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Saturday July 26, 2:50 PM
Myanmar forestry minister
sacked, detained for 'malpractice'
YANGON, July 26
(AFP) - Myanmar's forestry minister
Maung Phone has been sacked and detained after being accused of malpractice, a
source close to the military government said.
"Action was taken against
the minister on Friday for malpractice," said the source, using an _expression_
that typically refers here to corruption.
The source said it also
appeared that Aung Thaung, the minister for Industry 1, was to be removed from
his post for the same reason.
The Industry 1 portfolio deals with
consumables like beverages and medicines, while the Industry 2 ministry handles
heavy manufacturing.
Details of the sackings remained sketchy in
secretive Myanmar, and it was not known where Maung Phone was being detained or
what charges he could face.
The source said that the two ministers'
juniors, including their deputies and director-generals of their departments,
were also likely to lose their jobs.
A timber joint venture cooperation
with private Myanmar enterprises was to be closed down as well, he
said.
Extensive reshuffles are not uncommon in Myanmar, where the ruling
State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) likes to move around even its most
trusted generals every few years.
The last reshuffle came in February
when it appointed new ministers for health, finance and revenue, and rail
transport.
But the most dramatic personnel change happened in 1997, when
four ministers -- for the trade, hotel and tourism, agriculture and
transportation portfolios -- were stood down amid accusations of
graft.
The sacking of the ministers caused a furore within the regime,
and in that case too, their departures caused ripples down the SPDC hierarchy as
their subordinates fell out of favour and were replaced.
Myanmar has
lived under military rule since 1962, and the current regime took power after
rejecting the results of 1990 elections won by opposition leader and Nobel peace
laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.
Aung San Suu Kyi is currently under detention
at an undisclosed location, after May 30 clashes in northern Myanmar when her
supporters were ambushed by a pro-junta gang.
The junta is under intense
international pressure to release the democracy icon, but has so far given no
indication of when she might be freed.
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Sunday July 27, 4:16 PM
Malaysia warns Myanmar over Suu Kyi
LANGKAWI, Malaysia, July 27 (AFP) - Malaysia warned Myanmar Sunday to free
opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi or risk intervention from the United Nations
or other countries.
"It is wiser for Myanmar to listen now," Foreign
Minister Syed Hamid Albar told reporters.
"This is in the context of
ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), it is within our grasp, we can
manage it and handle it.
"But if nothing happens, then we are concerned
by the possibility that other countries, other regional organisations including
the United Nations, may come in to decide their fate, then it will be more
difficult."
Nobel peace laureate Suu Kyi has been in detention since
political violence on May 30, despite international demands that she be
released.
"Myanmar need not be isolated, they can be mainstream but it
depends on them. They have to pay heed to the wishes of the international
community, including ASEAN," Syed Hamid said on the sidelines of a Malaysia-Thai
business forum here.
Thailand's proposed "roadmap" for democratic reform
was a step forward in trying to resolve the deadlock, he said.
"It
depends very much on Myanmar's acceptance of it, how they perceive it, but
ASEAN's bottom line is that Aung San Suu Kyi should be released and the
reconcilition process should commence," he said.
Thai Foreign Minister
Surakiart Sathirathai said the roadmap was merely a "friendly suggestion" for
Myanmar to work towards national reconcialiation and not an interference in its
affairs.
"This is not considered as intervention in the domestic affairs
of Myanmar," he said.
"It's not like we, an outsider, working on
something and asking them to accept it. It's basically producing a draft, a
dummy of a roadmap rather, for them to comment on."
He said Thailand had
so far only exchanged views on the roadmap with Myanmar and had not submitted
any formal document.
"Right now, we are putting on paper a comprehensive
framework," he said. "The release of Aung San Suu Kyi is the first step."
He said his Myanmar counterpart Win Aung was "receptive" to the fact
that Thailand was working on the roadmap during talks last week in Bali but "he
would have to consult his leadership."
If Myanmar is interested,
Thailand will submit the document, he said, adding that he would raise the
matter with Win Aung during an economic meeting in Bangkok on Thursday.
In Yangon on Saturday, however, Deputy Foreign Minister Khin Maung Win
reacted coolly to Thailand's roadmap.
"We haven't received any of the
details, we only know what we read in the newspapers," he told reporters. "But
Myanmar's policy continues to be that it would rather solve its own problems
from within."
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and his Thai
counterpart Thanksin Shinawatra were due to hold talks here later Sunday in
which Myanmar was expected to by high on the agenda.
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Sunday July 27, 9:13 PM
Myanmar junta accuses
democratic opposition of plotting to seize power
YANGON,
July 27 (AFP) -Myanmar's ruling
junta launched a new attack on Aung San Suu Kyi and her opposition party,
accusing them of plotting to seize power from the regime and insisting it would
never stand aside.
The comments came a day after the military government
announced it had foiled a scheme hatched by rebel and dissident groups to
overthrow the junta by assassinating its leaders and mounting a campaign of
civil unrest.
It said the campaign involved inciting monks, students,
workers and opposition parties to rise up against the regime, and was mounted in
support of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD).
On
Sunday it stepped up its rhetoric, saying violence on May 30 which triggered
Aung San Suu Kyi's arrest and continuing detention was the result of the NLD's
"strategy to plot the downfall of the existing government."
Eyewitnesses
to the clashes say Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters, who had been making a
political tour of northern Myanmar, were ambushed by a pro-government mob in an
incident feared to have left dozens dead.
But in a commentary in the
official press, the junta said the May 30 incident showed that if the NLD seized
power "the country will be a whirlpool of anarchy and civil
conflicts."
Myanmar's military, which has been in power in various guises
for the past four decades, has long cited the threat of civil strife as reason
for its refusal to stand aside and introduce democratic reforms.
The
latest commentary, part of a series denigrating Aung San Suu Kyi and aimed at
justifying its actions on May 30, blamed the NLD for Myanmar's ills since 1988
when a pro-democracy uprising was brutally put down.
Elections held two
years later were won in a landslide by the pro-democracy party but the results
were never recognised by the regime, leading to a political deadlock which
exists to this day.
In Sunday's article the government ruled out ever
standing aside in favour of the pro-democracy opposition, saying the only way
forward was for them to work together.
"The true programme for democracy
is ... accepting the existing Tatmadaw (military) government as an ally and
joining hands with it," it said.
On Saturday, military intelligence
officials said that 12 people had been arrested over the assassination and
overthrow plot, including the editor of a Myanmar sports magazine Zaw Thet Htwe,
and that explosives were seized.
Political analysts said the situation
now appeared extremely grave for the NLD and Aung San Suu Kyi, and that she was
not likely to be released in the near future.
"They're saying they have
evidence of an attempted coup and I think this is more evidence that they really
are leading up to looking at banning the NLD as a legal organisation," said one
Yangon diplomat.
The allegations were "completely made up, complete
rubbish," he said.
"We're hearing from the government side very strongly
that she broke the rules, whatever they might have been, and that's certainly
the message coming through the articles, that they must now suffer the
consequences."
Myanmar's junta is under intense international pressure to
release Aung San Suu Kyi.
But despite moves from the United States and
the European Union to tighten sanctions over the crisis, they have remained
unmoved.
On Saturday, Deputy Foreign Minister Khin Maung Win reacted
coolly to a Thai proposal for an international forum to look at ways of securing
Aung San Suu Kyi's release and introduce democratic reforms.
"Myanmar's
policy continues to be that it would rather solve its own problems from within,"
he said.
In a fresh warning from one of Myanmar's few allies, Malaysia on
Sunday said the generals must free Aung San Suu Kyi or risk intervention from
the United Nations or other countries.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Myanmar envoy faces tough mission across
Asia
Sun Jul 27,12:46 AM ET
By Jane
Macartney, Asian Diplomatic Correspondent
BALI, Indonesia (Reuters) - Myanmar Foreign Minister Win Aung will not
be looking forward to his visits this week to Indonesia and Thailand.
The welcome for this special envoy of Myanmar's ruling military
will not be as warm as it would have been before the junta threw democracy icon
Aung San Suu Kyi into jail after a violent clash between her supporters and a
government mob on October 30.
And unless Win Aung comes bearing more
than yet another letter from junta leader Than Shwe merely explaining the
incident and offering no solution, he is likely to receive short shrift.
His audience may be especially cool in Indonesia, which now holds the
chair of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) -- one of the few
international organisations to accept Myanmar as a member.
"We are
waiting with anxiety what will be his message to Jakarta," Indonesian Foreign
Minister Hassan Wirajuda said on the sidelines of the Asia-Europe Meeting of
foreign ministers on the Indonesian island of Bali this week.
But
Indonesian made it clear that ASEAN was unwilling to wait indefinitely.
Foreign ministers have been reluctant to set Myanmar a deadline by which
to release the Nobel prize-winning opposition leader, but hinted that they
expect Win Aung this week to offer a date by which she will be freed.
Win Aung's mission is not made easier by divisions between his
neighbours in ASEAN over how to deal with Myanmar.
At ASEM, diplomats
said Indonesia and Vietnam had been swift to reject a proposed roadmap from
Thailand for ASEAN to help guide Myanmar's generals towards democracy.
Win Aung will fly on to Thailand on July 31 after attending a meeting of
Asian and African officials in Bandung, Indonesia, this week, but may find that
divisions over the "roadmap" mean that the initiative will fade into the
background.
A clearer picture could emerge after Sunday's meeting on the
Malaysian island of Langkawi between Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and
Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad, who just a week earlier suggested Myanmar might
eventually have to be thrown out of ASEAN.
BUILDING THE PRESSURE
The pressure on Myanmar is indeed intense.
At ASEM,
Asian participants endorsed a final statement agreed with their European
counterparts calling for the immediate release of Suu Kyi.
The Asians
avoided stronger language advocated by Europe, fearing this would only further
antagonise the generals.
The proposed European statement, a copy of
which was obtained by Reuters, voiced "grave" concern, demanded rather than
merely called for Suu Kyi's release and urged her attackers to be held to
account.
While that language may have been too strong for Asian nations,
diplomats pointed out that the readiness of China -- a chief backer of the junta
-- to accept a joint statement marked an unprecedented breakthrough.
"This should not be lost on the regime," said one diplomat.
Asian ministers at the Bali gathering acknowledged that international
outrage at Suu Kyi's detention was damaging the entire region but admitted they
were mystified how to persuade the secretive junta to change its ways.
"None of us really understands what they are up to," said one minister,
who declined to be identified, adding that it was quite possible the generals
themselves were undecided about how to proceed.
Ministers, speaking
privately, made clear that Win Aung can expect to make little progress if he
turns up -- as he did earlier this month on a similar mission -- armed only with
a letter accusing Suu Kyi's supporters of planning to assassinate junta leaders
and a photo album to prove his point.
"I wish I will have a different
message when the special envoy comes," Wirajuda told a news conference.
He said Indonesia was now waiting "impatiently" for a full response and
for Myanmar to accept a visit by a ministerial mission to assess the situation.
But he let slip his own expectations of the mission, saying it was still too
early to be too pessimistic.
Statements out of Myanmar have been tough
-- including announcing the arrests this weekend of some they accuse of plotting
to blow up junta leaders.
"In sum, nobody seems to know when or who the
ongoing political impasse in Myanmar will be solved," Myanmar expert Kyaw Yin
Hlaing, assistant professor at the department of political science of the
National University of Singapore, said in a speech at the Institute of Southeast
Asian Studies in Singapore last week.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Saturday July 26, 3:44 PM
Cool Myanmar response to
democracy "road map" idea
By Aung Hla Tun
YANGON, July 26 (Reuters) - Myanmar's military government said
on Saturday it knew little about a "road map" to democracy proposed by
neighbouring Thailand, adding that the country should be left alone to solve its
internal problems.
The ruling generals also said they had freed 96
people but were still holding 40, including pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu
Kyi, in connection with a clash on May 30 between her supporters and a pro-junta
group.
With international anger mounting on Yangon, Thailand has
proposed that Myanmar's leaders sit down with key Western countries and their
Asian neighbours to hammer out a plan for a democratic transition.
But
Myanmar's Deputy Foreign Minister Khin Maung Win said Thailand had given no
details of its proposal.
"They haven't informed us of the details of the
road map," Khin Maung Win told a news conference. "But we have our ideology that
solutions for domestic problems must be sought within the country."
A
senior military intelligence officer, Brigadier General Than Tun, said
authorities were still detaining 40 people, including 39 members of Suu Kyi's
National League for Democracy (NLD). He said Suu Kyi was in good health, but
declined to give her whereabouts.
Some diplomats say the May 30 violence
left dozens dead and was orchestrated by the military government, with hundreds
of youths attacking Suu Kyi's convoy with bamboo and iron rods as she toured
central Myanmar.
The junta denies this and says four people died.
"She's fit as a fiddle," Than Tun said. "Her health has been very good
all along."
CHARM OFFENSIVE
Faced with growing
international criticism, the Myanmar junta has launched a charm offensive in
recent weeks, sending envoys to several Asian countries. Khin Maung Win said he
would visit the Phillippines and Brunei on Sunday.
Foreign Minister Win
Aung is due to meet his Indonesian counterpart on Monday and stop in Thailand
for meetings on his way back to Yangon.
Indonesia is currently chair of
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which has broken three
decades of tradition to criticise one of its own members.
The grouping
held a special meeting without Myanmar this week to repeat its call for Yangon
to free Suu Kyi immediately. And Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad was
quoted in reports last week as saying Myanmar could be expelled as a last
resort.
Buy Khin Maung Win said other ASEAN capitals did not share this
view.
"We think it's his personal opinion only," Khin Maung Win said.
"It is not the ASEAN consensus and we understand some ASEAN members don't agree
with him."
But the United States and the European Union have threatened
more sanctions against Myanmar, while key donor Japan has turned off all new
aid.
The military has ruled Myanmar in various guises since a 1962 coup,
arguing that strong rule is needed to keep the ethnically diverse country
together. The generals refused to accept the NLD's 1990 election victory and
have kept Suu Kyi under house arrest for much of the last 15 years.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Myanmar Says No Timeframe for Suu Kyi's
Release
Sunday July 27, 11:04 PM
JAKARTA
(Reuters) - Myanmar Foreign Minister
Win Aung said on Sunday there was no immediate schedule for the release of
detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
"I can't see a
timeframe right now," Win Aung told reporters shortly after arriving in
Indonesia.
--------------------------------------------------------------
The Miami Herald
Posted on Sun, Jul. 27,
2003
JEFFREY D.
SACHS
Opinion - Smart sanctions can improve life in
Myanmar
Congress recently voted almost unanimously to
tighten sanctions against Myanmar, whose despotic regime repeatedly imprisons
the country's rightful leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. She won Myanmar's presidential
election in 1990, but the military has prevented her from taking office ever
since.
Sanctions are the wrong approach. It's time to target sanctions on
despots, not impose them on whole countries.
The most famous recent
sanctions were those imposed on South Africa during apartheid. Those sanctions
did help speed the demise of that barbaric system. But one success does not
negate many failures.
Of course, when a country is excluded from the
international system by economic sanctions, its economy will likely stagnate or
collapse. South Africa's economy experienced an absolute decline in per-capita
output during the years of sanctions. But sanctions were not the only reason for
decline. Political unrest devastated the economy, as did a fall in world gold
prices. Still, South Africa was hurt by sanctions, and the same is true for many
other countries.
Cuba bears a heavy economic burden today not only as a
result of its internal mistakes, but because of trade and investment barriers
imposed by the United States. Haiti's economy went into a tailspin when America
imposed sanctions in the 1990s, ostensibly to re-establish
democracy.
Iraq and North Korea have likewise been battered by sanctions.
In Iraq during the 1990s, millions of children suffered illnesses and vast
numbers died because international sanctions helped wreck the country's economy.
North Korea's economy collapsed in the 1990s -- leading to famine -- owing to
the lethal combination of political despotism, atrocious economic policy and
international sanctions.
Myanmar has already paid a high price for its
isolation. International organizations have cut back or eliminated their work in
the country. Much bilateral foreign aid has been eliminated, too. One result is
that HIV/AIDS runs rampant, and the country receives almost no help in
controlling the epidemic.
Despite the suffering, how often have sanctions
achieved their goal? In Myanmar, Iraq, North Korea and Cuba, despotic regimes
became even more despotic. These regimes blamed foreigners for domestic
hardships, even when it was their policy mistakes and human-rights abuses that
caused the crises.
Sanctions purportedly weaken odious regimes by causing
unrest and by reducing the government's power base and tax collections. But
sanctions also tend to cut off domestic opposition from international sources of
support and reduce international awareness of the abuses taking
place.
Some additional effects are more pernicious. Many countries under
sanctions become sources of illegal trafficking in drugs, arms, money laundering
and forced labor.
There is an alternative. So-called smart sanctions
specifically target political leaders. They deny international travel privileges
to despots and their families and subject despots to risks of international
prosecution. Leaders become prisoners in their own countries.
Smart
sanctions can also target trade in military goods, cutting off despotic regimes'
armed forces. Moreover, foreign aid can be shifted away from government toward
nongovernmental organizations, strengthening civil society.
Starving
Myanmar's economy is unlikely to help with political change, but it will deepen
the suffering of the people. Those who embrace using sanctions do not intend
this, but that does not lessen their responsibility for the
outcome.
Jeffrey D. Sachs is director of the Earth Institute at Columbia
University.
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Myanmar gov't says no time frame for releasing Suu
Kyi
JAKARTA, July 27, Kyodo - Visiting Myanmar Foreign Minister Win Aung
said Sunday his government has no schedule for releasing detained opposition
leader Aung San Suu Kyi despite international pressure seeking her immediate
release.
''We will announce (her release) when the time comes, (but) I
can't see (any) time frame right now,'' Win Aung told a small group of
journalists upon his arrival in Jakarta to meet his Indonesian counterpart
Hassan Wirajuda and President Megawati Sukarnoputri.
Win Aung is
expected to explain to them the policy taken by the Myanmar government to arrest
Suu Kyi.
''We are going to discuss matters of mutual interest to us,''
he added.
Myanmar's junta has been detaining the Nobel Peace Prize
laureate and some members of her National League for Democracy (NLD) since May
30 following what the junta claimed were violent clashes between NLD supporters
and pro-junta demonstrators in northern Myanmar.
Asked to comment on a
''road map'' for democracy in Myanmar proposed by Thailand, Win Aung only
commented, ''We're going to discuss it.''
Thailand has proposed to
Indonesia as chairman of the 10-member of the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) to set up a working group to help Myanmar formulate a plan
toward democratization and reconciliation in the country.
ASEAN held a
meeting this week on the sidelines of the fifth Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) of
foreign ministers on the Indonesian resort island of Bali to decide their common
position on the Myanmar issue.
The ASEM foreign ministers later issued a
chair's statement calling on Myanmar to immediately release Suu Kyi and other
NLD members and ensure them freedom of political activities.
They also
called on Myanmar to resume its efforts toward national reconciliation and
democracy.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Asian Tribune
Date :
2003-07-27
Burmese Junta attempts to Divert Attention from Depeyin
Massacre
Chittagong, July 27: In a vicious endeavor to
divert the peoples? attention from the "Deepeyin Massacre," the State Peace and
Development Council (SPDC), on 19 July, engineered a riot between Muslim and
Buddhist communities at Pyinmana Town in Mandalay Division located in the
central Burma.
A riot broke out on 19th July at Pyinmana after a quarrel
between a shopkeeper and a customer According to news sources the riot took
place in front of a monastery and about 30 t0 40 monks joined the mob in the
altercation. The rioters started beating up the Muslims while throwing stones at
the town mosque. Some houses and shops owned by Muslims were completely
destroyed.
Following the unrest, police came to the spot to quell the
riot and arrested Daw Thet Yi, a Muslim Shopkeeper, and few others. But there
was no report of any further arrests and the monks were not even questioned;
according to information received by Kaladan Press from a lawyer from
Rangoon.
A source in Pyimana told that the authorities planned the riot,
in order to divert the attention the people, when there was growing public
resentment against the SPDC over the Depeyin massacre. Earlier, on 7 July, at
around 8:30 pm, in Irrawady division, a group of United Solidarity and
Development Association (USDA) members distributed anti-Muslim pamphlets
inciting hatred against the Muslim population. Now the Muslims in Irrawaddy
division are in fear of possible onslaughts by USDA sponsored terrorists,
according to Muslim Information Center.
It may be mentioned that, in
February 2001, a full-scale communal riots broke out in several areas of Sittwe,
the state capital of Arakan, resulting in the death and destruction of Rohingyas
and their houses and properties. Perpetrators disguised as monks took the
leading part in the communal unrest. A dawn- to- dusk curfew was imposed to
quell the riot. Since then more humiliating restrictions are being imposed by
the SPDC, on the freedom of movement of the Rohingyas.
There were
continuous outbreaks of SPDC sponsored rioting in May and October 2001, in
Taungoo, Taunggyi, Pegu and Prome Townships in which the SPDC intelligent
personnel, in the guise of monks, led the mobs. As a result, 9 Muslims were
killed, while the properties of the Muslims worth millions of Dollars were
destroyed.
. It is worth mentioning that ruling military SPDC used to create
riot between Muslim and Buddhist communities, to redirect the people?s attention
from local issues, particularly when the regime faces any political and
financial crisis. The Muslims are made scapegoats as anti-Muslim sentiment is
very strong in the country, lamented an elderly Rohingya politician. - Kaladan
Press -
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