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BURMA RELATED NEWS - January - 30, 2001. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HEADLINE
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- AP - European delegation to Myanmar meets Aung
San Suu Kyi
Reuters - European
Delegation Visits Myanmar's Suu Kyi
BBC - EU delegation meets Suu Kyi
The Salon - The Htoo twins come in from the
cold
Bernama - MYANMAR
JUNTA HEAD WARNS AGAINST 'NEOCOLONIAL' INTERFERENCE
IRNA - Prospects of
peace in
Myanmar
The Times - No peace
for Suu Kyi
The Nation - Unions
pile the pressure on Burma
Tuesday, January 30 3:12 PM SGT
European delegation to Myanmar meets Aung San Suu Kyi YANGON, Jan 30 (AFP) - An
European Union (EU) delegation met with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi
Tuesday to discuss her landmark contacts with the military regime and signs of a
political thaw in Myanmar.
The five-member EU team arrived at the National League for Democracy (NLD)
leader's lakeside home at about 10:20am (0350 GMT) and stayed for two hours,
witnesses said.
Aung San Suu Kyi has been largely out of touch with the international
community since September 22 when she was placed under house arrest for
attempting to leave Yangon in defiance of a travel ban.
The EU fact-finding mission provides a rare chance to learn at first hand
her views on the contacts with the junta and indications the two sides may be
about to embark on their first official dialogue since 1994.
The Swedish-led delegation arrived in Yangon Sunday to investigate the new
mood in the military-run country and to encourage the junta and the opposition
to break their decade-long political deadlock.
On Monday they held talks with Foreign Minister Win Aung and
Lieutenant-General Khin Nyunt, the powerful head of military intelligence who
since September has met at least twice with Aung San Suu Kyi.
UN envoy Razali Ismail, who brokered the secret contacts, earlier this
month reported the two sides were moving towards "more substantive
discussions."
Since then the regime has extended a series of concessions that have gone
some way to improving the poisonous atmosphere between the two sides.
More than 80 opposition prisoners including NLD vice-chairman Tin Oo were
released from four months in detention on Thursday in a gesture aimed squarely
at the European officials' visit.
The developments have been greeted enthusiastically by the NLD as well as
the network of dissidents living in exile.
But diplomats in Yangon said this week the initiative to kick-start a
reconciliation dialogue was "fragile" and unlikely to bear fruit
immediately.
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who has become a key ally of the
military government and its leader Senior General Than Shwe, reportedly said the
junta was willing to hold elections "eventually."
"He (Than Shwe) is willing to do the elections eventually. Well, the
election will not be held this year or next. It should be held in a few years,"
he said in a weekend interview with Japan's Mainichi Shimbun.
Khin Nyunt said earlier this month that the international community must
roll back sanctions if it wants to see "the emergence of a peaceful, modern and
democratic state."
EU officials have said the bloc will hold its annual review of sanctions
against Myanmar in April, but any change would require proof of tangible steps
towards democracy.
"The issue of lifting the sanctions is a bit premature at this time, let's
see first what the troika mission can bring," Sweden's ambassador to Bangkok Jan
Axel Nordlander said before the team's arrival.
Tuesday January 30 3:14 AM ET
European Delegation Visits Myanmar's Suu Kyi YANGON (Reuters) - A European
Union delegation, in Myanmar for three days, paid a visit Tuesday to
pro-democracy opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent more than four
months under de facto house arrest.
Access to the Nobel Laureate has been strictly controlled by the Myanmar
authority. The only foreign diplomat allowed to meet Suu Kyi since September was
U.N. special envoy Razali Ismail.
A Reuters reporter on the scene Tuesday saw cars from the European Union
(EU) delegation drive to Suu Kyi's house. No details of the talks were
immediately available.
The delegation of EU representatives, who arrived in Yangon Sunday, is in
Myanmar to try to put pressure on the military government to move toward
democracy.
The team met Lieutenant-General Khin Nyunt, Secretary One of the ruling
State Peace and Development Council, and Foreign Minister Win Aung Monday.
Meetings with representatives of Myanmar's ethnic minority groups are also
planned.
Myanmar has faced heavy criticism from the EU for its treatment of Suu Kyi
and her National League for Democracy (NLD), which won elections in 1990 by a
landslide but has never been allowed to govern.
Recent weeks have seen signs of a thaw in the Myanmar military's stance.
Earlier this month, the United Nations revealed Suu Kyi and senior
government leaders had held secret meetings.
Last week, more than 80 NLD prisoners, including party Vice Chairman Tin
Oo, were released from prison.
Cartoons and editorials denouncing the NLD in the official media have also
suddenly ceased.
Myanmar agreed to the visit of a European delegation last month, during a
meeting in Laos of ministers from the EU and the Association of South East Asian
Nations (ASEAN), the first ministerial-level talks between the two blocs since
Myanmar was controversially admitted to ASEAN in 1997.
ASEAN groups the countries of Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand,
Brunei, the Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos as well as Myanmar.
BBC - Tuesday, 30 January, 2001, 07:40
GMT
EU delegation meets Suu Kyi A European Union delegation visiting Burma has arrived at the home of the
pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who is being held under house arrest.
It is reported to be only her second diplomatic contact in more than four months. The meeting was one of the conditions set by the EU representatives for
agreeing to travel to Rangoon.
The four-day visit, which began on Sunday, is aimed at breaking the
deadlock between the Burmese Government and Aung San Suu Kyi's National League
for Democracy (NLD).
The NLD won by a landslide in the 1990 general election, but the military
has refused to hand over power.
Dialogue
On Monday, the EU delegation began talks with the country's military
government to urge them to move towards democracy. It met Lieutenant-General
Khin Nyunt, the powerful head of military intelligence.
Earlier this month, the United Nations revealed Suu Kyi and senior
government leaders had held secret meetings - the first between the two sides in
six years.
Aung San Suu Kyi has not commented publicly about the talks, which are
understood to have been with General Nyunt.
Celebrations
The EU is maintaining sanctions against the country because of persistent
human rights violations by the regime.
Asian and Western governments have welcomed the EU visit, but many
observers remain sceptical that a major breakthrough is in the offing.
Nevertheless, there is a new mood of optimism in Burma and at the NLD's
headquarters in Rangoon.
Last week, the military released 84 NLD members of from detention.
And the media's repeated attacks on Aung San Suu Kyi have recently stopped.
Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, fresh from a visit to the
country, also said in a newspaper article published on Sunday that the ruling
junta was willing to hold elections in a few years.
Aung San Suu Kyi's only other diplomatic contact since September, has been
with UN special envoy Razali Ismail, who met her on two mediation missions in
October and January.
The Salon
The Htoo twins come in from the cold Myanmar's legendary child rebel leaders are like toxic cherubim, confusing our moral senses. By Lawrence Weschler Jan. 29, 2001 | The image itself (splayed across virtually every newspaper
in the world) was uncanny, the caption more unsettling yet: Dec. 6, 1999, a pair
of 12-year-old ethnic Karen twin brothers, the Htoos, Johnny on the left (that's
a boy?) and Luther (Luther!?) on the right, leaders of a beleaguered Myanmar
insurgent group known as God's Army, whose members credit them with mystical
godlike powers that "render them invulnerable during battle."
In the photo, they look like Renaissance cherubs gone badly wrong
(specifically like those two clichéd angels propped at the foot of Raphael's
Dresden Sistine Madonna): toxic putti. Raphael's cherubs, that is, gone upriver,
deep, way too deep into Conradland -- miniature Brandos bestriding their own
demented cargo cult. Their aura is all the more unsettling in that, in this
photo anyway, they actually look, if you'll pardon the _expression_, like Siamese
twins. Johnny seems to grow right out of Luther's back, his tremulous innocence
hitched helplessly to the latter's age-old, gimlet-eyed world-weariness: seen it
all (toke), seen it all (toke), should never have seen any of it.
The inhaled stogie lends the image a certain sulfurous air, as does word
that their followers have now gone and attacked a hospital, of all things, and
are holding hundreds of hostages. Is there no bottom to the world's demented
evil?
Of course, this is all so much Orientalist claptrap: feverish white Western
fantasies about the metaphysical debauch of endlessly inscrutable colored folk,
the convenient Other. In fact, the attack on the hospital itself undercuts such
smug and easy projections: They've raided the hospital and are holding all those
hostages to advance their demands that the Thai army stop shelling their
positions and that the doctors there treat their own ragtag wounded. There is no
Primordial Evil here, only all-too-human desperation.
But the fantasy of the first allows us to screen out the palpable reality
of the second -- no need any longer to trouble ourselves over the plight of
Karen minorities wedged in a tightening vise between those Burmese and Thai
generals. No call to keep paying attention.
And so we don't (pay attention). Time passes, and then suddenly, last week,
here they are again, those wacky Htoo boys, come in out of the cold (or rather
the jungle dank). After turning themselves in to Thai border guards alongside a
clutch of their followers, they are whisked to a police compound in the nearby
town of Suan Phung, where (according to the dispatch by Time's Robert Horn) they
soon find themselves exchanging bewildered stares with the Thai prime minister
and several of his top generals. The prime minister "gently stroked the boys'
lice ridden locks. 'He totally demystified them,' says Sunai Phasuk of Forum
Asia, a human rights group. In Thailand, where people still crawl before
royalty, 'you don't pat a god on the head.'"
So that, see (another comforting dodge, an obverse reassuring fantasy):
They're just ordinary kids after all. Decked out there in their fresh soccer
frocks, straddling nothing more fearsome than everyday puberty, they're just
like the boys next door (though it would be nice if somebody could get that
Luther kid to stop smoking).
This too, of course, is all wrong. Thirteen years old, they look like they
can't be more than 7 or 8. And that's not charming mumbo jumbo, that's severe
extended malnutrition. These aren't just ordinary kids. They've seen things,
they've lived through hells that the world (which is to say the rest of us,
swaddled in our comforting illusions) had no business allowing.
Malaysian National News Agency
MYANMAR JUNTA HEAD WARNS AGAINST 'NEOCOLONIAL' INTERFERENCE YANGON, Jan 30 (Bernama-Kyodo)
- Myanmar junta leader Gen. Than Shwe on Monday warned against outside
interference by ''neocolonial'' states trying to cause disunity in the country,
local media reported Tuesday.
''Some big neocolonialist countries, which want to dominate and manipulate
Myanmar, are trying to destroy the spirit of national solidarity in order to
weaken the country and put it under their influence,'' said Than Shwe, chairman
of the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC).
In a speech in the parliament, he told a group of primary school teacher
trainees to always strive for national unity. The text of his address was
carried in local newspapers.
''Taking advantage of their superiority in science and technology, these
big nations are trying to dominate the developing nations politically,
economically, socially and culturally,'' he said.
Myanmar must be guarded by implementing the SPDC's three basic principles
of ''non-disintegration of union, non-disintegration of national solidarity and
perpetuation of sovereignty,'' he said.
A five-member delegation from the European Union is currently visiting
Myanmar to examine the local human rights situation. The mission met
pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday, diplomatic sources said.
--BERNAMA-KYODO
Myanmar-Peace-Analysis
/GNR/
Prospects of peace in Myanmar Kuala Lumpur, Jan 29, IRNA -- A European Union team arrived in Yangon,
Myanmar to assess the progress of national reconciliation in the
country.
The EU delegation is due to review the result of historic talks between the
officials of the military-run country and the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi
who is still under house arrest in Yangon.
Although no details are available about on the meetings of the EU mission
with Myanmar authorities, however, there is hope that the government will think
of giving the opposition a share in the administration of
affairs.
The delegation is scheduled to confer with senior Myanmar officers in order
to get first-hand knowledge of their
views.
The five-member delegation has promised to pay a visit to Suu Kyi, a
Noble-laureate and leader of the "National League for
Democracy
(NLD)" to become acquainted with her viewpoints on dialogue with military government. Myanmar agreed to the visit of the EU team with the mediation
of the U.N. special envoy to Myanmar Razali Ismail and Malaysian
Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad who visited Yangon earlier in
January.
Razali Ismail met Suu Kyi in Yangon earlier this month. He also met the
ambassadors of European countries and the U.S. and later with the
ambassadors of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), Japan, China
and South
Korea.
Simultaneously with the disclosure of the two direct but secret contacts
between Suu Kyi and senior government leaders, Myanmar authorities announced the
release of more than 80 NLD detainees who were in prison for the past 4
months.
Among those released from prison, there was the 74-year-old party
vice-chairman Tin Oo who was released last
Thursday.
The military government in Myanmar has been under international pressure in
recent years for the suppression of democratic beliefs of the people of the
country.
Two weeks ago former U.S. Secretary of States Madeleine Albright
warned that in case the dialogue between the government and the opposition
fails, the U.S. would possibly impose economic sanctions against the
country.
Albright said that the U.S. is hopeful that the dialogue would result in
the realization of national reconciliation and subsequently put a quick end to
the violation of human
rights.
Lieutenant-General Khin Nyunt said last week that if the international
community seeks to witness emergence of a calm, modern and democratic country it
should abandon its sanctions against
Myanmar.
He said that countries that have imposed sanctions and put pressures on
Myanmar should lift the sanctions if they intend to observe forging of a
national reconciliation trend under the military
rule.
Nyunt said that now most observers have admitted that pressure mechanisms
not only have proven ineffective but could have adverse consequences as
well.
Although the Myanmar government has recently shown a little interest in
taking steps towards improvement of the political atmosphere, however, Suu Kyi
has not abandoned her demand that the military leaders should admit the result
of the 1990 elections.
Suu Kyi won the election in 1990 by a landslide but the generals took
control of the situation and suppressed the
opposition.
However, experts in the region believe that still a prospect for
realization of a national reconciliation in Myanmar is not
within
reach.
SAWA NASH/RR End ::irna 30/01/2001 16:43 The Times
MONDAY JANUARY 29 2001 Reuters Cover Story No peace for Suu Kyi An acrimonious family dispute has developed between the Nobel prizewinner
and her brother over who owns the property in Burma where she has been kept
under house arrest. Grace Bradberry reports
Aung San Suu Kyi is a woman of whom people do not like to ask personal
questions. For one thing, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize has been all but
canonised, and one does not quiz saints about their private lives. For another
it would seem that she has no private life.
Before 1988, when she returned to Rangoon to nurse her dying mother and became leader of the National League for Democracy, the opposition party, she was a housewife in Oxford with a husband and two sons. After 1988, she was an international human rights heroine, who was allowed little contact with her family. It was as if from that time on her private life came to a halt and was replaced by a public one. But nobody is without a private life entirely. Last November Aung San Suu
Kyi’s resurfaced. A brother, whose name barely appears in the index of books
written about her, filed a lawsuit demanding half of the property in Rangoon
where she has lived, often under house arrest, for the past 12 years. Property
is divided equally between children under Burmese law.
Reports noted drily that Aung San Suu Kyi and her brother were estranged.
Why would anyone, let alone a brother, do such a thing to a woman who is so
revered? The move was all the more inexplicable because her brother is a US
citizen and under Burmese law a foreigner cannot own property in the country.
The answers to these questions lie with 54 University Avenue, the shuttered
house by Lake Inya that has become something of a shrine for human rights
campaigners. It is a house that seems to be owned by history and by politics —
it was given by the state to Aung San Suu Kyi’s mother in recognition of her
late husband, General Aung San, who won Burma’s independence from the British.
Yet the truth is that for both Aung San Suu Kyi and her brother, Aung San Oo, it
is a house where the personal is embedded in every cranny.
It was here that brother and sister grew up together, in the shadow of
their father’s reputation, and became locked in a complex sibling rivalry that
has continued for 50 years. The rift is deep, kept open by perceived slights and
wounding disagreements of a highly personal nature. Compared to Aung San Suu
Kyi’s moral fight it seems petty stuff — and yet it could have led to her losing
the house, and with it a crucial powerbase for the Burmese opposition.
The furniture at the house is the same that both siblings remember from
their childhood. The house itself is unchanged, though neglect has taken its
toll — a layer of moss has crept across peeling plasterwork. In most other
cities it would be a property developer’s dream, located in the town’s best
neighbourhood (Yangon) and in need of work. Even on Rangoon’s less than buoyant
property market, the estate has been variously valued by commentators at between
£4 million and £40 million.
Eight thousand miles away stands a house that could not be more different.
Built in 1962, it covers a mere 1,200 square feet, has three bedrooms, two
bathrooms and is located on an unassuming street in a middling-to-good area of
San Diego. Its value is no more than £200,000. It is here that Aung San Suu
Kyi’s brother, a 57-year-old computer engineer for the US Navy, lives with his
wife Lei Lei Nwe Thein, a university administrator. They moved there in 1990. A
year later Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize. Oddly, it was not until
last November that any of his neighbours discovered the connection.
They were alerted to it by leaflets posted through doors that denounced
Aung San Oo, and condemned the lawsuit he had filed claiming half the Rangoon
property. To drive home their disgust, members of the Burmese-American community
held up placards outside Aung San Oo’s house.
What had incensed the protestors were the possible consequences of the
lawsuit. If Aung San Oo won, his half of the property would probably be handed
over to Burma’s military Government. Some feared that Aung San Suu Kyi would be
evicted, perhaps even moved to prison. On the Internet, Burmese-Americans
speculated on the brother’s motivations: he was anti-democracy, he was in league
with Burma’s military junta, he had been pushed into it by his wife, he hated
his sister.
There were a few ugly e-mails about “genetic mutation” implying that Aung
San Oo had betrayed his father’s legacy.
Aung San Oo was the eldest of three children born to General Aung San and
Khin Kyi, a former nurse who had looked after him when he became sick. In July
1947, just six months before independence, General Aung San was assassinated.
His eldest son was four, his youngest son three and his daughter two. Aung
San Suu Kyi grew up unable to remember her father. Aung San Oo was old enough
not only to remember but to miss him. He is recalled as a withdrawn child and
there is speculation that he was badly traumatised by the death of his father.
At such a time, it might have helped to have his mother on hand. But she
accepted a government job and became, “immersed in her work”, according to an
old family friend, Ma Than E.
In her book Freedom From Fear, Aung San Suu Kyi recalls that she was closer
to her other brother, Aung San Lin, than to Aung San Oo. Tragically, Aung San
Lin died when he was eight, drowning in an ornamental lake in the grounds of the
house. Of the two children, it seems to have been Aung San Oo who was the least
psychologically robust. “He was always jealous of his sister,” recalls a family
friend. “There was a definite rivalry. He hadn’t the charm of his sister, even
though he was able in other ways.”
Dr Alice Khin, a Burmese expatriate who now lives in Canada, says that Aung
San Oo “is said to have felt lonely and depressed”. He was also judged to be
less good-looking than his sister.
“She got the good looks,” says Dr Khin. “She also had confidence in
herself. He did not.”
Both children, though brought up as Buddhists, attended Catholic schools in
Burma. But while Aung San Suu Kyi was educated in Burma and then, from 15, in
India, Aung San Oo was despatched to Dover College in England for the sixth
form. Living with her mother in Delhi, Aung San Suu Kyi took flower arranging
classes, learned to ride, and acquired a wide circle of Indian friends,
including Indira Ghandi’s sons Rajiv and Sanjay. Returning from Dover College,
and later from Imperial College, Aung San Oo would have found himself an
outsider to this circle.
Mary Trevellyan, an old family friend, was appointed his guardian while he
was at Imperial. But despite this support, it seems that he felt isolated during
his student days. His wife has complained that the Burmese community in London
abandoned him.
“While he was in the UK, nobody treated him nicely as he was a poor
student,” she said in a radio interview, going on to mention three Burmese
expatriates who apparently did not acknowledge him. While Aung San Suu Kyi met
her husband, Michael Aris, at Oxford, Aung San Oo seems to have felt few ties to
Imperial, and subsequently moved to America.
But it was an event years later that would lead to the greatest rancour
between brother and sister. Shortly before their mother’s death, Aung San Oo
married Lei Lei Nwe Thein, his junior by about ten years. His mother disapproved
of his choice, and his sister reportedly thought the antagonism sufficiently
justified to ask her brother not to take his wife to the funeral. He went alone.
Lei Lei Nwe Thein seems to provoke a good degree of bile. Rumours abound in
the Internet chat rooms frequented by Burmese-Americans. One is that before she
emigrated to America, she dated men from the American Embassy in Rangoon. There
are also malicious whispers that she might have enjoyed a full relationship with
another man before she married Aung San Oo. In Burma, dating foreigners is
frowned upon. Enjoying pre-marital sex, even within a long-term relationship, is
considered heinous. Aung San Suu Kyi’s sister-in-law is also accused of being
manipulative and there are unsubstantiated rumours that her family is connected
to the military regime.
Lei Lei Nwe Thein denies all this. “On the Internet people are swearing
about me, saying that I am the one making this claim,” she told a
Burmese-language radio station. “What the heck is going on? If I’d wanted the
house I would have done this a long time ago.”
So was it true that her father enjoyed “some sort of close relationship”
with General Khin Nyint, part of Burma’s military regime? “My father?,” Lei Lei
Nwe Thein replied. “He is already dead, so how can he have some relationship
with General Khin Nyint? In his whole life, my father was never a government
servant. He never behaved humbly to anyone to get opportunities. He never stole
government money for his own purposes. How could he have a relationship with
General Khin Nyint?” She also rejects the idea that she encouraged her husband
to pursue the lawsuit. “My husband is not a weak man. He is like stone and
nobody can change his desire.” So why did he bring the lawsuit? “It is just to
legalise his share of the property. But it has become all blown out of
proportion — this is just a family affair, not a public one.”
According to Lei Lei Nwe Thein, her husband was simply trying to follow his
mother’s wishes, she said, and turn the house into a memorial. It is well-known
that Khin Kyi intended the house to become an educational trust or museum. But
then she died before she knew the role that her daughter would play in Burmese
politics.
“We have never thought about living in the house,” Lei Lei Nwe Thein told
the Radio Free Burma journalist. “Khin Kyi wanted it to be opened up as a
memorial. You all know, this is a state house — the state gave it to the
family.”
She also cited a Burmese statute of limitation which gave her husband only
12 years from his mother’s death in which to file the suit. “If not, Oo (her
husband) will lose his property. This is just to make sure that we own half of
the house. The only thing she (Aung San Suu Kyi) has to do is accept this. Her
refusal causes all kinds of trouble.”
As it turns out, the trouble has landed at the San Diego door of Aung San
Oo and his wife. Last week, a Burmese court threw out the lawsuit, ostensibly on
technical grounds. Observers interpreted this as a softening of the junta’s
stance towards both Aung San Suu Kyi and her opposition party. Those who have
heard from Aung San Suu Kyi over the past few months say that she has not been
concerned about the property dispute.
Aung San Oo last visited Burma in July, to attend the 53rd anniversary of
his father’s death. He went to the house at University Avenue. The two siblings
did not speak.
The Nation - January 30.
2001.
Unions pile the pressure on Burma Brussels - Trade unions across the world have been requested to press their
governments to impose a ban on investments in and trade with Burma, ahead of an
important meeting of the International Labour Organisation in March.
In a 10-page briefing on Burma sent yesterday to its 221 affiliated
national union centres in 148 countries, the Brussels-based International
Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) mentions 30 different products in
relation to which it found "vast evidence of forced labour over the last 10
years".
The products range from teak wood to coconut oil, rubber, cement, coffee,
sugar cane and others. The ICFTU also said it had accumulated evidence of forced
labour in 17 different areas of industry.
In addition to oil and gas production and textiles, where forced labour is
already well documented, the ICFTU said it was now also researching in other
directions, such as the telecommunications, automobile and pharmaceuticals
industries.
The ICFTU said it had asked its affiliates world-wide to seek the following
data from their national governments:
Lists of enterprises maintaining trade relations with Burma (imports,
exports and investments) in each country.
Total value of trade with Burma, per country.
Identification of products imported from Burma, in each country.
The ICFTU move comes as a European Union delegation is visiting the Burmese
capital, Rangoon, where it expects to meet top military officials as well as
opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who is still under house arrest.
The ICFTU said it had "extensively briefed" both the Belgian and Swedish
diplomats taking part in the EU mission about the implications of a recent ILO
resolution on Burma.
Adopted in June 2000 and confirmed last November, the ILO document calls
for the organisation's member states to "review relations" with Burma and cease
any that might help the junta perpetuate the forced labour system.Quoting
several statements by senior governmental representatives from theregion, the
ICFTU said "We have noticed some very small and cosmetic stepsby the military
but we are still very far from seeing any real progress. Infact we are convinced
that fear of the impact of the ILO Resolution is thereal drive behind the
so-called secret SPDC talks with the opposition andthe recent release from jail
of about 100 senior opposition activists".
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