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More than 300 Nigerians in Thai prisons to be sent home
soon
Sat Mar 8, 3:59 AM ET
BANGKOK,
Thailand (AP) - Thailand will send
338 Nigerian prisoners back to their home country later this month to serve the
rest of their jail terms, a newspaper reported Saturday.
The move
would follow an agreement Nigeria signed Jan. 16 on the transfer of prisoners
with Thailand, the Bangkok Post reported. Prison officials could not be
contacted to confirm the report.
To be eligible for transfer,
inmates must have served a minimum of four years of their sentences in Thai
jails, or eight years for those serving life terms, the Post's report quoted
Natthee Jitsawang, deputy chief of the Corrections Department, as saying.
Those sentenced to death are not eligible.
Ten
Nigerians failed to meet the criteria and will remain in Thai prisons, Natthee
said, adding that 99 percent of Nigerians jailed in Thailand are convicted drug
traffickers.
The Nigerian government will pay for the inmates'
transfer, sending a chartered plane to pick them up, he added.
As
of last year, there were about 7,400 foreigners in Thailand's prison population
of almost 174,000. Nigerians make up the fourth biggest group of incarcerated
foreigners. Citizens of Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia ? all neighbors of Thailand ?
make up the biggest groups of imprisoned foreigners.
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Myanmar criticises its inclusion on US religious freedom
blacklist
YANGON, March 8 (AFP) - Myanmar's inclusion on a US blacklist for
abuses of religious freedoms is unfair, the military government said Saturday.
"The people of Myanmar together with its government are
disappointed to learn that the US secretary of state unfairly listed Myanmar for
'severe violations of religious freedom'," it said in a statement.
"Myanmar is a land where the people of all faiths enjoy religious
freedom and harmony in practice," it said.
US Secretary of State
Colin Powell on Wednesday designated China, Iran, Iraq, Myanmar, North Korea and
Sudan as countries of "particular concern" on freedom of worship, keeping in
place the possibility of punitive sanctions against them.
In its
statement the junta countered that reports after visits by a journalist and two
fact-finding missions had commented on the religious and ethnic harmony in the
predominantly Buddhist country.
With all the "religions conflicts
and upheavals occurring in many places around the world including the United
States" it was "absolutely improper and insensitive to accuse other nations or
governments on the basis of hearsay evidence," it said.
The US
State Department's annual report on religious freedom worldwide released in
October said Myanmar's government maintained a tight grip on religious activity,
fearful of the Buddhist clergy's support of democracy.
The junta
also discriminated against Muslims and Christians, even though the right to
religious freedom was enshrined in the constitution, the report said.
More than 100 monks were imprisoned during the 1990s for
supporting democracy and human rights, while the government has tried to link
itself with Buddhism to boost its own legitimacy, the report said.
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Prominent Mon ethnic leader dies in Myanmar
BANGKOK, March 8 (AFP) - A prominent leader of Myanmar's ethnic Mon
group and a former fighter for Mon independence, Nai Shwe Kyin, has died at the
age of 91, sources and news reports in Thailand said Saturday.
Nai
Shwe Kyin died at his home Friday in the capital of Myanmar's southern Mon
state, Mawlamyine.
In 1958 he founded the New Mon State Party that
became the vanguard for the Mon armed struggle for independence from Yangon
until the signing of a truce with the military government in 1995.
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Asian Tribune
Date : 2003-03-08
The Women League of Burma on women who have struggled for justice,
peace and equality.
The Women?s League of Burma
pinpoints those women in Burma face violence of different forms. In a statement
issued on the occasion of the International women?s day, the women's league
points out that in Burma many women have been raped, trafficked for sexual and
other exploitation, forced to become refugees due to civil war, and driven by
poverty to sell their bodies.
The Women?s League further adds:
?Oppression and systematic violation of human rights by successive military
regimes has inflicted poverty on the people and the country.?
The
full text of the statement issued by the Women?s League of Burma on the occasion
of the International Women?s day is given below:
In 1975, the
United Nations General Assembly recognized women's struggle for ethnic,
cultural, civil and political rights and declared 8th of March as International
Women's Day.
In the past century, the women's rights movement has
without doubt gained many successful achievements. However, women are still
facing discrimination. Therefore, we need to continue our struggle and work for
gender equality in our society.
There are still religious and
social practices and beliefs oppressing women, such as restriction of women's
freedom of movement, abortion of unwanted girl children, and honor killing of
women.
In Burma, women face violence of different forms. Many women
have been raped, trafficked for sexual and other exploitation, forced to become
refugees due to civil war, and driven by poverty to sell their bodies.
Oppression and systematic violation of human rights by successive military
regimes has inflicted poverty on the people and the country.
Ethnic
women are facing sexual violence committed by the junta's army. Instead of
seeking out perpetrators to take legal action, the Burmese authorities are
denouncing reports documenting sexual violence committed by the state and trying
to cover up the violations. Furthermore, the authorities are violating the right
to freedom of organization by disturbing and harassing Burma's democratic
leader, the General Secretary of the National League for Democracy, Daw Aung San
Suu Kyi.
The status of women and issues of women's development,
peace and gender equality are linked to a country's social, political and
economic development. Burma's current social, political and economic development
is not conducive for women's development. We believe that restoration of a
democratic system in Burma will enable us to work for peace, gender equality and
real development for women of Burma.
We will work together with
our international sisters for elimination of discrimination against women and
capacity building of women. And for Burma, we shall work hand in hand with
ethnic sisters, friends and colleagues towards a peaceful, progressive, free and
just society. Let us work together to end the military dictatorship in
Burma.
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Asian Tribune
Date : 2003-03-08
Myanmar ? ?Win, win if work together on
drugs?
In a joint move teams from Myanmar and the
USA will complete today (March 3) a survey on opium poppy production in Shan
State ? with a call from the Government urging the US to join more fully in the
war against narcotics.
"Working together is a ?win win? situation.
We can win the war on drugs. But, if we fail to work together, the drug
traffickers gain the advantage," said a Government spokesman.
The
19-member team, led by Brigadier-General Kyaw Thein of the Ministry of Defence
and Dr Basil Cock of the US, collected poppy samples from 12 separate areas
throughout Shan State in their work which commenced on February 24. The team of
12 American and seven Myanmars visited at least 10 areas where a wide variety of
crop substitution programs are underway ? including inspecting a coffee
plantation in Lwe-sam-son, a tungsten factory in Long-htan and highland terrace
farms near Lashio.
It was the ninth such survey jointly conducted
between the Myanmar and US governments since 1993. In an apparent "opening up of
their hearts" both sides have seen the advantages of cooperating together in
quantifying and substantiating the decline in acreages of poppy being planted
and opium being harvested. According to a senior Myanmar anti-drugs official
expectation is high that poppy production will drop even further over the coming
year and may even be greater than the drop by 26 per cent in 2002 ? to 828
metric tons of opium.
Some estimates suggest that production in
2003 could be as low as 400t. "Unfortunately, cooperation with the United States
has been limited to opium surveys and this cooperation should be increased. Both
our countries have a mutual interest in stopping drug production and we both
share an obligation to the international community to work together," said the
government spokesman. ? 03 ? 09 Myanmar Times -
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Times Online
March 08, 2003
Christian aid and prayers for Burma's tortured and
displaced
By Tara Holmes
SAW
NAING GAE is only eight years old. He has already witnessed the brutal death of
his mother and father at the hands of Burma?s military regime. But his ordeal
didn?t end there. He was then taken across the border and sold to a Thai family.
He managed to escape and found his way back to a refugee camp, where he is now
staying with 30 other orphans. He doesn?t join in when the other children sing;
he doesn?t smile. His innocence has gone. His story is typical of the thousands
of Karen people who have fled their homes to escape Burma?s civil war.
Today
British Christians of all denominations will gather at St John?s Church,
Waterloo, in London, to pray for an end to the conflict. Tomorrow, people will
assemble once again in churches up and down the country to mark a global day of
prayer for Burma. The initiative, launched in this country three years ago by
Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), brings together Christians from all
Burma?s ethnic groups, including those who belong to the dominant Burman group,
whose leaders have carried out a relentless campaign bordering on ethnic
cleansing.
Lydia Haines, the CSW?s country officer for Burma,
explains: ?We?re looking for healing and restoration of peace in Burma and
praying for the political process and an end to the atrocities there.? Two
million people have been expelled from their homes and villages by the junta
since the conflict began more than 50 years ago. Burmese troops are accused of
killing 10,000 civilians a year. In the past ten years alone, the military junta
has conscripted more than three million people, including women and children,
into slave labour. Thousands have fled either their homes or the brutal
conditions of relocation sites.
The majority of the displaced
population are from ethnic minority areas such as the states of Karen, Karenni
and Shan; more than 100,000 people, mainly ethnic Karens, live in camps along
the Thai-Burmese border. In the Karen refugee camps are Christians, Buddhists,
Muslims and people of all traditional religions. About 40 per cent are
Christians, of whom most are Baptists.
James Mawdsley is a British
human rights activist who spent more than a year in solitary confinement in a
Burmese jail. Mawdsley, a Roman Catholic from Ormskirk, Lancashire, was arrested
in August 1999 and sentenced to 17 years in prison for distributing
pro-democracy leaflets in the country. He served 411 days before being released
after diplomatic pressure.
In prison he was beaten by guards but
he said that his conditions were better than most other inmates who were 100 to
a cell. In 2001, his book on his experiences, The Heart Must Break, was
published and he vowed to continue his battle against the junta.
Mawdsley,
30, who has since set up a charity to help provide an education for children
along the Thai-Burma border, says: ?Along the border areas, rape, destruction of
villages and slave labour are all as bad as ever. When people see their culture
being destroyed and their land being taken away, this is genocide. Despite the
good work that has been done by the United States, the United Nations and the
European Union, their main interest is stability rather than justice. It?s an
understandable caution. It?s not being done out of malevolence, but unless we
start pushing really hard and accept that sometimes situations will be beyond
our control we will not extinguish the strength of the SPDC, the State Peace and
Development Council, Burma?s military regime.?
The human rights campaigner
has been back to Burma four times since his imprisonment to visit schools being
helped by his charity, The Metta Trust for Children?s Education.
?Many of us underestimate the effect we can have even by small
actions,? he says. ?The vast majority of people, when they see suffering, want
to help, but when they confront the scale of the problem, they feel helpless.
But a letter to an MP, giving money to charity or welcoming Burmese people in
this country can make a huge difference. I also feel very strongly that prayer,
as well as being an appeal to God, can give us a focus for action and a
direction.?
Lord Alton of Liverpool, who has just returned from a
fact-finding trip to the Burmese border, says he was shocked by the latest
violations of human rights. The independent crossbench peer was collecting
evidence on behalf of the Jubilee Campaign, a parliamentary pressure group. He
was accompanied by the American congressman, Joseph Pitts.
In a
refugee camp near Mae Sot, Lord Alton took evidence from the Committee for
Internally Displaced Karen People. He has now produced a 100-page report which
lists three mass killings by the SPDC. ?It is a carefully chronicled account of
looting, burning, torture, rape and murder,? says Lord Alton.
?The
SPDC routinely plant landmines indiscriminately and in areas where landmines
have been laid by their opponents the SPDC use people as human landmine
sweepers. I saw some of the victims ? people whose limbs have been severed from
their bodies, whose skin has been peppered with shrapnel, and others who have
been left blind. I also talked to families of people whose loved ones had been
seized and used as porters and construction workers, and who have never
returned. The SPDC kill many of the porters in frontline areas, especially when
they are unable to work any longer because of exhaustion or sickness.
?Although the British Government still refuses to categorise these
crimes as genocide, there is no doubt in my mind that no other word adequately
describes the realities in Burma?s Karen state.?
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The Nation
A plea to the government
Subhatra Bhumiprabhas
Published on
Mar 8, 2003
Regional women's groups yesterday called on the
Thai government to join women's voices on international Women's Day today by
setting up a camp for Shan victims of rape.
In a joint statement,
the Asia-Pacific Forum on Women Law and Development (APWLD) and other rights
groups including Forum Asia, AltSEAN-Burma (Alternative Asean Network for Burma)
and Friends Without Borders, pleaded with the Thai government to look into the
plight of Shan women and girl victims of sexual violence who had fled to
Thailand.
The APWLD asked the government to set up camps along the
Thai border for the victims, saying these women were facing greater danger and
trauma as no protection mechanisms existed.
The APWLD cited the
report "Licence To Rape", published in June last year, which revealed 173
incidents of rape and other forms of sexual violence against 625 girls and
women, allegedly committed by Burmese troops in Shan State, mostly between 1996
and 2001.
The report was compiled by the Shan Human Rights
Foundation and the Shan Women's Action Network (Swan).
"We are
seriously concerned about the increased climate of insecurity for rape survivors
and their communities inside Burma at this time," the statement
read.
The group also called on the United Nations and other bodies
to set up safe and secure mechanisms for investigations inside Burma to protect
the women from further risk.
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The Nation
Burma demands troops leave Doi Lang
Published on Mar 8, 2003
A dispute over the
Thailand-Burma border erupted yesterday when the Burmese demanded the withdrawal
of Thai troops from the strategic mountain of Doi Lang.
Burmese
Lt-Colonel Aung Thien Oo said 32 Thai troops were stationed at the mountain, 23
on the hills and another nine on cliffs along the border.
The
Burmese government, he said, considered the action a violation of its
sovereignty and demanded that the Thai military remove its troops from the
area.
Doi Lang, located on the northwest border with Burma near
Chiang Mai, is considered a strategic military post for monitoring drug
trafficking. Both sides claim sovereignty over the area.
The
Burmese officer cited the Thai-British treaty signed on October 27, 1894 to back
Burmese claims to Doi Lang. However, Thailand referred to a 1980 map to show
that the mountain belonged to the Kingdom.
The demand for the
withdrawal of troops was made at the meeting of the 28th Township Border
Committee in Chiang Rai between Thailand and a Burmese delegation led by Aung
Thein Oo.
Colonel Apichart Meesommon, heading the Thai delegation,
said the Thai government and the State Peace and Development Council had agreed
that the Thai Army could retain troops in the area, as long as no further
soldiers were deployed.
He maintained that Thai troops in Doi Lang
were definitely within Thai territory.
Apichart also asked the
Burmese delegation to ensure that the Burmese stopped digging along the Sai
River, which could change the demarcation line.
The Thai-Burmese
joint border committee is currently trying to define the border and expects to
complete its task soon.
The Thai Army also suggested a meeting with
Burmese soldiers stationed along the border at least once a month to reduce
tension and misunderstandings.
Apichart said at the meeting that
Her Majesty the Queen would visit Chiang Mai's Mae Ai district later in the
month. He requested that the Burmese therefore maintain peace in the
area.
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The Nation
Ethnic leader Nai Shwe Kyin
dies at 91
Supalak
Ganjanakhundee
Published on Mar 8,
2003
Mon leader Nai Shwe Kyin, who played a major role
in Burmese political history, died yesterday at the age of 91.
The
former rebel and founder and president of the New Mon State Party (NMSP) died
peacefully at his Myaing Thar Yar residence in the Mon State capital of Moulmein
at 1.30 am (2am Bangkok time), according to Thai military sources monitoring
Burmese affairs.
Born in 1913 in Kawhnat near Moulmein, Nai Shwe
Kyin received a degree from Rangoon University in British colonial times before
entering the British Navy with the rank of instructor. The Mon leader played a
major role in crafting the future of his people from an early age. He founded
the Mon Freedom League in 1947 to support the struggle for an independent Burma
before being jailed a year later for his political activities.
Nai
Shwe Kyin's armed struggle began when he joined the Mon People's Front after his
release from prison in 1951.
In July 1958, the day after the Mon
Peoples Front surrendered to U Nu's government, he formed the New Mon State
Party (NMSP), which became the main party for Mon independence from Rangoon
until the signing of a truce with Burma's ruling military junta in June
1995.
Nai Shwe Kyin retained the presidency of the party and lived
peacefully in Moulmein after the 1995 peace accord.
Younger Mon
fighters accused him of receiving business concessions from the junta in
exchange for the cease-fire and split away to maintain armed resistance.
He once told The Nation that armed struggle could not achieve Mon
aims and would destroy all parties. The cease-fire at least offered the Mon
people the chance to improve their living standards, he said.
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