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San Francisco Chronicle
Burma's
leaders slowly moving to combat HIV
Poor nation's junta ignored
danger for years
Rafael D.
Frankel, Chronicle Foreign Service
Thursday,
April 3, 2003
Lantaya, Burma -- Set among a
series of wooden shacks that are connected by bamboo bridges, the four thatched
huts on stilts make up one of Burma's few AIDS clinics.
The clinic
in this bedroom community 45 minutes outside the capital, Rangoon, has 11
patients. They are treated for malnutrition and other illnesses but are given
few medications to stave off the virus. All sleep on wood-framed beds with thin
foam pads.
The female patients are former sex workers, or wives
who contracted HIV from their husbands. The men are drug addicts infected by
unclean needles or migrant workers who frequented prostitutes. Those who aren't
bedridden paint signs that promote safer sex to be posted in the community.
Despite such basic care sponsored by the Netherlands chapter of
the prominent Nobel Prize-winning group Doctors Without Borders, these 11 AIDS
patients are the lucky ones.
In Burma, an impoverished nation of
48 million people, there are only two hospitals that have AIDS wards, and few
Burmese can afford the average $300-a- month cost of anti-retroviral drugs. Many
rely on traditional medicines and advice from pharmacies.
Many
observers blame this dire situation on a military government that has allowed
the nation's health system to decay -- the World Health Organization ranked
Burma 190 out of 191 member countries in 2000, above only Sierra Leone - - and
practically ignored the AIDS epidemic until last year. Life expectancy is just
55 years, compared with 63 years in the rest of Asia.
For years,
the ruling junta, which calls itself the State Peace and Development Council and
calls the country Myanmar, had made AIDS a taboo subject. Health observers say
that decision enabled the disease to gain a major foothold in Burma.
"It is their fault," said a Western AIDS worker, who, like other
health activists, doctors and diplomats, spoke only on condition of anonymity
for fear of government reprisals. "They are afraid of being criticized" by
Western governments. Because the government tightly controls information, no one
knows how many Burmese are HIV-positive. UNAIDS, the United Nations' program,
estimates that 400,000 people were infected at the end of 2001, or just under 1
percent of 15- to 49-year-olds. That is the grouping UNAIDS defines as the
"adult" population and the most vulnerable to infection.
The
junta, however, has long insisted that the numbers are much lower because they
say Burma has a culture that stresses abstinence before marriage and fidelity
afterward. As a result, state AIDS campaigns had urged monogamy and fidelity
while excluding the mention of condoms or the need for drug addicts to use clean
needles.
"The cultural and social values of Myanmar society are
found to have a protective effect to a greater extent than in many population
groups," said junta member Gen. Khin Nyunt on World AIDS Day in December.
But a 1999 study by Chris Beyrer, an epidemiologist at the John
Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health who worked with the World
Health Organization in Burma, suggests that at least 687,000 Burmese are HIV-
positive, or almost 3.5 percent of Burma's adult population, which would be the
highest rate in Asia. His team analyzed government figures at clinics and
hospitals and narrowed the study to pregnant women, soldiers, sex workers, gay
men and blood donors while excluding the nation's estimated 1.4 million drug
users.
Beyrer, who studied AIDS in seven countries in his book
"War in the Blood: Sex, Politics and AIDS in Southeast Asia," also blames the
junta for the grim reality.
"There has been a complete failure on
so many levels," Beyrer said. "The health care system is in collapse, grossly
underfunded and neglected by the junta. The junta has been a disaster."
STRAIGHTS, DRUG USERS AT
RISK
Heterosexuals account for 57 percent of infection
rates in Burma, followed by intravenous drug users with 22 percent. Those who
donated or received tainted blood are 4 percent, homosexuals make up 1.2
percent, and the cause was unknown for 13.5 percent, according to UNAIDS.
But health workers say the number of Burmese infected with HIV
could be much higher because many people are unaware of the disease and go
untreated.
The Burmese "know really only layman knowledge about
transmission," said a local physician.
Some health experts also
blame the international community. Most foreign assistance ceased after the
junta suppressed Burma's democracy movement by force in 1988 and ignored the
results of the 1990 election -- won by the opposition party led by Aung San Suu
Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize the next year.
Over the years,
humanitarian groups have faced the dilemma of assisting AIDS patients without
lending legitimacy to a repressive government. In 2001, donor funding for AIDS
programs was less than $3.5 million, compared with Thailand, where foreign
donors have spent between $30 million and $90 million per year in the past
decade.
"I would fault the international community as much as the
military in not supporting humanitarian work," said another foreign AIDS worker.
But there is now renewed hope that both the junta and
international aid groups have turned a corner in fighting the AIDS epidemic.
A FEW ENCOURAGING SIGNS
Tony Lisle,
the UNAIDS director for Southeast Asia, sees an "absolute groundswell of change
in Myanmar in the last 18 months" in reference to the military's willingness to
finally face up to the AIDS crisis.
Lisle said Burma's rulers have
acknowledged AIDS as a "serious issue," and he points to several encouraging
signs: a government-sponsored needle exchange program; an AIDS awareness
billboard campaign; the appointment of a prominent doctor as the new minister of
health; and a soap opera on state-owned television about a rich business family
whose widowed patriarch is infected with HIV, which includes discussions of
condom use.
A shift in policy on condoms is good news for
Population Services International, a U.S. nongovernmental organization that was
behind the television soap opera. The group has been promoting safer sex and
distributing condoms since 1995 from riverboats that visit remote villages along
the Irrawaddy River.
The organization is now distributing condoms
unfettered. "This was unthinkable just three years ago," Lisle said.
Moreover, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, created at the urging of
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, is expected to provide $30 million in the
next three years to foreign AIDS programs in Burma.
"It's all
moving in the right direction," said another Western health worker.
HIV SPREADING IN RURAL AREAS
Yet the
junta and the nongovernmental organization face a daunting challenge.
Although AIDS has long been an urban problem, the disease is
spreading quickly to rural areas as a result of migrant workers and truck
drivers having sex with prostitutes while traveling in such countries as India,
China and Thailand. When they return, they pass the virus on to their wives and
girlfriends, according to UNAIDS.
Another concern is the rising
AIDS rate among urban female sex workers. UNAIDS says about 27 percent of sex
workers in Rangoon and Mandalay are HIV- positive.
At a late-night
"fashion show" at the Yangon International Hotel in Rangoon,
young
women paraded down a dance floor followed by a spotlight and the gaze of dozens
of potential male clients.
"They are all up for negotiation," said
a Malaysian businessman who asked not to be named. "Do they make the men wear
condoms? Some do. Some don't. It depends on the girl and how much you pay them."
Meanwhile, despite the junta's apparent policy shift, its tight
rein on society continues to complicate foreign AIDS programs.
Nongovernmental organizations complain about fiats that allow only
government hospitals to carry out HIV tests and require permits to assemble a
village to listen to a discussion on the disease.
"The generals
don't allow any autonomy. Everything has to go through them," Beyrer said. "The
health ministry knows there is a serious problem, but when you actually attempt
to implement programs, it has to go through a general."
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Far Eastern Economic Review
THE SARS
OUTBREAK, CHINA SILENCES ITS MEDIA
By
Susan V. Lawrence
Issue cover-dated April 10,
2003
Throughout the atypical pneumonia's spread through
mainland China, then on to Hong Kong, Vietnam and the rest of the world, the
state-controlled Chinese media have played down the seriousness of the problem
and said nothing about its apparent origins in the mainland.
That
remains true today, even though China has now officially acknowledged 1,167
cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, more than half of the
global total. The propaganda authorities' motivations for the low-key tone
appear to be a fear of sparking panic among the public combined with an
unwillingness to concede that failures in China's public-health measures might
be responsible for the disease's global spread.
While the media
have reported sporadically--and almost always soothingly--on the SARS outbreak
in southern Guangdong province, which accounts for most of the reported Chinese
cases, dispatches about developments elsewhere still often imply that SARS is a
problem distant from China. The Rolling Stones cancelled their planned concert
in Hong Kong, the semi-official China News Service reported on March 28, because
of "the outbreak of atypical pneumonia recently in Hong Kong and areas of
Southeast Asia." (Within days the rock band also cancelled its concerts in
Beijing and Shanghai.)
In a similar vein, when the Beijing media
finally reported on March 27 that the capital had SARS cases, the three
paragraphs they all ran on their inside pages emphasized that the cases were all
"imported" from Hong Kong and Shanxi province, and that SARS was not spreading
among the public in the capital.
Significantly, the Chinese media
have not reported the Hong Kong health authorities' determination that a doctor
from the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou first carried SARS to Hong Kong in
February. He is believed to have infected fellow guests and visitors at the
Metropole Hotel, who then carried the illness to other people in Hong Kong as
well as to Singapore, Vietnam and Canada.
With a team of World
Health Organization experts visiting, Beijing is now coming under pressure to
give its citizens better information about the disease. So with no explanation
about why it might be relevant to readers' lives, the Beijing Evening News on
March 31 published guidelines on how people can protect themselves from SARS.
The advice: maintain good airflow through work and living spaces, try to avoid
crowded places, wear a 16-layer mask when visiting the sick, frequently wash
hands with soap and running water and seek prompt medical attention at the first
sign of symptoms. The newspaper also suggested that people not randomly take
preventative medicines.
As public health information goes, it was a
good start. The only problem: The guidelines were buried on page 30 of a 52-page
newspaper.
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Hoover's Online
Police rescue Myanmar
fishermen
April 3, 2003 3:38am
MALACCA, Wed. -
Two Myanmar fishermen were rescued by marine police at sea last night after
being allegedly thrown overboard by their captain. The fishermen, both 20, were
drifting helplessly in choppy waters about seven nautical miles from Kuala
Sungai Melaka when they were rescued at 9.30pm.
They were suffering
from severe exhaustion, having been drifting for about three
hours.
A Malaysian fishing boat spotted them waving frantically
while trying to stay afloat. The crew threw them life-buoys but were reluctant
to pull them in for fear of their own safety. Instead, they called their boat
owner and informed him.
Boat owner See Lye Heng, 57, rushed to the
marine police base here and told them about the incident.
A rescue
operation was immediately mounted and a marine police boat sped to the
scene.
State Public Order and Security chief Superintendent Onn
Ahmad said the fishermen claimed they had left Songkhla in a Thai fishing boat
in the middle of last month.
He said the fishermen, identified as
Jo and Lek, were headed for Phuket when they had an argument with the boat's
Thai captain.
"They claimed the argument later turned into a brawl
and the captain overpowered them and ordered them to be thrown overboard," he
said.
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Asian Tribune
Date : 2003-04-03
In
Burma It is the Choice of the Generals Between Talks and
Sanctions.
By - Zin Linn - a former political
prisoner in Burma
It's the military regime's ulterior
motive to have a sort of half-hearted engagements with the representatives from
ILO, ICRC, AI and the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights.
Recently, the UN Special Rapporteur, Mr. Paulo Sergio Pinheiro cut
short his fifth visit to Rangoon, after finding a bugging device under the
table, during an interview with political prisoners. Later he told reporters in
Bangkok that he was frustrated by the slow progress over both - the
reconciliation dialogue and the release of political
prisoners.
''It was a great embarrassment for the government. It
was the worst thing that could happen with a human rights rapporteur,'' the
Special Rapporteur said with a degree of frustration in an interview in
Bangkok.
He said that the regime is still seems to be reluctant to
enter into a political dialogue with the opposition party.
"I think
it's going nowhere," he said curtly. When he commented about action to initiate
political dialogue, he said, "The impression I got from all sides is, there's no
progress."
Peoples from all walks of life in Burma are suffering
severely due to miseries heaped on them by the military regime, which rules the
country with a rod of iron for the last 40 torturous years, and this is an issue
known widely throughout the world. The consequences of this misrule, the reign
of violence have started spilling over into territories of the neighboring
countries. Especially, Thailand is the neighboring country that is most
afflicted by Burma's socio-economic problems including political unrest; flow of
refugees, migrant-workers, women and children trafficking, disease, drugs,
prostitution and terrorism and many other issues emanating from the misrule by
the army generals in Burma.
For the past 14 years, according to
estimation, over one million Burmese illegal workers have fled into Thailand.
This is due to the Burmese rulers - the army generals, mishandling the country?s
resources, which ultimately led to the collapse of its economy. This has led the
Burmese to flee to Thailand and thus the Thai government is facing immense
pressure and also innumerable interconnected socio-economic problems. One of the
ramifications of the socio-economic problem is undoubtedly is the massive influx
of narcotics, including heroin and metamphetamines, creating serious national
and international problems.
About 2,400 km long border shared by
Thailand and Burma is an area of immense instability, with border skirmishes,
terrorism, drug-trade and the trafficking of women and children taking place on
a sickening regularity. The regime's negligence of health-care problems in the
country has catapulted HIV/AIDS flow into neighboring
countries.
All the social afflictions that originated inside Burma
caused adverse relations between Burma and its neighbors, and the spillover has
especially affected, it is said, Thailand's domestic
stability.
What is more and more threatening is the ruling military
junta intentionally resorting to xenophobic rhetoric on the basis of fuelling
hatred between peoples of Burma and Thailand. The junta's education minister has
ordered that every middle and high school student has to answer a history
question based on anti-Thai propaganda aspect as a compulsory subject in his or
her examinations.
In the hope of derailing the national
reconciliation dialogue urged by international community, junta is encouraging
ethnic divisiveness and creating tension and conflict in the midst of the
various ethnic groups with the sole aim of junta to continuously remain in power
and position.
Moreover, the junta's policy of oppression and its
priority to strengthen military power is threatening regional stability and
peace, especially towards the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).
As Burma is a member of ASEAN family, it's time for the regime to address the
objective assessment of the pressing problems in Burma. ASEAN should urge the
army rulers of Burma to trim down military expenditures and provide adequately
for the socio-economic development that will benefit the downtrodden people of
Burma.
At the same time, it is the responsibility of the ASEAN
governments to find ways to do away with the military oppression on the innocent
Burmese people and urge the military administration to bring about a peaceful
end to the protracted political conflicts in the country.
The
ASEAN leaders should consider to pressure the State Peace and Development
Council (SPDC) to end the military campaign against its very own
people.
The next thing that intertwined with the regional politics
is the problem of prisoners of conscience who are arrested and sentenced to
long-terms of imprisonments and are held in the various prison facilities in the
country.
Many of these prisoners are intentionally transferred to
prisons located in the very remote areas. Facing terrible torture, and ruthless
harassment, they are languishing in without proper food and medication in these
remote prison facilities in the country. The outcome of these inhumane measures
adopted by the junta, more than one hundred political prisoners including
Members of Parliament (MPs) and journalists had quietly died in the those
jails.
Numerous senior executives belonging to the National League
for Democracy (NLD) members including U Win Tin, the Secretary of the Central
Executive Committee of the NLD are said to be still held in the prisons.
Moreover, according to available information, there are 17 MPs, 34 journalists,
writers and poets and nearly hundred female politicians are held in these
infamous prisons of Burma.
All political prisoners have been
arrested due to their political convictions and activities involving in the
promotion of democracy and human rights. Releasing prisoners of conscience may
be considered a sign of sincerity, which might indicate that the generals
honestly want to restore democracy and human rights in Burma. But, as long as
the generals dilly-dallying the release of the political prisoners, it means the
generals still not ready for democracy and national reconciliation in
Burma.
The military regime speaks loudly about national
reconciliation and takes advantage of releasing limited number of prisoners, in
order to reduce international pressure especially to prevent sanctions against
their rule. The regime should understand the fact that building an appropriate
political atmosphere is the basic need for national reconciliation. One such
object is the unconditional and immediate release of all political prisoners
detained arbitrarily and inhumanely. The release of all political prisoners can
spur the country?s economic revival, which is in a state of
collapse.
In a later response, UN Special Rapporteur Mr. Paulo
Sergio Pinheiro declined the junta's claims of holding political prisoners for
security reasons as an absurd reasoning. "You have to release all the
prisoners," said Mr. Pinheiro, who reiterated long-standing U.N. demands on
Myanmar's rulers to free all political prisoners. He added, "I can barely
imagine that prisoners 75 years old, in terrible state of health, are a security
threat. This is nonsense. This is absurd."
Burmese oppositions and
the human rights organizations around the world are urging the SPDC to make an
honest commitment of releasing unconditionally and immediately all detained
political prisoners, restore their democratic rights, and enter political
dialogue with the leaders of the NLD and the non-Burman ethnic nationalities so
as to stop the crisis in Burma as well as to preserve the stabilities in the
region. The generals turn a blind eye to the issue of a political dialogue with
1991 Nobel Peace Prize Winner Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
So, it is the
army rulers? choice between political dialogue and incremental sanctions.
Recently, Mr. Lorne Craner, US Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights,
Democracy and Labor, delivered a survey of the political situation in Myanmar.
''The regime suppresses political dissent by censorship, persecution, beatings,
disappearances and imprisonment,'' he lamented..
''Our patience for
positive change is beginning to run out and we, along with the UK and others,
are considering all options, including further sanctions.''
When
meeting with Jody Williams, 1997 Nobel peace prizewinner and a campaigner
against landmines, opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has said international
pressure should be maintained to force military-ruled Burma to move towards
political reform.
In the meantime, grass-roots folks, those living
on the outskirts of the capital and the poverty-stricken areas, can hardly
afford to have a meal in a day. Especially, number of down-and-outs is
increasing rapidly. The living standards of average citizens are terribly
declining. According to the UN estimation, one child in three under the age of
five is already suffering from malnutrition. And there are also fears of a major
rice shortage within a year.
``People are getting increasingly
dissatisfied with the situation,'' said one Burmese economic analyst close to
the military. ``They are tolerating it at present, but if the situation
continues to deteriorate over the next 12 months then there is a very real risk
of massive social unrest and upheaval.''
In conclusion, Burmese
generals will never consider coming straight to the point in accordance with the
United Nations' resolutions or for the sake of the for the poor and depressed
masses in the country. Using delaying tactics, the generals adopting ingenious
measures to nullify the democratic inspiration of the Burmese people. Therefore
the international community should come forward to tighten the sanction to make
the generals to come to terms with the genuine aspirations of the people of
Burma.
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