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BURMA RELATED NEWS - June 25,
2001.
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HEADLINES
---------------------------------------------------------------- NYT - AIDS Hidden in
Myanmar, Expert Says
BBC - Burma allows BBC man in for a short
visit
Bernama - China, Myanmar Cooperate To Develop
Transport On Int'l River
The Nation - Burmese
overwhelm border checkpoint
Bkk Post - Army powerless to stop material for
lignite plant
Xinhuanet - Myanmar Builds 122 Dams in 13
Years
Xinhuanet - Myanmar Scores Achievements in Drug
Control
Bernama - Trial Session In Suu Kyi Lawsuit
Postponed Until July 9
---------------------------------------------------------------- The New York Times
June 25, 2001
AIDS Hidden in Myanmar, Expert
Says
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
An American expert on AIDS in Southeast Asia says that the military
government of Myanmar is falsifying statistics to hide evidence that the disease
has reached epidemic levels there.
The specialist, Chris Beyrer, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins School
of Hygiene and Public Health in Baltimore, has just completed a study concluding
that 3.46 percent of adults are infected with the virus that causes AIDS.
Dr. Beyrer's study will be presented Monday during a special United Nations
General Assembly session on AIDS.
Although this percentage is well below the worst levels of some African
nations, it would make Myanmar the second-worst case in Southeast Asia, which
has the highest reasonably confirmable rates in all of Asia. Cambodia, for
instance, has a rate of infection of about 4 percent of adults.
Medical experts classify a disease as an epidemic when the level of the
population affected reaches 2 percent or more.
"The bottom-line issue here is that people who know about the H.I.V.
epidemic in the region are very concerned about the situation in Burma," Dr.
Beyrer said in an interview, using the country's traditional name. He described
the response of the military government as "ominous silence."
The conclusions of Dr. Beyrer, who has worked as a consultant for the World
Health Organization in Myanmar, are broadly supported by the findings of United
Nations AIDS experts. Unaids, the coordinating body working on the disease
within the organization, estimates that 48,000 people in Myanmar died of AIDS in
1999, the year on which Dr. Beyrer and his team based their study. That year,
the Burmese government officially reported 802 AIDS deaths.
In the mid-1980's, Myanmar began to follow Thailand's example and take
regular measurements of the spread of H.I.V. infections. Dr. Beyrer added that
Health Ministry officials compile accurate numbers — which international
agencies get and pass on to experts abroad — only to have them brushed aside by
the country's military leadership.
In conducting the Johns Hopkins research, Dr. Beyrer and his team looked at
the government's own figures collected at clinics and hospitals.
Among Burmese men aged 20 to 44, the researchers calculated, the infection
rate is about 5.3 percent. The infection rate for women nationally was below 3
percent, except in the Shan states. In general, the study found, 1 in every 29
adults in Myanmar carries H.I.V.
---------------------------------------------------------------- BBC - Monday, 25 June, 2001, 15:10 GMT
16:10 UK
Burma allows BBC man in for a short visit Time stands still in Burma
By Jonathan Head in Rangoon
To walk into Rangoon's shabby airport is to step back into an Asia which
has been swept away almost everywhere else by the frenzied march of economic
growth.
Under the baleful light coming off the peeling yellow walls, bewildered
officials pass the travel documents of each waiting passenger to one another,
reluctant to take on the responsibility of permitting another foreigner into
their lonely country.
I had with me the all-important Permit to Conduct Journalistic Activities,
typed and stamped by the Burmese embassy in Bangkok. This threw the immigration
officials into further confusion.
"You're really a journalist?" they asked, disbelievingly.
Luckily, there were plenty of intelligence officials on hand, dressed in
the traditional white tunic and wrap-around 'longyi', but with the inevitable,
give-away designer sunglasses. They knew exactly who I was. My visa must have
passed through several layers of military scrutiny before being approved.
Culture divide
But if they feel like extending a warmer welcome to a valued guest, the
Burmese generals do have a few extra tricks up their sleeves.
I was being allowed to cover the visit by the Prime Minister of Thailand,
Thaksin Shinawatra, whom Burma's military rulers badly wanted to impress.
The two countries are old rivals. In the 18th century a Burmese army
invaded Thailand and destroyed the then capital city, Ayuthya.
It is an episode neither country has ever forgotten. Since then the Thais
have turned the tables, their soaring economic progress a marked contrast to a
Burma mired in poverty and repression.
Running a dictatorship does have its advantages however.
For Mr Thaksin's arrival, the generals had lined an entire three kilometres
(two miles) of road from the airport with cheering schoolgirls in national
costume, who waited for an hour in torrential monsoon rain to greet the Thai
prime minister.
But if the visit helped to warm relations between these two neighbours, it
also showed in stark relief, just what different paths they have chosen.
Mr Thaksin is a self-made billionaire with a populist touch. He won an
election in January by a landslide, with a skilful campaign modelled on Bill
Clinton's successes in the 1990s.
As he came off the plane, dressed in a crisp dark suit, smiling and waving,
he was greeted by a grim-faced committee of generals.
This was the SPDC - the new, but hardly more appealing name for the Slorc,
the self-appointed ruling military council.
They blinked furiously at the pack of journalists accompanying the Thai
delegation, unaccustomed to the limelight.
As a regime which has chosen to annul elections, rather than contest them,
the SPDC has little experience in the art of glad-handing a crowd.
Behind the times
Life in Burma is punctuated with inconveniences imposed by the capricious
nature of the country's hard-headed rulers.
The internet is unknown - only 11 senior members of the government are
permitted to use it.
And in Rangoon, the sight of people chatting into their mobile phones,
which is such a characteristic of every other Asian city, is absent.
Instead, a lucky few have what they call the basket-phone - an
old-fashioned bakelite telephone, attached on top of a massive battery and
transmission unit, which the proud owner lugs around in a plastic shopping
basket.
It costs about five years' income for the average Burmese to buy.
And there is another noisy feature of most Asian cities which is missing
from Rangoon - motorbikes.
When I asked a Burmese friend about this, he explained that a few years
back the most hard-line general in the regime, Maung Aye, was being driven home
at night, when he was overtaken by a young man on a motorbike.
The general sent his outrider after the impudent driver, but he was unable
to catch up with him.
From that night on, said my friend, the use of motorbikes by ordinary
people was banned.
It is of course impossible to verify the truth of his account - but it was
a testimony to the belief among the Burmese that their leaders are capable of
the most absurd abuses of power.
So the people of this decaying but dignified city soldier on, day by day,
holding on to the faintest glimmer of hope that one day the generals might
release them from their desperate isolation.
Conversations, even on a busy street, are whispered and fearful - mention
the dialogue between the regime and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and
their eyes turn down to the ground.
The talks have had only the briefest mention in the local media. No-one
knows whether they are making any progress at all. For most Burmese, they are
still a dangerous topic.
Instead they talk about the ever-rising prices, and the near-impossibility
of making a decent living. My friend, who has a degree, tells me that he lives
with his father and two brothers.
"All of us have good jobs," he says. "Yet we can still only just afford
enough to eat - what kind of life is that?"
It is a question the stony-faced generals, who still insist that no-one
else can govern Burma, have refused to answer.
---------------------------------------------------------------- Malaysian National News Agency
(Bernama)
China, Myanmar Cooperate To Develop
Transport On Int'l River
KUNMING, June 25 (Oana-Xinhua) -- Southwest China's Yunnan Province is increasing cooperation with Myanmar to develop a road-water transportation line for more efficient trade. The province and the country expect a portage to be completed in the near
future between a road in the province and the waterway of the Irrawaddy River in
Myanmar.
The 2150-km river originates on the Tibet Plateau and flows through Yunnan
and Myanmar and empties into the Indian Ocean. -- Oana-Xinhua
---------------------------------------------------------------- The Nation - June 25,
2001.
Burmese overwhelm border checkpoint
Thousands of Burmese crowded local markets after a major border checkpoint
was reopened yesterday, allowing the trade in consumer and agricultural
products, worth an expected Bt10 million daily, to continue after more than four
months of closure.
The sudden influx of Burmese traders and customers also caused bottlenecks
at immigration booths and traffic jams all over Mae Sai city.
Thai and foreign visitors also waited in long queues to go through
immigration formalities to cross to Tachilek.
Most of the Burmese returned with rice, vegetables, pork, soft drinks and
cooking oil in their carrier bags or vehicles.
Boonma Techachaorenvikul, president of the Mae Sai Businessmen's Club, said
that the reopening of the border would promote tourism and bilateral trade. "It
is good that everything has returned to normal," he said. Before the border
closures trade amounted to Bt300 million with most products being exported from
Thailand. Eighty per cent of all trade between Tachilek and Muang La, just
across the border with China's Yunnan province, is in Thai products.
The border crossing was closed in February after fighting among rival
ethnic militias set off a volley of cross-border shelling. The opening of the
checkpoint comes after a meeting of the high-level Township Border Committee
(TBC) and a conciliatory visit to Rangoon by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra
last week.
Mae Sai district prepared 1,000 roses to present to TBC members and
citizens of both Thailand and Burma. "It has been lively since early this
morning, with mostly Burmese crossing to Thailand to buy consumer products,"
said Decha Sattaphol, a district chief in Mae Sai.
"Trade at the crossing will be brisker now, but it will take some time
before it gets back to its original level."
Burma has increased border-crossing procedures a little by asking citizens
to register at an office, where they are charged Bt10 each to enter Thailand.
Thailand charges a Bt40 entry fee.
Colonel Wannatip Wongwai, Commander of the 3rd Region Special Task Force,
as Chairman of the TBC, joined Burmese Lt-Colonel Ae So in a ribbon-cutting
ceremony.
Officials attributed the border opening to improved Thai-Burmese relations
following Thaksin's visit, during which he met the country's military leader,
Senior General Than Shwe.
The two agreed to work together to combat drug trafficking along their
border and also reached a common stance on the touchy issues of border security,
dispute resolution and the refugee crisis.
Thaksin said one sign of real progress was the decision to reopen border
checkpoints.
The TBC resumed contacts on Saturday, after first embarking on talks in
April, and paved the way for the checkpoints to be opened and border trade to
resume, he said.
"Relations between the two countries will be back at their previous good
level within the next two months," the premier told reporters. "I am confident
the problems will now decrease."
February's border clashes sparked off months of wrangling between the two
sides and a series of slurs and insults that provoked exchanges of official
protests and dragged relations down to alarming lows.
But Thaksin said after returning from Rangoon last week that bilateral ties
were back on track following his meetings with the ruling generals and Burmese
Foreign Minister Win Aung's visit to Thailand last Friday.
A number of Mae Sai residents, although delighted at the border reopening,
continued to worry about the building of a lignite power station about two
kilometres from the Thai border. Prapan Srivichai, Secretary General of the Rak
Mae Sai Group, urged that the station be moved at least 80 kilometres
away.
"We're not against the reopening of borders, but we'd like negotiations on
the power station to proceed for the safety of Mae Sai residents," he said. An
advisor to the group also asked the government to continue improving
relationships with Burma and to make long-term plans to prevent future border
disputes.
---------------------------------------------------------------- Bangkok Post - June 25,
2001.
Army powerless to stop material
for lignite plant
Chief urges talks on factory's relocation Wassana Nanuam
The army does not have the power to prevent delivery of equipment and
materials for construction of a lignite power plant in Tachilek, the army
commander said yesterday.
Gen Surayud Chulanont said neither the Third Army nor the army could refuse
if Burma wants to use the Mae Sai-Tachilek checkpoint, which reopened early
yesterday morning.
The army chief voiced concern about possible conflicts in the area, as
residents of Mae Sai are strongly opposed to the project. In April, they forced
a convoy of 44 trucks carrying generator parts for the power plant to return to
Bangkok.
Gen Surayud called on the government to open talks with Rangoon on the
possibility of relocating the plant.
"It is very close to the border. The government should discuss with Burma
to find out if it is possible to have the site relocated," he said.
Meanwhile, Third Army commander Lt-Gen Wattanchai Chaimuenwong expressed
uncertainty about the border situation because "drug traffickers and
anti-Rangoon rebel groups are still active in the area".
The commander insisted that Thailand did not support any rebel groups,
including the Shan State Army, which has launched extensive anti-drug crackdowns
on the Burmese side of the border.
Lt-Gen Wattanachai said following the reopening of Mae Sai-Tachilek
checkpoint the Third Army would keep a low profile and focus on fighting drug
trafficking.
An army source said the army plans to modify about 500 Unimoq trucks and
turn them into armoured troop carriers at the Lop Buri arms building
centre.
The vehicles would be used in anti-drugs and combat operations, the source
said.
---------------------------------------------------------------- Myanmar Builds 122 Dams in 13
Years
2001.06.25 10:41:40 YANGON, June 25 (Xinhuanet) --
Altogether 122 dams were built in Myanmar as of June this year since late
1988 when the present government took office, irrigating 694,980 hectares
of farmland, according to the Myanmar Ministry of Agriculture and
Irrigation Monday.
The 122 dams, which mostly lie in the country's Bago, Mandalay and
Magway divisions, were built at a cost of 40.2 billion Kyats (
about 114.85 million U.S. dollars). With the addition of the 122 dams in 13 years' time, the total number
of dams in the country has been brought to 260.
Besides, a total of 253 river-pumped water stations have so far been set up
in Myanmar, irrigating over 81,000 more hectares.
Myanmar's cultivable land stretches 18.225 million hectares, of which
10.125 million hectares have been put under crops and 19 percent of them
are cultivated through irrigation.
The country's agriculture accounts for 37 percent of its gross
domestic product and 25 percent of its export value.
---------------------------------------------------------------- Myanmar Scores Achievements in
Drug Control
2001.06.25 09:57:13 YANGON, June 25 (Xinhuanet) --
Myanmar is one of the main producing areas of opium and heroin in the
world. Facing with the grave endangerment of narcotic drugs to its own
country and the international community, the Myanmar government has
been persisting in carrying out long-term combat against drugs, scoring
certain achievements in the efforts.
According to the figures published by Myanmar's Central Committee for
Drug Abuse Control (CCDAC), during the nearly 13 years from September 18,
1988 to March 31, 2001, Myanmar destroyed a total of 50,617 hectares of poppy
cultivation, bringing about a reduction of 549.92 tons of opium
production.
Since 1990, Myanmar openly burnt up seized narcotic drugs for 35 occasions
-- 15 times in the capital of Yangon and 20 times in border areas. Of them,
narcotics put on fire in Yangon for the 15 times totaled 81.7 tons
including 23.69 tons high-grade opium, 34.27 tons low-grade opium, 3.74
tons heroin, 5.14 tons marijuana and 11.58 tons ephedrine as well as over 80.85
million tablets of stimulant drugs.
The Mongla region in Myanmar's eastern Shan state became a drug- free zone
in April 1997 and the country's first drug elimination museum, also known
as the Kokang Drug Elimination Museum, was inaugurated in the state's
Laukkai area on December 27, 2000.
Besides, Myanmar started building another museum of its kind in Yangon in
July 1998 and it will be completed and put into service on June 26,
this year's International Day Against Illicit Drug Abuse.
To help drug addicts stay away from drugs, the Myanmar government has
set up six drug treatment centers in Yangon, Mandalay, Myitkyina, Taunggyi
and others, admitting 2,000 drug addicts annually.
In addition, Myanmar also established eight rehabilitation centers
throughout the country to help the treated return to the
society.
The annual report of the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB)
for the year 2000 showed that the opium output in Myanmar at present
accounts for 80 percent of that produced in Southeast Asia and 20 percent
of the total yielded in the world. Myanmar is now the second largest opium
and heroin producing country after Afghanistan, while Laos stands the
third.
The report said that over the past 10 years, Myanmar's opium
production dropped by 40 percent. In the past four years since 1996,
Myanmar's poppy cultivation area reduced by one third and opium production
dropped 58 percent. In 2000, the country's poppy cultivation area was
108,700 hectares, while its opium yield totaled 1,085 tons.
The report added that the fall in production of opium and heroin was
due, on the one hand, to the escalation in degree in combating drug and on
the other hand to abnormal climate which affected the growing of poppy.
Despite existence of a trend of fall of opium and heroin production
in Myanmar, there is a sharp increase of stimulant tablets in the
country.
There are two strategies of drug eradication of Myanmar. Firstly,
taking the drug control task as a national duty. Secondly, raising the living
standard of ethnic minorities in border areas, changing their traditional
way of livelihood of depending upon drug cultivation, production and
drug trade.
Myanmar's main measures taken in the sector of drug control include
promulgation of anti-drug laws, formation of the CCDAC , strengthening of
international, regional and bilateral cooperation in the drug control sector as
well as making people know the danger of narcotics through news media to
enable them to stay away from drug.
Up to now, Myanmar has signed memorandums of understanding on
regional drug control plan with China, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and
Vietnam as well as bilateral cooperation agreements on drug control with
India, Vietnam, Russian Federation, Laos, the Philippines and
China.
Moreover, since 1993, Myanmar and the Counter Narcotic Center of the
United States have conducted joint field survey on poppy cultivation in
the country's Shan state for eight times.
Meanwhile, Myanmar and Japan are also jointly implementing a plan of
cultivating poppy-substitute crop in Myanmar's northern Shan state,
covering an area of 35,962 hectares.
Myanmar has since 1999 started implementing a 15-year plan of drug
eradication, covering 54 drug cultivating and producing townships -- 25
townships targeted in the first five years, 20 townships in the second
five years and 9 townships in the third five years. The plan will cost
33.588 billion Kyats ( about 50 million U.S. dollars ) and 150 million
dollars.
Although Myanmar has obtained some achievements in the drug control
sector, but for various reasons, their achievements had not attained the
projected target. Myanmar still has a long way to go with its fight against
narcotic drugs.
---------------------------------------------------------------- Malaysian National News Agency
Trial Session In Suu Kyi Lawsuit
Postponed Until July 9
YANGON, June 25 (Oana-Kyodo) - The judge presiding over a lawsuit filed against Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi by her elder brother Aung San Oo for ownership of their parents' estate today adjourned the court until July 9 to consider the plaintiff's application for an amendment of the plaint. Aung San Oo, who lives in the United States, lodged the suit at the Yangon
Division court in September for partition of their parent's estate at 54
University Avenue in Yangon where Suu Kyi currently lives. The court dismissed
the plaint in January this year, on grounds of procedural errors.
Aung San Oo filed another suit at the same court in April, this time
seeking ownership of the estate instead of partition. -- Oana-Kyodo
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