BURMA
AGENCIES in Rangoon and Bangkok
"The first priority is to consolidate the Karen factions to strengthen fighting for independence," he said.
Ba Thin, 73, was elected KNU chairman at the group's 12th Congress on Wednesday, replacing Bo Mya who had been chief since 1976.
Ba Thin, unlike Bo Mya, is viewed as a pragmatist by most observers.
"It is possible the KNU will soften its stand to reach peace with Rangoon," commented a Thai observer.
The KNU congress also called on Burma's generals to ease their war against the Karens and hold meaningful talks.
The KNU, which has fought for independence from Burma since 1949, has failed in several attempts to establish a ceasefire with the junta and its predecessors. The last breakdown was in 1995.
Bo Mya said he would continue to command the KNU fighters, but Ba Thin would assume charge of political affairs.
"I accept the decision of the KNU congress," he said.
Bo Mya had been accused of poor leadership by allowing the KNU to lose Manerplaw, near the Thai border, in a battle with Rangoon troops and the junta-backed Democratic Karen Buddhism Army in 1994.
Heavy fighting was reported yesterday between Burmese forces and the God's Army guerilla group responsible for holding more than 500 hostages in a Thai hospital siege, said Thai army sources.
The army had sent three battalions into thick jungle adjacent to Thailand's central Ratchaburi province to flush out the remaining guerillas, said a senior Thai military source.
Sources close to the God's Army guerillas said on Wednesday that the group's base near Kamaplaw village had been overrun by Burmese troops.
The 12-year-old twin leaders of the guerilla group were reported missing.
Burma's junta, however, issued a statement yesterday denying that any large-scale military offensive was being waged around Kamaplaw.
It admitted, however, that "some skirmishes did take place when government troops were making routine patrols in that area a few days ago".
Myanmar Rebel Group Fights Back
By Thaksina KhaikaewAssociated Press Writer
Friday, Jan. 28, 2000; 1:17 p.m. EST BAW WI, Thailand –– The Myanmar rebel group led by 12-year-old twin boys fought back Friday against stronger Myanmar government forces that overran the rebels' jungle headquarters a day earlier.
As fighting continued along the Myanmar-Thai border, Thai officials said Myanmar troops were facing resistance not just from the rebel God's Army but also from other ethnic Karen rebels. Meanwhile, the main rebel group – pressured by fallout from the recent fighting – said it was ready for peace talks with Myanmar, also known as Burma.
Journalists from the Democratic Voice of Burma, a dissident radio station with good contacts with insurgent groups, said seven God's Army members have been killed in the fighting and three have been captured. Sixteen Myanmar troops were reported killed and 16 injured, they said. The figures could not be confirmed.
In Bangkok, Thai Col. Pairote Tongma-eng said the 4th Brigade of the Karen National Union, the mainstream Karen rebel group, was also badgering Myanmar troops.
God's Army, a fundamentalist Christian rebel group, is battling the military regime in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar. The group, estimated to contain 100 fighters, believes the army's 12-year-old leaders, Johnny and Luther Htoo, have magical powers that protect them from harm.
The group operates from the jungles near the Thai border. Thai army intelligence and Myanmar dissidents said the group's headquarters at Ka Mar Pa Law fell Thursday.
The loss of Ka Mar Pa Law was the second blow this week for the small God's Army. On Monday, 10 gunmen from God's Army and another group seized a Thai hospital and trapped hundreds of hostages in a desperate bid to secure a retreat to Thailand. But Thai commandos ended the siege Tuesday and killed all the gunmen.
The hostage-taking hardened Thai public opinion against Myanmar's ethnic minorities, who have struggled for decades against the country's military dictatorship.
That change seems to have had some fallout: On Friday, the Karen National Union announced it was ready for peace talks with Myanmar's generals if they call an official cease-fire.
The KNU is the only major ethnic insurgency group yet to reach a cease-fire with the Myanmar government. But the group is now facing renewed pressure to cut a deal because of the hospital incident. Thailand is the only haven from battle for Karen civilians, and the KNU needs Bangkok's goodwill to operate.
Thailand has stepped up security along the border to keep fighting from spilling over. Thailand also has stopped Myanmar rebels from crossing the boundary: The hospital siege was triggered partly because the Thais fired mortars at God's Army last weekend to keep the fighters from joining 1,000 Karen civilians fleeing into Thailand.
Thailand has said God's Army members can cross the border if they lay down their arms. But the rebels are believed unlikely to do so in the atmosphere of distrust following the shelling.
In Myanmar, the legal pro-democracy party led by Nobel Peace Prize-winner Aung San Suu Kyi condemned the hostage-taking but said it was the result of instability in Myanmar because of decades of military rule.
"It should be noted that instability within the country can affect stability within the region," the party said in a statement.
The Sydney Morning Herald
Child soldiers born of conflict and isolation
The siege, which ended when Thai commandos stormed the building and killed the 10 God's Army gunmen, was a tragic reminder of the psychological trauma and physical misery caused to children dislocated by conflict.
Photographs of the killed insurgents showed that some of them were adolescents, and the ethnic Karen God's Army behind the hostage-taking is led by twin 12-year-old boys Johnny and Luther Htoo.
Aid workers and human rights groups familiar with the God's Army say they live such an isolated existence in a remote jungle camp that they have little understanding of the realities of the outside world.
One school of thought is that the students, some of whom are thought to be suffering from various degrees of mental illness after long years in exile, coaxed the naive Karens into the hospital attack.
In Burma, the abuse of children and young teenagers has been a hallmark of decades of political and ethnic conflicts against the country's repressive military rulers.
The regional director of UNICEF, Mr Kul Gautam, told a Bangkok conference on children's rights this week that the hospital tragedy in Ratchaburi underscored "how the anger and frustrations of displacement can so terribly manifest themselves".
"Although they did not take part in the incident, to think that the twins might have helped plan or played a role in so desperate an act is heartbreakingly sad."
He said reports suggested the behaviour of Johnny and Luther was a "mix of classic battle fatigue and childish playfulness".
"The twins have been fighting against Myanmar [Burmese] soldiers since they were nine and they have 'lost count' of how many they have killed," Mr Gautam said.
"This should stir moral outrage in each and every one of us and move us to take all the action necessary to protect other children from such a fate."
Mr Gautam pointed to a growing problem of internally displaced people in Asia as well as cross-border refugees.
"There are displaced children who face the threat of death or dismemberment due to conflict or landmines, the ever-present silent killers," he said. "Other displaced children have been, as the incident in Ratchaburi clearly showed, coerced by adults into becoming child soldiers and taking up arms themselves."
Earlier this week it was announced in Geneva an agreement had been reached on a new international accord prohibiting the use of child soldiers in war.
The accord officially raised the age for involvement in combat from 15 to 18, but that means little in places such as Burma and Sri Lanka where the use of child soldiers is commonplace.
The cigar-smoking Luther and Johnny have been the subject of international publicity, including reports that their followers believe they have divine powers.
However, the secessionist Karen National Union, from which the more militant God's Army split in 1997, believes the power and influence of the twins have waned.
This school of thought holds that others manipulate the boys to gain publicity and support.
"When we think of the fate of the twin boys, Johnny and Luther, how their so-called bravery and prowess is cynically glamourised, I know we all feel compassion for them," Mr Gautam said.
"We should be angry, angry with their adult manipulators."
Can governments control the internet?
By internet analyst James Miles
Regulations announced in China this week aimed at preventing the leaking of state secrets via the internet are the latest measures introduced by numerous governments around the world to control online activity.
From North Korea to Cuba to Syria, officials are struggling to contain the tide of unwanted information that the internet threatens to unleash upon their countries' citizens.
China looks likely to become a case study for authoritarian governments as they battle to control what they see as the internet's darker side.
Within a few years, Chinese may well become the most commonly used language of the World Wide Web. And with the country's online population doubling every six months it will not be too many years after that before China becomes the most wired nation on the planet.
There are few if any other countries in the world where the internet has at the same time both enjoyed such phenomenal growth and aroused such deep suspicion as it has in China.
The country's rulers have been far quicker to accept the internet's potential commercial benefits than have their counterparts in Burma, North Korea or Vietnam.
Yet they continue their attempts to control and regulate the medium, often oblivious it seems of the internet's ability to work its way around any bureaucratic or legal obstacle put in its way.
Keeping pace with technology
China's latest regulations reflect the leadership's desperate efforts to keep pace with the new technology.
Four or five years after the internet's first appearance in China, the government has now decided to issue a specific ban on the leaking of state secrets in cyberspace.
China's laws already made it clear enough that secrets have to be kept, but the government has finally woken up to the ease with which the internet is used to convey information it wants to keep concealed. The new rules also require all websites to undergo official scrutiny before they are published.
Measures have little impact
The measures are likely to have little if any impact. Often what the Chinese Government means by a state secret would be regarded by most other countries, and indeed by many ordinary Chinese, as routine information.
Dissidents who are now using the internet to convey news abroad of events that China would prefer to keep secret will continue doing so.
The new rules do not increase the probably minimal risk of detection by a police force that is ill equipped to monitor the fast growing volume of internet communications.
Some other countries that might well be watching how China's manages to ride the internet tiger include:
Burma: The authorities in Rangoon introduced internet regulations this month very similar to the restrictions that China has tried to impose. These include requiring internet users to register with the police and banning unauthorised websites and the transmission of material deemed harmful to the state. Burma is likely to be more successful than China in enforcing these regulations because private internet usage is still virtually unheard of, and even the ownership of an unauthorised modem can result in a lengthy jail term.
Vietnam: Slightly ahead of Burma in the easing of restrictions on the private use of the internet. Users must still seek permission from the government, and as in China, websites deemed politically or morally harmful are blocked. But internet cafes are beginning to open and if China's experience is anything to go by these will provide citizens with a way of accessing material with little risk of their browsing habits being monitored by the authorities.
North Korea: Private use of the internet is banned.
Malaysia: Opposition forces have made extensive use of the internet. Malaysia ruled in December 1998 that internet cafes must record the names of people who use their computers. But the government says it will not attempt to censor the internet and some Malaysian journalists publish political news on the web that would be banned from the country's broadcast or print media.
Cuba: Internet use in Cuba is only just beginning to extend to the general public. It is believed that e-mail messages are often monitored by the police.
Central Asia and the Caucasus: The watchdog group Reporters Without Frontiers issued a report last August describing the countries of this region as among the "enemies of the internet", with only very limited access provided.
Middle East: There is no direct access to the internet in Baghdad, while in Iran the authorities block sites deemed harmful to the state or the Muslim faith. Saudi Arabia also blocks access to sites that provide information considered contrary to Islamic values. In Syria, individuals are generally not allowed access to the internet.
Bangkok Post - Jan 29, 2000
Explosions reported in Mong Yawn
Subin
Khuenkaew Three explosions rocked Mong Yawn, the United Wa
State Army's southern military command, early this week causing damage to the
town's power plant and two petrol stations, an informed source said. "Two generators providing electricity to the town went down following an
explosion on Monday," said the source, who was certain it was not an
accident. Two explosions on Tuesday had reportedly damaged two petrol stations owned by
two senior UWSA officers, Wei Hsueh-kang, 361st brigade commander, and Ta Kap,
who is deputy commander of the UWSA's 894th brigade, headquartered in Mong
Yawn. An army officer from the Pha Mueng task force, supervising security along the
Burmese border, said he was also aware of the explosions. "We don't know exactly
what caused them," he said. A Thai soldier from the 17th Infantry Regiment was also reported to have
disappeared while on duty in the border area near Ban San Maked, in Chiang Rai's
Mae Fah Luang district. A source said the man was thought to have been seized by the UWSA.
Bangkok Post Jan 29, 2000.
God's Army gains edge over junta
troops
Battalions suffer heavy
casualties
| A Ratchaburi girl student finds yesterday was another holiday after showing up at the school gate and being told by a teacher the school will reopen for classes on Monday. All the schools in the provincial town have been closed since Monday following the Jan 24-25 siege of the Ratchaburi regional hospital. _ JETJARUS NA RANONG |
An end to the assault on Kamaplaw, opposite Khao Chong Krachoam, in Suan Phueng district, Ratchaburi, was not in sight, said Col Pairoj.
God's Army guerrillas remained in control of their stronghold despite days of shelling, he said.
As the fighting continues. Thais living near the border fear they may be robbed by God's Army guerrillas as the rebels' food supplies are drying up.
Somneuk Boonsong, head of Ban Pha Pok, Suan Phung district, said yesterday he had learned that about 200 rebels and civilians of the Karen minority force were starving.
Mr Somnuek said God's Army could be wiped out soon as Burmese troops had sealed off Kamaplaw following the heavy shelling since Thursday.
His village had formed a security protection force comprising 60 men and evacuated children, women and the elderly to safe places.
A Thai soldier who was part of an army special force being deployed at Ban Huay Khok said the fighting had sometimes spilled over into Thai border areas and the Thai side had fired a number of warning shots.
The force has stopped firing mortar rounds at the Karen base since Monday, he said.
Thawee Poonsawat, a villager of Ban Huay Nam Sai, said two starving Karen women had asked for food from her while she was fishing near the village yesterday.
Watchara Yaem-arun, head of Ban Takoklang , said there has not yet been an influx of Karen refugees but villagers were still concerned God's Army rebels might rob them.
All border villages had volunteers to safeguard security during night time. The military and border patrol police had also stepped up their border patrols.
Burmese troops have started rounding up young strong men from villages opposite Ranong to serve as porters in the dry-season offensive against ethnic rebels, border sources said.
Soldiers from the 262nd battalion raided at least three villages about 10km west of Victoria Point and rounded up about 200 men, the sources said.
The Burmese military needs 100 more to carrry weapons, food and water supplies for the troops currently fighting in the areas opposite Prachuap Khiri Khan and Ratchaburi.
The Nation Jan 29, 2000
Headlines
Officials urged to carry out
autopsies
CONTROVERSY continues over the killing of the 10 Burmese dissidents at Ratchabury hospital with the president of the Law Society of Thailand's human-rights committee calling on the government to conduct transparent forensic examinations of the bodies.
This is the latest move in the ongoing debate over whether the rebels were summarily executed after they turned themselves in. While the Thai authorities have denied the charge, some witnesses say they saw eight of the surrendered rebels taken into another building before the final bullet shots were heard.
''I believe the bodies should be sent to the department of forensic science at the Police Hospital so the truth will emerge,'' said Somchai Homla-or. But the government said on Thursday that if no relatives came to claim the bodies, they would be cremated.
Somchai added that the relatives of the dead had the right to interrogate any witnesses and could ask them to testify as to the real nature of the killings.
Dr Pornthip Rojanasunandh, a well-known forensic medical examiner at the Ramathibodi Hospital, said she wondered why no forensic examinations had yet been carried out. She also said that a neutral and transparent committee should be set up to shed light on the subject.
''According to the law, autopsies will have to be carried out,'' said Pornthip. ''The only exception is under the anti-communist law. While I cannot say at this stage that we would be able to establish the facts, it would give us an idea of what took place.
''We ought to uphold the law and do it [the autopsy] properly.''
She added that there were many doctors at Ratchaburi hospital who could do a preliminary autopsy, while the forensic department was willing to provide all the help it could.
Meanwhile Twekiat Menakanis, a law lecturer at Thammasat University, who is an expert on international criminal law, said that according to the law, the extra-judicial killing at the Ratchaburi hospital might be considered ''too violent'' and violated international practices on how to deal with terrorism.
The lecturer said the government might have resorted to swift use of force for political reasons.
''According to the international standard on the handling of terrorism, if the hostage-takers had already laid down their weapons, they should have the right to live,'' he said. ''No law allows authorities to kill them after they have surrendered.''
Twekiat said such killings only occurred in underdeveloped countries.
Puttanee Kangkun, coordinator of the Thai Action Committee for Democracy in Burma, is today likely to send a petition letter to the Law Society of Thailand to formally request the government to hold a forensic examination. If it is discovered that some were executed after turning themselves in, the petitioner wants the commando officers involved to stand trial.
BY Pravit Rojanaphruk and
Subhatra Bhumiprabhas
The Nation
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Centre set to stay open longer than anticipated
PRIME Minister Chuan Leekpai has said that Thailand will most likely continue to look after Burmese asylum seekers residing at the Maneeloy holding centre.
In a statement issued yesterday he said he didn't think all of them could be resettled within the next three years, as planned earlier.
Shortly after the Burmese Embassy hostage crisis last year, the National Security Council said the Maneeloy holding centre in Ratchaburi would be shut down within three years, and that all the Burmese residing there would be resettled in a third-party country.
National Security chief Kachadpai Burusapatana has mounted a campaign to get a third-party country to grant the Burmese a home but so far the process has not been as fast as the agency would like.
So far, only the United States has publicly said it would take in about 1,000 of the 3,000 Maneeloy residents, while a number of other countries have expressed interest.
Human-rights groups have urged the government to allow Maneeloy residents the camp to further their education outside the camp, but the government has refused, citing security reasons. The centre is administered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
In the past, the Thai government was relaxed with the camp's rules and regulations, and permitted the students to go in and out of the camp almost at will. However, since the Burmese Embassy hostage crisis, the authorities have become much stricter.
Interior Minister Sanan Kachornprasart said yesterday that police were sweeping through the city to force all the students to return to the Maneeloy centre.
Kachadpai has threatened to charge all Maneeloy residents living outside the centre as illegal immigrants unless they return.
Meanwhile, the United States was sorry about the way the Ratchaburi hospital siege had ended, but understood Thailand's swift action on Tuesday morning in which all 10 rebels were killed, a senior Foreign Ministry official said yesterday.
The Thai embassy in Washington informed the ministry that the US lauds Thailand for its ongoing humanitarian efforts to provide temporary refuge to disarmed refugees seeking shelter from the fighting, said ministry spokesman Don Pramudwinai.
Many foreign envoys praised Thailand's handling of the incident, Don said. The media in other countries had been factual in their reports of the incident, he added.
The Nation
Headlines
Terrorists' fingerprints go missing
RATCHABURI -- Police were compelled to take the fingerprints of the ten slain terrorists again yesterday after three different sets of prints were found to be missing.
The bodies were taken out of their temporary burial compartments at the Khaolua Temple here for about three hours for the task to be carried out. Scores of locals gathered to watch.
A police source said one batch of the 10 sets of fingerprints had been sent to the Scientific Crime Detection Division in Bangkok and another batch for the Ratchaburi governor to cross check with files at the Maneeloy Holding Centre.
Meanwhile in Bangkok, government spokesman Akapol Sorasuchart said the government would announce the identities of the 10 slain terrorists next week.
The 10 armed militants were killed when Thai security personnel stormed the Ratchaburi Hospital which the group had annexed a day earlier.
Akapol said the authorities would use all physical evidence and body markings to verify the identities of the 10 men. Authorities have so far publicly named only one of them, identified as Beda, also known as Preeda.
Akapol added that it had yet to be determined whether Gyaw Ni, also known as Johnny, was among the 10. Both Beda and Gyaw Ni were among the armed guerrillas who stormed the Burmese Embassy in Bangkok last October and later given safe passage out.
According to Phummarat Thaksadipong, director of the National Intelligence Agency, the authorities have so far determined the identities of eight of the 10.
Of the eight, five or six of were Burmese dissidents while the rest were members of the Karen God's Army, Phummarat said.
The agency was also checking whether San Naign, also known as Ye Thi He, was among those killed. San Naign took part in the 1989 plane hijacking and was sentenced to six years in jail but was released three years later on good behaviour.
Phummarat said he was ready take responsibility for the hostage incident and admitted that there were some shortcomings in the agency's intelligence work.
But he added: ''Taking over a hospital is very unconventional, given the sanctity of a hospital. Nobody thought an armed group would take over a hospital by force.''
A senior security officer told The Nation that authorities knew from the start that the 10 were not soldiers of the God's Army but a group which called itself the Vigorous Burmese Student Warriors, the same gang which took control of the Burmese Embassy in October last year.
Police are also distributing pictures of the 10 men in the hope that relatives might recognise them and come forward to claim the bodies.
BY Thanin Kitnanthakun and
Piyanart Srivalo
The Nation
.............................
Hostages to gain trauma counselling
THE Public Health Ministry is to provide post-trauma counselling for 168 people taken hostage in the Ratchaburi Hospital siege staged by the God's Army terrorists, Public Health permanent secretary Sujarit Sriprapan said yesterday.
Sujarit revealed that damage to the hospital during the siege amounted to Bt2.4 million. The repair costs would be financed by the government central fund and the hospital is expected to be working normally by Monday, he said.
When the 10 terrorists stormed into Ratchaburi Hospital, records showed 606 inpatients, 236 medical staff, with 168 patients and visitors in the outpatient ward.
To prevent future acts of terrorism, the ministry has instructed that security be tightened at hospitals in 25 border provinces and surrounding areas.
Meanwhile, Ratchaburi governor Komes Dangthongdee has ordered local police to set up checkpoints for passenger buses and trucks to prevent a repetition of terrorists hijacking a bus to their target to avoid detection by highway police.
Police commissioner Gen Pracha Phromnok instructed Police Region 7, which has jurisdiction over Ratchaburi, to launch a fact-finding investigation into why police failed to detect 10 terrorists travelling almost 100 kilometres from the border to the town centre.
The Ratchaburi security panel called for the updating of blueprints for all key buildings in the province, as a precautionary anti-terrorist measure.
Lek Waikakul, chairman of the Ratchaburi Chamber of Commerce, voiced concern that the terrorist incident might have impacted on the local economy.
''Stores now close earlier than usual. And there has been a drop in customers at the local branch of Robinson Department Store after a bomb hoax on Thursday,'' he said.
Police have arrested a 10-year-old boy who allegedly called the Robinson Department store branch in Ratchaburi and made a bomb threat, the Muang district police chief said yesterday.
''We traced the call to him. He confessed he did it. We reprimanded him and let him go,'' said Pol Col Sakchai Tanboon-ek.
Chaweng Laksanavilas, deputy chairman of the Thai Tour Operators' Association, predicted a temporary decline in the numbers of local tourists to destinations near the western border.
Chaweng was optimistic, however, that local tourism would return to normal soon because the Ratchaburi Hospital siege was an isolated incident.
The Nation