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Sunday July 6, 5:06 PM
Myanmar condemns pressure to
free Suu Kyi
YANGON (Reuters) - A top Myanmar official has criticised
foreign pressure to free pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in remarks seen
as reflecting the determination of the ruling junta to continue detaining the
Nobel Peace laureate.
Official newspapers quoted Gen Khin Nyunt, chief
of military intelligence, as saying that international sanctions to press
Myanmar to release Suu Kyi were bullying acts and a violation of international
law.
"If a lot of pressure were applied and unfair sanctions imposed on
Myanmar, it would amount to a breaching of international laws and bullying of
Myanmar," he said.
The general, speaking on Saturday to a group of
teachers in Phaunggyi, 40 miles north of Yangon, said every nation must have
full rights to follow its own policies.
"Preventative measures will have
to be taken to avoid the recurrence of the incidents in which people were in a
terrible state and of the ordeal of the 1988 unrest," he said, referring to a
nation-wide democracy uprising suppressed by the military.
Myanmar's
ruling generals have detained Suu Kyi since a May 30 clash between her
supporters and a pro-junta group.
Observers said the comments indicated
the junta was not going to release Suu Kyi soon.
"What I understand from
General Khin Nyunt's speech is that they will not yield to the demand by the
Western bloc and some ASEAN members," an Asian diplomat, who declined to be
identified, told Reuters on Sunday.
"I feel they are determined to keep
detaining her as long as they think it is necessary regardless of outside
pressure and sanctions."
International anger with the regime has mounted
in recent weeks, with the European Union and the United States threatening
harsher sanctions and key donor Japan suspending new aid.
The junta has
responded by sending its foreign minister and deputy foreign minister on a tour
of Asian capitals, brandishing pictures of Suu Kyi in detention in efforts to
allay concern.
For the second day in a row, Myanmar's state papers on
Sunday carried photographs of Suu Kyi in the company of junta leaders, along
with commentary criticising her.
One photograph showed Suu Kyi meeting with
education minister U Than Aung, and others showed her with National Democracy
League (NLD) members visiting government construction sites in 2002.
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Myanmar Media Calls Suu Kyi Pawn of U.S.
Sun
Jul 6, 6:38 AM ET
By AYE AYE WIN,
Associated Press Writer
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - Myanmar's official media lashed out against
detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi for the second day Sunday, accusing
her of being a pawn of the United States.
Adding to the salvo, the
country's intelligence chief Gen. Khin Nyunt said countries were bullying
Myanmar by imposing economic sanctions and exerting other pressures to demand
her release.
The United States and the European Union are threatening
harsher sanctions against Myanmar if its military regime does not free the Nobel
Peace Prize winner, who was detained following a bloody confrontation in
northern Myanmar May 30.
"If pressures are exerted and sanctions imposed
unduly, the countries which do so breach laws and regulations of the
international community and bully another country," Khin Nyunt, the country's
third-ranking leader, said in a recent speech carried by the Myanma Ahlin
newspaper Sunday.
A commentary in state-run newspapers said Suu Kyi's
stubbornness in dealing with the military junta was the result of influence from
the West, particularly the United States.
"Auntie Suu's change from a
flexible attitude to a hardline stance coincides with the number of visits by
meddlesome foreigners, especially politicians and diplomats from a Western
power," the unnamed author wrote using "auntie" as a term of derision.
The official commentary said Suu Kyi's attitudes changed after her
meeting in January with former U.S. Embassy Charge d'Affaires Priscilla Clapp.
It said that earlier, Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy withdrew from the
National Convention after her meeting with former U.S. Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright.
Suu Kyi and her party have refused to take part in
the drafting of a new constitution by the National Convention. Instead they
demand that a Parliament elected in 1991 ? when Suu Kyi's party scored a
landslide victory ? be convened.
The commentary also said Suu Kyi
demanded a convening of Parliament after discussions with Rep. Dana Rohrbacher,
R-Calif.
The criticism ? the second day official newspapers have lashed
out against Suu Kyi, indicated that despite an international outcry, she would
probably not be released soon.
On Saturday, Myanmar's official
newspapers published a stinging commentary against Suu Kyi, calling her a
"willful and hardheaded person liable to rash judgments followed by blind
action, in her relations with the present government."
Rarely published
in official newspapers, photographs of Suu Kyi earlier meeting with military
leaders appeared again Sunday alongside the attacks. The message appeared to be:
the junta had sought dialogue with Suu Kyi but it was aborted by Suu Kyi's
hardline attitude.
Suu Kyi was arrested after a clash between members of
her motorcade and pro-government supporters.
Suu Kyi rose to head the
pro-democracy movement in 1988 when the military brutally put down a popular
uprising. While under house arrest in 1991, her party scored the electoral
victory but the results have never been recognized by the generals.
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Photos of Myanmar's Suu Kyi Published
Sun Jul
6, 2:34 AM ET
By AYE AYE WIN,
Associated Press Writer
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - Photographs of detained pro-democracy leader
Aung San Suu Kyi talking and dining with Myanmar's ruling generals appeared in
official newspapers Saturday, but it was unclear when the meeting between the
bitter rivals had taken place.
The photographs, carried in all three
official newspapers, were accompanied by a stinging commentary against Suu Kyi,
a Nobel Peace prize winner held by the junta since a bloody confrontation May 30
between her followers and government supporters. Diplomats said it was a bad
sign for Suu Kyi's early release.
The photographs showed Suu Kyi shaking
hands with junta leader Senior Gen. Than Shwe and eating with him and other top
military figures at what a caption said was a "family dinner." Another caption
said "frank and cordial exchange of views can lead to consolidated national
political future of the nation."
The newspapers did not say when or
where the meetings took place.
A commentary in the official New Light of
Myanmar newspaper described Suu Kyi as a "willful and hardheaded person liable
to rash judgments followed by blind action, in her relations with the present
government."
The commentary, purportedly written by a member of Suu
Kyi's National League for Democracy, said there had been a "ray of hope" after
Suu Kyi's release from one of her several periods under house arrest in May
2002. But the unnamed author said hopes for reconciliation were dashed by Suu
Kyi's behavior and actions.
The article noted that several meetings
between Suu Kyi and government leaders took place after May 2002 ? which may
have been the meetings shown in the photographs, several diplomats said.
"It's a media campaign against the NLD and particularly against Aung San
Suu Kyi," said one Asian diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. A
Western diplomat, who also declined to be further identified, said the
government had launched a campaign to turn the public against Suu Kyi and her
party, adding that prospects for her release did not appear good.
On
Friday, two Myanmar dissidents testified before a Senate panel in Thailand that
a drunken mob of about 3,000 people surrounded Suu Kyi's motorcade, stripping
the clothes off her supporters and beating them mercilessly with bats, rods and
spears.
The testimony by witnesses Khin Zaw and Wunna Maung was the most
comprehensive and detailed yet. Their statements also lend credibility to other
opposition claims that up to 70 people were killed in the incident.
The
government says four people were killed in the clash, claiming it was triggered
by Suu Kyi's convoy plowing through peaceful pro-government demonstrators.
The human rights group Amnesty International expressed concern Friday for
the safety of at least 90 people it said have been missing since the attack.
Suu Kyi's recent arrest has sparked an international outcry and some
countries, including the United States, are planning to toughen economic
sanctions against the impoverished Southeast Asian nation.
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The Washington Post
Letters - Burma's
Burdened Villagers
Sunday, July 6, 2003; Page B06
James R. Schulte [letters, June 24] suggested that Burma's
military government should be excused for using forced labor because it takes
place during the dry season when villagers cannot farm. He overlooked the fact
that for most Burmese villagers, the dry season is not the equivalent of a long
school vacation when they have nothing better to do. Villagers often find it
especially difficult during that period to provide for their families, and the
additional burden of involuntary, unpaid labor makes matters worse.
While
living in Burma for two years, I witnessed year-round forced labor. Villagers
were treated not as community taxpayers but as beasts of burden.
The public
works projects Mr. Schulte described were mostly for the benefit of the
military. He defended this practice as a tradition that "goes back to the
pharaohs." Does he feel the same way about slavery?
CRAIG
WILLIAMS
Washington
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The Guardian
BAT set to sell off its stake in Burma
Richard Wachman
Sunday July 6,
2003
The Observer
British American Tobacco is expected to make
discreet moves in the next few days to find a buyer for its 60 per cent stake in
a cigarette factory in Burma. The move is to meet a request by the UK Government
to withdraw from the country, where there have been widespread human rights
abuses.
BAT, whose deputy chairman is former Conservative Chancellor
Kenneth Clarke, has said it would put the request to its board after Foreign
Office Minister Mike O'Brien asked chairman Martin Broughton to pull out.
The Government wants to put fresh pressure on the Rangoon military
regime after its crackdown on opposition leaders last month. Aung San Suu Kyi,
leader of the opposition National League for Democracy, has been rearrested and
many of her followers killed.
It is thought that BAT's stake in the
venture has been written down in its books to almost nothing, reflecting growing
political uncertainty in Burma.
One option, understood to be under
consideration, is a sale for a nominal sum to the Union of Myanmar, the Burmese
government agency, which owns the other 40 per cent of the factory. Another
possibility is to sell the shareholding to an Asian investor.
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The Straits Times
Myanmar on the boil
Myanmar's crackdown on the pro-democracy opposition will bring more
pain and hardships to its people. This could spell trouble, but the military
regime is unyielding
By Lee Kim
Chew
JULY 6, 2003 SUN
ALREADY one of the
world's poorest countries, long-suffering Myanmar is about to be hit with a
triple whammy.
The United States will soon ban all made-in-Myanmar
products. Aid from Japan is drying up. And the European Union has expanded its
embargo on anything to do with Yangon's military regime.
The prospects
look awful for Myanmar's impoverished masses, with the worst yet to come when
the new sanctions start to bite in the months ahead.
Some 350,000
workers, mostly women in about 400 garment factories across the country, will
lose their jobs because of US laws forbidding imports from Myanmar.
Last
year, 85 per cent of its textiles, clothing and footwear totalling US$356
million were exported to the US. Even without the ban, Myanmar's textile quotas
to the US would have expired next year.
America's new laws will force the
factories to close unless Myanmar can find new markets, but this won't be easy.
It faces stiff competition from China and Vietnam.
Washington will also
freeze the junta's assets in the US, ban remittances to Myanmar, and block any
application by the military government for soft loans from the World Bank and
the International Monetary Fund.
INCREASING
ISOLATION
ON ANOTHER level, Myanmar will also miss out on
President George W. Bush's Enterprise for Asean Initiative, which offers the
prospect of bilateral free trade pacts for South-east Asian countries which are
committed to economic reforms and openness.
Myanmar's unreformed economy
won't qualify. It was a bit player in last year's US$120-billion two-way trade
in goods between the US and Asean; and little of American investments in Asean,
which totalled US$53 billion last year, found their way to Myanmar, a forbidden
land for business under US laws.
Asean membership in 1997 may have ended
Myanmar's diplomatic isolation but the country has yet to reap any economic
benefits from that opening.
There are other factors discouraging foreign
investments in Myanmar.
US oil giant Unocal Corporation is facing a legal
suit in California, accused of being implicated in the forced labour, murders
and rapes allegedly committed by Myanmar troops during the construction of the
Yadana gas pipeline in 1990s.
So far, more than 40 American companies
have pledged to bypass Myanmar products because of its human rights violations
and repressive policies.
One of America's largest retailing chains, May
Department Stores, will stop selling goods made in Myanmar, following a boycott
campaign spearheaded by the Free Burma Coalition.
In the EU, the
London-based Burma Campaign UK is targeting British companies doing business
with Myanmar. Among those that have quit the country to protect their
reputations are lingerie maker Triumph International and Premier
Oil.
British American Tobacco, which has a cigarette factory in Myanmar
employing more than 500 workers, is resisting pressure from the British
government to pull out.
Britain has not banned investments in Myanmar,
but Prime Minister Tony Blair has said trade with the junta was 'not
appropriate', and his government is pressing the EU to tighten its sanctions on
the regime.
Myanmar's shrinking economy is evident to any visitor: Many
new hotels in Yangon have only 30 per cent occupancy, even during the peak
season. Tourist arrivals have fallen sharply in recent months, and the Sars
outbreak has made things worse.
With inflation at over 20 per cent and a
bank run last January, there seems no end to Myanmar's
troubles.
A MORTAL THREAT
ACCORDING to Dr Peter
Carey of Oxford University, the Myanmar government gets its revenue from three
main sources: gas from the Andaman Sea, which will yield about US$800 million
(S$1.4 billion) this year; illicit money from drugs; and massive Chinese
aid.
In January, Beijing wrote off part of Yangon's debt, gave the junta
US$200 million in soft loans and promised more new industrial
projects.
But all this is not enough for the junta, which reportedly
spends a third of its budget on the military.
Japan, a major aid donor,
has given Myanmar debt relief worth 11.3 billion yen (S$160 million) over the
past five years. But last month, pressured by the US, it cut off new
aid.
Myanmar is now asking the richer Asean countries for more aid and
investments. But the junta is unlikely to get much help because of the
international outcry over its re-arrest of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu
Kyi, her third incarceration since 1989.
The generals took the Nobel
Peace laureate into 'protective custody' after pro-junta groups ambushed her
motorcade and attacked her supporters on May 30 in northern Myanmar.
The
build-up to the attack was long in the brew, ever since Ms Suu Kyi began
travelling outside Yangon a year ago to rebuild her party, the National League
for Democracy.
NLD spokesman U Lwin told the Democratic Voice of Burma, a
Norwegian-backed radio station, that she was harassed last April by local
authorities, which used loud music to drown out her speeches during her trip to
Chin state in western Myanmar.
Last October, during a visit to Arakan
state, she had to clamber up a fire-truck to stop its driver from using water
canons to disperse some 20,000 people who had come out to welcome her.
Ms
Suu Kyi has to contend with the Union Solidarity and Development Association, a
grassroots movement with Senior General Than Shwe, chairman of the ruling State
Peace and Development Council, as patron.
Myanmar's generals created the
mass movement, which claims 16 million members, after brutally suppressing a
nationwide revolt against military rule in 1988.
There is speculation
that the generals are divided over how to deal with Ms Suu Kyi, but there is no
doubt that they agree on one thing: Her popularity poses a mortal threat to
their rule.
That rule lost its legitimacy after the junta repudiated the
NLD's sweeping electoral victory in 1990 and is being maintained only at
gunpoint.
REGIME CHANGE?
THE question that begs
to be asked: Could the people's worsening economic plight, aggravated by new
economic sanctions, and anger over Ms Suu Kyi's detention, combine to spark
regime change?
Myanmar has been under military rule for four decades and
the last time its people revolted, back in 1988, thousands were
killed.
If it happens again, the casualties will be higher because the
army, now better equipped, has grown to 325,000 troops. This is why the
well-entrenched generals see no reason to resume political talks with Ms Suu
Kyi.
They claim that she is influenced by the outlawed Burmese Communist
Party, and blame her for instigating restive ethnic minorities against the
government.
Above all, they regard the NLD leader as a proxy of Western
powers. For Senior General Than Shwe, her support for Western sanctions proves
that she is in cahoots with 'neo-colonialists'.
Unstinting Western
support, such as the US$1-million 'Free Spirit' prize which the US-based Freedom
Forum foundation awarded to Ms Suu Kyi in February for her pro-democracy
struggle, deepens the regime's distrust of her.
The junta has made
half-hearted attempts at change. Several hundred political prisoners have been
released in the past year, but the intimidation and arrest of NLD supporters
continue. According to the International Red Cross, about 1,500 political
prisoners are still in jail.
Last January, in a bid to ward off economic
sanctions, the junta invited the Bush administration for talks, seeking an
'open, constructive dialogue towards humanitarian, economic and political
development in Myanmar'.
It wanted 'American cooperation in education,
health pragmatic, useful advice on making the transition to a stable
democracy'.
Washington rebuffed the overture.
But the regime's
lobbyists did succeed in getting Mr David Rockefeller, the 87-year-old former
chairman and CEO of Chase, one of America's top banks, to visit
Myanmar.
After a 10-day stay, Mr Rockefeller declared that he found the
'partial liberalisation encouraging'. But little came of it.
The junta
has weathered international ostracism for the past 13 years, neither responding
to incentives for democratic reforms nor pressures to hand over power to
civilians. There is no sign that its hardline policies are about to
change.
As a result, American lawmakers are becoming impatient with the
regime. Senate Deputy Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for one has noted that
misrule in Myanmar 'distracts Asean from other important issues'.
Asean
countries would find the US 'a less willing negotiating partner' unless they
took firm action against the regime, he warned. The junta 'is pulling down the
region, and it is time that its neighbours owned up to their responsibility in
fixing this problem once and for all', he said last week. 'The Asean policy of
non-interference will not stand.'
But Myanmar's generals feel secure in
the belief that China, its chief benefactor, will not intervene in its domestic
affairs, just as they repose confidence in Asean's hands-off policy.
As
long as Yangon's internal politics do not become a security problem for its
Asean neighbours, the junta will be left to its devices.
In the meantime,
Myanmar's already hobbled economy will be crippled, bringing immeasurable
suffering to most of its 49 million people. The generals, though, have a high
pain threshold, and they will remain pre-occupied with little else beside their
power. The country is bound to be on the boil for some time.
( Lee Kim
Chew is chief regional correspondent of The Straits Times.)
TRIPLE WOES
1 The US will ban all
made-in-Myanmar products. The junta's assets in the US will be frozen,
remittances to Myanmar will be banned, application by the Myanmar government for
soft loans from the World Bank and the IMF will be blocked.
2 Japan, a
major aid donor to Myanmar with debt relief worth 11.3 billion yen over the past
five years, has cut any new aid to the country.
3 The European Union has
expanded its embargo on Myanmar. London-based Burma Campaign UK is targeting
British companies doing business there and British PM Tony Blair is pressing the
EU to tighten its sanctions on the Myanmar regime.
THE SUU KYI
FACTOR
The re-arrest of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi
reflects how the generals see her popularity as a mortal threat to their
rule.
Will the worsening economic plight, plus the new sanctions, and
increasing anger over Ms Suu Kyi's detention combine to spark regime
change?
Myanmar has been under military rule for four decades and the
last time its people revolted in 1988, thousands were killed.
If it there
is another revolt, there will be more casualties because the army is now larger
and better equipped.
So the well-entrenched generals see no reason to
resume political talks with Ms Suu Kyi.
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Bangladesh, Myanmar to promote mutual cooperation
Xinhuanet 2003-07-06 22:43
DHAKA, July 6
(Xinhuanet) -- Prime Minister
Khaleda Zia and visiting Myanmar Foreign Minister U Win Aung Sunday expressed
identical views on mutual cooperation for the development of the two countries.
During a meeting between Khaleda Zia and the Myanmar envoy, they shared
the common opinion that "the doors of a new era" wouldbe opened up between the
two neighbors if the agreements and memorandum of understandings (MOUs) reached
between the two countries were implemented properly, according to the official
Bangladesh News Agency.
Aung, who arrived here on Saturday on a
three-day visit to Bangladesh, recalled the visits of Myanmar Prime Minister,
Senior General Than Shwe to Bangladesh and Khaleda Zia's return visit to
Myanmar, saying that the two visits had contributed significantly to give
further impetus to the bilateral relations, especially in the establishment of
closer people-to-people links between the twocountries.
Khaleda Zia
visited Myanmar in March this year. During the visit the two countries had
agreed to start the process of establishing direct road link between the two
neighbors and also signed a number of agreements and MOUs for bolstering
bilateral economic ties.
Khaleda Zia and Aung said a number of steps had
already been taken for hastening the process of further cementing bilateral
relations.
While Khaleda Zia raised the issue of Bangladesh's entry into
ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the Myanmar foreign minister said his country would
lend full support to Bangladesh in getting ARF membership.
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