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U.N. envoy to visit Myanmar before briefing annual Human
Rights Commission meting
Mon Mar 17, 5:58 PM ET
By PRISCILLA CHEUNG, Associated
Press Writer
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - A U.N. human rights envoy will visit Myanmar
this week to push for independent investigations into alleged human rights
violations against ethnic minorities in the country, the world body said Monday.
Paulo Sergio Pinheiro will visit Myanmar at the government's
invitation between March 19 and 26 and present his findings to the U.N. Human
Rights Commission, which began its annual six-week meeting in Geneva on Sunday,
a U.N. statement said.
The European Union (news - web sites) is
expected to table a resolution at the Geneva meeting attacking the human rights
situation in Myanmar.
During his visit, Pinheiro will examine such
issues as "the situation of political prisoners, the exercise of basic political
freedoms, and developments in the area of the administration of justice," it
said.
He will also discuss with officials from Myanmar's military
junta alleged rights abuses in ethnic minority areas, such as the Shan State,
where the military is accused of having used rape as a weapon of war against
ethnic Shan women. Pinheiro has proposed independent investigations into those
allegations.
Myanmar has been in a political deadlock since the
junta took power in 1988. It called general elections in 1990 but annulled the
results when opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy
party won.
Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel peace laureate, has held
reconciliation talks with the junta since October, 2000 but little progress has
been reported.
The ruling junta has long been accused of jailing
thousands of political opponents in harsh conditions, forcing civilians to work
in labor camps and authorizing extra-judicial executions.
The
government said Sunday it has recent released 45 prisoners. Human rights groups
believe about 1,000 political prisoners are still being held in the country's
jails and have demanded their unconditional and immediate release.
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Tuesday March 18, 6:04 PM
Myanmar's No. 2 leader said to be well after Singapore
hospital
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) _ Deputy Senior General Maung Aye, the
second-ranking member of Myanmar's ruling junta, returned Tuesday from medical
treatment in Singapore in stable condition, a Myanmar health official said.
There had been concerns about the health of the 65-year-old deputy
chief of Myanmar's armed forces after he was admitted to a military hospital in
Yangon in the last week of February for an operation related to a problem with
his prostate gland.
However, tests at a Singapore hospital showed
that Maung Aye's condition was neither life-threatening nor serious, said the
official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Maung Aye was
admitted to hospital in Singapore on March 9 and discharged March 14,
recuperating afterward in a hotel there, he said. He returned to the Myanmar
capital Tuesday on a special flight.
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Trade to top agenda on Bangladesh PM's landmark visit to
Myanmar
DHAKA, March 18 (AFP) - Bilateral trade will top the agenda during
a landmark visit to Myanmar by Bangladeshi Prime Minister Khaleda Zia starting
Wednesday, a foreign ministry spokesman said.
The visit is aimed
at strengthening ties between Bangladesh and its eastern neighbour, the
spokesman said.
"The entire gamut of bilateral relations existing
between the two neighbouring countries will be reviewed and areas of tangible
economic cooperation will be identified," he added.
Zia is
scheduled to inaugurate the Bangladesh trade fair at the Yangon Trade Centre and
address Myanmar's business community.
The prime minister, due to
leave for Myanmar on Wednesday on the three-day official visit, will be the
first Bangladeshi premier to visit the eastern neighbour in a decade.
The trip comes at the invitation of Senior General Than Shwe.
Zia's entourage would include Foreign Minister Morshed Khan,
Communications Minister Nazmul Huda and Commerce Minister Amir Khasru Mahmud
Chowdhury, the spokesman said.
Myanmar junta leader Than Shwe, who
was in Dhaka in December, was the first leader of Myanmar's junta to visit
Bangladesh since the 1988 coup in Yangon. He is the military commander-in-chief,
prime minister and defence minister.
Some 100 Bangladeshi
organisations are expected to participate in the one-week trade fair.
The neighbours have a small amount of bilateral trade, with
Myanmar exporting timber, maize, rice and fish and Bangladesh selling
fertiliser, cement and medicine.
According to available statistics
during the fiscal year 2001-2002, Bangladesh imported goods worth about 16.94
million dollars, while exports to Myanmar were worth 2.39 million dollars.
Commerce ministry sources said some agreements were likely to be
signed during the visit that would help boost bilateral trade as well as redress
the trade imbalance.
Bangladesh is increasingly pursuing a "look
east" foreign policy and is talking to Myanmar about the possibility of building
a direct road link between the neighbours.
Officials hope the
highway would link cash-strapped Bangladesh to the economic giants of Southeast
Asia and eventually connect it to China, a major economic and military aid donor
for Dhaka.
Last month a shipping service was launched between
Bangladesh and Myanmar, the first legal sea link since Dhaka won independence
from Pakistan in 1971.
Both are members of BIMSTEC, an economic
forum which also groups India, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
During Than
Shwe's visit to Dhaka, Bangladesh and Myanmar pledged to boost bilateral ties to
overcome the economic challenges faced by both countries.
Relations were strained in the early 1990s when about 250,000
Rohingya Muslims flooded into Bangladesh from Myanmar, claiming atrocities by
the junta.
Ties have improved since then, with the repatriation of
most of the refugees under a United Nations agreement, but more than 20,000
still live in camps in Bangladesh.
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Wired News
Does the End Justify the
Means?
By Patrick Di
Justo
02:00 AM Mar. 18, 2003 PT
If you
can read this, you're probably not in Myanmar.
That country's
military junta has blocked Internet access to Wired News, as well as to most
porn sites and to the website of the Free Burma Coalition.
If
you're in China or Saudi Arabia, you'll have a hard time viewing anti-government
websites and Internet porn. And if you're surfing the Net from one of 40 percent
of the libraries or schools in the United States, don't expect access to
websites hosted on Tripod or Geocities.
The University of
Toronto's Internet Censorship Explorer permits anyone with a Web browser to test
the limits of certain national and organizational Internet-blocking schemes.
Users simply enter a target URL and a country into a search field on the
Censorship Explorer's website. The software then scans the ports of available
servers in that country, looking for open ones. By using the foreign computer as
a proxy server, ICE then attempts to visit the target URL from behind that
country's firewall. The result is either the visible website or a "page blocked"
message is then returned to the user.
Project director Ronald
Diebert knows that by using port-scanning technology, he's operating in a gray
area.
"Network security administrators often look upon port
scanning as surface evidence of malicious hacking," he said. "However, port
scanning alone is not a crime in Canada or the United States."
His
use of proxy servers is a bit more controversial, he said. "We do not have
explicit prior permission to use the computers. However, we are assuming that if
a port is left open, it is intended to be used as a proxy and is configured as
such."
Computer security professionals, though, do not look kindly
at that assumption.
"This to me is no different than hacking,"
said Jon Asdourian, a computer forensics examiner with Stroz-Friedberg. "They're
obviously using resources that would not normally be available. Using someone
else's resources without their knowledge is abhorrent to us."
Richard Mason, director of the Maguire Center for Ethics at
Southern Methodist University, said that the issue is murky. "They're asking an
ethical question of censorship within a country, which is a good thing. On the
other hand there's an element of deception to it."
Diebert defends
the project as being for the greater good. "We do not intend to use these tools
to damage or steal data, or reveal information about system vulnerabilities. Our
aim is to empirically study Internet content filtering, and this is the only way
it can be done without partners on the ground."
Diebert has
written a six-point statement of principles that all his researchers must
follow. They are absolutely forbidden to damage the proxy servers they find
open. Deibert has also let the computer administrators at the University of
Toronto know about the project.
"I feel strongly about the value
of this type of research," Diebert said. "Uncovering censorship and surveillance
practices is fair game."
Using ICE, Diebert and his team have
discovered that pornography and government criticism are the subjects most
frequently blocked by non-democratic countries. China's blocking techniques keep
out everything from Playboy.com to Friends of Falun Gong to the Dalai Lama's
website.
Chinese officials insist such techniques do not amount to
censorship.
"We don't have censorship of the Internet," said Larry
Wu, second secretary for Science and Technology at the Embassy of the People's
Republic of China in Washington. "Generally, the Chinese government is for the
full exchange of information. We have full freedom of speech, freedom of the
press. However, we have our own understanding of what is a limitation of the
freedom of speech. So we do use techniques to block certain websites, as well as
we try to block spam."
Nail Al-Jubier, a spokesperson for the
Embassy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, admits that his government regulates
Internet access.
"The overwhelming number of blocked sites are
pornography," Al-Jubier said. "Some websites that are deemed un-Islamic -- those
that promote violence -- are blocked because of the standards of the community.
Some parents don't want their children going online if these are the things they
can see."
Al-Jubier denies that Saudi Arabia blocks sites deemed
politically objectionable, but admits that sometimes mistakes happen. "One time
Fox News was blocked and we didn't know why, but we manually unblocked (it)."
He added that Saudi citizens who want to avoid the government Net
censorship can always dial up through America Online to Bahrain or Dubai.
Diebert has plans to modify his Internet Censorship Explorer so it
operates as a distributed computing-type project, like SETI@Home, that would let
Internet users worldwide search for and find available proxy servers in target
countries. He plans to keep ICE running "as long as there is Internet censorship
and surveillance worldwide."
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Asian Tribune
Date : 2003-03-18
NA
chairman wishes to boost co-operation with
Myanmar
Hanoi, March 17: National Assembly Chairman
Nguyen Van An has expressed a wish for increased co-operation with Myanmar's
National Assembly.
This was when he met with visiting Myanmar
Senior General Than Shwe in Hanoi on March 16.
Chairman An said
that the two countries should work together within a bilateral and multilateral
framework. He was delighted at the developing friendship and multi-faceted
co-operation between the two countries.
Chairman of the State Peace
and Development Council of Myanmar, Than Shwe, said that Myanmar and Vietnam
have had a good relationship throughout history, which will serve as a basis for
promoting and expanding their relations in the future.
Senior
General Than Shwe briefed his host on recent developments in Myanmar, such as
the poverty reduction programme, improvement of living conditions and the
implementation of the third five-year development plan.
Earlier,
Senior General Than Shwe paid a floral tribute to President Ho Chi Minh at his
mausoleum and laid a wreath at the Monument to Fallen Combatants.
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Nhan Dan -
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Asian Tribune
Date :
2003-03-18
ActivistsTarget London HQ of British - American Tobacco,
in Protest Against Investment in Burma.
London,
March 17: Activists wearing facemasks of British American Tobacco Deputy
Chairman Ken Clarke MP will be demonstrating outside BAT's London HQ on March 26
in a protest against their investment in Burma.
According to a
press release by Christian Solidarity (CSW), it states that CSW is joining with
Burma Campaign UK in encouraging its supporters to call on BAT to close the
factory it jointly owns with Burma's military dictatorship and pull out of Burma
immediately.
The Press release further adds: Protestors will also
carry placards shaped as speech bubbles quoting a letter from Ken Clarke to a
constituent in which he criticizes companies "collaborating" with the regime in
Burma.
In the letter he stated: "I must admit I sometimes feel
uncomfortable about investment in that country." He went on to say that: "The
problem in Burma arises when companies start collaborating with an extremely
unpleasant regime which is totally contrary to our notions of civil liberties
and democracy."
The joint venture generates £250,000 in profit per
year for the Burmese military regime. At least 40 percent of this money is
believed to be spent on arms.
Stuart Windsor, National Director of
Christian Solidarity Worldwide, said: "Economic pressure on the Burmese military
dictatorship is a key way of getting real change for the people of Burma.
"BAT is collaborating with a regime which rapes, murders,
oppresses and tortures its people. We hope that as many people as possible will
join CSW and Burma Campaign in protesting against BAT which gives this genocidal
regime economic support."
The protest will be from 12.30-1.30pm,
with the photo shoot at 1pm. BAT's head office is at 4 Globe House, Temple
Place, London, right next to Temple tube station.
(For more
information, contact Richard Chilvers at Christian Solidarity Worldwide on 020
8949 0587 or 020 8942 8810 or email: richard.chilvers@xxxxxxxxxx or go to
www.csw.org.uk Alternatively contact Mark Farmaner, Media Officer at Burma
Campaign UK on 020 7281 7377.)
BAT is the second biggest
international tobacco company and the 18th largest company in the UK. Its brands
include Rothmans, Dunhill, 555, JPS, Lucky Strike, Kent and Pall Mall.
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ASEAN foreign ministers' meeting to discuss
Iraq issue
Xinhuanet 2003-03-17 17:05:29
KUALA LUMPUR, March 17 (Xinhuanet) -- The impending war on Iraq is
expected to be the main agenda at the three-day ASEAN Foreign Ministers Informal
Meeting to be held at the Nexus Karambunai Resorts in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia,
on Tuesday.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)'s
Secretary-General Ong Keng Yong said ASEAN countries view the matter with
urgency as it might affect the region economically.
"Of course,
the key issue will be the situation in Iraq becausethis is an urgent issue, and
other issues that concern ASEAN's future," he was quoted by Bernama news agency
as saying upon arrival at the Kota Kinabalu International Airport Monday.
"So we will discuss it, and in fact, the discussion between
theUnited States and its allies will also have a bearing on us and even what
happened in the United Nations has a bearing on us," he said.
The
ASEAN official was responding to a question on whether the ultimatum issued by
the Unites States and its allies on the possible war against Iraq would be the
main agenda in the grouping's meeting.
After an emergency summit
on Sunday with the leaders of Britain, Spain and Portugal on the Azores Islands,
US President George W. Bush said, "We concluded that tomorrow (Monday) is a
moment of truth for the world."
Asked on the stand of ASEAN
countries on the Iraq issue, Ong said: "I think we are all against war and we
hope that there should be no war. I don't know how much we can do as an ASEAN
group because one group of the big power wants to have a war and one group
against war."
Asked whether the ASEAN meeting would come up with a
resolution, Ong said, "For this one, no ..., the ministers are going to be
informal. We are trying to brainstorm on ... what can we do to ensure ASEAN do
not suffer much."
The ASEAN groups Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei,
Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam.
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