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Saturday February 15, 3:53 AM
FATF lifts
money-laundering sanctions on Ukraine, slams Philippines
PARIS,
Feb 14 (AFP) - The Financial Action Task Force, a
global body for fighting money laundering, said that it was withdrawing
sanctions against Ukraine but recommended they be imposed on the Philippines
from mid-March.
The task force also said it was removing Grenada
from its list of non-cooperative countries and territories because the British
West Indies island had significantly reformed its anti-money laundering
system.
In mid-December, the FATF labelled Kiev as uncooperative in
the fight against money laundering and several FATF members including the United
States, Canada and Britain announced counter-measures against Ukrainian banks
and financial institutions.
But in a statement Friday, the FATF
said its members had decided to withdraw the application of additional
counter-measures against Ukraine because the government had recently enacted
"comprehensive anti-money laundering legislation that addresses the main
deficiencies" first identified by the task force in 2001.
Ukrainian
President Leonid Kuchma welcomed the FATF decision but said the counter-measures
had helped to promote action against money laundering.
The
sanctions had been a "good lesson" for parliament, where a dispute between
opposition and pro-presidential deputies delayed the adoption of an anti-money
laundering law and prompted the punitive steps in December, a presidential
statement said.
Ukraine will nonetheless remain on its
non-cooperative list "until it has implemented effectively its new anti-money
laundering legislation", the Paris-based task force said.
Ukrainian
Finance Minister Mykola Azarov said Kiev could be removed from the list by the
end of the year.
FATF President Jochen Sanio hailed the development as "a
significant success for the FATF and Ukraine in the fight against money
laundering".
The Philippines, by contrast, had failed to meet an
FATF deadline on Thursday to approve adequate legislation to counter money
laundering, the task force said.
"The FATF has taken the serious
step of recommending that its members impose additional counter-measures against
the Philippines, due to the failure of the Philippines to enact legislation to
address previously identified deficiencies in their anti-money laundering
regime," it said.
Failue to do so by March 15 would result in
counter-measures as of that date, it said.
The current FATF list of
non-cooperative states comprises: Cook Islands, Egypt, Guatemala, Indonesia,
Myanmar, Nauru, Nigeria, Philippines, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and
Ukraine.
The FATF, which meets under the aegis of the Organisation
for Economic Cooperation and Development, is an independent body of experts from
29 countries, the European Commission and the Gulf Cooperation Council.
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San Francisco Chronicle
Court to reassess Unocal role
in Burma suit
Bob Egelko, Chronicle
Staff Writer
Saturday, February 15, 2003
A federal appeals court on Friday granted Unocal Corp.'s
request to reconsider its responsibility for the brutal treatment of villagers
in Burma by Burmese soldiers guarding the oil company's pipeline.
In September, a three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals in San Francisco reinstated the damage suit by villagers who said the
soldiers forced them into slave labor and committed rape and murder during
pipeline construction in the mid-1990s. The court said a jury could decide
whether Unocal knowingly aided enslavement and brutality by Burma's military,
which has a long record of abuses.
But the court said Friday that
a majority of its 24 judges had voted for a rehearing before an 11-judge panel,
at a date not yet scheduled.
Daniel Petrocelli, a lawyer for
Unocal, based in Southern California, said the case was being followed closely
by U.S. companies that do business abroad. He said the ruling in September would
have made companies "potentially liable for acts over which they had absolutely
no control, which occurred in countries on the other side of the world,
perpetrated by the host governments."
The eventual ruling may not
matter to the opposing parties because a virtually identical suit by the same
villagers under California law is heading toward trial in Los Angeles Superior
Court.
But an appeals court's analysis of a U.S. company's
potential responsibility for abuses by foreign soldiers could set an important
precedent for other cases. One is pending in a San Francisco federal court,
where a group of Nigerians seek to hold ChevronTexaco responsible for shootings
of protesters by Nigerian soldiers and police at oil company facilities.
An 18th century U.S. law gives federal courts jurisdiction over
human rights abuses abroad.
Unocal is a partner in a now-completed
project licensed by Burma's military government to pipe natural gas from an
offshore field across a portion of southern Burma to Thailand. The lawsuit
alleged that soldiers guarding the pipeline forced residents to work without
pay, raped several villagers and shot others who refused to work or were too
weak. The suit also alleged that the soldiers burned a baby to death.
In September's ruling, the court said there was evidence that
Unocal hired and helped the military to provide security, even though the
company's president admitted he knew the military was likely to use forced
labor.
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US Congressman Accuses Burmese Military of Genocide
Campaign Against Minorities
VOA News
15 Feb 2003, 11:13
UTC
A U.S. congressman took to the floor of the House of
Representatives last Wednesday to decry what he called a campaign of genocide by
Burma's ruling junta.
Joseph Pitts, a Republican Congressman from
the state of Pennsylvania, said he visited the Thai-Burma border in January and
met with refugees, democracy activists, prisoner-of-conscience groups and others
working to help the people of Burma.
Mr. Pitts said the
international community "has failed to recognize that there is, under
international legal definitions, a campaign of genocide against the ethnic
minorities" by the ruling military dictatorship.
The Congressman
called on the United States and the international community to do something to
assist the people of Burma and stop the brutality.
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Bangkok Post - Saturday 15 February
2003
Senate wants project nixed
Concerns for human
rights, environment
Kultida Samabuddhi
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra will be asked to scrap a
300-billion-baht hydropower dam project on the Salween river, the Senate foreign
affairs said.
``The project would cause great damage to Thailand,''
said panel chairman Kraisak Choonhavan, citing concerns about environmental
impacts and human rights violations.
The Electricity Generating
Authority of Thailand is expected to build the dam and eight power plants in Mae
Sariang district, Mae Hong Son.
Senators will on Tuesday discuss
Thailand's stand on development projects on the international rivers which it
shares with its neighbours. These projects include a 3,000-megawatt hydropower
dam on the Salween river, a natural borderline between Thailand and Burma, and
the blasting of rapids for navigation in the Mekong river on the Thai-Lao
border.
Mr Thaksin would be informed of the outcome of the
discussion next week.
Egat governor Sithiporn Rattanopas, who met
the panel on Wednesday, said the Salween dam project was economically viable
even though Thailand would have to shoulder all construction
costs.
``When the project is completed in 2012, Thais will enjoy a
lower price of electricity, at 0.90 baht per unit, or a saving of around 31
billion baht a year,'' Mr Sithiporn said.
He added that the Energy,
Finance, and Environment ministers had all agreed on Jan 29 to give the project
a go-ahead.
The Natural Resources and Environment Ministry has
volunteered to make an assessment study of the project's environmental
impacts.
Initially, Egat would set aside 10 million baht to support
the environmental impact assessment study, to be headed by natural resources and
environment permanent secretary Plodprasop Suraswadi.
The dam would
inundate around 20,000 rai of lush forest in the Salween wildlife sanctuary in
Thailand, the Egat governor said. However, Egat had no idea how the project
would affect Burma's ethnic groups and forest.
``The information on
the Salween dam is incomplete because it has come from desk research,'' he
said.
``No one could survey the dam site and conduct any field
study unless the governments of both countries formally agree to develop the
project.''
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ASEAN representation at Tokyo confab on Burma
downgraded
BANGKOK, Feb. 14 (Kyodo) Some Southeast Asian governments have
decided to lower their level of representation at a U.N. conference on Burma to
be held Saturday in Tokyo after the country's junta criticized it as
intervention in its internal affairs, Association of Southeast Asian Nation
(ASEAN) sources said Friday.
The sources said ASEAN members such as
Thailand and Singapore will not be sending high-level officials to the
conference as earlier planned in the wake of a letter from Burma Foreign
Minister Win Aung recently received by
those governments.
The
closed-door conference to be held at the U.N. University in central Tokyo is
aimed at facilitating restoration of democratic rule in Burma.
The
participants will include government representatives of Japan, ASEAN member
countries and Western countries such as the United States, Australia and
Britain.
The ASEAN sources said some Southeast Asian governments
plan to send no representatives at all to the conference, while others have not
been invited.
ASEAN comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos,
Malaysia, Burma, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and
Vietnam.
The Tokyo meeting will neither be joined by
representatives of Burma's ruling State Peace and Development Council nor the
National League for Democracy of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu
Kyi.
But it will include U.N. special envoy Razali Ismail, who has
been endeavoring to bring Burma's ruling generals and Suu Kyi together to engage
in a substantive political dialogue that would lead to national
reconciliation.
The conference will occur ahead of Razali's 10th
visit to Burma, which is set to take place later this
month.
Razali, who brokered dialogue between the junta and Suu Kyi
that led to her release from almost 20 months of house arrest in May of last
year, last visited Burma in mid-November.
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Asian Tribune
Date : 2003-02-15
Suu Kyi calls for talks, generals
defiant
Yangon, Feb. 15: : The gulf between
Myanmar's opposition and military appeared to widen on Wednesday with
pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi calling for talks while the ruling
generals railed against threats to stability.
Speaking at a
ceremony to mark Union Day, Suu Kyi said Myanmar's economy and society were
suffering because of the political impasse between the ruling State Peace and
Development Council (SPDC) and the opposition.
"I would like to
call on the SPDC...to immediately start dialogue for the good of the entire
people," Suu Kyi told a gathering of supporters and diplomats at the
headquarters of her National League for Democracy (NLD) party. "We need to
recognise that we lack unity and reconciliation. Our problem will not disappear
if we merely keep pretending not to know its existence."
Union Day
commemorates a 1947 agreement between Suu Kyi's father, independence hero
General Aung San, and leaders from several ethnic minorities, guaranteeing them
freedom to choose their political destiny. To mark the occasion, military leader
General Than Shwe issued a statement attacking "destructive elements" in Myanmar
-- a euphemism for the opposition the military often used until U.N.-brokered
confidence building talks began with the NLD in late-2000
The talks
led to Suu Kyi's release from house arrest last May, but have since stalled.
"Destructive elements within and without the nation cannot dare to see the
flourishing of national solidarity and the development of some political,
economic and social environment," said the statement, published by Myanmar's
state media.
"The entire people must always remain vigilant against
these elements and ward off the dangers posed by them." The military government
said on Monday it had arrested 12 opposition activists for plotting to blow up a
prison and a railway station. A military intelligence spokesman said seven of
those arrested were low-level members of the NLD.
United Nations
Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he was concerned by the arrests. In a
statement circulated at U.N. headquarters in New York, he also urged the Myanmar
authorities to release all political prisoners without delay, and join
"substantive political dialogue" with Suu Kyi.
- The International
News -
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Asian Tribune
Date : 2003-02-15
San San Nweh finally gets 1999 Reporters Without Borders
prize
Well-known French TV journalist Christine
Ockrent has presented Burmese opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate
Aung San Suu Kyi with the 1999 Reporters Without Borders / Fondation de France
Prize to pass on to winner San San Nweh.
Ockrent, who is also a
member of the board of Reporters Without Borders, handed over the prize at a
meeting on 31 December 2002 at the opposition politician's home in Rangoon,
where they discussed the fate of other journalists imprisoned in the country,
including 73-year-old Win Tin, who has been in jail for the past 13 years.
The prize has been awarded every year since 1992 to journalists
who through their work, beliefs or attitudes, have shown devotion to the ideal
of press freedom. San San Nweh won it in 1999 while she was in prison serving a
10-year sentence imposed in 1994 for "putting out news harmful to the state."
She was freed in July 2001 but not allowed to leave the
country.
Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières)
reiterates its call for the release of 16 journalists still held by Burma's
military rulers.
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Shan Herald Agency for News
No: 02 -
14/2003
15 February 2003
Drugs: Thai academic: Shan defeat might
mean more drugs bound for Thailand
A noted lecturer
from Thailand's prestigious Chulalongkorn University has recently warned that
the rout of Shan rebels by joint Burmese-Wa offensives might amount to defection
of Shans to the Wa leading to the rise in drug flow into the
kingdom.
"The Shans basically have a higher development potential
compared to the Wa," said Vorasak Mahatthanobol, Faculty of Political Science to
Siam Rath Weekly, 14-20 February. "It has certainly been the reason for their
ability to resist (the joint onslaught). However, if their present weakening
continues, a number of them may decide to cooperate with the Wa in the drug
trade."
The Shan State Army "South" of Col Yawdserk maintains
anti-narcotics is an organic part of its principles. The group seized nearly
300,000 speed pills heading for Thailand on 4 February.
Some senior
officials from Thailand's Office of Narcotics Control Board in the north were
also reported to have reasoned that "disarming" the SSA would not help the
kingdom's ongoing war on drugs. "Of course, if Rangoon really gets tough with
the Wa, it may be the time for us to ditch the Thai Yai (Shans)", said the
source.
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Shan Herald Agency for News
No: 02 -
12/2003
15 February 2003
Thai-Burma relations: "Hate Thai" history
remains compulsory in schools
According to New Era
journal, February edition, the history of Thai-Burma relations, as written by
Rangoon following military confrontation between Thai and Burma forces in
February 2001, continues to be required text in Burma's schools, despite
resumption of bilateral ties last year.
Col San Pwint, knownas one
of Gen Khin Nyunt's trusted lieutenants, had warned teachers in Pongpakhem,
Mongton Township, on 23 January, following discovery that the text was being
taught only students in the primary but not to those in the middle and
highlevels. Teachers who remained slack even after his warning would face
effective official action, he said.
Pongpakhem, 16 km from the
Chiangmai border, was designated a sub-township of Mongton last
year.
According to Bangkok Post, 23 September 2002, Gen Sanan
Khajornklam, Secretary of Thai-Burma Cultural and Economic Cooperation Committee
had mentioned to his Burmese counterparts of the need for making changes to
texts which were seen as harmful to bilateral ties. "But Bangkok was reluctant
to push the matter further," said post correspondent Wassana
Nanuam.
The text maintains that conflicts between the two
countries, past and present, without exceptions, have been set off by "Yodaya"
aggression. Yodaya is a derogatory name for Thailand and its people.
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Shan Herald Agency for News
No: 02 -
13/2003
15 February 2003
Drugs: Mules carry Thai
currency
Despite assurances by Wa supremo, Chairman
Bao Yuqiang, that the drug trade is run by businessmen operating outside the law
and that the Wa leadership was simply a victim, a deserter from his United Wa
State Army confided recently to S.H.A.N. that the proceeds in baht from its
sales to Thai agents had to be transported on muleback.
"Each mule
can carry at least 50 kg", said Sergeant Ai Keud, 28, from Brigade 171's 619th
Battalion, currently stationed at Kharngpa, north of the Shan State Army's Loi
Taileng base. "We used at least 5-10 mules per trip."
He explained
that mules were preferred to motor vehicles in order to prevent the loss of all
their takings in case of attack by hostile forces. "Some of the mules, if not
all, might be able to escape the onslaught," he said. "In a truck, the potential
to lose all our earnings is high."
A Wa private receives 250 baht
for his monthly pay whereas he, as a sergeant, got 300. "But on the average, I
earned at least 2,000 baht each month for these special assignments," Ai Keud, a
Palaung from northern Shan State, explained. "In some months, I even earned up
to 10,000."
Apart from methamphetamine, Mongton Township, where his
battalion is located, also produces opium, according to him, who rejected junta
officials' claim that the township had been rid of the poppy culture beginning
this season. "There are about 40 bosses each with 100-300 hired laborers working
for him in the fields," he said. "They are fed three meals a day, with men
receiving 130 baht each and women 100 each for their daily
wages."
Ai Keud, who speaks several languages, has been assigned to
work with the Public Relations Department of the SSA.
Wa units are
organized on the communist model. His former battalion, the 619th, has Sarmlawt
as "political commissar" and Sarngtay as "battalion commander."
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