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http://www.petitiononline.com/soe123/petition.html -------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------- HEADLINES -------------------------------------------------------------- AP - Myanmar protester still sheltering in British Embassy AFP - Myanmar junta to ease its stranglehold on rice AFP
- ICRC tries to probe deeper into
Bkk Post - Soldiers kill smugglers, police arrest seven Shan The Nation - Women's rights groups 'at risk' Business - ST
- -------------------------------------------------------------- Mon Apr 7, 4:49 AM ET
Myanmar protester still sheltering in British Embassy
-------------------------------------------------------------- Myanmar junta to ease its stranglehold on rice Mon Apr 7, 5:13 PM ET
YANGON, April 7 (AFP) - Myanmar's military government is to scrap a 40-year-old paddy procurement policy and loosen up its hold on rice exports to make way for more private sector involvement, agriculture officials said Monday. The decision, taken at a high-level junta meeting last week and yet to be formally announced, would signify a dramatic change in policy in a country where agricultural production and trade has been tightly controlled for decades. "The new policy will be introduced starting from the next harvest season" later this year, a high-ranking official at the ministry of agriculture told AFP. The procurement method currently practised allows the government to buy up 10 percent of overall production at officially fixed and heavily deflated prices. The grain is then redistributed to government employees, military personnel and their families as a subsidy, while the rest was kept as reserve stock for emergencies and for export. Under the new scheme farmers will no longer have to shoulder the burden of selling a portion of their produce to the government at prices as low as one sixth the prevailing market price, experts said. "This is a major policy shift obviously aimed at making market forces take over, and is certain to make a positive impact on rice farmers, who will be the main benefactors," one local rice expert said. Rice is Myanmar's primary agricultural product, and at least 12 million out of an estimated labour force of 16 million people are farmers. Annual rice production is estimated this harvest season as surpassing 21 million metric tons. Once one of Asia's leading rice exporters, Myanmar exports less than one million tons annually despite an increase in production, as more rice is consumed domestically. "The policy drive of successive governments including the present military government has always been to first ensure self-sufficiency in rice and to export only the surplus," an analyst said. The move is expected to stabilize future rice prices, but will badly effect civil servants and military personnel who had grown accustomed to the subsidies. A steering committee has been formed to supervise rice exports by the private sector. It will be chaired by Lieutenant General Soe Win, a senior leader in the ruling State Peace and Development Council, and include two cabinet ministers as well as representatives of the Myanmar Chamber of Commerce, the Rice Traders Association and the Rice Millers Association, the ministry official said. Analysts say there are now indications the junta, faced with financial woes including a debilitating banking crisis, is looking seriously at easing other controls as well, such as those on gasoline and electricity. -------------------------------------------------------------- ICRC tries to probe deeper into
Mon Apr 7, 7:49 PM
ET Last November, the ICRC was
allowed into the eastern areas for the first time to provide protection for
people in villages and check on conditions in prisons or labour camps there.
The areas in Shan and Kayin
states are riven by conflict between the military and rebel or ethnic groups,
but an ICRC official said they wanted to move deeper into the areas as well as
into the north of Karen state. "The discussions to have an
even greater presence in these problem areas are continuing," Peter Krakolining,
deputy head of operations for The visits to about 80
prisons, labour camps, agricultural camps and road building sites in
They include private
interviews with prisoners. ICRC said it was monitoring
conditions for about 2,997 detainees, ranging from political prisoners to common
law detainees, and had registered 1,665 of them last year. "The visits are significant,
they have an impact," Michel Ducraux, head of the ICRC's office in
"We make recommendations and
work on corrective measures should the case arise -- and it arises," he said,
adding that the ICRC will be "very careful to make sure our presence will not be
cosmetic". The checks on detention camps
were organised with the military government's home ministry. "I cannot rule out the
possibility that some other instances have something, I don't know, but it's
just to make it clear that we're not naive enough to think that we have total
command of the situation," Ducraux said during a visit to the agency's
headquarters. "There are at least people on
the side of the authorities who are willing to make some efforts and some steps,
otherwise it will mean nothing," he added. "In front of us we have a body
or an authority which is not homogeneous, let's put it this way," Ducraux said.
The human rights group Amnesty
International on Tuesday criticised Myanmar's military government for the slow
pace of release of political prisoners and a lack of other steps taken since its
first-ever visit there in January. It estimated that there were 1,200 political prisoners in the country. -------------------------------------------------------------- Bangkok
Post - Monday 07 April 2003 -------------------------------------------------------------- THE NATION Women's rights groups 'at
risk' Subhatra Bhumiprabhas,
Pennapa Hongthong Published
on Women's human-rights activists
from different parts of the world yesterday called on the United Nations to
engage more strongly with women's rights issues. "While the US-led war in Iraq
wreaked havoc on the human rights of thousands of people in Iraq" - as
organisers put it - 29 women from 14 countries assembled in Bangkok to discuss
the increasing risks facing activists working to defend women's human rights.
Among the participants were representatives from
The three-day-long discussion,
which was organised by the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development
(APWLD), ended yesterday. Among other conclusions, the group warned that
activists working on behalf of women were being put at risk by the incorrect
notion that women's rights are not human rights. "To defend human rights is
already a very challenging, if not life-threatening, commitment. But to defend
women's human rights makes it even worse because of the issues we raise, and
because of the very fact that we are women," said Mary Jane Real, APWLD's
coordinator. Real urged the UN to cooperate
with human-rights movements, women's groups and other institutions to take up
women's issues "within the context of human-rights norms, mechanisms and
systems".The three-day discussion was closely monitored by Hina Jilani, the UN
secretary-general's special representative on human-rights defenders, who
attended all three days of the meeting. The conclusion and recommendations of
the meeting were submitted to Jilani. Many specific cases were cited
at the meeting to demonstrate that the conditions in which women human-rights
defenders work are deteriorating.In Malaysia, said Zainah Anwar of Sisters in
Islam, women human-rights defenders working on religion and women's rights in
religion are vulnerable and face serious risks. Zainah herself has faced strong
criticism from the public for demanding that the Islamic practice of allowing
men to have four wives be ended. "[We are at risk] because we
are not women being silent, because we are women speaking out. And in many
Muslim countries, it is dangerous for women to be at the forefront, speaking out
against violations of your liberties," said Zainah. Pornpen Khongkachornkiet,
women's-rights campaign coordinator of Forum Asia, cited the case of members of
the Shan Women's Action Network (SWAN) who were threatened after releasing
"Licence to Rape", a controversial report on systematic sexual violence and rape
committed by Burmese troops against women in
"The SWAN received no
protection from the international community since the Burmese regime rejected
the report," she said. Yevgenia Kozyreva from
"It is important to create enabling conditions for women to exercise the right to defend human rights, without being exposed to prejudices, harassment and threats to their lives," she said. -------------------------------------------------------------- Business Day The bankruptcies of a few
small money-lenders in mid-February initially sparked the crisis, which saw
thousands panic and rush the country's 20 private banks. The banks had attracted a
large concentration of savings by offering interest rates six times higher than
public institutions. A near-absence of official
comment from the military junta, and insufficient short-term measures devised by
monetary authorities to deal with the sudden liquidity cruch then worsened the
crisis, diplomats and businesspeople in The most important private
banks, including the Asia Wealth Bank (AWB) ã?»which
held more than 200 million dollars, or 43% of total deposits of private banks
and the Chinese-run Yoma Bank were immediately affected and the others were soon
hit, a western analyst said. "Of course, the private banks
were not managed with great orthodoxy. They lent always on short-term credit and
often to the rich, who bought gold, four-wheel drives, houses," the analyst
said. "This created a true
speculative bubble. Gold prices here are above world levels, and property prices
per square metre are not far off
As a stop-gap measure, the
central bank injected 25 million dollars into private banks, he said. Borrowers were ordered to
repay 50% of their loans immediately, while bank withdrawals were limited to
between 50 and 100 dollars each week per account, a paltry sum for companies
needing to pay wages or suppliers. As a result of its scarcity,
the kyat, which had been trading on the widely-used blackmarket at around 1,100
to the dollar, shot up - brutally for many - to 750. It now hovers at the 900
point. The kyat's appreciation would
be welcome news for the junta, which risks mistaking it as a sign of a healthier
economy, according to analysts. Officially, there is no
banking crisis. "They try to camouflage the
crisis. They passed on orders to news publications: it doesn't exist," one
observer said. Diplomats and analysts agree
that authorities are not dealing with the crisis. "Usually in a banking crisis
the government tries hard to prevent it from spilling over into the general
economy ã?»the
government steps in and guarantees deposits," a western diplomat said.
"Here the government has
refused to fix the situation." The consequences are already
visible, with enterprises unable to pay for their raw materials closing or
shifting their employees to part-time work in an industrial park in
Meanwhile shops in the capital
are suffering a drop of 30 percent of their turnover since the start of the
crisis, according to figures from a western embassy. And if farmers are unable to
sell their produce in the next few weeks as the current harvest ends, they will
not be able to sow their crops next season. "The whole economy is
paralysed," declared a western businessman. "And I am paralysed too, because at
this stage there is no point in expanding my business. People are depressed...
There is absolutely no cash." An Asian diplomat said the
crisis is affecting everyone. "It does impact on the entire
spectrum of the economy. For businesspeople, the traders, it is important for
this government to find lasting solutions," he said. The evaporation of the money
supply has prompted a crisis of confidence in the banking system: The weekly
Myanmar Times reported that sales of safes have doubled in
"People trusted their banks
and suddenly they can't withdraw money," said a businessman of
More generally, a high-ranking
diplomat said, é??his
creates resentment and generally reinforces the feeling of how badly the
government is handling the economy." The major effects, however,
are difficult to ascertain because of the huge parallel economy in
"The banking crisis will
reinforce the weight of the underground economy," said another diplomat.
With its pathological fear of
social unrest, the junta has apparently ensured that the largest companies have
sufficient liquidity to meet the payment of salaries for March. "The government will not let
massive layoffs take place," predicted another western diplomat. "They also keep
a close watch on rice distribution, wages and salaries." An army of the unemployed and
famished farmers taking to the streets would be the worst-case scenario for the
generals. But this is a still tiny risk,
according to one Yangon-based observer who pointed to the "the apathy, aplasia
of -------------------------------------------------------------- The Straits Times Last week's report by the
Washington-based Refugees International Group (RI), based on interviews with
women on the Thai-Myanmar border, suggested that the use of rape by Myanmar's
armed forces was more widespread than first reported last year. RI documented 43 rapes among
women from the Karen, Karenni, Mon, Tavoyan and Shan groups. But the junta said in a
statement yesterday that while rape cases may have occurred in the country, rape
was not being used as a weapon of war. Allegations that
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