|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
BURMA RELATED NEWS - April 13,
2002.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
HEADLINES
----------------------------------------------------------------- AFP - Three Malaysians jailed for beating
Myanmar man to death
AP - Police arrest illegal Myanmar worker for
killing officer
AP - Report: Japan to push Asian free trade
zone, draft proposal by November
BR - Burma survivor acts as link to
VA
TI - EU demands tougher sanctions on Myanmar
Kyodo News - ASEAN-Japan to forge bilateral FTAs under regional
scope
----------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday April 13, 12:34 PM
Three Malaysians jailed for beating Myanmar man to death SINGAPORE, April 13 (AFP) -
Three Malaysians were jailed for six years and six months each for beating to
death a Myanmar worker who had refused to pay more for sex with a prostitute, a
report said Saturday.
The three from Malaysia's Sarawak state punched and kicked the 36-year-old
Myanmar plasterer after he refused to pay 150 dollars (82 US) for a second round
of sex with the prostitute, the Straits Times said in neighbouring Singapore.
It said the victim was willing to pay only 20 dollars to the woman.
The three, who were convicted of manslaughter, had arranged for the sexual
encounter at a brothel.
----------------------------------------------------------------- Police arrest illegal Myanmar
worker for killing officer
Fri Apr 12,10:49 AM ET BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - A
Myanmar man, one of hundreds of thousands suspected of working illegally in
Thailand, killed a police officer during a roundup of the migrants, police
alleged Friday.
Police Sgt. Anurak Phethun was shot to death Thursday night after four
officers had detained five suspected illegal immigrants.
One of the immigrants pulled out a pistol and shot Anurak while his fellow
officers were handcuffing the others, said police investigator Col. Chatchai
Watanasuka.
The suspect, whose name was withheld, was arrested on charges of killing an
on-duty police officer, Chatchai said.
The shooting occurred about 40 kilometers (25 miles) southwest of Bangkok
in Samut Sakhon town, a haven for both legal and illegal Myanmar workers.
Police have been cracking down on illegal employment since early March,
when the Labor and Social Welfare Department announced that only about 300,000
of the more than 500,000 registered laborers from Myanmar had renewed their work
permits.
At least 30,000 illegal workers have been rounded up and returned to
Myanmar, also known as Burma, during the past two months, police said.
Officials estimate that about 1 million foreign workers from other Asian
countries, mainly Myanmar, are being employed as cheap labor in Thailand. More
than half of them work in agriculture, construction and fishing.
----------------------------------------------------------------- Report: Japan to push Asian free
trade zone, draft proposal by November
Sat Apr 13, 4:14 AM ET TOKYO (AP) - Japan wants to
speed up the creation of an Asian free trade zone with 14 neighboring nations
and territories as a regional answer to similar economic pacts in North America
and Europe, a news report said Saturday.
Tokyo hopes to conclude a draft framework for the deal before November,
when Asian leaders meet at a Cambodian summit, Japan's Kyodo News agency said,
citing Trade Ministry officials.
The free trade zone, which could include Japan, China, South Korea, Hong
Kong and Taiwan as well as the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations, or ASEAN, would span a market of 2 billion people, the report
said.
It could also be expanded to include New Zealand, Australia and the United
States.
Trade Ministry officials were unavailable for comment Saturday.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has increasingly stressed the need for
closer economic ties in Asia and recently signed a free trade agreement ?
Japan's first such deal ? with Singapore.
Speaking Friday at the Bo'ao Forum for Asia, a conference of business and
political leaders, Koizumi recently said the region must cooperate more to
compete economically against the North American Free Trade Agreement and the
European Union.
ASEAN's member countries are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia,
Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
----------------------------------------------------------------- The Bergen Record
Burma survivor acts as link to VA Friday, April 12, 2002 By JUSTO BAUTISTA Staff Writer Karnig Thomasian of River Edge beneath a silhouette of a B-29, the type of
bomber he was flying in when he was shot down over Burma in World War II. He
spent months in a Japanese prison in Rangoon. (CHRIS PEDOTA/THE RECORD)
Beaten with rifle butts, sick with malaria, forced to eat maggot-infested
rice and fish and to drink trough water, Karnig Thomasian barely clung to life
in Rangoon Central Prison in the sweltering spring of 1945.
Hope came in the form of a flower.
Thomasian discovered one shining green shoot in the prison yard. Other
prisoners of war protected it and nurtured it. The plant bloomed on Easter
morning, what looked like a lily.
The prisoners saw the blossom as a symbol. Inspired, they held a secret
Easter service. Jewish prisoners made a stir in the yard to distract the
Japanese guards while the Christians prayed inside.
"There were thoughts of home and tears as we gathered," the World War II
veteran recalled.
And there are still tears, anytime Thomasian remembers that morning.
These days, he makes a point of remembering, and of helping others
remember. He is a national service officer, or NSO, for a veterans organization
- Garden State Chapter 1 of the American Ex-Prisoners of War. His job is to
reach out to other veterans, help them understand their problems, and guide them
in their dealings with the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Frequently, the process starts with remembering.
Most of the men imprisoned at Rangoon Central - in the country then known
as Burma, now Myanmar - kept their memories bottled up inside for 40 years,
Thomasian says. He was that way himself. Things began to change in 1984, when
the "Rangoon Ramblers" held an emotional reunion in Oak Brook, Ill.
"The cork blew off," said Thomasian, now 77 and a resident of River Edge.
"Everybody talked incessantly, through the day and night. It was unbelievable
how it all poured out. Most of these guys hadn't talked to anybody."
Gradually, Thomasian learned the therapeutic value of opening up. As he
did, he came to understand how his own life had been shaped by post-traumatic
stress disorder. He became a national service officer to help others cope with
the same sort of problem.
All NSOs are volunteers. Veterans who need help find the NSOs through word
of mouth, ads in veterans publications, even newspaper articles. The NSOs help
veterans fill out applications for benefits, even accompany them to the
hospital, if need be. Thomasian normally sits down with a veteran in his den at
home and outlines the entire application process - a long way from
Rangoon.
Though Thomasian's group is eager to help all veterans in need, the
emphasis is on POWs who served in Korea and Vietnam. He said former POWs are
often reluctant to seek help.
"Some of those guys are not being taken care of as they should be," he
said. "And some of the fault lies with them. They don't want to get
involved."
Vietnam-era POWs can be particularly reluctant, said Emilio "Vince"
Vizachero, 77, of Burlington Township, an NSO who covers South Jersey.
"Can you blame them? They were treated like dogs when they came home," said
Vizachero, a retired shoemaker. Vizachero spent nine months in German labor
camps after he was captured in Mortain, France, in 1944. He was an 18-year-old
Army private.
"A lot of POWs do not want POW license plates on their cars, and when they
go to clinics, they don't want anyone to know they were prisoners of war. They
are embarrassed," he said.
"For years we tried to get POWs involved. They didn't want any part of the
VA. The feeling was, you neglected us all these years, don't bother us now. They
say, 'I have Blue Cross Blue Shield under my wife's insurance.' That's sad,
because they could be getting money from the VA."
Vizachero says he battled the Veterans Administration for years on his own
case. Finally he qualified for compensation for back and hip ailments caused by
wounds and labor-camp beatings during World War II.
"I swore from that time on, I would help any POW to get their claims
easier," he said.
Another ex-POW volunteer, 78-year-old Paul Werkmeister of Linden, agreed
with Vizachero that POWs used to have a hard time with the Veterans
Administration. It was hard to convince VA doctors that ailments were the result
of wartime injuries, Werkmeister said. As a 21-year-old combat medic with the
106th Infantry Division, Werkmeister was captured in the Battle of the Bulge and
spent four months in a German prison camp outside Berlin.
A top VA official in Washington said the agency has a "good, strong
relationship" with ex-POWs.
"A lot of ex-POWs simply wanted to get on with their lives and not deal
with the institutional government," said Robert Epley, associate deputy
undersecretary for programs - Veterans Benefits Administration. "One of our
challenges is to convince them we can and will help them. We're making progress.
We're dealing with more and more POWs every year."
In 2001, the Veterans Administration treated more than 77,300 veterans for
post-traumatic stress disorder.
Werkmeister himself feels that in recent years, the VA's response to POWs
has been better. He credits the work of NSOs.
"We've got good service officers now, guys like Karnig," he said. "He knows
what it's all about. He's been there. I don't think we had that kind of
representation before."
Service officers often have to steel themselves as they listen to other
ex-POWs talk about their problems. The emotions run deep and strong. Thomasian,
a retired Madison Avenue art director, knows firsthand about the flashback
"cloud" that can turn a veteran's life into a nightmare. His own cloud arrived
10 years ago, as his wife, Diana, battled cancer.
"His behavior changed," said Diana Thomasian. Unexplained anger "came up
like a tidal wave."
"I would recognize what was happening, and turn around and walk out," she
said. "He would come in and apologize. Sometimes, it would be quite emotional. I
would stay away. He can turn it off better than I can. A woman takes these
emotions quite seriously. It took me some time to get over the hurt."
Thomasian explains that he was confusing his life at home with the life he
had known in prison camp.
"During that time," he said, "I treated her like one of the guys in my camp
- 'C'mon, get out of it' - if they wanted to give up. I was just not being
understanding. I never dreamed I had post-traumatic stress disorder. It would
never have occurred to me, and that's where the problem was."
Thomasian was a 20-year-old Air Corps sergeant from Washington Heights in
upper Manhattan when his B-29 bomber was blown out of the sky 20,000 feet over
Rangoon in December 1944. Flames raced through the 100-foot-long fuselage.
"Everything turned red," he said.
He bailed out head first and watched his plane twist toward the ground.
Five crew members were killed. Thomasian was captured. He then spent six months
in Japanese prison camps, where the slightest rule infraction brought on an
interrogation and, frequently, a clubbing, he said.
As Allied forces closed in, his Japanese captors rounded up healthy
prisoners and marched off. He stayed behind to care for the sickest prisoners.
He and his friends painted "Japs Gone" on the roof of their building. Their
ordeal ended when a British newspaperman pounded on the prison's big front doors
and yelled, "The Gurkhas are right behind me."
"We gathered all around him, looking, touching him," Thomasian remembered.
"He was 6-foot-3. Big. With rosy cheeks. That's when we all noticed how sick we
were."
Thomasian joined the American Ex-Prisoners of War in 1989. Upon retiring at
age 71, he turned his full attention to helping veterans. His message, in a
nutshell: "Don't feel ashamed. Have the courage. You have the right to get these
benefits. You laid your life on the line for the country."
----------------------------------------------------------------- The Times of India - SATURDAY, APRIL
13, 2002
EU demands tougher sanctions on
Myanmar
AFP [ THURSDAY, APRIL 11, 2002 9:43:35 PM ]
STRASBOURG: The European Parliament called on Thursday for tougher European Union sanctions on Myanmar if dialogue between the military junta and democracy activists fails to make headway. In a resolution that is not binding on the 15 EU member states, the bloc's
directly elected assembly urged the junta in Yangoon to immediately release
opposition democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest and "speed up the
process of dialogue" with her.
If there was no progress in talks with Myanmar's opposition in the next six
months, it said, then the 15 EU states should "strengthen economic sanctions and
consider an investment ban".
Existing sanctions, including an arms embargo and a travel ban on members
of the Myanmar junta, come up for renewal this month. They had been extended by
EU foreign ministers in October.
The European Parliament's resolution said there was "significant" European
investment in Myanmar, particularly in the oil and gas sector. It also said
"over 1,000 political prisoners" languished in Myanmar's jails.
A four-member EU delegation visited Myanmar in March, during which it was
able to visit Aung San Suu Kyi at her Yangoon home, where she has been confined
since September 2000.
----------------------------------------------------------------- ASEAN-Japan to forge bilateral FTAs
under regional scope
YANGON, April 12 Kyodo - Senior
officials from Japan and a regional grouping agreed here Friday to build a
comprehensive economic partnership framework through a network of bilateral
comprehensive economic partnership pacts. (23 :32)
----------------------------------------------------------------- |