980s. With their Thai and Indonesian colleagues, Philippine journalists formed a Southeast Asian Press Alliance in 1999 to maintain the reformist momentum, and sought a similar pact within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). But both fell victim to the changing domestic climate of press information. Thai reporters walked out of the ASEAN grouping in late 2000, complaining of a lack of accountability and transparency. Thai journalists had their own problems at home, with political leaders drawing increasingly upon legal avenues to silence critics for the first time since the end of the military era in the late 1980s. Bank accounts of senior staff at one newspaper were probed by graft investigators in an apparent bid to lodge fraud charges that could be used to suppress reports critical of the government. Journalists were sacked from a TV station owned by the prime minister's family. In the Philippines, president Joseph Estrada, later hounded from office by media coverage of his alleged corruption, brought an opposition newspaper to heel with a tax blitz, a freeze on state advertising revenues and an interview ban on its reporters. Elsewhere, the pattern has been depressingly similar. Two conservative journalists were jailed and a right-wing magazine temporarily banned in South Korea after they published separate articles questioning the political leanings of senior government leaders. Vietnam acknowledged in October that one man had been under house arrest for two years and another was being investigated for criticizing the government on the Internet. Access to overseas websites has been restricted. Malaysia forced the resignation of an independent newspaper editor and suspended two of his colleagues last year for publishing an article on a stalled plot, that was never officially refuted, to kill prime minister Mohammad Mahathir. Police in Malaysia forced the temporary closure of website Malaysiakini.com in January after it published a letter questioning the special economic rights accorded to native Malays (See Malaysia: Raid bad news for free media January 22, 2003). Burma briefly banned two privately-owned magazines last year - in one instance, for carrying an advertisement for a company in neighboring Thailand, with which it has a strained relationship. Reporters have been beaten up for writing articles critical of political leaders in Cambodia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and India. China has singled out reporters from ethnic minorities for harsh treatment and Laotians are required by law to write stories favorable to politicians. In all, Freedom House rated only five countries, or 21 percent of all Asian states, as having a free press in 2002, and the same number as partly free. The remaining 13, representing 54 percent of the total, were not free. There were 11 killings of reporters, making Asia a dangerous news beat to cover. As of December, another 53 reporters were being held in Asian prisons, led by Nepal with 18 inmates, Myanmar with 16 and China with 11. -------------------------------------------------------------------- |