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Friday March 28, 11:20 AM
ADB Lends US$8.5MLN to
Develop Vietnam's Mekong Delta Tourism
HANOI, March
28 Asia Pulse - Vietnam and the
Asian Development Bank (ADB) on Wednesday signed an agreement for a US$8.5
million loan to develop tourism in the lower Cuu Long(Mekong) River
basin.
The project is part of the bank's US$35 Greater Mekong
Subregion (GMS) Tourism Development Project, which includes a $15.6 million loan
to Cambodia and a $10.9 million loan to Laos.
ADB country director
John Samy said infrastructure development was essential for tourism in the
area.
"Rich in environment, cultural, and historical treasures, the
GMS countries including Vietnam stand to benefit substantially by capitalising
on their tourism potential. But infrastructure development and greater economic
co-operation are essential," he said.
The region comprises
Cambodia, China's Yunnan Province, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and
Vietnam.
"It is a fast growing tourism destination, but growth is
constrained by difficulties of access, a lack of investment in tourism
infrastructure, the absence of new products to attract visitors and weakness in
policy and institutional capacities," Samy said.
In Vietnam, the
project will focus on improving the environment in My Tho, tourist islands in
Tien Giang Province and Sam Mountain in An Giang Province. Two river piers in An
Giang and a new pier complex in My Tho are also planned.
The
development of eco and village-based tourism and the conservation and
improvement of natural and cultural heritage sites will take place in both An
Giang and Tien Giang provinces.
ADB officials said the project will
ensure that the poor benefit from increased tourism, that current levels of
tourism will be effectively managed, cultural traditions and natural habitats
preserved and environmental degradation mitigated.
It will also
monitor the social impacts of tourism, promote the role of women and establish
measures to minimise the negative impacts of increased
tourism.
Tourism facilities at border posts will also be upgraded
.
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Asia Pacific US Department Store Joins Boycott of Burma
Made Products
VOA News
28 Mar 2003, 11:05
UTC
U.S.-based May Department Stores has announced that it
will no longer sell products made in Burma, where the garment industry is tied
to a system of modern-day slavery.
The Free Burma Coalition
released a statement Friday, saying the company is the 40th American business to
join the boycott in three years, resulting in a 27-percent drop in U.S. imports
from Burma in the past year.
Burma's democracy leader, Aung San
Suu Kyi, has called for foreign businesses to avoid Burma, saying that sanctions
send a strong political and economic message to its military dictatorship.
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The Straits Times
MARCH 28, 2003 FRI
Thai army will ask Myanmar rebels to withdraw from border
BANGKOK - The Thai army is set to persuade ethnic
Shan and Wa forces to withdraw from their bases on the Myanmar border as a first
step towards stamping out the cross-border drug trade.
Clearing the
border of the two ethnic groups will allow the Thais to work with Yangon's armed
forces to work out a more efficient anti-drug smuggling
machinery.
Until now, Myanmar's armed forces have only nominal
control in the areas dominated by the Shan and Wa, both of whom maintain armed
forces of their own.
Thailand also hopes to demarcate the border
clearly soon and start joint border patrols.
The newly appointed
commander of Thailand's Third army, Major-General Picharnmet Muangmanee, told
journalists over the weekend that with these measures, the Thais hope to reduce
the cross-border drug trade which has flooded Thailand with
amphetamines.
Thailand will try and persuade the Shan State Army.
'Thai soldiers will absolutely not use force in dealing with the Shan,' he
said.
Myanmar will talk to the United Wa State
Army.
The two ethnic groups have been fighting Myanmar's authority
for years and often cross the Thai border to seek refuge.
The Thai
army has maintained an uneasy, arm's length relationship with them for
years.
The Wa have some 20,000 well-armed fighters and the ruling
regime in Myanmar is not keen to challenge them. The Shan also remain
influential in many pockets.
The Wa helped the Yangon regime fight
the Shan in the 1990s in return for a measure of autonomy.
Both the
Wa and the Shan have been having running battles for years with Yangon, which
they oppose because of ethnic issues.
The Thai authorities believe
mediating between Yangon and these two groups is in Bangkok's interests because
it would enhance Yangon's control over the border areas.
Only with
these in place would Thailand make headway in its battle against
drugs.
Drug-trade analysts agree that wiping out street peddlers
will have limited effect if the flow of amphetamines from across the Myanmar
border remains unchecked.
Millions of yaba pills are smuggled
across the border regularly. With an estimated one million addicts, Thailand has
one of the world's worst methamphetamine problems. --NIRMAL GHOSH
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Bangkok Post - Friday 28 March 2003
Police
holding 14,445 dealers; 467 killed
About 50 believed to have fled
into Burma
Wassana Nanuam
More than 400 drug dealers in the North
have been killed since the war on drugs began on Feb 1, while 14,445 others have
surrendered, authorities said.
Also, about 50 blacklisted major
dealers in the North have escaped to Burma, said Pithaya Jinawat, head of the
Northern Narcotics Control Office.
Mr Pithaya said only 15 of the
467 suspected dealers killed since Feb 1were gunned down by police in
self-defence. The rest were believed to have been murdered by drug gangs trying
to cover their trails.
There were 487 government officials among
the blacklisted suspects. So far, 77 of them _ mostly based in Mae Hong Son _
had been arrested, he said.
Mr Pithaya added that a total of 77,385
drug users in the North had already reported to
authorities.
Quoting reports of the Narcotics Control Board (NCB),
he said there were 330 drug networks in the North and 280 smuggling routes in 10
northern provinces.
About 50 methamphetamine factories along the
northern border belonged to drug kingpin Wei Hseuh-kang and the ethnic Red Wa in
Burma.
Officials of the NCB and the United Nations Drug Control
Programme recently visited the Red Wa's La and Pok towns, located opposite
Chiang Rai. They found the majority of Wa townspeople were wealthy. Most of them
owned four-wheel-drive vehicles and satellite phones, the officials
reported.
U Sa Koo, a Wa military leader, admitted the Red Wa were
still producing opium and speed pills. However, they had made a promise to
Rangoon to help wipe out illicit drugs by 2005.
The NCB and UN
officials also found Thailand's war on drugs had led to a decrease in the
circulation of drug money.
Smugglers were also forced to reduce the
size of their shipments and to figure out new ways to conceal their illegal
goods, such as hiding pills in powder milk packets.
Also, there was
a sharp rise in both wholesale and retail prices of speed pills. The wholesale
price now stood between 30-50 baht per tablet, while the retail price had
rocketed from 80-100 baht to 300-400 baht apiece.
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The Nation
EDITORIAL: Energy behemoth slips
privatisation
Published on Mar 28, 2003
Instead of breaking Egat into four parts and selling it
off, the plan now is to turn the agency into a regional powerhouse
Privatisation of state utilities is supposed to mean the shedding
of excess manpower, improved efficiency and consequently lower prices.
Privatisation is a buzzword we are all familiar with. But one man has recently
managed to swim against the tide by keeping his cumbersome organisation under
state ownership and maintaining a monopoly over power production. If Sitthiporn
Ratanopas, governor of the country's largest state enterprise - the Electricity
Generating Authority of Thailand (Egat) - had his way, he not only would keep
Egat big but also extend its tentacles into neighbouring countries by investing
in huge power projects in those territories.
After taking over the
organisation only six months ago, Sitthiporn has talked Prime Minister Thaksin
Shinawatra into reversing a long-settled plan to divide and privatise Egat into
four smaller power companies. Last week, Deputy PM Somkid Jatusripitak announced
that Egat would remain intact a monolithic organisation with the state's share
staying at least 50 per cent.
Some 20,000 Egat employees, as well
as their anti-privatisation labour union, heartily congratulated Sitthiporn for
his success.
Nonetheless, this success at keeping its turf is
likely to come at a high cost for the Thai public. In his fight against
privatisation, Sitthiporn convinced Thaksin that Egat would reinvent itself by
taking a new role in Asean's power sector.
He dusted off the Asian
Development Bank's plan to create an Asean Power Grid to pool electricity
supplies by an interconnected power network between countries in the region.
In an attempt to play a central role in planning and operating the
power network, Sitthiporn proposed construction of two gigantic dams on the
Salween River at the Thai-Burmese border as initial power suppliers to the power
grid.
These plans are based on an assumption that Egat would
expand its role into a regional player as well as maintain its monopoly in
planning and managing power utilities in the country. But when tracing Egat's
past record of energy management, we find that for many reasons the direction
the organisation is taking is not for the benefit of the public and the
country's economy.
First and foremost, Egat has clung to
supply-side management. A continuing search for new energy sources to feed an
assumed growing demand is a burden to the Thai economy. Sitthiporn readily
concedes the high contribution of energy to the country's GDP is caused by
inefficiency.
Despite this inefficiency, Egat is reengineering its
electricity price structure to boost consumption by heavy, energy-intensive
industries . According to Sitthiporn, the more these industries consume, the
cheaper the rates Egat can charge. This regressive price structure to promote
heavy industries will be at the cost of general consumers who will continue to
pay at progressive rates.
The "re-nationalisation" of Egat would be
acceptable only if the government puts in place a new mechanism to create better
checks-and-balances for the agency. The direction it is heading to find more
power supplies, especially from neighbouring countries, to feed energy intensive
industry to boost Thailand's GDP is not a sustainable path for the country and
the region in the long run.
The Salween hydro project, supposed to
be the largest dam in Southeast Asia with up to 5,600 MW capacity, highlights
Egat's flawed perception of energy management. This huge amount of electricity
would come from a Bt300 billion-plus investment that would damage the priceless
ecology of Thailand and Burma and produce excessive power that would not be used
efficiently.
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28/03/2003 10:15:34 | ABC Radio Australia
News
Burmese junta warns of continuing fighting
An explosion has killed two people in Rangoon as
Burma's junta warned of persisting ethnic strife.
The blast outside
a government telephone exchange killed two women workers and injured a
third.
A second explosive device was found in a park opposite the
US Embassy and was defused.
Officials have not commented either on
the cause of the blast or who may be responsible.
It coincided
with the commemoration of Armed Forces Day marked by a parade of troops in
Rangoon.
Under tight security the country's ruler, Senior General
Than Shwe, told the troops some groups failed to recognise the achievements of
the armed forces.
He says if sectarian views continue, they will
cause the collapse of national unity.
Several militias, notably
Karen and Shan groups, are continuing to battle the central government.
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Burmese detentions 'absurd'
John
Aglionby in Jakarta
Thursday March 27, 2003
The
Guardian
A UN human rights envoy accused the
Burmese military junta yesterday of making "absurd" excuses to detain more than
1,200 political opponents.
Paulo Pinheiro, who suspended his latest visit to
Burma after an antiquated bugging device was found in a prison room he was using
for confidential interviews, insisted that all the prisoners must be released
immediately.
"You cannot continue using the excuse that some
prisoners are very dangerous," he said in Bangkok. "I can barely imagine that
prisoners 75 years old, in terrible state of health, are a security threat. This
is nonsense."
He said it was completely unjustifiable that a young
man had been sentenced to 14 years for waving the flag of the opposition
National League for Democracy.
The Brazilian professor, who is due
to present his report on Burma to the UN human rights commission next month,
said it was "unacceptable" that prisoners were being released only on a
piecemeal basis.
But he commended the junta for giving the Red
Cross greater access in some parts of the country and allowing Amnesty
International to make a visit this year.
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Seattle Post
Thursday, March 27,
2003
Spreading peace at gunpoint
By JOHANN HARI
BRITISH
COLUMNIST
Kenneth Joseph is a young
American pastor who was so convinced the current war would be waged against the
will of the Iraqis that he traveled there to act as a human shield. He was
convinced he would be welcomed by the Iraqis as a hero. Yet this week Joseph was
explaining his trip had "shocked him back to reality."
The Iraqis
told him they saw the war as desirable, despite the inevitably high cost of
civilian deaths. (Saddam Hussein's thugs are still murdering "dissidents" who
question the regime, so they were risking their lives to tell him this.) They
said -- in footage he recorded on a hidden camcorder -- "they would commit
suicide if American bombing didn't start. They were willing to see their homes
demolished to gain their freedom from Saddam's bloody tyranny. They convinced me
that Saddam was a monster."
Every single anti-war protester should
-- on the basis of this evidence and similar material I have offered in previous
columns -- reconsider his or her view. This is not "pro-war propaganda": Joseph
was as anti-war as the most vehement members of the Stop the War coalition, but
he was also an honest man who could not disregard the evidence of his own
eyes.
Who are the real imperialists here: those who want to carry
out the wishes of the Iraqi people or those who want to ignore them in the name
of a non-existent peace? And, yes, it was non-existent. There is no peace if, at
any time, people can be captured, tortured, burned or raped. Read the Amnesty
International reports. This was the everyday reality of Saddam's Iraq. Only the
dishonest can say British and U.S. soldiers are interrupting "peace"; they are
interrupting a decades-long war, waged by Saddam against the Iraqi people, to
bring it to an end. Do not weep that this happening; be proud.
Of
course George W. Bush is unpleasant; of course oil is a factor. They know this,
too, but they back the war anyway because it is the only way to get rid of
Saddam.
If you honestly oppose the war and think you can defend
your stance to the people suffering under Saddam, dial 00964 and then guess an
11-digit number. Ask the civilians there what they want to happen. Go on. Tell
them that you oppose the war, and see what they say.
Zainab
al-Suwaij, executive director of the American Islamic Congress, a non-profit
Iraqi exile group, says: "I was shocked at first (to hear his relatives
criticizing Saddam over the telephone). It's very dangerous. All the phones are
tapped. But they are so excited." Listen to their excitement, and tell them why
they are wrong.
So why, you might ask, are the Iraqi armies still
fighting? Why have they not surrendered? Saddam's propaganda channels have been
reminding the Iraqis of the 1991 betrayal, when the first President Bush told
them that if they rose up against Saddam the United States would support them.
They did as he asked, and they were gunned down. The streets of Mosul and Basra
are still studded with the bullet holes from that terrible month. Saddam leaves
them as a constant reminder of the danger of resisting him and of trusting
America. I have seen those holes and noted how Iraqis glance at them with a
pale, chastened look. This time, the Americans will not walk away from the
Iraqis' suffering but the troops have yet, understandably, to be convinced of
this.
Once Iraqis are certain the Americans will not back off and
leave them to the mercy of Saddam, they will explain why they wanted this war.
This is not idle speculation: It is already happening. In Safwan last weekend,
Iraqis called out to U.S. and British troops: "You're late. What took you so
long? God help you become victorious." Another person said: "I want to say hello
to Bush, to shake his hand." One woman stated: "For a long time we've been
saying, 'Let them come.' Last night we were afraid, but we said, 'Never mind, as
long as they get rid of him, as long as they overthrow him, no problem.' " This
was reported in one of the most anti-war newspapers in
Britain.
Those who still deny all this evidence will know soon
enough what the Iraqi people thought all along. When it emerges -- as I strongly
believe, based on my experience of the Iraqi exile community and the
International Crisis Group's survey of opinion within Iraq -- that they wanted
this war, will the anti-war movement recant? Will they apologize for
appropriating the voice of the Iraqi people and using it for their own
ends?
Confronted with the evidence of Iraqis' feelings, many of the
anti-war critics will, I fear, change the subject. They will say that, whatever
the Iraqi people desired, the damage to international law was too great; they
fail to acknowledge a key flaw with international law. The foundations for the
present system were built in 1945, when the greatest threat to human life and
dignity was war between nations. Its structures are designed solely to prevent
conflict between states and to secure peace in the international arena -- and in
this respect, they have been phenomenally successful.
What
international law cannot do is secure peace within nations. The governments of,
say, Burma, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe may be judged "peaceful" under
international law, while they are butchering and terrorizing their populations.
There is no peace for people living under tyranny. International law must be
changed to allow democracies to act where there are reasonable grounds (as in
Iraq) for believing that the people of a country wish it, and where the regime
is systematically breaching human rights on a massive scale.
Some
people, such as the Liberal Democrat spokeswoman Shirley Williams, have voiced
the perfectly understandable fear that the alternative to international law is
"the law of the jungle." Yet people living under a tyranny like Saddam's live
under exactly that chaotic "law" -- and international law forbids others to act
to end it. To focus solely on the international order at the expense of the
level at which people actually live -- the national -- is to write off the most
desperate and needy people alive.
It might seem perverse to seek to
spread peace at the barrel of a gun; but the peace we enjoy here in Europe
exists only because we (along with the Americans) acted with weaponry to banish
tyrants. The Iraqi people want and deserve the same. If their wishes -- as
reported unambiguously by Kenneth Joseph and many more like him -- are not
compatible with international law, then an urgent priority once this war is over
must be to reconstruct international law to make it encourage, not hinder, the
overthrow of tyranny.
Johann Hari is a columnist for The
Independent, a general-circulation newspaper in Great Britain.
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Asia Times - Mar 29, 2003
'After
Baghdad, Yangon'
By Nelson Rand
MAE SOT, Thailand - If George W Bush is wondering where
next to take his "regime change" crusade after he's polished off Saddam Hussein,
Saw Bawah has a suggestion: Myanmar.
Saw Bawah is a medic with the
Karen National Liberation Army. Recently he came across the border from his
jungle base camp in Myanmar to this small Thai town to watch the US-led "shock
and awe" campaign against Iraq on a television in the office of the Arakan
Liberation Party (ALP), an armed ethnic group opposed to the ruling junta in
Yangon.
Saw Bawah's Karen group has been fighting for an
independent homeland in eastern Myanmar since 1949. On this day he sat with his
face right up to the TV screen, watching in awe as coalition planes dropped
bombs on Baghdad and firefights erupted in Umm Qasr. It was an information
overload for this man who rarely receives any news from the outside world - let
alone live TV coverage of a war. He couldn't tell the difference between Saddam
Hussein, Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf and Americans on the
television set, but he knew what was going on: Britain and the US were taking
action against a brutal dictator and his regime.
Said Saw Bawah:
"I hope that when the US is finished with Iraq, it'll do the same in Burma."
He was not alone in his sentiments. It is here in Mae Sot where
political dissidents, exiles, and ethnic leaders and guerrillas from neighboring
Myanmar congregate to battle their own repressive government - politically and
militarily - that has been ruling their country with an iron fist since 1962.
Like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Myanmar is ruled by a repressive
government that has been blasted repeatedly by the international community for
human-rights abuses including rape, torture, the imprisonment of political
prisoners, and the killings of ethnic minorities. The International Labor
Organization has slammed the country for its use of forced labor, Reporters Sans
Frontieres calls it the "world's largest prison for journalists", and a report
last May by the Shan Human Rights Foundation documenting the systematic use of
rape by the Myanmese army on ethnic-Shan civilians received widespread publicity
and condemnation of the Yangon government by the international community.
Myanmese dissidents and ethnic insurgents based in and around Mae
Sot know what life is like living under such a regime, and so they watch with
envy as US and British troops invade Iraq to destroy Saddam's government.
"We would have liked the Americans to do what they are doing now
in Iraq to have done in Burma 50 years ago," said Aung Naing Soe of the ALP. He
was among 15 Myanmese from his and Saw Bawah's ethnic factions who sat glued to
the television set, flipping the channels between CNN and the British
Broadcasting Corp.
There were no debates or arguments in the ALP
office about the war. Nobody criticized the US and Britain for their actions,
disputed the morality of the invasion, or condemned military action for causing
the loss of innocent lives. Everyone agreed: war was the right course of action.
Everyone there wanted the US to do the same to Myanmar, and they all were
willing to lose an innocent family member in a military strike if it meant
freedom for Myanmar. "We are not fighting for our individual families," said
Naing Soe, "we are fighting for the freedom of our country." (The ruling junta
officially changed the name of the country from Burma to Myanmar in
1989.)
"The people of Burma know only too well about Iraqi
suffering, as they have suffered themselves under the hands of a brutal military
regime possibly worse than that of Iraq," said a Myanmar activist in the ALP
office who spoke on condition of anonymity. "But for Burma there is no end in
sight as they don't have the natural resources that interest other countries
like oil. Where does this lead them in their struggle for democracy? ... Another
50 years of murder, rape, torture, summary executions and genocide -
unthinkable."
Ethnic groups in Myanmar such as the Karen, Shan,
and Arakanese accuse the Myanmese government of genocide in their ethnic areas.
In the words of one senior KNLA commander, Saw Ner Dah Mya, "The Burmese
government wants the Karen to survive only in museums."
The
country is besieged with international sanctions for its poor human-rights
record and is widely condemned for not honoring the results of 1990 national
elections in which opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi won a landslide
victory. The country is also the world's second-largest producer of opium.
Saw Thashee, an aide to senior KNLA leaders, said the KNLA would
be willing to give 10,000 Karen troops to help the US in Iraq if they would help
them afterward to free Myanmar - a very generous if not impossible offer
considering the KNLA only has about 5,000 soldiers.
There was only
one person in the ALP office who took a different stance on the war with Iraq.
"I'm against it," said Ran Naing of the ALP. "Because the US didn't ask me to
come and help them."
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