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BURMA RELATED NEWS
- September 17 - 18, 2002.
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HEADLINES
------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dow Jones - Activists Laud Hess,
Premier Exit From Myanmar Interests
Reuters - Arms-laden truck seized in
northeast Thailand
AP - Rhetoric mild as alternative
parliament pledges to work for democracy in Myanmar
AP - Military-style, Christian outfit
aids minorities victimized by conflict in Myanmar
AP - Myanmar offers 'full support'
for search for World War II missing Americans
AFP - Myanmar soldiers burn villages,
leave hundreds homeless: KNU rebels
Bkk Post - Junta has little to
celebrate
BBC - UN to probe Burma rape
allegations
------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wednesday September 18, 7:11 AM
Activists Laud Hess, Premier Exit From Myanmar Interests By Stephen Parker Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Human-rights activists heralded a decision this week by Amerada Hess Corp. (AHC) and Premier Oil PLC to shed business ties with an authoritarian regime in Southeast Asia. In a deal announced Monday, Amerada Hess agreed to exchange its 25% equity interest in U.K.-based Premier Oil, which is a partner with the military regime of Myanmar, formerly Burma, in the Yetagun natural gas project. In return, Hess will receive a portion of Premier's stake in an offshore Indonesian field. The agreement also transfers Premier's 26.67% stake in the Yetagun Project to Petronas International Corp., Malaysia's state oil company, Premier said in a statement. "Our primary reason for doing this was to obtain recognition for the value of our investment (in Premier)," said Amerada Hess Vice President Carl Tursi. "We never felt we had any interest in Burma, but we were happy to have that issue removed from the table. It was certainly a consideration." The Yetagun gas project in Myanmar includes an offshore production platform to tap the Yetagun field in the Andaman Sea, and a pipeline to carry gas through Myanmar to the Thai border. Amerada Hess Corp. has no direct operations in Myanmar, but had been criticized for maintaining an equity stake in Yetagun partner Premier Oil. Human-rights activists have opposed foreign investment in Myanmar for a decade because of human-rights abuses by that nation's military regime against its own people. What's more, activists have accused the military of using forced labor along the Yetagun pipeline route. U.S.-based activists, who had already pressed many other companies to abandon business interests in Myanmar, touted the Hess and Premier exit as a fresh victory. "Risk has been expanded for businesses in this day and age," said Heidi Quante, coordinator of the Burma Project in San Francisco. "If you're involved in something egregious, the rest of the world will find out about it, and it can come back and affect the bottom line." To raise awareness last year, activists gathered outside 14 Hess gasoline stations from Massachusetts to Florida, waving signs that read, "Honk for human rights" and, "Leave Burma now." They called on Amerada Hess to insist that Premier leave Myanmar. "Hess, Hess, what the Hess? Out of Burma! It's a mess," about 20 protesters shouted at a Hess station in New York City. "They rape the people, rape the earth. We know what your oil is worth!" The U.S. State Department, U.N. International Labor Organization and private human-rights groups have reported widespread abuses by the Myanmar military. The Myanmar regime, which calls itself the State Peace and Development Council, "continued to restrict severely freedom of speech, press, assembly and association," the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor said in a country report. The report didn't link any abuses directly to the natural gas operations. Myanmar's defense ministry denies allegations of human-rights abuses in a nine-volume treatise titled "The Truth," published on the Web at Myanmar.com. Buoyed by the announcements this week from Amerada Hess and Premier, Quante said the Burma Project will continue to press Unocal Corp. (UCL) to back out of a separate gas project in Myanmar. "It's really just time for Unocal to go," Quante said. Over 50 corporations have left Burma, and I think that speaks volumes. Our recommendation is to take the high road and get out of Burma." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tuesday September 17, 5:54 PM
Arms-laden truck seized in northeast Thailand BANGKOK, Sept 17 (Reuters) - Police said on Tuesday they had seized a light truck in northeastern Thailand carrying a cache of guns and over 30,000 rounds of ammunition. The truck's driver and another man eluded capture after fleeing a police checkpoint in Udon Thani province late on Monday, Police Colonel Thawatchai Nilanuj told Reuters. Thailand is the source of illicit arms for a host of rebel groups in Southeast Asia, including in Indonesia and the Tamil Tiger rebels in Sri Lanka, according to military analysts. The Tamil Tigers began talks with the Sri Lankan government at a beach resort in Thailand on Monday, and neutral Bangkok has been under mounting pressure in recent months to clamp down on the illegal arms trade. Thawatchai said that it was unclear where the latest arms shipment, which included a light machinegun and an assortment of rifles, was bound for. He speculated it may have been headed for ethnic rebels fighting the military government in neighbouring Myanmar. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rhetoric mild as alternative
parliament pledges to work for democracy in Myanmar
Mon Sep 16,10:50 AM ET YANGON, Myanmar(AP) - The opposition National League for Democracy party held a low-key celebration Monday to mark the anniversary of the committee it set up in 1998 as an alternative parliament. "The Committee Representing the People's Parliament will strive with relentless perseverance to achieve democracy in the country," said a statement issued by the group, known as the CRPP. NLD leaders, including Aung San Suu Kyi, marked Monday's anniversary by holding a lunch meeting with representatives of ethnic political parties at the party's headquarters, but diplomats and journalists were not invited, although they had been in previous years. The smaller scale of the celebration was seen by some diplomats and observers as a conciliatory gesture toward the ruling junta, which has been holding closed-door reconciliation talks with Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace laureate. The NLD won a landslide victory in a 1990 general election but Myanmar's military rulers did not recognize the result and refused to allow parliament to convene. The CRPP was backed mainly by the NLD, which declared that it would perform parliamentary functions until parliament was convened. The committee was largely symbolic, but its formation infuriated the junta, which declared it illegal, insisted it be abolished and followed up with a wave of arrests of pro-democracy activists. In recent months the junta has freed some political detainees and in May released Suu Kyi from 19 months' house arrest. The CRPP's anniversary statement welcomed the attendance of Aye Thar Aung, its secretary, who was released from prison last month on "humanitarian grounds" because he is suffering from lung cancer. He had been given a 21-year prison sentence in 2000 for violating political emergency and publishing laws. The committee's speaker, Dr. Saw Mra Aung, who was detained at a government guest house in 1998, was released last year. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Military-style, Christian
outfit aids minorities victimized by conflict in Myanmar
Tue Sep 17, 9:25 PM ET By DENIS D. GRAY, Associated Press Writer MAE HONG SON, Thailand - Most of the time, Shannon Allyson lives quietly in a four-bedroom, quarter-million-dollar house in Louisiana with his wife and three young children. At his thriving dental clinic, a filling will set you back dlrs 210, a crown dlrs 600. But occasionally the telephone rings, there's word of another mission and Allyson shuts down his suburban America life and flies halfway around the world. He slips into jungle boots, straps on a backpack and embarks on a grueling, risky trek deep into military-ruled Myanmar. There, the 41-year-old dentist offers solace and aid ? free of charge ? to thousands uprooted by war. The missions ? there have been more than 40 over the past five years ? are run by a low-profile outfit with a Christian orientation called the Free Burma Rangers. Ranger teams, which include some Americans like Allyson, seek to help as many as 2 million of the often forgotten people who have been driven from their homes in Myanmar's military campaign to suppress ethnic minorities that seek greater autonomy. Human rights groups and Western governments accuse the military in Myanmar, which also is known as Burma, of brutalizing innocent civilians as it fights rebels among the Karen, Karenni and Shan minorities in the rugged eastern regions bordering Thailand. The regime denies doing that. "Civilians massacred, villages burned, churches destroyed, Christian pastors and Buddhist monks tortured, forced relocation and over 5,000 IDPs (internally displaced people), 1,000 of whom are in hiding and fleeing for their lives," says one Ranger report, summarizing a June mission that Allyson was on in the Dooplaya district of Myanmar's Karen State. Modeled after the U.S. Army's Special Forces, the Rangers operate in four- and five-person teams whose members specialize in medical treatment, security, counseling and ? something the Green Berets don't have ? recording violations of human rights. "People were sleeping on the ground, under trees. There were many sick. There was no school. Not enough medicine for children and very little food," says Tha Uh, a video cameraman and pastor, describing one of eight sites assisted during a foray into northern Karen State in February and March. In one high valley, the team came across several hundred Karen who have been on the run for 28 years, sometimes forced to move as often as twice a year when Myanmar troops closed in on their encampments. At these bleak settlements, the team heard familiar stories: villages burned and livestock slaughtered, civilians herded into "relocation centers" to separate them from the rebels, those seeking to live free forced into a marginal existence in the jungles. Parents in one area said soldiers had tossed their 2-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son into the flames of the family house. The team that went into northern Karen State recalled the laundry list of what they hauled in for distribution to those living on the run ? medicine, toothpaste, Bibles and hymnals, toys and coloring books, volleyballs, cash and clothing. Tha Hoe, a 33-year-old Karen nurse, acted as a one-person mobile clinic treating patients nonstop for dysentery, malaria, skin diseases, wounds from bullets and land mines. She also has delivered babies and extracted teeth. "Since I was a child I wanted to be a doctor, but I never had the opportunity," says Tha Hoe, who was imprisoned for two years after her husband was killed by Myanmar soldiers. Team members describe her as a gentle woman with nerves of steel and enough stamina to slog through the bush on treks lasting up to two months. "It's meaningless to be afraid, even if there are Burmese soldiers around you," says Tha Hoe, who has been on six missions. "They even kill innocent civilians, so you can imagine what they would do with people like us with guns." The teams normally are guarded by the various armed rebel groups. On some evenings, under the stars, Tha Uh's team held prayer meetings and sing-alongs as the pastor strummed the guitar he carries into the field. Many of the ethnic people are Christians but the Rangers say they provide aid to all people irrespective of religion. Returning from Myanmar, the Rangers compile detailed reports in clipped, military phrases and they take video footage and photographs. In June, a team brought back grisly photographs and accounts of an alleged massacre by Myanmar soldiers of 12 civilians, including a pregnant woman and her unborn child, who were fleeing to Thailand. U.S. Rep. Joseph Pitts, a member of the House International Relations Committee, brought the photographs to the attention of the U.S. Congress. Pitts echoed a key tenet of the Rangers: While the outside world focuses on the political jousting between democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi and Myanmar's generals in the capital of Yangon, the plight of remote ethnic minorities remains in the shadows. Although aid comes from church groups and other organizations in Western countries, the ranks of the Rangers are made up almost entirely of ethnic minorities like the Karen, Karenni, Shan, Pa-O and Arakan people, who have fled their homeland to Thailand. About 100 have been trained in leadership, public health, mountaineering, land navigation by night and other vital skills before being sent on operations. Foreigners like Allyson, who spent four years in the Green Berets, add their expertise. He's made more than 1,000 "dental calls" during five trips, bringing along a specially adapted, battery powered portable drill and boxes of medicines from the United States. "I'm doing what I'm supposed to do: getting them out of pain and asking nothing in return," says Allyson, who lives in Mandeville, Louisiana "I've really learned to love those people." Allyson ? "the first and only dentist they've ever seen" ? says he's ready for the next telephone call, despite the hardships. He has come down with malaria, lost up to 9 kilograms (20 pounds) each trip and faced the prospect of death from land mines or the guns of Myanmar soldiers who often try to trap the Rangers. On his last trek, in June, soldiers nearly caught his team when the troops moved in on a Karen village they had burned down five months earlier. As the sun set, Allyson and his colleagues watched from hiding as the troops ringed the settlement. The team later met scattered family groups huddled together in the jungle with "despair on their faces and all their belongings on their backs." "They don't have anywhere to go. They want to defend their homes but they can't. They face overwhelming odds," Allyson says. "It's a physical and spiritual battlefield. On one level they are losing, but on the other the Burmese are not conquering their minds and souls. They are still free. They can still smile." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Myanmar offers 'full support'
for search for World War II missing Americans
Tue Sep 17, 7:11 AM ET By AYE AYE WIN, Associated Press Writer YANGON, Myanmar - Myanmar's government has pledged "full support" for a pioneering U.S. mission to search for the remains of U.S. servicemen whose planes crashed in the Southeast Asian nation during World War II. Myanmar agreed for the first time to allow U.S searches on its territory during a visit last week by U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW/Missing Personnel Affairs Jerry D. Jennings, a U.S. diplomat said Tuesday on condition of anonymity. "Myanmar authorities have pledged full support to permit the recovery mission to explore the sites believed to contain the wreckage of U.S. military planes," said the diplomat. The mission would seek to retrieve plane wreckage and the remains of missing servicemen from four sites where U.S. military aircraft are believed to have crashed during supply missions to China. The agreement was originally announced late Monday in Washington. Defense Department officials there said experts from the Army's Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii technical talks would hold technical talks in Myanmar in November and visit the four crash sites early next year. Myanmar's relations with the United States are cool, because Washington disapproves of the military regime's poor human rights record and failure to hand over power to a democratically elected government. The junta is keen to patch up relations by stressing the common cause it has with the United States in matters such as battling terrorism and the war against drugs. The U.S. Army lab has conducted similar searches at World War II crash sites in other Asian nations, including China. More extensive search and recovery operations are carried out in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia to find servicemen missing from the Vietnam War era. About 600 aircraft went missing in India, Myanmar and China during World War ll Allied supply missions flying 800 kilometers (500 miles) over the Himalayas from India to China. About 600 servicemen and other persons involved in the supply missions are listed as missing in action, the U.S. diplomat said. In 1996, Myanmar handed over remains and wreckage from a U.S. C-47 aircraft which had crashed during the war in the rugged terrain of Kachin State. Myanmar is also known as Burma. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Myanmar soldiers burn
villages, leave hundreds homeless: KNU rebels
CHIANG MAI, Thailand, Sept 17 (AFP) - Nearly 300 Karen villagers have fled into Myanmar's southern jungles after government troops torched three villages in Pa-An province, the rebel Karen National Union (KNU) said Tuesday. The three villages, Mae Thamuhta, Wuntho and Kyelupu, were located in Karen State's Hlaing-Bawe district, according to a spokesman for the ethnic militia, Mahn Nyein Maung. The villages were burned down on Thursday after the troops accused the villagers of being involved in the KNU guerrilla network, he told AFP by telephone. "The soldiers usually take this kind of action when they suspect some of the Karen villagers are linked to the KNU, so they set fire to all the houses in the village," he said. The soldiers also arrested Mae Thamuhta village's headman Hpa Yukhe, Mahn Nyein Maung said. More than 60 families were left homeless, he said, adding that some of them were now living in the forest while others headed to refugee camps on the Thai border. A string of 17 camps in Thai territory shelter more than 120,000 ethnic Karen, Karenni and Mon refugees who have fled fighting and political persecution in Myanmar. The KNU is one of the few ethnic armies which continues to fight against Myanmar for autonomy. Most other rebel groups have signed ceasefire pacts with the Yangon junta. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bangkok Post -
Wednesday 18 September 2002
ANALYSIS / BURMESE GENERALS MARK AN ANNIVERSARY Junta has little to celebrate The generals might still be in power after 14 years, but there is little evidence to show that they have benefited their country in this time. In fact, things appear much, much worse than they were back in 1988. LARRY JAGAN Burma's generals mark their 14th year in power today, after staging a bloody coup on Sept 18, 1988. The generals said at the time that they were forced to take control of the country in order to prevent it disintegrating into anarchy and being split asunder by ethnic rebel guerrillas demanding autonomy. The military was to rule for only a transitional period in which Burma would become economically prosperous, and a multi-party democracy would be introduced when appropriate. Fourteen years later, the generals have consolidated their rule and appear in no more of a hurry to relinquish power to a civilian government than they were after the opposition National League for Democracy overwhelmingly won general elections in May 1990. Since then, the country has been deadlocked politically and its economy has spiralled out of control. The one notable difference in 14 years is that the military leaders have started secret talks with the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. These started two years ago when the opposition leader was under house arrest for trying to move outside of Rangoon in defiance of a travel ban. So far though, this has meant contact only, rather than substance, between the two sides. The UN envoy for Burma Razali Ismail says there was more than 70 meetings between the opposition leader and senior generals of the regime _ including General Than Shwe, prime minister and the junta leader _ in the time she was under house arrest. But since then, the expected start of substantive talks has failed to materialise. What is now clear is that, 14 years on, Burma's political future is at a crucial crossroads. The dialogue process seems stalled. ``Everyone knows the dialogue process has stalled,'' opposition spokesman U Lwin told journalists recently. Substantive political talks need to start if the country is to break the political deadlock. If that doesn't happen soon, the international community will lose patience and, instead of relaxing Rangoon's isolation, it may well implement a rigorous economic boycott of Burma. But in the midst of the expectation of an imminent political breakthrough both within Burma and outside, the country's generals are now beginning to reveal their true colours. The generals have returned to their favourite theme: that the period of military rule was only a transition to a form of democracy. ``Such a transition cannot be done in haste or in a haphazard manner,'' Burma's intelligence chief Lieutenant-General Khin Nyunt said recently in one of his speeches. Clearly the Burmese generals are in no hurry to introduce democratic reforms. In fact, what seems to be happening is that Gen Than Shwe has strengthened the control both of the army and the administrative structure. Since the members of the Ne Win family were arrested for plotting a coup against the country's top generals six months ago, there has been growing signs that Gen Than Shwe is intent on establishing his own dynasty. ``It's quite clear that no Burmese leader has wielded such absolute power as the senior general [Than Shwe] does now,'' said an Asian diplomat based in Rangoon. ``His power and authority are totally unquestioned.'' According to a senior military source close to Gen Than Shwe, the prime minister doesn't trust either of his closest lieutenants. He regards both the army commander-in-chief General Maung Aye and Lt-Gen Khin Nyunt, the head of military intelligence, as hot heads who cannot be trusted. There is also now a growing suspicion as well that Gen Than Shwe _ now that his leadership and position are beyond question _ is intent on staying in office and has no intentions of handing over power to a civilian administration. ``Gen Than Shwe intends to hold on to power for another 10 years,'' said a senior military source close to the general. ``He's prepared to talk to the opposition leader, even work with the NLD in an interim administration, and even consider power-sharing at some point, but his main strategy is to drag the dialogue process out and retain power as long as possible.'' The UN envoy, Razali Ismail, remains convinced that progress towards real political discussions is still possible and that a meeting between Ms Suu Kyi and a senior representative of the State Peace and Development Council, probably Lt-Gen Khin Nyunt, is still on the cards in the near future. However he had also expected there to be a significant number of political prisoners released in the lead up to that meeting. That has not happened as yet, and Mr Razali is rather disappointed, according to UN sources close to the envoy. Those who know Gen Than Shwe well say he is an avid sports follower. In fact, many diplomats in Rangoon believe he spends much of his time watching international football games on satellite television. ``No one dares interrupt during those matches,'' a Rangoon resident said. A senior Asian politician recently asked Gen Than Shwe how he saw Burma's political game _ between the army and the pro-democracy opposition _ working out in the future. ``You've got it all wrong,'' he is reported to have replied. ``We're the umpire, not one of the teams in the match.'' So as far as Burma's generals are concerned, they control the game. But they may not be able to do so in the near future. There is growing frustration with the apparent failure to start the political talks. Some activist students are starting a campaign to demand immediate political reform. And now there is real danger of social unrest exploding across the country. Although the failure to start political talks may be the focus of some of the unrest, it is the underlying economic crisis which will really gave rise to the unrest. The kyat continues to plummet against the dollar on the informal exchange market, and the prices of most imported goods are sky-rocketing as a result. Even rice is now too expensive for many consumers. The government's attempts to provide subsidised grain, especially in places like Rangoon, have had a minimal effect. The situation is only going to get worse, according to international food experts. ``There is a very real danger that next season's rice crop will fail and for the first time in years there will be people starving in Burma for the lack of food,'' said one researcher who has travelled in many parts of the country in the last few months. Only substantial international aid can avert a real humanitarian crisis, according to independent experts. But this will only be forthcoming if there is progress in the dialogue process. ``The generals must know they are running out of time,'' a UN official said. ``Starting substantive political talks as soon as possible is essential if they want to ensure stability.'' - Larry Jagan is the BBC's Southeast Asia analyst, based in Bangkok. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BBC - Tuesday, 17
September, 2002, 13:23 GMT 14:23 UK
UN to probe Burma rape allegations United Nations officials say that the human rights rapporteur for Burma, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, is to visit the north-eastern Shan state after allegations of systematic rape by the Burmese army. UN officials in Geneva say that the allegations by human rights groups that the army has systematically raped ethnic Shan women will be an important part of Mr Pinheiro's mission to Burma next month. The Burmese military government has dismissed the allegations as a tissue of lies. A BBC correspondent in the region says Mr Pinheiro is also likely to investigate the conditions in Burma's jails, alleged violence between Muslims and Buddhist monks last year, the military's use of child soldiers and the issue of political prisoners. It will be the fourth visit to Burma by the UN rapporteur since his appointment nearly three years ago. From the newsroom of the BBC World Service ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |