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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BURMA RELATED NEWS - OCT - 23, 2000. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HEADLINE
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Dow Jones - Vietnam Bk Assoc To Host Regional Mtg Nov
8-11 - Official
The Times - No charity in
Burma
The Daily Telegraph - Freed
Burma campaigner tells of rats and beatings
Kyodo News - ILO mission meeting
with senior Myanmar officials
BBC - James Mawdsley: Defiant
dissenter
Monday, October 23 12:40 PM SGT Vietnam Bk Assoc To Host Regional Mtg Nov 8-11 - Official HANOI (Dow
Jones)--The Vietnam Banking Association is to host an annual
meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nation banking associations from
Nov. 8 to 11, an official told Dow Jones Newswires Monday.
The meeting, to be held in Hanoi, will bring together various regional banking officials from the 10 Asean countries and will "discuss cooperation and development issues," he said. He noted that the upcoming meeting will include seminars on
intra-regional competition, as well as the development of internet banking and
e-commerce. Further details weren't available.
The Vietnam Banking Association currently has 43 members
including both state-owned and semiprivate joint stock commercial banks.
Foreign-invested banks and local branches of foreign banks aren't members of the
Vietnam Banking Association, he said.
Asean groups Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, the
Philippines, Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar.
The Times (UK)
Letters to the Editor MONDAY OCTOBER 23 2000 No charity in Burma FROM MRS GLENYS KINNOCK MEP FOR WALES (LABOUR) Sir, James Mawdsley has, thankfully, been released from jail in Burma. The regime has claimed that this is a “charitable gesture” on its part. Without doubt no such gesture will be made to the estimated 1,500 political prisoners who suffer regular brutal treatment in Burma. Neither will it be extended to the democratically elected leader of that country, Aung San Suu Kyi. She remains under house arrest without communication with the outside world. Let us, therefore, not be led to believe that anything has
changed; or that strong measures against the military junta, including
sanctions, need not be put in place.
Yours sincerely,
GLENYS KINNOCK (Group of the Party of European Socialists), European Parliament, Rue Wiertz, B1040 Brussels. October 20. The Daily Telegraph
Sunday 22 October 2000
Freed Burma campaigner tells of rats and beatings by Alex Spillius and Adam Lusher THE human rights campaigner James Mawdsley returned to England a free man
yesterday and told how he feared going mad during 415 days solitary confinement
in a Burmese prison cell.
After being arrested for distributing pro-democracy leaflets in August last
year, he was watched constantly by guards at Kengtung prison and allowed out of
his cell for only an hour a day. The glare from a striplight deliberately left
on all night by his jailers damaged his eyes to the point where he was unable to
read.
"I wanted to protest against solitary confinement before I went crackers,"
said Mr Mawdsley, 27, who served 14 months of a 17-year sentence. "I wasn't
crackers but I knew I would be in a few months. Prison is hard. Physically you
can adapt, but mentally it's a battle."
During the 12-hour flight from Bangkok to London, Mr Mawdsley - who had
lived on a diet of rice and fish paste in jail - was able to enjoy a traditional
English breakfast of eggs, bacon, tomato and sausages. On the flight from
Rangoon to Bangkok he had refused a celebratory glass of champagne, fearing the
effect it would have on him.
After his long months in solitary confinement, Mr Mawdsley spent most of
the long flight in conversation with his mother. The campaigner, who had been
denied even a radio while in jail, was able to catch up with current affairs by
watching in-flight BBC World news and sport.
Mr Mawdsley's cell in Kengtung was a converted warder's office 27ft by
23ft, with only bare boards to sleep on. When the devout Roman Catholic from
Ormskirk, Lancashire, was handed over to British officials earlier in Rangoon,
he refused to sign an undertaking to stop criticising the junta. He has however
said he will not risk returning to Burma.
Still wearing his prison flip-flops, the 27-year-old former Bristol
University student said yesterday: "My cell was pretty dirty and had lots of
wildlife - toads, bats and rats."
Successive protests earned him three beatings on consecutive days, the most
brutal being on the third. "They just sent the boys in. They burst in and before
I could say a word they were into me. It doesn't take long with five guys
hitting you with clubs before you go down. After I fell, two carried on but the
others stopped them."
Mr Mawdsley said an atmosphere of terror permeated the prison. Convicts
were frightened to look him in the eye for fear they would be beaten. His guards
were determined there should be a light on him every second of the day. When
power failures blacked out the neon light, they would connect it to a car
battery. Consular staff from the British embassy in Rangoon supplied an airline
mask, but the rats ate it.
He was only allowed to write one letter a month to his family, but none was
ever received.Prison censors deemed the autobiography of Nelson Mandela and the
works of Solzhenitsyn acceptable.
Mr Mawdsley landed in England at 5.08am and immediately had a tearful
re-union with his father David, sister Emma and twin brother Jeremy, a captain
in the Royal Artillery.
YANGON, Oct. 23 Kyodo
ILO mission meeting with senior Myanmar officials An International Labor Organization (ILO) mission is meeting with senior
officials of Myanmar's junta to check whether Yangon is complying with the
recommendations of a 1998 ILO commission of inquiry that found widespread and
systematic use of forced labor, official sources said Monday.
The five-member ILO mission, led by Francis Maupain, special adviser to the
ILO director general, arrived in Myanmar on Friday.
BBC -Friday, 20 October, 2000, 14:28
GMT 15:28 UK
James Mawdsley: Defiant dissenter By Caroline Frost of the BBC's News Profiles Unit What drives a man to leave his home and family, travel across the world to
certain imprisonment, and lay his life on the line for a foreign and faraway
cause?
The pro-democracy activist James Mawdsley has had time to ponder this
question. In the last year, he has spent all but 20 minutes of each day in the
solitary confinement of his Burmese cell, following his sentence last year to 17
years imprisonment for sedition and illegal entry.
Since then, hunger strikes, squalid conditions and beatings with bamboo
sticks might have prompted him to take the course of action followed by fellow
freedom-fighter and Briton Rachel Goldwyn.
She agreed to co-operate with the Burmese authorities in their purge on
narcotics in return for her freedom. But it seems that James Mawdsley was
determined to stay put.
Two sources of strength and comfort for this extraordinary young man have
been his Christian faith and his belief in the justness of his cause.
In a letter written from his cell he questions whether he is in unbearable
pain.
"And the answer's always no, because if you are in unbearable pain, you
can't put the question to yourself."
The theological roots of such forbearance can be found in James's
background as an altar boy in his home village. He enjoyed a childhood where he
and his siblings were encouraged always to seek the truth for themselves, rather
than believing necessarily what they were told.
And his sister Emma describes their mother Diana as a woman "who instilled
in us the need for decency and fair play."
It seems James was always a bit of a free thinker. For many years, Emma
explains, "We had a lot of political discussions. He definitely has a way of
making you look at things in a different way."
For James's father David, his son's current political struggle is a logical
activity for a man for whom loyalty is paramount.
"The Burmese people were his friends", he says. "There was no way James was
going to abandon them."
His long-time friend Emma Glover says that James would have no trouble
sacrificing the material British comforts we take for granted. She said: "He's
never been a comfort zoner."
It was a chance encounter for the 27-year-old Briton that sealed his fate,
when he met a group of Burmese refugees while backpacking through New Zealand.
Their tales of genocide, rape and repression spurred the university
drop-out turned defender of democracy to make his first trip into Burma to "see
for himself".
After teaching English to the displaced Karen tribe, James became
politically active after being forced to flee from his village when the military
junta moved in.
Arrested and thrown out of the country, James nevertheless returned to
support his new friends and was imprisoned before being deported once again.
In spite of their concerns about his welfare, James's family respected his
decision to return for a third time to Burma and almost certain arrest. He
explained that "I cannot sit idle; their cause is my cause." His family and
friends witnessed his inner turmoil.
Although divorced, his parents rallied in support of their son. His father
drove him to the airport, while his mother struggled with her own maternal
dilemma.
She explained: "As a mother I wish he was home, but as a member of the
human race, I cannot argue with what he is doing."
On his return home, his father has only three requests to make of him. They
are to resist any urges to enter Burma again under the current regime, to
consider some publishing options, and finally to speak to the local Church about
his experiences.
His mother will be more direct. "I'll have to box his ears," she has
already decided. But in the tradition of this strong-minded but loving family:
"It will be a loving box."
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