Burma (Myanmar) Blog

Kerry Gets One Right

2010-03-19T11:43:00.001-06:00

“Kyaw Zaw Lwin spent seven months in unjust confinement and we are all relieved that his ordeal is now over. Sadly, while he is coming home, Burma’s junta continues to hold its grip on 2,200 political prisoners. All are jailed for one reason — their efforts to convince the Burmese junta to respect basic human rights and agree to a genuine democratic process.” – John Kerry, U.S. Senator from Massachusetts

Nyi Nyi Aung Released

2010-03-19T11:41:00.001-06:00

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - A U.S. citizen accused of subversion was released from prison in his native Myanmar and deported Thursday after serving part of a three-year prison sentence.

Kyaw Zaw Lwin, also known as Nyi Nyi Aung, had been arrested when he arrived at Yangon's international airport Sept. 3 on accusations he was plotting to stir political unrest, which he denied.

The 40-year-old was sentenced in October for forging a national identity card, possessing undeclared foreign currency, and failing to renounce his Myanmar citizenship when becoming an American citizen.

He was released Thursday after 6½ months in prison and escorted aboard a flight to Thailand accompanied by a U.S. consular official, said his aunt, Khin Khin Swe.

"He looks well and happy, though much thinner than before," Khin Khin Swe said.

"I am very happy for him but I want families of other prisoners of conscience to be happy and hope that all will be released," she said, adding that five of her relatives are in prison, including her son-in-law.

The U.S. Embassy confirmed the release and said: "We welcome that development."

As a teenager in Myanmar, which is also known as Burma, Kyaw Zaw Lwin helped organize students during the country's 1988 pro-democracy uprising and later fled to the United States. His reason for returning to Myanmar was not clear, though there has been speculation he hoped to see his jailed relatives.

Attorney Beth Schwanke of the Washington-based advocacy group Freedom Now said that Kyaw Zaw Lwin had spoken by phone with his fiance, Wa Wa Kyaw, and would return Friday to their home in Montgomery Village, Maryland.

"She says he's exhausted and has clearly been through a horrible ordeal, and he sounds strong and that he's thrilled to be released and coming home to Maryland," Schwanke said.

Wa Wa Kyaw released a statement thanking the U.S. State Department and members of Congress for helping secure her fiancee's release.

U.S. Congressman Chris Van Hollen called Kyaw Zaw Lwin's case a "miscarriage of justice."

"His imprisonment, trial, and sentencing were a travesty and an affront to the rule of law," Van Hollen said in a statement. "While I am pleased Nyi Nyi Aung has been set free, we must continue to press for the release of all political prisoners held by the Burmese junta."

Myanmar's military government holds more than 2,000 political prisoners, according to the U.N. and independent human rights organizations. The most prominent is opposition party leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The 1991 Nobel peace laureate has been detained for about 14 of the last 20 years, and is currently under house arrest, from which she is due to be released in November.

Kyaw Zaw Lwin's mother is serving a five-year prison term for political activities, and his sister was sentenced to 65 years in prison for involvement in 2007 pro-democracy protests, which government forces brutally suppressed, activist groups and family members say.

Last year, another American was deported by Myanmar. John Yettaw, whose case attracted considerably more attention, was sentenced to seven years in prison in August for sneaking into Suu Kyi's home, but released less than a week later after a visit to the country by U.S. Senator Jim Webb.

Bangladesh, US, Train Near Burmese Waters

2010-03-05T09:47:00.001-06:00

US naval ships started a three-day training exchange program with Bangladesh on Tuesday on the Bay of Bengal near Burmese territorial waters, said an official source. “The training program started yesterday on the offshore island of Kutubdia in Cox’s Bazaar District, located near the Burmese border. In the training, 200 US naval personnel are participating,” the source said.

US Navy Commander Adam J. Welter is conducting the training with an estimated 200 naval personnel on board the USS Ingraham.

Commander Welter told journalists that the training is aimed at strengthening the relationship with Bangladesh through mutual cooperation and understanding.

The training is being conducted as part of a goodwill visit to Bangladesh, and will be carried out as the ship travels to Singapore from Bahrain, where it was engaged in anti-terror vigilance until two weeks ago.

The US and Bangladesh naval forces will share their experiences and knowledge as part of the training, not just militarily but also technical knowledge. Such joint military training missions are occasionally carried out by Bangladesh and the US in the Bay of Bengal.

“Burma VJ” in the running for Academy Award

2010-03-02T17:37:00.001-06:00

The documentary “Burma VJ” is in the running for an Oscar for best feature-documentary at the 82nd Annual Academy Awards show which will be broadcast worldwide on Sunday night in the United States.“If “Burma VJ” receives the Oscar, it will be the first time in history that a whole nation’s population will receive the Oscar,” said Jan Krogsgaard, the originator and scriptwriter of the film. “I think even the generals of Burma would like to see this happen, deep inside themselves, and find peace within their own life.”

“Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country” tells the story of how Burmese video journalists took to the streets and filmed the September 2007 mass demonstrations in Rangoon. It is among five documentaries nominated this year.

Other nominees are “The Cove,” about a hidden dolphin slaughter in a Japanese town; “Food, Inc.,” a story of the horrors of factory farms, slaughterhouses and meat plants in the US; “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers,” the story of a high-level Pentagon official and Vietnam War strategist who in 1971 concluded that the war was based on decades of lies and leaked top secret documents to The New York Times; and “Which Way Home,” a film that follows unaccompanied child migrants on their journey through Mexico as they try to reach the United States.

“Burma VJ” has already won 33 awards—including World Cinema Documentary Film Editing and Golden Gate Persistence of Vision prizes.

Most of the material for the film was shot by Burmese video journalists at great personal risk and smuggled out of the country to the Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB). A Danish professional film-maker, Anders Østergaard, directed the film, which was released to wide acclaim this year.

In an interview on the Oscar official Web site, producer Lise Lens-Moller said: “Burma had almost vanished from the global consciousness when we started working on the film in 2004 and the VJ’s main motivation for risking their lives and their freedom everyday was to try and bring attention to their situation. I hope the Oscar nomination will keep the Burmese people’s struggle alive and supported around the world.”

The live announcement of the Oscar winner will attract Burmese communities around the world.

“It must be a historical milestone,” said Khin Maung Win, the deputy executive director of the Democratic Voice of Burma. “Even if Burma VJ does not win the prize, the film will bring attention to our democracy movement.”

Recent Report on KIA

2010-02-24T15:17:00.001-06:00

Laiza, Burma – The sharp sound of loading and unloading weapons and the barked orders of the sergeant-major cut through the mountains of northern Burma as the young cadets are put through their morning drills.Their discipline is good, their uniforms smart and there is little doubting their sense of purpose or patriotism towards the red and green flag with crossed machetes they proudly wear on their right shoulders.

They are the next generation of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), and say they are not afraid to be the generation that fights in a civil war many fear may soon be upon them.

“The Union of Burma was formed on the basis of equality for ethnic people, but there has been inequality throughout history and we are still being suppressed,” said cadet Dashi Zau Krang.

He is 26 and has a degree in business studies, but says inequality has stopped him getting a good job and driven him to join the military.

But he is not afraid.

“The Burmese army may be the strongest in South East Asia, while we are very few, but God will help us to liberate our people to get freedom and equality. This is our responsibility,” he said.

It is a war the Kachin people do not want and one they cannot win.

But their generals believe a 17-year ceasefire could soon end as a Burmese army deadline approaches, demanding the forces merge or disarm.

They have already refused, and although their leaders are still pushing for a political solution, their commanders are preparing for the worst when time runs out at the end of February.

“I can’t say if there will be war for sure, but the government wants us to become a border guard force for them by the end of the month,” said the KIA’s Chief of Staff, Maj Gen Gam Shawng.

“We will not do that, or disarm, until they have given us a place in a federal union and ethnic rights as was agreed in 1947.”

The KIA and its civilian organisation have been allowed to control a large swathe of northern Burma as part of a ceasefire agreement with the country’s ruling generals.

Trade with China

They provide power, roads and schools funded by taxes on the brisk trade from China as well as the jade and gold mines and teak.

But now soldiers are being recruited, veterans are being recalled and retrained, and an ethnic army is preparing to fight perhaps the biggest military force in South East Asia.

On the car radio are freedom songs, and at one of the training camps a course in traditional dance is being run – cultural nationalism and propaganda is strong.

A BBC team travelled to an area in northern Burma controlled by the Kachin army and its civilian arm, the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO).

We were taken to training camps and outposts, but could not walk into Laiza town to talk to people on the street for fear of being seen by an extensive network of Burmese or Chinese government informers and spies.

It made forming a balanced view very difficult, but the determination and planning of the military was clear.

High on a vantage point above their headquarters, trenches are being dug and tree trunks are being hauled and hewn into gun turrets piled high with earth.

They can see the Burmese army positions from here and they know this will be just one of the front lines if fighting breaks out.

A well-oiled and highly polished large-calibre anti-aircraft gun is produced, standing on a tripod in a bunker overlooking the lush jungle valley.

Guerrilla war

The gleaming gun is a statement, a display for the visitors, but the small metal plane stencilled on the sights looks woefully optimistic.

They are organised and say they have heavy weapons, but we did not see them.

There are around two dozen ethnic groups in Burma, mostly scattered around its borders, and the biggest have been in various states of ceasefire or civil war over the past few decades.

The KIA is one of the biggest. Their commanders say it includes 10,000 regular troops and 10,000 reservists, but it is impossible to know for sure.

The Burmese army is huge. It has an air force of sorts and artillery, and the KIA knows the only way to survive will be to withdraw into the jungle and fight a guerrilla war of attrition.

But civil war would create tens of thousands of refugees and create regional instability.

“If we are attacked the other ethnic groups will support us, as they know the same could happen to them,” Gen Gam Shawng explained.

The nearby Wa ethnic group has tens of thousands of troops and resources funded by drug smuggling, and we were told a deal with them had been agreed.

Whether civil war comes here is now up to the Burmese government.

If they use this election year to solve what they see as the “problem” of the ethnic groups they will have a fight on their hands, and the region will have to deal with the consequences.

American Sentenced in Burma

2010-02-18T13:52:00.001-06:00

A Myanmar court Wednesday sentenced a naturalized US citizen to three years in jail with hard labor on charges of committing forgery, illegal possession of foreign currency and refusing to revoke his Myanmar passport.

Judge Nyo Tun of the Yangon North District Court found Nyi Nyi Aung guilty on three counts and sentenced him to three years in jail.
'We will appeal his case at the Division Court soon,' said Nyan Win, the defendant's lawyer.

Nyi Nyi Aung, a former Myanmar student activist who fled to Thailand after the 1988 crackdown on the fledgling pro-democracy movement in his homeland, was arrested Sep 3 at Yangon International Airport.

He was initially accused of holding undeclared currency, a crime committed by most visitors entering Myanmar, where foreign currency is strictly controlled and the legal exchange rate is six kyat to the dollar, compared with 1,000 kyat to the dollar on the ubiquitous black market.

Authorities later added charges of holding forged documents and refusing to cancel his Myanmar passport.

Nyi Nyi Aung, who lived in Thailand from 1988 until 1994, was eventually granted refugee status by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and migrated to the US where he became a naturalized citizen in 2005.

In the US, he was a campaigner for democracy in Myanmar, which has been under military rule since 1962.

Nyi Nyi Aung reportedly entered Myanmar four times on his US passport between 2005 and 2009, meeting with various dissident groups.

Prior to his arrest in September, the junta had made it known he was a wanted man in Myanmar for his anti-government activities.

Friends speculated that he had returned to visit his mother, a political prisoner who is suffering from thyroid cancer.

There are an estimated 2,100 political prisoners in Myanmar jails or under house arrest.

Hearing In Senate Foreign Relations Committee

2010-01-23T11:47:00.001-06:00

The inconsistent foreign policy of the United States towards Asian countries has gifted an opportunity to China to enhance its influence over regional countries including military-ruled Burma, Senator Jim Webb said on Thursday during a hearing of which he chaired.Webb, in his remarks at the Senate’s Foreign Relations Subcommittee Hearing on Washington’s engagement in Asia, said, “American sanctions and other policy restrictions have not only increased Chinese political and economic influence in Southeast Asia, they ironically serve as a double reward for China because all the while American interaction in East Asia has been declining.”

Webb said in recent years China has become the only country in the world to which the United States is vulnerable, strategically and economically.

“And nowhere is this more obvious than in Burma, where Chinese influence has grown steadily at a time when the United States has cut off virtually all economic and diplomatic relations. Since then, Chinese arms sales and other military aid has exceeded $3 billion,” added the Virginian Senator.

Webb, who in August 2009 travelled to Burma and met with high-ranking junta officials, including Senior General Than Shwe, as well as detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, is a strong advocate of engagement with the Burmese junta, in power since 1988.

Webb said in the absence of United States engagement with the junta, China has taken over and greatly influenced the Burmese regime to the extent of creating “an intrinsic suspicion of U.S. motives in the region.”

“And as only one example of China’s enormous investment reach,” he added, in reference to a future pipeline to run through Burma, “within the next decade or sooner, Beijing is on track to exclusively transfer to its waiting refineries both incoming oil and locally tapped natural gas via a 2,380-kilometer pipeline, a $30 billion deal.”

The Senator said Washington should maintain consistency in its foreign policy towards Asia, as “inconsistencies inherent in our policies toward different governments tend to create confusion, cynicism, and allegations of situational ethics.”

The hearing on Thursday also took the testimony of Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, Dr. Robert Sutter of Georgetown University and Dr. Robert Herman of Freedom House.

Verdict Expected for Kyaw Zaw Lwin

2010-01-23T11:42:00.001-06:00

A Myanmar court will hand down its verdict next week on an American charged with forgery and currency infractions after being accused of trying to foment rebellion against the country’s military rulers.Nyan Win, the lawyer for Myanmar-born Kyaw Zaw Lwin, said final arguments in his case were made Friday at the court inside Yangon’s notorious Insein prison, and a verdict is expected Wednesday.

Kyaw Zaw Win was arrested on Sept. 3 and initially accused of trying to stir up unrest which he has denied. Prosecutors later asked the court to charge him with forgery and violating the foreign currency exchange act.

He was put on trial in October and faces up to 12 years in prison.

Kyaw Zaw Lwin’s mother is serving a five-year prison term for political activities and his sister was sentenced to 65 years in prison for her role in 2007 pro-democracy protests, which government forces brutally suppressed, activist groups and family members say.

Kyaw Zaw Lwin staged a 12-day hunger strike in December to protest conditions of political prisoners in Myanmar, according to human rights groups.

Myanmar has one of the most repressive governments in the world and has been controlled by the military since 1962.

Rights groups and dissidents say the junta has jailed thousands of political prisoners, including pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, the 64-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Suu Kyi whose political party won 1990 elections that the military refused to recognize has been detained for 14 of the past 20 years, mostly under house arrest.

Air Force Jet Crashes at Myanmar Airport

2010-01-23T11:37:00.000-06:00

Yangon – A Myanmar Air Force fighter plane crashed on Friday morning while attempting to land at Yangon airport, killing its pilot, an airport official said.An official at Yangon International Airport said the Chinese-made F-7 jet crashed while on a training flight. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

The cause of the crash was not immediately known. The Air Force base is adjacent to the civilian airport and uses the same runways.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a Swedish think tank, Myanmar purchased at least 36 F-7 jets from China in the 1990s.

American Citizen Charged in Myanmar Court

2010-01-01T19:29:00.001-06:00

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- A special court Friday formally charged a Myanmar-born American, initially accused of attempting to foment rebellion against the country's military rulers, for forgery and violation of the foreign currency act, his lawyer said.

In another court case, the Supreme Court announced that it will hear final arguments to decide whether to review the most recent extension of the house arrest of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Kyaw Zaw Lwin, a U.S. citizen, was charged with forgery for allegedly making up a national identity card, which carries maximum 7-year prison term. He was also charged with violating the currency act, that could put him in prison for another three years, said his lawyer Nyan Win.

Kyaw Zaw Lwin, who is also known as Nyi Nyi Aung, was arrested Sept. 3 when he arrived at Yangon airport and accused of trying to stir up anti-government protests.

The lawyer said his client ended a 12-day hunger strike on Dec. 15 and "looked well and was in good spirits."

Kyaw Zaw Lin's mother is serving a five-year prison term for political activities and his sister was sentenced to 65 years in prison for her role in pro-democracy protests in 2007.

The lawyer for Suu Kyi, also Nyan Win, said the Supreme Court posted an announcement on its notice board setting Jan. 18 as the date to hear final argumentd in her latest case.

Suu Kyi's lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court in November after a lower court upheld a decision to sentence her to 18 months of house arrest. She had been convicted in August last year of violating her previous term by briefly sheltering an American intruder who swam uninvited to her lakeside home.

The legal team argued that her house arrest extension was unlawful as it was based on provisions from the 1974 Constitution that was no longer in existence, said Nyan Win.

"We are optimistic that the Supreme Court will review the Divisional Court decision as we have presented strong legal points," he said.

The 64-year-old Nobel Peace Laureate was initially sentenced to three years in prison with hard labor, but that sentence was commuted to 18 months of house arrest by junta chief Senior Gen. Than Shwe.

Suu Kyi has been detained for 14 of the past 20 years.

Suu Kyi's sentence ensures she cannot participate in Myanmar's first elections in two decades that are scheduled for next year. Her party swept the last elections in 1990, but the results were never honored by the military, which has ruled the country since 1962.

O’Brien Continues To Explain Myanmar’s Rulers

2009-08-11T13:43:00.001-05:00

“Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery is torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always -- do not forget this, Winston -- always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever.”

Suu Kyi, Orwell, and O’Brien

2009-08-11T13:33:00.002-05:00

In the Orwellian country that is Myanmar, the former Burma, a woman who has committed no crime can be tried and judged guilty. And that is what happened last month.

This month, in fact this week, the sentence was declared. It was originally to have been three years, but was commuted to only one and a half years.

Let’s take a minute and consider what she actually did.

When an American named John Yettaw swam across the Inya Lake to her house, she did not immediately throw him out. This assumes, of course, that she knew about his presence in the first place.

Why was he not allowed to swim to her house? Well, it turns out she was under “house arrest” for fourteen of the last twenty years. What crime had she committed that she would be under arrest for that length of time? She won an election in 1990.

No, those are not unconnected thoughts. Her crime was that she won an election in 1990. So what do the madmen who run Myanmar want? In the words of O’Brien:

“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?”

Su Su Nway in Solitary Confinement in Kale Prison

2009-08-04T18:36:00.001-05:00

A prominent Burmese labor rights activist, Su Su Nway, was placed in solitary confinement for three days after participating in a ceremony to mark the 62nd anniversary of Martyrs’ Day on June 19 in Kale Prison, in Sagaing Division, according to her sister.

Speaking to The Irrawaddy Newspaper on Tuesday August 4th, her sister, Htay Htay Kyi, said, “She was put in solitary confinement because she stood up and sang an independence anthem composed by Min Ko Naing to mark Martyrs’ Day.”

Htay Htay Kyi said she visited her sister on July 21 when she delivered medicine to Su Su Nway who said she had been denied medical care by the prison authorities.

Su Su Nway, 37, suffers from hypertension [high blood pressure] and heart disease.

In 2006, she won the John Humphrey Freedom Award for promoting human rights.

She was arrested together with two colleagues after they pasted anti-government posters on a billboard in downtown Rangoon during the monk-led uprising of 2007. She was sentenced to twelve and a half years in prison.

Su Su Nway is among 2,100 other political prisoners who are currently being detained by the Burmese military authorities.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in July called on the Burmese junta to release all political prisoners before the national elections in 2010.

Burmese permanent representative at the UN, Than Swe reportedly told Ban that Burma will release prisoners before the election; however, he did not specify if political dissidents would be among the prisoners released.

Dengue Fever in Kalemyo

2009-07-19T11:30:00.001-05:00

At least 10 children have died and several are ill after being afflicted by Dengue, a mosquito-borne viral disease, in Kalemyo a town near the Indo-Burma border in Sagaing Division, north-western Burma, an official at a private clinic said.

“As far as I know at least 10 children have died. A lot of other children are admitted in the hospital, which is crowded with patients,” the official in Thapyaynyo clinic in Kalemyo said.

When contacted, an official at the Kalemyo General Hospital on Friday said, the ‘Patient Ward’ of the hospital is full of children being treated for Dengue haemorrhagic fever.

The outbreak of Dengue was noticed in Kalemyo in the beginning of June and has been continuing since.

A local resident of Kalemyo told Mizzima that most of the children in her neighborhood are suffering from the disease. While many have been taken to hospital several others are depending on private clinics.

Dengue in Kalemyo, a town located on the border of Chin state in western Burma, is common during the monsoons.

Local residents said, despite being a curable disease, Malaria and Typhoid continue to claim several lives every year.

Pagoda Collapse in Myanmar

2009-06-08T10:59:00.001-05:00

From NY Times

BANGKOK — It cannot have pleased Myanmar’s ruling family: the collapse of a 2,300-year-old gold-domed pagoda into a pile of timbers just three weeks after the wife of the junta’s top general had helped reconsecrate it with a diamond orb and a sacred golden umbrella.

A rescue worker looks through the rubble of the ancient Danok pagoda, which collapsed last Saturday as workmen were completing its renovation — killing at least 20 people, according to émigré reports.

There is no country in Asia more superstitious than Myanmar, and the collapse of the temple was widely seen as something more portentous than shoddy construction work.

It comes at a moment when the junta has put on trial the country’s pro-democracy leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, after an American intruder swam across a lake and spent a night at the villa where she has been under house arrest for most of the past 19 years.

After two weeks of testimony, the trial is on hold as the junta apparently tries to decide how to manage what seems to have been a major blunder, drawing condemnation from around the world.

The superstitious generals may be consulting astrologers as well as political tacticians as they decide how to proceed. That would not be unusual for many people in Myanmar.

Currency denominations and traffic rules have been changed in the past, the nation’s capital has been moved and the timing of events has been selected — even the dates of popular uprisings — with astrological dictates in mind.

“Astrology has as significant a role in policies, leadership and decision making in the feudal Naypyidaw as rational calculations, geopolitics and resource economics,” said Zarni, a Burmese exile analyst and researcher who goes by one name. He was referring to the country’s new capital, which was opened in 2005.

And so it seemed only natural to read a darker meaning into the temple collapse.

The Danok pagoda, on the outskirts of Myanmar’s main city, Yangon, was blessed May 7 in the presence of Daw Kyaing Kyaing, the wife of the country’s supreme leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe. The event received major coverage in the government-controlled press.

In a solemn ceremony, the worshipers fixed the diamond orb to the top of the pagoda along with a pennant-shaped vane and sprinkled scented water onto the tiers of a holy umbrella, according to the government mouthpiece, The New Light of Myanmar.

Like the rest of the heavily censored press, the newspaper was silent, a week ago, when it all came crashing down. But word of mouth — and foreign radio broadcasts — spread fast in Myanmar.

“O.K., she thinks she is so great, but even the gods don’t like her, people believe like that,” a senior astrologer said on condition of anonymity because of the danger of speaking to the media.

The ceremony was part of a decades-long campaign by the senior general to legitimize military rule on a foundation of Buddhist fealty, dedicating and re-gilding temples, attending religious ceremonies and making donations to monks.

That campaign was undermined, and perhaps fatally discredited, in September 2007 when soldiers beat and shot protesting monks in the streets, invaded monasteries without removing their boots and imprisoned hundreds of monks.

“No matter how many pagodas they build, no matter how much charity they give to monks, it is still they who murdered the monks,” said Josef Silverstein, a Myanmar specialist and emeritus professor at Rutgers University, at the time of the protests.

So when the Danok pagoda suddenly collapsed last Saturday as workmen were completing its renovation — killing at least 20 people, according to émigré reports — many people saw it as the latest of a series of bad omens for the junta that included a devastating cyclone early last year.

Its sacred umbrella tumbled to the ground and its diamond orb was lost in the rubble, according to those reports.

“The fact that the umbrella did not stay was a sign that more bad things are to come, according to astrologers,” said Ingrid Jordt, an anthropology professor at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and a specialist on Burma.

“It is also a sign that Than Shwe does not have the spiritual power any longer to be able to undertake or reap the benefit from good acts such as this,” she said in an e-mail message. “In a sense, the pagoda repudiated Than Shwe’s right to remain ruler.”

As laborers began trying to put the pagoda back together, local residents were quoted in émigré publications with vivid accounts of supernatural happenings.

“The temple collapsed about 3:10 p.m. while I was loading bricks on a platform around the pagoda,” a 24-year-old construction worker told The Irrawaddy, a magazine based in Thailand.

“The weather suddenly turned very dark,” he was quoted as saying. “Then we saw a bright red light rising from the northern end of the pagoda. Then, suddenly, the temple collapsed. I also heard a strange haunting voice coming from the direction of the light.”

Indeed, the Danok pagoda may have been a poor choice for the junta’s ruling family to seek religious affirmation.

According to The Irrawaddy: “Several elderly locals from Danok Model Village said that they believed that the pagoda never welcomed cruel or unkind donors, and always shook when such persons made offerings.”

Secretary of State Speaks Out

2009-05-21T11:21:00.002-05:00

Myanmar's military regime is allowing reporters and diplomats into the trial of Aung San Suu Kyi.

But allowing access to the trial isn't halting accusations that the hearing is a ploy to keep the pro-democracy leader behind bars through next year's election.

Suu Kyi is accused of violating the terms of her house arrest after an American stayed at her home without official permission. The offense is punishable by up to five years' imprisonment.

The Nobel Peace laureate has been in detention without trial for more than 13 of the past 19 years. She was due to be released next week.

Meantime U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says it's "outrageous" that Myanmar's military-led government is still holding Suu Kyi in detention.

Clinton told lawmakers Wednesday at a Capitol Hill hearing that the junta is holding Suu Kyi merely because she is politically popular.

Clinton says elections scheduled in Myanmar for next year are "illegitimate" even before they begin because of the way the junta has treated the Nobel Peace laureate.

Suu Kyi has been in detention without trial for more than 13 of the past 19 years. She is accused of violating the terms of her house arrest after an American man stayed at her home without official permission.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday it is "outrageous" that Myanmar had put pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi on trial but hoped it would end soon and she would be released.

Clinton, speaking to a Senate subcommittee overseeing State Department funding, said the Obama administration was trying to see if third countries could pressure the military junta in Yangon to obtain her release.

"Clearly China, India and others are major players," Clinton said, suggesting these countries would be approached.

"We're going to try (to push for her release), and I don't think I can make any kind of assurance because we don't know whether we will have any success in convincing them otherwise," Clinton told the senators.

"But it is outrageous that they are trying her and that they continue to hold her because of her political popularity and they intend to hold elections in 2010," the chief US diplomat said.

These elections from the beginning "will be illegitimate because of the way that they have treated her," she continued.

"So it is our hope that this baseless trial will end with a quick release of her and then a return to some political involvement eventually by her and her party," she added.

Aung San Suu Kyi went on trial on Monday on the charges of breaching the terms of her house arrest over a bizarre incident in which an American swam to her lakeside house.

The charges carry a jail term of up to five years and would stretch her detention past its supposed expiry date this month and through controversial elections due in 2010.

John Yettaw, 53, who was held for sneaking into Suu Kyi's house and staying there for two days before he was caught, was also put on trial on charges of breaking the security law and immigration conditions.

Yettaw, 53, apparently used a pair of homemade flippers to swim across a lake to her crumbling residence in an apparent show of solidarity, but Aung San Suu Kyi's main lawyer Kyi Win said they had asked him to leave.

Orphanages Closed, Buildings Seized

2009-03-16T12:18:00.001-06:00

The Burmese military regime has shut down at least 50 Chin orphanages in Rangoon, the former capital of Burma leading to problems for children.

According to a report said the regime closed down about 50 Chin orphanages on March 6, 2009 as their licenses expired. The regime has seized all the buildings

“We had registered for a period of five years. I don’t know others’ cases. Actually, we had registered in 2003 and its validity is up to 2008. Now we have to register for 2009 to 2013, but just before doing so the authorities stopped renewing the license,” said a local Chin from Rangoon .

It means 50 out of 100 Chin orphanage schools in Rangoon city have now been shut down by the government. Similarly, 13 out of 16 schools in Hleku townships also closed including Victoria Childcare Centre (VCC) which looks after 54 orphanages.

Kanpalet Township , Southern Chin state, which looks after 99% of the children in VCC has sent them back to their relatives as per the rule of government that allows a person can adopt not more than five children in his life time.

“The children’s future will be totally dependant on the adopters. Some will be adopted well and some might be adopted as house keepers or servants. It’s very hard to figure out their fortune,” said a victim at one of orphanage schools.

At the same time, some schools are searching for people to adopt the children.. It is difficult to know where other schools are located and who are taking responsibility regarding this matter as the government has restricted them and they are afraid to used telephone for their security.

“Once we had used telephone for conversation about our work, the authorities immediately arrived and they inquired about it. We don’t want to use the phone anymore after facing this thrice as we’ve afraid,” he added.

He continued that the care takers at the orphanage schools have been given an appointment on 17 March. It needs to be watched how it will turn out, but the schools cannot be opened again.

Chin orphanage schools started to open in 2003 in Yangon city and there are about 140 of Chin orphanage schools in Burma.

More From Tim Patterson

2009-03-06T21:15:00.001-06:00

“My generation thinks there will be a war,” says a 22-year-old cadet in the Kachin Independence Army, one of several armed groups that struggle for political autonomy on the frontiers of Myanmar.

His AK-47 slung loosely over his shoulder, the cadet qualifies his prediction, perhaps in deference to the officers who listen as he speaks.

“We don´t know what the leadership will decide,” he says. “We will follow their orders.”

Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, encompasses the homelands of several distinct ethnic groups that resent the totalitarian rule of ethnic Burmese, who form a majority in this impoverished Southeast Asian nation.

Burmese dominate the powerful armed forces, which prop up the military junta that governs Myanmar, widely recognized as one of world’s most corrupt and repressive governments.

The Kachin Independence Army (KIA) is the military wing of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), among the largest and most powerful of the armed groups that challenge the junta´s rule.

Founded in the early 1960s, the KIO represents ethnic Kachins, themselves a loose coalition of predominantly Christian tribes whose historic territory encompasses the Himalayan foothills of northernmost Myanmar, bordered by southern Tibet, far-eastern India and the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan.

For more than 30 years, the KIA has waged a guerrilla campaign against the military from its jungle bases along the Chinese border. Other armed groups were active in the region during this period, including the Communist Party and various warlords, many of whom financed their armies through opium smuggling, intensive logging and mining for gold, rubies and jade.

In 1994 the KIO leadership signed a cease-fire with the military, an agreement many Kachins saw as a betrayal of their aspirations for political autonomy.

The cease-fire brought a measure of stability to Kachin state and enriched some powerful individuals who were willing to cooperate with Burmese authorities, but it did little to alleviate the suffering of Kachin civilians.

In the 15 years since the truce, Kachins say there has been no genuine attempt at reconciliation, and many expect a renewed outbreak of armed hostilities.

During the war years, Kachin state developed a reputation as one of the most lawless places in the world.

Only a handful of foreign observers managed to sneak inside to document reports of human rights abuses by Myanmar’s military in its efforts to defeat the resistance groups and consolidate control over Kachin state.

One journalist, Outside Magazine editor Mark Jenkins, was drugged, beaten and dumped in an alley with a death threat written on his hand after interviewing Kachin villagers near the state capital of Myitkyina in 1996.

The Kachins hope for more exposure to the outside world, one KIA soldier explained. “Here in Kachin, it´s been 15 years since the cease-fire, but nothing has changed.”

“I have a degree in economics, but there is no job for me,” added another soldier. “There are no good positions for Kachin people. There is oppression and exploitation everywhere.”

Like others quoted in this article, the soldiers asked not to be named, fearing retribution from the government.

The KIA military academy is located off a rough mountain road that links the wartime army headquarters, a windswept base called Pajau, with more comfortable and modern peacetime headquarters outside the bustling border town of Laiza.

Recruits rise before dawn to practice karate and repeat the pledges of the army: “We will always obey the orders of the Kachin Independence Organization,” they shout. “We will never give up our arms.”

These two pledges may come into conflict if the KIO leadership decides to participate in nationwide elections scheduled for 2010.

The elections are the culmination of a constitutional process introduced by the junta last year. Few observers expect the elections to be free or fair.

Both within Myanmar and abroad, the elections are widely seen as an attempt by the junta to legitimize iron-fisted military rule.

A clause in the new constitution states that all rebel groups must disarm and submit to the central control of the Myanmar military.

Although the KIO initially signaled its intent to participate in the election, officials now claim the KIO itself will stay on the sidelines, although KIO members may form a party to contest the elections.

Whether the Kachins decide to participate, the government that emerges will no doubt be heavily influenced by the leaders of the current military junta.

If the government attempts to forcibly disarm the KIA and other armed ethnic groups, the Kachins may retreat from their peacetime headquarters and retrench in the rugged hills along the Chinese frontier.

Bombs Explode in Two Historic Areas

2009-03-06T21:11:00.001-06:00

Note: the following story is from BurmaNet. The two locations where the bombs exploded were sites of massive government retaliations against the student-led protests in 1988. The "Whole Burma United Revolutionary Front" (WBURF) has claimed responsibility for the bombings.

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Authorities in Myanmar have warned people to be on alert after two small bombs exploded in the commercial hub Yangon, causing minor damage but no injuries, junta-run media reported Thursday.

The explosions hit hours apart Tuesday evening at a Yangon park and bus stop, and police and soldiers immediately sealed off the scene.

“Authorities concerned have reminded the people to provide information to those responsible in time if there is something or someone (suspected) of committing destructive acts,” the New Light of Myanmar newspaper said.

The paper said an investigation was ongoing and gave no indication about who might be behind the blasts, but the military regime has in the past blamed similar attacks on ethnic rebel insurgents battling junta rule.

The first explosion blew a hole in a fence and smashed the windscreen of a truck, the paper said, while the bus stop bomb near a busy intersection blew a small crater in the ground and damaged the shelter.

Myanmar was rocked by a series of similar small blasts late last year, with one man killed in Yangon in October and two people killed in a township outside the main city in a video cafe bombing.

Although the junta usually blames armed exile groups or ethnic rebels, it has also pointed the finger at democracy activists.

State-run media in September accused two members of detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) of bombing pro-government offices in July last year.

The NLD won a landslide victory in 1990 elections, but the junta never allowed it to take office. Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest almost constantly since.

The military has ruled Myanmar since 1962, partly justifying its grip on power by claiming the need to fend off ethnic rebellions which have plagued remote border areas for decades.

No Hugs For Thugs

2009-03-06T21:04:00.001-06:00

Opinion by Jean Geran:

Secretary of State Clinton should not go wobbly on the junta. In the midst of her recent Asia trip, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton indicated that the United States is reviewing its policy toward Burma. As the Obama administration assesses its options, it would be wise to remember it is dealing with one of the world’s most brutal tyrannies, which has held power for decades through terror and totalitarian control. Fear and force are the two things that the ruling junta most understands—and are the only two factors that have ever succeeded in altering its behavior over the years. Any policy review must be mindful of that history.

In recent months, the Burmese generals stepped up their imprisonment of dissidents. The number of political prisoners has swelled to over 2,000. Horrific attacks and displacement of civilians in ethnic minority regions continue unabated. The legitimate leaders of the Burmese people such as Aung San Suu Kyi and Min Ko Naing, along with representatives of the tormented ethnic minority groups such as the Karen and Shan, continue to seek more support from the international community and more pressure on the regime. Now is not the time to abandon them.

It is especially disturbing to think that a review of U.S. policy may cede important ground gained under the Bush administration. In addition to President Bush’s forceful advocacy on the issue, First Lady Laura Bush took a personal interest in Burma’s plight and, among other initiatives, helped bring the issue of the tyrannical Burmese government for the first time before the U.N. Security Council. Any policy change that goes the other direction and eases pressure would be disastrous for the Burmese people.

The most important thing that the West can do is to apply more and smarter pressure on the generals to force them to the negotiating table—not with us, but with the legitimate leaders of their own people. We can also press Burma’s neighbors—specifically India, Thailand, and China—to end their support for the regime.

Frustration over the lack of progress has revived longstanding debates over sanctions and humanitarian aid. On the surface the arguments for easing sanctions and allowing more aid strike sympathetic chords with those unfamiliar with the peculiar and psychotic nature of Than Shwe and the rest of the junta. It is easy to think that aid will ease the suffering of the people. But only the most carefully channelled assistance can avoid cooptation by the regime, and even these channels are extremely rare and limited to flows across the border from Thailand and small subtle efforts that work under the radar of the regime. Large-scale aid flowing through Rangoon, especially through larger U.N. agencies, inevitably is controlled by the regime or its cronies and strengthens their grip on power.

The generals have repeatedly shown their contempt for the welfare of their own people. This contempt was most tragically seen in their appalling response to Cyclone Nargis. The disaster led to over a hundred thousand deaths, many unnecessary, due to restrictions or even denial of aid. One need only remember the ships, planes, and tarmacs full of supplies that were not distributed because the regime denied access to the victims; or the plight of courageous Burmese citizens like 23-year-old student Kay Thi Aung, who was imprisoned in September 2008 for her efforts to provide aid to cyclone victims, and who recently suffered a miscarriage due to the deplorable jail conditions; and comedian Zarganar, sentenced to 59 years imprisonment for criticizing the regime’s failures. In most other countries the actions of these two would not be considered political activity, but to the lawless Burmese regime all things—even humanitarian gestures—are “political.”

The current sanctions have not yet brought freedom, but that is no reason to abandon them. They must be intensified and coordinated multilaterally.

The people of this fertile, resource rich, and once well-educated country are suffering under the economic malevolence and ignorance of their oppressors, not the effects of economic sanctions. A policy review of sanctions would be helpful only if it leads to better targeting and expanded coordination with allies in the region and beyond. But any backtracking or easing of pressure would be a huge mistake and would play right into the hands of the generals.

Likewise, a policy review that leads to a renewed diplomatic push in Washington and at the United Nations might have a chance of overcoming the Russian and Chinese veto threat. A strong U.N. Security Council resolution, especially one with sharp multilateral teeth such as an arms embargo or targeted global sanctions, would quickly get the attention of the generals. The case for Security Council action is clear. Ongoing military offensives against civilians that include rape as a weapon of war, as well as refugee displacement, disease spreading across borders, and trafficking in drugs and people, make the situation in Burma as much a security issue as a human rights or humanitarian one.

Concern for Burma has long attracted strong bipartisan interest and support in the United States, and Secretary Clinton herself has previously made a priority of supporting female leaders such as Aung San Suu Kyi. If this review goes forward and new tactics are considered, U.S. policymakers should remember the nature and history of this brutal regime and pay heed to the vital voices of the Burmese democracy movement over those tired voices of Western academics, the United Nations, or aid agencies. We in the West have failed the people of Burma time and again with our weak statements and our short memories, and yet they persevere with an honor and steadfastness that should put us all to shame. They are the ones who know what is best for their country. We must continue to stand beside them against tyranny and terror until freedom and prosperity are once again theirs.

Jean Geran is a senior fellow at the Legatum Institute. She served as the director for democracy and human rights on the National Security Council and as an abuse prevention officer on the U.S. Disaster Assistance Response Team in southern Iraq.

From Associated Press: Denis D. Gray

2009-02-27T14:00:00.001-06:00

Reforming Myanmar’s harsh military rule may not rank at the top of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy goals, but it’s one he will find among the most difficult to achieve.

For half a century, formidable forces rebel armies, uprisings, economic sanctions, pressure by the United Nations have attempted to dislodge or at least temper Myanmar’s ruling junta. All have failed.

The generals of Myanmar, also known as Burma, continue to crush popular protests with guns, commit atrocities against ethnic minorities and currently hold more than 2,000 political prisoners, including pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has been under house arrest for more than 13 of the past 19 years.

So can any new approach by Obama effect meaningful change in Myanmar?

Options in his arsenal appear limited, but some will be tried, and they could prove important.

“If there is going to be any change in international policy which will make a difference, it’s going to have to come from Washington. The U.S. remains a key player,” says Thant Myint-U, a Burmese historian and former U.N. official. “For the Burmese government, the U.S. holds out what they want, which is international acceptability and respect, and an end to its pariah status.”

A prominent Southeast Asian politician agreed.

“Obama could be a pivotal leader (on the issue) because of his high concern for democracy and human rights,” Philippine Senator and former Senate President Aquilino Pimentel told the Associated Press.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, on her recent Asian swing, indicated Washington was “looking at what steps we might take that might influence the current Burmese government and we’re also looking for ways that we could more effectively help the Burmese people.”

Analysts foresee more carefully crafted U.S. sanctions, greater cooperation with the United Nations and others to forge a common front on Myanmar, and trying to convince China to exert influence on its close ally. But employing a carrot and a stick, humanitarian aid may also be increased.

“Obama’s approach to foreign policy, a stress on common action among allies and negotiation, will be more effective than Bush’s unilateralism and moralistic hectoring,” says Donald M. Seekins, a Myanmar expert at Japan’s Meio University.

Obama’s new U.N. Ambassador Susan E. Rice has said there remained “scope for greater regional and international action to pressure Burma’s dictators,” including multilateral sanctions and getting Myanmar’s Southeast Asian neighbors to support tougher action.

But she warned Myanmar may represent “one of the most intractable challenges for the global community.”

In a country where many still regard the United States as a potential savior, there is skepticism that the new president can loosen the junta’s grip on power but also some hope.

Myanmar, under the military’s grip since 1962, may be one of the few countries where many say they would welcome an invasion by the United States or at least a bombing of the junta’s remote, bunker-like capital of Naypyitaw.

Although censors banned the publication of Obama’s inauguration speech, many managed access and interpreted his remarks about the world’s dictators as an open message to Myanmar’s generals.

“President Obama was referring to Myanmar. He is willing to help the Myanmar government if they are ready to accept American assistance, but also gave a strong signal that America will not tolerate corrupt regimes,” said lawyer Maung Maung Gyi, citing Obama’s warning to those “who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent,” and Washington’s readiness to assist those who would “unclench your fist.”

has come out in support of sanctions against the junta, and during the presidential campaign likened Suu Kyi to the late American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. The sanctions, which have strong bipartisan backing, include a post-1997 ban on all U.S. investments in Myanmar and the freezing of U.S. assets of junta leaders.

In the past, Washington has also tried to exert some pressure through the United Nations and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which includes Myanmar. But China, Russia and India all with economic or strategic interests in Myanmar have blocked such moves while ASEAN’s policy of noninterference has hindered reform in Myanmar.

The annual summit of ASEAN leaders, hosted by Thailand later this week, is almost certainly to be another case of what the Burmese jokingly call “NATO” No Action, Talk Only on the Myanmar issue.

But some Southeast Asian figures are pressing for both more ASEAN as well as U.S. action on Myanmar.

“ASEAN has to flex its muscle more. ASEAN should be in the forefront of the struggle for human rights in Myanmar but probably the European Union and the United States can impose some measures that will compel Myanmar’s military rulers to address the plight of its people,” Pimentel said in Manila.

This history caused Clinton to lament: “It is an unfortunate fact that Burma seems impervious to influences from anyone. The path we have taken in imposing sanctions hasn’t influenced the Burmese junta, but … reaching out and trying to engage them has not influenced them either.”

Washington currently applies political and economic sanctions against Myanmar because of its poor human rights record and failure to hand over power to a democratically elected government.

Thant Myint-U of Singapore’s Institute for Southeast Asian Studies, said the sanctions would make sense “if the U.S. was willing to make Burma it’s No. 1 priority and use all its leverage with China and India to make them global and that’s not going to happen.”

Washington instead should move ahead with direct talks and real engagement in an effort to influence the next generation of military leaders, he said, because they hold the key to change.

From Tim Patterson

2009-02-24T08:48:00.001-06:00

Campfires twinkle along the Chinese border as soldiers sing raucous freedom ballads and strum beat-up old guitars. They sing in Jinghpaw, the main language of the Kachin people, and their joy is irrepressible on this cold night in the Himalayan foothills of northern Myanmar.

The far north of Myanmar — formerly Burma — is home to the Kachins, a group of predominantly Christian tribes whose struggle against the military government of Myanmar is now in its fifth decade. As ethnic and religious minorities in one of the most repressed and impoverished countries in the world, the Kachins are fighting an uphill battle to achieve political autonomy throughout their homeland.

The Myanmar military government, dominated by ethnic Burmese, has long sought to suppress insurgencies led by ethnic groups such as the Kachin, Karen and Shan. Like many conflicts worldwide, the struggles between Myanmar’s minority ethnic groups and the central government are exacerbated by the inherent wealth of the contested lands.

Kachin state is lightly populated but rich in natural resources, which include timber, gold and the world’s only significant deposits of high quality jade. Most of these resources are exported to China, which is the biggest provider of arms to the Myanmar military. Ordinary Kachins must look on while the wealth of their land is sold out from under them, financing their oppression.

“The prosperity of Kachin state has been seized by the junta,” said Seng Maw, 23, one of two female students at a leadership training academy run by the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO). “We don’t own the rights to our own resources.”

A 1994 ceasefire agreement between the KIO and the Myanmar military ended active hostilities, but the political situation remains tense. The ceasefire froze the conflict in place without addressing any of its causes. Many civilians anticipate a renewed outbreak of war in 2010, when the government has scheduled elections that few believe will be free or fair.

Kachins see their freedom struggle as separate from political opposition on the part of the ethnic Burmese majority. Even if a democratically elected government were to replace the junta, the Kachins doubt any Burmese government would respect their autonomy.

“The Burmese political system has always been top down,” explained Daw Kong, a KIO volunteer. “Democracy will be very hard for them to put into practice.”

Anger at the Myanmar government runs deep, especially among young people.

“I have a university degree in economics, but there is no job for me,” explained a 22-year-old who joined the Kachin Independence Army after failing to find employment in the state capital of Myitkyina. “There are no good positions for Kachin people.”

For now, the KIO maintains a shadow state in pockets of territory along the Chinese border. Although the area under exclusive KIO control amounts to less than 10 percent of Kachin state, peace has provided the breathing room to build institutions of self-government and civil society. The KIO has its own police department, education system, television station and immigration department, and levies taxes at border crossings with China.

Much of the KIO’s funding comes from business deals that facilitate the exploitation of natural resources by Chinese and Burmese companies, and its own human rights record is mixed.

According to a 2007 report by the monitoring organization Human Rights Watch, the KIA accepts minors who volunteer for military service, but no longer recruits soldiers who are under 18 years old.

The KIO’s opium eradication program has drawn recognition from international observers.

“The KIO are one group that is clearly sincere about eradicating drug production,” said David Mathieson of Human Rights Watch. “The international community has to recognize the good intentions of the KIO.”

The KIO leadership has relocated from a windswept mountaintop base to modern headquarters overlooking the bustling border town of Laiza. The new facilities feature concrete office buildings equipped with internet connections and a large meeting hall used for Sunday church services.

The 5th brigade of the Kachin Independence Army is stationed near Laiza, next to a golf course where KIO officials host members of the Myanmar government’s northern command. A misplayed shot here could end up in Chinese territory — totally out of bounds.

This fairway diplomacy is a meager substitute for genuine political dialogue, but the Kachins take it seriously. Golf is taught alongside jungle survival skills at the Kachin military academy, where a putting green is just steps away from a map depicting fortified positions.

Veterans of the guerrilla war attend officer training school at the military academy, alongside a new generation of soldiers who profess an eagerness to fight for their nation. Soldiers are paid 10,000 kyat per month, less than $10.

“My generation thinks there will be a war,” said a young academy cadet. “We don’t know what the leadership will decide. We will follow their orders.”

Some Kachins feel the KIO sold out by agreeing to a ceasefire.

The ceasefire “was the best chance for KIO leaders to corrupt the natural resources such as gold mining, jading and logging for their own comfort,” wrote a former KIO official who requested anonymity.

Such high-level corruption might hamstring the KIO’s ability to rally support among ordinary Kachins.

“In Myanmar we have three in one – government, military and business,” explained Dtoi La, a trainee journalist. “That’s true for the junta and the KIO.”

For now, Kachins prepare for the future as best they can. Their dream is not a return to the old ways of subsistence agriculture, but rather a chance to develop as other nations do.

“We don’t want to be left behind,” Dtoi La said. “Keep an eye on Myanmar. There will be war in the future.”

Chin National Day turns into Chin State Day celebration in Burma

2009-02-24T08:42:00.001-06:00

Note: The Chin people of Burma are overwhelmingly Christian, including Baptist, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Methodist, and numerous other denominations.

________________________________

New Delhi (Mizzima) - With the Burmese military junta's profound objection to the celebration of Chin National Day, ethnic Chin in Rangoon are albeit being forced to mark the day under different banners, organisers said.

On Friday, Chin people in Rangoon, celebrated the 61st anniversary of Chin Nation Day under the banner of 'Fresher Welcome' of University students.

"We requested the local authorities in the township and district levels in Rangoon but they rejected our request to allow us to hold the Chin National Day celebration," an organizer said.

"So, we had no choice but to celebrate our national day under a different name."

But in Hakha, capital of Chin State, authorities forced Chin community leaders to observe the Day as 'Chin State Day', a local resident said.

"Actually, we prefer to use the actual name 'Chin National Day'. But the authorities do not allow us to do so. So we have no choice," she added.

Chin National Day was adopted at the first Chin National Conference held on February 20, 1948 in Falam town in Chin state. During the conference, Chin leaders agreed to abolish the use of the chieftainship system of administration and agreed to form a democratic system of governance.

However, the Chin National Day was later renamed as the Chin State Day during the rule of the Burma Social Programme Party (BSPP) regime led General Ne Win, who assumed power in a military coup in 1962.

Salai Kipp Kho Lian, a Germany based Chin activist, alleged that changing the Chin National Day into Chin State Day is part of the junta's nationalization policy to eradicate the identity of ethnic minorities in Burma.

Kipp said it was on January 3, 1974 that the Burmese regime declared the Chin Special Division into Chin State so February 20 cannot be in anyway observed as Chin State Day.

"It does not make any sense to change Chin National Day into Chin State Day," Kipp said.

"It is a part of the Burmese regime's Burmanization campaign to eliminate ethnic groups," Kipp alleged.

But he said, "The more they [the regime] oppress us, the more we become active to promote our national identity."

On Friday, Chin people around the world including New Delhi, Denmark, and Malaysia marked the Chin National Day.

In New Delhi, more than 1000 Chin communities gathered in the western region of the city to celebrate the Chin National Day, where they performed traditional dances and sang folk songs to depict the culture of various ethnic groups among the Chin community.

A Sign of a Fist Unclenching?

2009-02-21T17:47:00.001-06:00

From The Associated Press (AP):

Myanmar’s military government announced an amnesty Friday night for more than 6,000 prisoners but did not mention whether any political detainees will be among those released.

State radio and television announced that the convicts from various prisons would be released starting Saturday. The brief announcement said that 6,313 prisoners were being freed in recognition of their good conduct and so that they would be able to participate in a general election planned for next year.

Human rights groups estimate that the regime holds more than 2,100 political detainees, including pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who is under house arrest. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Suu Kyi has spent 13 of the past 19 years in detention without trial.

When the junta freed 9,002 prisoners last September, only about a dozen were political detainees.

In recent months, the junta’s courts have sentenced more than 100 dissidents, including some of the country’s most prominent activists, to prison terms that would keep them incarcerated well past the 2010 polls. The junta says the elections will restore democracy, but critics charge they will be a sham to keep the military in control.

The top U.N. envoy to Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, who recently visitied the country, told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York that he had not received any official communique from the government and was waiting to see how many of the prisoners were criminals and how many were political prisoners.

“At the same time I believe it’s fair to welcome the release of prisoners, particularly political prisoners,” Gambari said.

Asked for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s reaction, U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas echoed Gambari, saying “it still remains unclear whether and how many political prisoners this deal may include.”

“We encourage the government to release all political prisoners including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi,” she said.

Myanmar, which has been under military rule since 1962, is shunned by Western nations because of its poor human rights record. The ruling generals came to power in 1988 after crushing a pro-democracy uprising and killing as many as 3,000 people.

The junta called elections in 1990 but refused to honor the results when Suu Kyi’s party won overwhelmingly.

Opinion Against Sanctions

2009-02-21T17:45:00.001-06:00

By Stanley A. Weiss

Watching President Barack Obama’s inauguration from my hotel room in Yangon, in Myanmar, I doubted whether his promise of change was meant for Myanmar as well.

U.S. relations with this country have stagnated for years, as Washington strives to sanction the country’s brutal leadership into submission. Meanwhile, the misery of Myanmar’s 54 million people deepens by the day.

Yet, the ice may be cracking. This week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that Washington “is looking at steps that might influence the current Burmese government” and “ways that we could more effectively help the Burmese people.”

Meanwhile, Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, issued a statement of willingness to begin dialogue with the regime without preconditions.

But it is time to admit that the regime’s full acquiescence to U.S. demands is not a requirement for improving people’s lives. That does not mean the United States should cease supporting the democratic aspirations of Myanmar’s people, or that Washington should embrace a regime that has driven a resource-rich country into poverty, used violence to stifle dissent, jailed more than 2,000 political prisoners, deprived its citizens of education and health care, and conscripted children into military service.

But the U.S. policy of isolation is only making the junta more recalcitrant. A member of a foreign intelligence service told me of speaking with a top general, who said, “We are not scared of Western sanctions; we will survive as long as we have rice, salt and ngapi (fermented fish paste).”

Myanmar has endured colonial rule, foreign invasion, civil war and armed insurgency; its intensely nationalistic leaders are paranoid and proud in equal measure. Besides, the junta can count on more than fish paste to see them through: Myanmar has significant natural gas reserves and neighbors happy to trade and invest.

Proponents of sanctions counter that the policy needs more time; that critical loopholes have only recently been tightened; that the answer isn’t to lift the sanctions but to bring more countries - especially China - on board. Yet there is no reason to think Beijing would be susceptible to U.S. pressure on Myanmar.

Meanwhile, as Brahma Chellaney, one of India’s top strategic thinkers told me, the United States “doesn’t have to live with the consequences of its actions,” but neighboring countries “will not escape the effects of an unstable Myanmar.”

Sanctioning Myanmar may make Americans feel good, but feeling good and doing good are not the same. If the U.S. intent is to improve people’s lives in Myanmar, it must find a new way forward.

First, to succeed in Myanmar, U.S. officials must think like the Burmese. Not only have punitive sanctions and relentless public condemnation failed to moderate the regime’s behavior, they have pushed the junta further away from the West and into Chinese arms.

Too close a relationship between Myanmar and China is in neither the generals’ nor Washington’s interests, but the United States has offered only the back of its hand. The U.S. won’t even call Myanmar by its name, even though “Myanmar” is the Burmese named for their country, while “Burma” was the name imposed by British colonizers.

As a former Asian diplomat with deep knowledge of Myanmar told me, the people at large “see the West’s persistence in calling the country ‘Burma’ not only as childish and petulant but also as a disrespect to the country and its people.” Using “Myanmar” in recognition of the country’s difficult history and independence struggle is a gesture that might alleviate some of the junta’s suspicion of the outside world.

Second, the United States should increase humanitarian assistance, channeled via the United Nations and NGOs. Myanmar’s people endure grinding poverty; their leaders spend only 0.3 percent of GDP on public health, as many as 6 million people lack access to food, and UNICEF reports that 50 percent of infant deaths are from preventable causes. Yet the country receives less than $3 of official development assistance per capita - as compared to $38 for Cambodia and $49 for Laos.

A range of Western donors are already working successfully in Myanmar. In less than two years, the Three Diseases Fund has reached over 93,000 people with HIV prevention activities, provided antiretroviral treatment to 5,500 people living with HIV, supplied over 800,000 people with bed nets, and supported drug distribution to 123,000 tuberculosis patients.

As British Ambassador Mark Canning told me, humanitarian assistance “not only helps people in need, but acts as a medium through which to engage the more constructive elements in government, exposes thousands of young people to the way the foreign relief community works, and reminds them that the international community is out there and there is the promise some day of a more normal relationship.” It offers both moral and material solidarity with Myanmar’s people.

And they want our help. In my quiet conversations with taxi drivers, shopkeepers and tour guides in Yangon, no one spoke to me of politics. Instead I was asked, “How can I go to your schools? Will America help us get medical treatment?” Ma Thanegi, a former aide to Aung San Suu Kyi who now advocates against sanctions, told me there were only two functioning radiotherapy machines in this Texas-sized country.

Last year, the major headline out of Myanmar was a deadly cyclone. This year, let’s hope it will be the winds of change.

Stanley A. Weiss is founding chairman of Business Executives for National Security, a nonpartisan organization based in Washington.

From The Washington Post

2009-02-20T08:52:00.001-06:00

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday that economic sanctions imposed by the United States and other Western governments had failed to pressure the repressive Burmese government, signaling a potentially major shift in U.S. policy.

Clinton, at a news conference here, did not deny that easing sanctions was one of the ideas under consideration by the Obama administration as part of a major review. “We are looking at possible ideas that can be presented,” she told reporters and said that she had discussed the issue with Indonesia officials here.

“Clearly the path we have taken in imposing sanctions hasn’t influenced the Burmese junta,” she said, adding that the route taken by Burma’s neighbors of “reaching out and trying to engage them has not influenced them either.”

Burma, also known as Myanmar, is regarded as one of the world’s most oppressive nations. The National League for Democracy, the party of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, won a landslide electoral victory in 1990, which the military leadership refused to accept. She has been held in confinement repeatedly since then.

Any move by the Obama administration to scale back sanctions on Burma could face strong opposition in Congress, where lawmakers have imposed a series of increasingly tougher restrictions on the Southeast Asian nation. The Bush administration also invested significant diplomatic capital into moving Burma for the first time onto the agenda of the United Nations Security Council, although proposed resolutions criticizing the junta’s behavior have been vetoed by Russia and China.

Vice President Biden last year was the key mover in the Senate of the Block Burmese JADE act, which renewed restrictions on the import of Burmese gems and tightened sanctions on mining projects there. The act also imposed new financial sanctions and travel restrictions on the junta’s leaders and their associates and created a post for a high-level envoy and policy coordinator for Burma.

But some humanitarian organizations have begun to question the sanctions policies. In an influential report issued in October, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group argued that humanitarian aid should begin to flow into the country and bans on Burmese garments, agriculture and fishery products and restrictions on tourism should be lifted.

“It is a mistake in the Myanmar context to use aid as a bargaining chip, to be given only in return for political change,” the report said. “Twenty years of aid restrictions — which see Myanmar receiving twenty times less assistance per capita than other least-developed countries — have weakened, not strengthened, the forces for change.”

While Clinton has been careful not to tip her hand on the direction of the policy review, she has used strikingly mild language about the Burmese government, describing “the unfortunate path” taken by Burma, leaving it “impervious to influence from anyone.”

From BurmaNet

2009-02-20T08:49:00.001-06:00

The United Nations’ human rights envoy for Myanmar headed on Wednesday for the country’s new capital, Naypyidaw, for possible meetings with senior junta figures.

Tomas Ojea Quintana, U.N. Special Human Rights Rapporteur for Myanmar, arrived on Saturday for his second mission to the country and visited political prisoners earlier in the week.

“He left for Naypyidaw this morning but we are not sure who exactly will receive him,” a diplomat based in the main city, Yangon, told Reuters.

The U.N. says Quintana had asked the military government for access to “a number of prisoners of conscience” but it was unclear if he would be able to visit opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest in Yangon for 13 of the past 19 years.

The generals moved the capital to Naypyidaw, about 380 km north of Yangon, in 2005.

Quintana was in eastern Kayin State on Sunday and Monday, visiting the prison in the local capital, Pa-an, and meeting leaders of ethnic groups opposed to the junta.

Later on Monday he went to the notorious Insein Central Jail on the outskirts of Yangon, where he met political prisoners including Tin Min Htut and Nyi Bu, elected MPs from the main opposition National League for Democracy (NLD).

They were sentenced to 15 years in prison in a closed trial on Friday, the day before Quintana arrived.

The two men had been arrested last August after they wrote an open letter to the U.N. criticising the military regime’s proposed political reforms.

State media made no mention of the U.N. envoy’s visit.

Under a new constitution brought in last year, multi-party elections are to be held in 2010, although the generals will be handing over little real power to the elected leadership.

Suu Kyi’s NLD believes the results of the last election in 1990 should be respected and form the basis for any transition to democracy. The NLD won a landslide victory, only to be denied power by the military, which has run the country since 1962.

The NLD has not said publicly whether it will take part in the election but it has called on the regime to set up a multilateral commission to review the constitution.

All three state-owned papers, which are generally considered to be the mouthpiece of the junta, urged the opposition on Wednesday to take part in the 2010 vote.

“If they really want to serve the interests of the nation and the people, they should recognise the benevolent attitude of the government and stand for elections fairly in line with the law,” the English daily New Light of Myanmar said in a commentary.

The NLD for its part issued a statement on Tuesday calling for a meeting between Suu Kyi and regime supremo Senior General Than Shwe.

“It will be the best way to bring about significant advantages for the country if the two leaders, who have the decisive power, meet and talk immediately without any preconditions instead of arguing with each other,” it said.

From Khin Maung Soe Min

2009-02-20T08:43:00.001-06:00

Locals in Chin state’s Htantalan township are being forced to work on the reconstruction of an old road and donate money towards the project in order to gain favour with authorities.

An ethnic Chin local in Hakha village said that Dr Mu Htan, who was elected by Htantalan as an independent representative for the people’s parliament in 1990, is making locals work on the reconstruction.

“He is forcing locals to contribute one head per household for one week for the road construction with no meal provided,” said the man.

Mu Htan is known to have close business deals with the government. It is thought that locals are being forced into the work to gain favour with Chin state’s Peace and Development Council chairman colonel Hon Ngai.

“Also he is aiming to collect 62 million kyat donation money for that project and has been pressuring parents of local youths who are living abroad now to ask for money from them,” said the man.

The reconstruction is being done on an old road linking the state’s capital Hakha to Hmandaw village in Sagaing division, halfway between Kalay and Gantgaw townships.

Hakha locals have said they were worried they might miss the marking of the Chin national day on 20 February because they had to do work for Mu Htan.

Mu Htan was unavailable for comments.

From the Thai Border

2009-02-11T22:48:00.001-06:00

[The Nation] The Thai Foreign Ministry’s permanent secretary Virasak Futrakul yesterday told US actress Angelina Jolie to mind her own business and demanded an explanation from the UN agency for refugees why it brought her to a refugee camp here in the first place. The Interior Ministry supervises refugee camps along the Thai-Burmese border and the UN refugee agency has stepped out of line by taking the Hollywood star there, Virasak said. He also reminded the UN High Commissioner for Refugees that the UN has no mandate in these camps and therefore should not be saying anything. The agency said that Jolie and her partner Brad Pitt visited the camp on the Thai-Burmese border after receiving permission from the Interior Ministry.

So much for the diplomatic jargon and necessities, but excuse us for reminding the world that the international community has a major problem on its hand. It concerns the Rohingyas, a stateless people who reside in Burma’s Rakhine State bordering Bangladesh.

But while no one can fully control the words and actions of Hollywood celebrities, the fact of the matter is, when they speak, just about everybody listens.

Thailand’s claim of sovereignty over this matter is understandable given the fact that the country is not a signatory to any refugee convention. But hiding behind diplomatic protocol doesn’t hold water, especially when the country is in a public relations mess following reports that our security forces have pushed hundreds of Rohingya boat people back out to sea. Some have been left unaccounted for while others have given heartbreaking accounts of mistreatment by the Thai military, which towed them back out to sea in ill-equipped boats with little food and water. Another blow to Thailand’s image is the fact that the Indian navy, which has rescued Rohingyas, repeated their stories to the world.

We don’t need to dance to Jolie’s tune just because she is a Hollywood superstar. What we need to do is come up with a sound policy that is based on legal and humanitarian principles. Instead of blaming Jolie, who has the luxury of walking away from this after a few days of photo ops, why don’t we start talking about the root cause of the problem? Or is that against the unwritten rules of Asean when it comes to “domestic matters” in a neighbouring member country?

This particular problem is caused by the Burmese junta - a source of headaches and heartache for Thailand, all Asean members and the international community.

Chin Children Being Conscripted Into Army

2009-02-09T18:36:00.000-06:00

Under age boys are being recruited forcibly as soldiers in the Burmese Army in Chin state, western Myanmar.

Three boys, about 13 years of age in Paletwa town were forcibly recruited in the army on January 28 by Commander Maung Than and seven soldiers from the Lisin Army camp of IB (304). They are still at the military camp, a local said.

He said the victims are NguiTheing (13) son of Pa Net, In Thawng (14) son of Khipui, and Sawng San (13) son of Khan Kung of Lung Zaw Kung village. They were taken from their homes..

“Ngui Theing was taken from his house. He was reluctant to go and cried out but even village heads were afraid to stop the forced recruitment, he told to Khonumthung News.

A report said that five boys from Matupi and Paletwa townships ran away to Mizoram state between December 2008 to January 2009 as they were afraid to join the army.

A local in Matupi said that if soldiers in Matupi IB (304) can recruit children, they will be promoted to a higher rank. So army people are searching for boys in the villages.

“When the authorities constructed the Matupi army camp in December 2008, they were trying to persuade a boy who was not attending school to serve as a soldier. But he refused and he was put in the lockup for a whole night as punishment,” he added.

Regarding this matter Terah of Chin Human Rights Organistaion(CHRO) said, “Actually the government should protect children from forced recruitment as child soldiers, but they doing this disgusting thing for their own interest and it violates human rights,”

The military junta is a signatory to the International Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) paragraph (38) which mentions that it has to protect under 15 year-old children from forced recruitment to the military

Monks Supply Electricity Where Government Will Not

2009-02-06T11:34:00.001-06:00

Electricity is flowing from two monk-led local development projects as the government continues to leave much of the rest of southern Burma without power.

The projects, in Chaung zone and Paung Townships, Mon State have both been organized by monks or former monks, and are now bringing electricity to over 600 households, with capacity for hundreds more.

“Our village has electricity now, because of the efforts of the monk and monastery donors,” said a woman from Dare village in Chaung zone Township, on Belukyn Island. “If we just hoped for electricity from the government, our village would never have electricity.”

The project in Dare was spearheaded by the abbot of the Mingalala Thu Kat Monastery, who organized a group of 15 laymen that purchased a generator from Rangoon in December. About 120 of Dare’s 200 households are currently drawing power.

“Paung Town has electrical wires from the government, but it is rare that we get any power,” added a resident of Paung Town. “That’s why some villages try to get electricity themselves. Even if they get electricity from the government, it is not enough power to do anything.”

The project in Paung Township is centered in Mu Naing village, where former monks from the local monastery raised money to buy a hydroelectric generator in November. The project has capacity for more than 1,000 households, with 514 currently connected.

Less than a kilometer away in Moulmein, Mon State’s capital city, residents have been complaining about the decreasing wattage of the power they receive. Last week, Mon State officials extended electricity to villages in nearby Mudon Township. They did so, apparently, without increasing the power output from Ngante station at Moulmein.

The wattage from the project on Belukyn Island, meanwhile, has residents raving. “The power supply is very good,” said the Dare resident. “We can cook, we can iron. We can use a refrigerator, fill batteries or even watch TV.”

Electricity in most parts of Burma is non-existent or inconsistent at best, with even major cities like Rangoon suffering from limited supplies and frequent outages. In Mon State, residents are often promised electricity contingent on bribes, but still fail to receive power.

Land Siezed for Arms Depot: Man Arrested On State Secrets Charge

2009-02-06T11:21:00.001-06:00

Statement Before UK House of Commons

2009-02-06T11:18:00.001-06:00

Bercow, John

That this House expresses deep concern at recent events in Burma with authorities in Rangoon ordering that services cease in at least a 100 local churches with a threat of prison for non-compliance; notes the concern of some of the local Christians who believe that the immediate cause of the crackdown is church involvement in providing relief for victims of Cyclone Nargis; further notes continued widespread discrimination against religious minorities and in some places violent persecution of Christians and Muslims in other parts of Burma; calls on the Government to raise concerns about religious freedom with the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC); urges the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Religion and Belief to investigate violations of religious freedom in Burma; and calls on the United Nations Secretary General to increase and intensify efforts to urge the SPDC to cease its widespread violation of human rights, including violations of religious freedom, to release all political prisoners, to open all parts of the country to unhindered access for international humanitarian organisations and to engage in meaningful tripartite dialogue with the National League for Democracy and the ethnic nationalities.

Opium Growers Return To Their Fields

2009-02-06T11:14:00.001-06:00

by Larry Jagan

Opium poppy cultivation in Burma has increased alarmingly in the past two years amid fears that region's worsening economic crisis will encourage an even greater spurt in growth, warns the United Nations.

Falling international commodity prices and increase political instability in Burma's border area has fuelled fears that many of Burma's poppy farmers will find it impossible to resist the temptation to return to their old ways. In the past few years there has been a dramatic fall in the area under poppy cultivation and opium production, but these gains have been reversed in the past two years, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime's (UNODC) annual survey just released.

"The problem of poppy production in the region has been contained but not solved," the UNODC chief in Bangkok, Gary Lewis told Mizzima. "There have been significant increases, especially in Myanmar, which are threatening to rise further because of the worsening economic conditions faced by former poppy farmers."
More than ninety percent of the poppy grown in south-east Asia – Burma, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam – is grown in Burma's north-eastern Shan State, though significant strides have been made in Burma over the past decade to dramatically reduce the cultivation of poppy and the production of opium.

Poppy cultivation has fallen from more than 120,000 hectares under poppy cultivation to around 30,000 in 2008 in Burma. Opium production has fallen from more than 1300 metric tonnes to 410 during this period. This is the equivalent of producing 40 tonnes of heroin. This reduction has been largely the result of international pressure on two of the largest opium producers in Burma's Golden Triangle – which borders China, Laos and Thailand -- the Kokang and the Wa. Both are rebel ethnic groups, with large guerrilla forces, but have ceasefire agreements with the Myanmar government.

The Kokang virtually ceased opium production in 2003 and the Wa in 2006. But in the past two years both poppy cultivation and opium production have begun to grow again. "The trend is certainly upwards with a significant increase in the land under cultivation in Myanmar," said Leik Boonwaat, UNODC chief in Laos, who has also been stationed in Myanmar. "For former opium farmers who already live in dire poverty are facing twin levers of increasing opium prices and falling commodity prices that may encourage them to reduce poppy growing."

The prices of most commodities grown or produced in Burma as alternatives to poppy, particularly maize and rubber, have fallen by more than fifty percent, according to the UN's annual drug report. Tens of thousands of former poppy farmers are facing a bleak future, according to an ethnic leader in northern Burma, who declined to be identified. They are almost certain to resume growing poppy, simply to survive, he said.

Most of the Wa and Kokang's alternative crops -- tea, rubber and fruit – are sold to traders across the border in China. But these merchants are no longer interested in buying these products from Burmese producers as demand in China has all but dried up.
Chinese traders are not even buying jade from the Pangsan market. There are even tougher times ahead for the Wa in particular, a source in their capital told Mizzima on condition of anonymity. The leaders are really worried about the future, he added.

"The price of opium has more than doubled in the past few years – from $153 a kilogramme in 2004 to $ 301 currently on the Myanmar market – making it hard for former opium growers to ignore this incentive to return to poppy cultivation," Leik Boonwaat told Mizzima.
With declining prices for their substitute crops and soaring market prices for opium, thousands of former poppy growers are at risk of returning to their traditional crop to produce the extra cash income they need.

Already there are significant signs that Burma's poppy growers are returning to their old trade. In the past two years there has been a distinct upward trend, according to the UN's latest annual report. Although opium production fell a little last year compared to the year before, this is because the yield was worse.

The greatest increase has been in Southern Shan state, where the Wa leadership is in the hands of the Chinese gangster Wei Xiao Gang – who is wanted on trafficking charges in the United States.
While the UN survey suggests that in the main Wa area – Wa Special Region 2 – there has been no resumption yet of poppy cultivation, there has been a steady increase in both eastern and northern Shan state. More worrying is the steady increase in poppy cultivation in both Kachin and Kayah states.

The fragile situation in the northern Wa areas is also of great concern to international anti-drug agencies, according to senior Thai intelligence officers. So far the Wa ban on poppy production, punishable by death, is holding but this may not be the case in the year.

Wa leaders have always know that the situation remained precarious – the ban was never a popular move – and depended on the poor Wa farmers having greater food security and an alternative source of a cash income.

"The Wa leaders may even be forced to renege on their promises to the UN and international community if the economic and security situation deteriorates further," a UN drugs official familiar with the problems in Shan state told Mizzima, but declined to be identified.
The current political problems in Burma – the planned elections in 2010 and the junta's efforts to disarm the ceasefire groups, especially the Wa -- is dramatically increasing instability in the border regions, which have been traditional opium producing areas and this mounting uncertainty is also going to increase the pressure on former opium growers to return to their poppy fields.

Aware of these problems – and the danger of more former growers resuming poppy cultivation, the UN believes there is an even greater need now to step up action against the drug smugglers.

"Already there are important measures in place for the cooperation and exchange of intelligence between drug enforcement agencies in the region – through the border liaison offices that were established several years ago," said Mr. Lewis.

Smuggling routes have changed in the past few years, with tighter border controls especially along the Myanmar border with China. "Certainly traffickers have had to change their transport methods and routes – much is now being moved through Laos from Myanmar, to meet the demand of the drug addicts in southern China, Thailand and Vietnam," said Mr. Boonwaat.

But some of the Golden Triangle opium production is heading out to India, Europe and the United States through the Rangoon port, according to Burmese government officials.

Last week the authorities seized some 118 kilogrammes of heroin stowed away on a ship, the Kota Tegap, headed for Italy via Singapore. It was hidden between planks of timber that was part of an export consignment.

The ship is owned by the ethnic Chinese Burmese businessman, Kyaw Sein and left the Asia World terminal, owned by the son of the notorious former drug baron Lo Hsing Han. Tun Myint Naing is also targetted by US sanctions. So far no arrests have been made, but investigations are continuing, according Burmese officials.

The ship had actually sailed, before it was ordered to return to port. It was Chinese intelligence who alerted their Burmese counterparts.
"This type of intelligence sharing is happening on a regular basis," Pithaya Jinawat, the deputy Secretary general of Thailand's Office of the Narcotics Control Board (ONCB) told Mizzima.

"The Chinese have tipped off the Thai authorities and Lao officials on several occasions in the past couple of years that have resulted in seizures of illicit drugs and the arrest of many traffickers," he said.

"There is no room for complacency," said Mr. Lewis "There is much more that needs to be done." In particular, to combat the money laundering of the proceeds of illegal activities and the illicit drugs trade.

Not all countries in the region have put anti-money laundering legislation in place. But then law enforcement agencies, judges and advocates all need to be trained. In this regard Asia has a long way to go.

But perhaps UNODC's biggest problem in trying to stamp out drug production and trafficking in the region is the lack of funds. The agency needs more financial support from donors to be able to effectively carry out all its work – especially in Myanmar," Mr. Boonwaat confided.

For the donors who provide these funds, there is a much greater concern: the spiralling growth in meta-amphetamines (ATS). As the UN tireless tackles the problem of opium production – the Chinese gangsters in the Golden Triangle have turned increasingly to yaa baa (as ATS is commonly known in this region).

Our fear is the production of yaa ba has become the most effective crop substitution for the Red Wa and the Chinese gangsters who back them," said a Thai military intelligence officer on condition of anonymity.

From Bahrain "Gulf Daily News"

2009-02-03T10:21:00.001-06:00

Myanmar's detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi yesterday met visiting UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari, outlining conditions for dialogue with the junta as the diplomat struggled to make a breakthrough. Gambari is in Myanmar to try to push all sides in the military-ruled nation toward dialogue on democratic reform, after his last visit in August ended in deadlock with Suu Kyi refusing to meet him.

The junta has also shown little sign of embracing the Nigerian troubleshooter's role, and he is not expected to meet reclusive head of state Senior General Than Shwe during his four-day visit, which began on Saturday.

Yesterday, Suu Kyi was allowed out of the lakeside home where she has been kept prisoner for most of the last 19 years to meet Gambari and five senior members of her National League for Democracy (NLD) party.

Suu Kyi expressed frustration over the world body's failure to persuade the junta to give up their monopoly on power, her party said.

She told Gambari that any visit by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon should be conditional on the release of her and all political prisoners, NLD spokesman Nyan Win said, while the party also reiterated its stance.

"Our demands are the release of all political prisoners, a review of the constitution, call the People's parliament and also dialogue," said Nyan Win.

People's parliament refers to the landslide election victory by Suu Kyi and the NLD in 1990 - an outcome that was ignored by the junta, with the military instead cementing its now nearly five-decade grip on power.

Nyan Win said Suu Kyi also raised the plight of more than 270 pro-democracy activists recently jailed for up to 104 years.

"She pointed out that the long prison sentences, such as 65 or 100 years, were handed down with no defence and no lawyers allowed," Nyan Win said.

From Reuters

2009-01-29T13:16:00.001-06:00

Up to 100,000 Christian Chin who have fled to India in the past 20 years to escape persecution by Myanmar’s Buddhist military rulers are at risk of being forced back, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday.

The New York-based rights said local authorities and community organisations in Mizoram frequently targeted Chin migrants, one of the former Burma’s many oppressed ethnic minorities.

“They live at the mercy of the local population,” HRW said in a report on the plight of the Chin, whose ancestral homes are in the mountainous reaches of northwest Myanmar.

“The Chin in Mizoram lack jobs, housing and affordable education,” HRW consultant Amy Alexander said, adding most were relegated to temporary, labour-intensive and low-paying jobs, earning around 100 rupees ($2) a day for 10 to 16-hour shifts.

The report comes at a time when attention has turned on the Rohingyas, another minority group in Myanmar, who have been fleeing abuse and harassment.

In the last two months, 550 Muslim Rohingyas are feared to have drowned after the Thai army forced 1,000 found in the Andaman Sea into wooden boats before towing out to international waters and cutting them adrift.

Despite relatively close ethnic ties between the Chin and Mizoram natives, tensions between the two populations regularly flared into anti-Chin pogroms, the HRW report said.

“Because they are stateless and marginalized and the poorest of the poor, they tend to be the scapegoat whenever there’s an incident at the border,” HRW researcher Sara Colm said.

The largest such campaign was in 2003, when the Young Mizo Association (YMA) forced 10,000 Chin back into Myanmar, HRW said.

In September 2008, the YMA issued an order for the Chin to leave Mizoram by the end of the month. The threat did not materialize, but it was enough for them to go into hiding, close their churches and wait till tensions were over, HRW said.

Such incidents showed India failing in its obligations to protect refugees or asylum seekers, Alexander said.

New Delhi has not signed the 1951 Refugee Convention but under international law, is bound by the principle of ‘nonrefoulement’, which protects migrants from being returned to any country where they could be persecuted.

In addition to what HRW described as “decades of systematic abuse” at the hands of the Myanmar army, the Chin’s woes have been compounded by a 2007 infestation of rats that destroyed huge swathes of crops and food stores.

A recent U.N. survey estimated that 40 percent of people in Chin State, Myanmar’s poorest, did not have enough food, increasing the number of people trying to leave the country.

Persecution of Chin People Continues

2009-01-28T09:22:00.001-06:00

The Chin people, Christians living in the remote mountains of northwestern Myanmar, are subject to forced labor, torture, extrajudicial killings and religious persecution by the country's military regime, a human rights group said Wednesday.

The New York-based Human Right Watch said as many as 100,000 people have fled the Chin homeland into neighboring India, where they face abuse and the risk of being forced back into Myanmar.

"The Chin are unsafe in Burma and unprotected in India," a report from the group said. The report said the regime in Myanmar, also known as Burma, continues to commit atrocities against its other ethnic minorities.

Myanmar's ruling junta has been widely accused of widespread human rights violations in ethnic minority areas where anti-government insurgent groups are fighting for autonomy. The government has repeatedly denied such charges. An e-mailed request for comment on the new report was not immediately answered.

Chief Secretary Vanhela Pachau, a top official for India's Mizoram state, said he had not seen the report and could not comment.

"(The police) hit me in my mouth and broke my front teeth. They split my head open and I was bleeding badly. They also shocked me with electricity," the group quoted a Chin man accused of supporting the insurgents, who are small in number and largely ineffective.

He was one of some 140 Chin people interviewed by the human rights group from 2005 to 2008. The group said the names of those interviewed were withheld to prevent reprisals.

A number of people spoke of being forced out of their villages to serve as unpaid porters for the army or to build roads, sentry posts and army barracks.

Amy Alexander, a consultant for Human Rights Watch, told a news conference that insurgents of the Chin National Front also committed abuses such as extorting money from villagers to fund their operations.

Alexander said Myanmar's government, attempting to suppress minority cultures, was destroying churches, desecrating crosses, interfering with worship services by forcing Christians to work on Sundays and promoting Buddhism through threats and inducements. Some 90 percent of the Chin are Christians, most of them adherents to the American Baptist Church.

Ethnic insurgencies erupted in Myanmar in the late 1940s when the country gained independence from Great Britain.

Former junta member Gen. Khin Nyunt negotiated cease-fires with 17 of the insurgent groups before he was ousted by rival generals in 2004.

Among rebels still fighting are groups from the Karen, Karenni, Shan and Chin minorities.

At least half a million minority people have been internally displaced in eastern Myanmar as a result of the regime's brutal military campaigns while refugees continue to flee to the Thai-Myanmar border. More than 145,000 refugees receive international humanitarian assistance in Thai border camps.

Alexander said that some 30,000 Chin have also sought refuge in Malaysia while about 500 were living in Thai border camps.

From Compass Direct News

2009-01-27T10:15:00.002-06:00

Burmese authorities last week [week of 12/01/09 -- see report below on 16 January] increased restrictions on Christian activity in the capital city of Rangoon and surrounding areas, including the closure of several churches, Compass sources confirmed yesterday.

Orders issued on Jan. 5 had already forced many Christians meeting in residential homes or apartments to cease gathering for worship. Officials last week ordered several major Rangoon churches, including Wather Hope Church, Emmanuel Church and the Assemblies of God Church, to cease holding services and continued enforcing the Jan. 5 ban on meetings held in unauthorized facilities.

In the late 1990s authorities stopped issuing permits for land purchase or the construction of new churches, leading many Burmese Christians to conduct services in rented apartments or office buildings, according to the Burmese news agency Mizzima.

The Kyauktada Township Peace and Development Council on Jan. 5 invited pastors from more than 100 Rangoon churches to a meeting where they were told to sign documents pledging to cease operation of their churches. About 50 pastors attended, according to Mizzima.

The documents threatened punishment, including potential jail terms and the sealing of church facilities, for pastors who refused to obey the closure orders.

Another local online news source, the Democratic Voice of Burma, claimed officials from the Ministry of Religious Affairs had summoned the owners of buildings where churches met and ordered them not to rent their properties to religious groups.

Mizzima quoted an unnamed Burmese Christian who claimed that 80 percent of churches in Rangoon were affected by the order.

History of Religious Repression

Some local Christians and international observers say the crackdown is related to Christian involvement in relief efforts for the victims of Cyclone Nargis, which hit Burma in May 2008.

Despite widespread devastation and loss of life, Burma’s reclusive government initially banned foreign aid but finally accepted it on condition that Burmese officials would distribute it. Christians, however, had responded immediately to the crisis, gathering relief supplies and transporting them to the Irrawaddy Delta region. Police or army officials stopped some groups, but many were allowed to proceed. At least one such group told Compass that officials likely feared the conversion of Buddhists who accepted aid from Christians.

The military junta ruling Burma promotes Buddhism at the expense of other minority religions, according to Paul A. Marshall’s 2008 Religious Freedom in the World. The country’s population is 82 percent Buddhist, 9 percent Christian and 4 percent Muslim, with traditional ethnic, Chinese and Hindu religions accounting for the rest.

The church closure orders may simply be an extension of Burma’s existing religious policies, which elevate Buddhism in an effort to solidify national identity. Burma ranks high on lists of religious and human rights violators at several watch organizations, including the U.S. State Department, Human Rights Watch, Freedom House and Open Doors.

Documents declaring the government’s intention to “stamp out” Christianity have circulated for some time. Rights organization Christian Solidarity Worldwide drew attention to one such document in a 2007 report entitled, “Carrying the Cross: The military regime’s campaign of restriction, discrimination and persecution against Christians in Burma.” The report summarized a 17-point document allegedly produced by an organization affiliated with the Ministry of Religious Affairs entitled, “Program to Destroy the Christian Religion in Burma.”

The first point in this document declared that, “There shall be no home where the Christian religion is practiced.”

A military dictatorship has ruled Burma since 1962. Following the takeover, the government renamed Burma as the Union of Myanmar and the capital city as Yangon, but many news agencies and government bodies continue to use the original names. When elections were held in 1988, with the opposing National League for Democracy clearly in the majority, the generals rejected the popular vote and used brute military force to cement their power throughout Burma. A similar show of force met hundreds of Buddhist monks who initiated mass anti-government protest rallies on the streets of Rangoon in September 2007.

While almost all Burmese citizens suffer under the regime, Christians are often singled out for specific attack or repression because of their perceived connections with the West.

Reports from various mission groups suggest Christianity is flourishing under the regime, but believers must be creative with their worship – particularly in rural areas. In reports confirmed by Compass, Christians in one state began photocopying Bibles to overcome restrictions on religious publications. Others baptized new Christians during the annual water festival, where citizens douse each other with buckets of water, ceremonially washing away the “sins” of the past year.

Heightened Security, Control

Rangoon residents say a much heavier security presence has been evident in the city since early January, when political activists began distributing anti-government leaflets, The Irrawaddy newspaper reported on Jan. 13. The leaflet drops may have contributed to the current crackdown on church gatherings, as generals suspect all organized groups of having a political agenda.

At a graduation of military students in Rangoon on Jan. 9, Vice-Senior Gen. Maung Aye, who is commander-in-chief of the army and deputy commander-in-chief of Defense Services, warned students to steadfastly uphold the country’s “Three Main National Causes” to prevent “recurrences of past bitter experiences.” The causes were listed as non-disintegration of the Union of Myanmar, non-disintegration of national solidarity and perpetuation of sovereignty.

The New Light of Myanmar, a government newspaper, reported the general as saying that, “You will have learned bitter lessons from a number of world events, in which certain States have become weaker … owing to external intervention in their conflicts.”

From The Irrawady

2009-01-27T10:12:00.001-06:00

The Burmese government’s Press Scrutiny and Registration Division (PSRD) censored publication of a major part of US President Barack Obama’s inauguration speech in the Rangoon-based weekly journal The Voice, according to journalists in the former capital.

Sources said that the censorship board decided not to allow the publishing of parts of Obama’s inauguration speech that included sensitive political messages.

A part of the speech that was cut was: “To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”

Burmese inside and outside the country circulated this part of the speech through the Internet and it was widely interpreted as a message to dictators, including Burma’s rulers.

A journalist in Rangoon said that Burma’s censorship board ordered the speech to be removed from the front page of The Voice, but it allowed the journal to publish stories and pictures of Obama in its inside pages.

Burma’s privately owned magazines and journals have widely covered news of Barack Obama since the presidential election campaign began.

According to media sources in Burma, there was originally little harassment or any serious warnings from the notoriously fickle censorship board. But all publications have reportedly been careful not to cover sensitive material about the strained US-Burmese relationship.

Burma’s top military leader, Snr-Gen Than Shwe, formally congratulated the US president on his election victory.

Last week, the Agence-France Presse (AFP) news agency reported that the Burmese junta hopes that the new US president will change Washington's tough policy toward the military regime and end the "misunderstandings" of the past.

“Our two countries' relations have had some misunderstandings in the past with the Bush administration. Mr Obama needs to study our country's real situation so that he can change policy,” a Burmese official reportedly told AFP.

“There have been many mistakes in the past [in relations between the countries]. We have had misunderstandings. But now we are expecting good intentions,” he said. The official also accused former President Bush of making "one-sided" decisions.”

In spite of media restrictions, many people inside Burma watched the live televised coverage of Obama’s inauguration on satellite television.

Rangoon-based media sources said that the PSRD was acting under the instructions of the Ministry of Information. The censorship board did not permit the publishing of articles related to Obama’s speech in other weekly journals, including The Yangon Times and True News.

Black Money Slowed To Trickle

2009-01-24T09:17:00.001-06:00

The black market value of Burma's currency, the kyat, hit a three-year high of nearly 1,000 to the US dollar on Friday, putting a brake on the unofficial cash transfers from abroad known as hundi.

The kyat had been skyrocketing all week, reaching new highs against not only the dollar but also, on Wednesday, the Thai baht (25 kyat), Singapore dollar (714 kyat) and the Chinese yuan (1,639.34), according to hundi services in Bangkok, Singapore and at the Sino-Burmese border.

"We are surprised and shocked,” said one businessman running a hundi service in Bangkok. “Now our service has been halted, and we can’t say when we will restart it. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

The hundi is an underground banking system that uses a network of unofficial currency exchangers and money transmitters in Burma.

The lack of an active and efficient money transaction service run by international and local private financial institutions and untrustworthy government exchange rates cause Burmese expatriates and migrant workers to use the informal services.

Burmese expatriates contacted by The Irrawaddy said they didn’t want to transfer money home at the current rate. Experts said that a fall in remittances from abroad, together with rising unemployment among migrant workers, could have a dire effect on Burma’s rural economy, in which millions of people rely on hundi transfers.

Black market currency dealers, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the illicit nature of their work, said the soaring value of the kyat could not be ascribed to any single reason. The black market rate is linked not only to China's yuan, the US dollar and the price of gold, but also to the volume of border trade.

One observer in Rangoon said the global recession could be a factor because it had resulted in a halt to cross-border trade.

The price of gold in the country is meanwhile falling because of declining demand, according to gold shops in Rangoon. So far this month, the price for a tical of 24 carat gold has dropped from 525,000 kyat to 468,000 kyat. One tical is equal to 0.525 troy ounces.

"Consumers are not buying like before,” said one gold shop owner. “There are more sellers than buyers.”

Burmese Astrologer on Obama

2009-01-20T12:26:00.001-06:00

YANGON: A top astrologer in Myanmar on Monday predicted ahead of Barack Obama’s inauguration that the US president-elect would win another term in office and that he would escape attempts to harm him.

“Obama will be definitely re-elected again. Leos are born to lead others. His card shows the emperor sign,” said San-Zarni Bo, 53, who gives daily predictions on a Myanmar FM radio station.

He said Obama’s birthday on August 4 means “the country will be developed under the leadership of number-four born Obama”.

But he warned that, according to his reading of the stars, there would be “certain assassination attempts” in 2009, 2010 and 2013 but that they would fail because of his birth date and horoscope.

“I can basically say all attempts will fail and be unsuccessful. But how can we say definitely without reading his palm?” he said.

He also warned of potential threats to incoming secretary of state Hillary Clinton.

“According to astrology, the arrow is pointing to Madam Clinton,” he said.

Numerology plays an important role in the daily life of this devoutly Buddhist country, where people turn to astrologers to determine the most auspicious times for weddings, travelling or making business deals.

Asked if Obama would help the people of military-ruled Myanmar – against whose junta Washington has imposed sanctions – San-Zarni Bo said people born on the fourth day of the month “stand on the side of the weak people”.

It will be interesting to see if Mr Obama speaks out for the weak tribal people who profess the Lord Jesus, regardless of what day of the month he was born. The people of Burma need action, not rhetoric and not superstition.

Military Junta Closing Churches

2009-01-16T20:15:00.001-06:00

Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) has received reports of a serious crackdown on churches in Rangoon, the former capital of Burma.

According to the news agency Mizzima, local authorities in Rangoon have ordered at least 100 churches to stop holding worship services. Mizzima also reports that the order could affect as many as 80 per cent of churches in the city, and that 50 pastors were forced to sign at least five documents promising to cease church services. The pastors were reportedly warned they could be jailed if they disobeyed the order.

The campaign appears to be particularly targeted at churches meeting in apartment buildings, rather than churches that own their own building and land. According to a report by the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), officials from the local branch of the Ministry of Religious Affairs summoned the owners of buildings in which churches were meeting, and issued them with an order prohibiting the use of private property for religious purposes. “Christians are worried that they will not be allowed to worship anymore, even in their own house,” said one pastor in a report received by CSW.

One pastor in Rangoon, who cannot be named for security reasons, claimed in a report received by CSW that several churches have now been locked and sealed, including three churches in South Dagon Township: the Evangelical Baptist Church, the Karen Baptist Church and the Dagon Joshua Church. An eyewitness said that in one church, the pastor presented his Legal Registration Certificate provided by the Ministry of Religious Affairs to the authorities when they came to inform him of the new order. In response, officials told him his registration certificate had been withdrawn.

Some Christians believe that the immediate cause of the crackdown is church involvement in providing relief for victims of Cyclone Nargis, which devastated the area in May 2008. According to Shwekey Hoipang, a Chin pastor from Burma living in exile, the regime does not like the fact that Buddhists have been receiving help from churches, and fears this may possibly result in conversions. “The regime does not want Buddhists coming in and out of churches. It does not want Christianity to grow in Burma,” said Shwekey Hoipang. “Ultimately, the regime seeks the destruction of Christianity. This is part of a top-secret plan by the military to stop Christian growth.”

Burma is categorised as a ‘Country of Particular Concern’ by the US State Department, for its violations of religious freedom. In 2007, CSW published a report, Carrying the Cross: The military regime’s campaign of restriction, discrimination and persecution against Christians in Burma, which revealed a 17-point document allegedly from an organisation affiliated to the Ministry of Religious Affairs, titled “Programme to Destroy the Christian religion in Burma”. The first point states: “There shall be no home where the Christian religion is practised.”

Benedict Rogers, East Asia Team Leader at CSW and author of Carrying the Cross said: “There is no doubt that the regime is hostile to minority religions in Burma, particularly Christianity and Islam, and seeks to restrict and suppress them. This recent crackdown is an extremely worrying development and a serious violation of religious freedom. We urge the UN Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Religion and Belief, and the US Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, to put pressure on the Burmese junta to end these violations and to permit churches and other religious institutions to operate freely, in accordance with internationally-accepted norms of religious freedom.”

CSW is a human rights organisation which specialises in religious freedom, works on behalf of those persecuted for their Christian beliefs and promotes religious liberty for all.

Aung Shwe: Hope is totally lacking.

2009-01-05T10:26:00.001-06:00

Associated Press: Myanmar's pro-democracy party marked the 61st anniversary of the country's independence from Great Britain on Sunday, saying it foresaw no hope for the military-ruled country.

At a ceremony inside the dilapidated headquarters of the opposition National League for Democracy, its chairman Aung Shwe also called for the release of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi and other party leaders.

Suu Kyi _ who has been under house arrest for more than 13 of the past 19 years _ put up a banner at the gate of her home quoting a speech her father, independence hero Gen. Aung San, had once given: 'Act decisively in the interest of the nation and the people.'

In a speech to about 250 party members and diplomats, Aung Shwe said that national unity is in disarray and that there is 'no harmony between the government and the governed.'

'Hope for the present and future of the country is totally lacking,' Aung Shwe said.

Myanmar gained independence from Britain on Jan. 4, 1948, after more than 120 years of colonial rule. It has been under harsh military rule since 1962.

Meanwhile, the leader of the military junta Senior Gen. Than Shwe warned that 'neocolonialists' were interfering in domestic affairs and inciting riots to undermine unity and stability.

'Neocolonialists' normally refers to Western nations that have been sharply critical of the regime's human rights record and brutal crackdowns on any protests.

The current junta emerged in 1988 after violently suppressing mass pro-democracy protests. It held a general election in 1990, but refused to recognize the results after a landslide victory by Suu Kyi's party.

Activists calling for release of Suu Kyi arrested

2008-12-30T16:04:00.001-06:00

December 30, 2008

Nine activists were arrested in Myanmar's commercial capital Tuesday during a march calling for the release of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, witnesses said.

The eight men and one woman from Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party were grabbed and shoved into waiting trucks by plainclothes police officers outside the old parliament building in Yangon, witnesses said on condition of anonymity because of fear of government retribution.

The protesters started their march at the party's headquarters and walked silently along Yangon's main road for about 30 minutes before they were detained, witnesses said. Some carried a banner calling for Suu Kyi's release.

It was not immediately clear where the NLD members were taken.

NLD spokesman Nyan Win said he heard that female party member Htet Htet Oo Wei was among those who marched but he could not confirm her arrest.

Htet Htet Oo Wei has been arrested several times in the past and was detained for about a month in May after she and nearly 20 party members marched from party headquarters to Suu Kyi's house.

Suu Kyi _ the face of Myanmar's beleaguered opposition _ has been detained continuously since May 2003 despite a worldwide campaign calling on the country's military rulers to release her. Her house arrest was extended for another year in May.

Myanmar has been under military rule since 1962. The current junta came to power in 1988 after crushing a nationwide pro-democracy uprising.

It held elections in 1990 but refused to honor the results after Suu Kyi's party won a landslide victory. Since then, it has drafted a constitution that voters approved in May. It paves the way for elections in 2010.

Critics have dismissed the junta's democratic road map, saying it is little more than a veiled effort by the generals to remain the dominant force in politics.

From Associated Press release.

Mizzima Specializes in Burma-related News

2008-12-24T08:16:00.001-06:00

New Delhi (Mizzima) – An unidentified gunman on Saturday shot dead an Indian from Manipur at his rented house in Kalemyo town of North-western Burma, police said.

The Manipuri, who had reportedly rented a house near St. Mary's Catholic Church in Pinlong ward of Kalemyo Town, was shot dead on December 19, at about 6:45 p.m., according to the police.
"It is true that a Manipuri [Indian] was shot dead on Saturday," a police officer at the Kalemyo police station in Sagaing division told Mizzima.

But the officer declined to give further details of the killing.
"We heard that a gunman shot him through the open window and fled on a motorcycle. The bullet hit him on the chest and he died," a local resident of the ward said.

Neighbours of the Manipuri (Indian) man said, he had reportedly moved into his rented house about three months ago, but with little contact with him, they failed to give details about his occupation, name and his stay and its legal status.

A source living in the same ward told Mizzima that the Manipuri man was a member of an insurgent group fighting against Indian authorities but was based in Burma.

The source, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal, said the Manipuri man was set up in Kalemyo by an armed outfit in Manipur as a liaison person to deal with Burmese military officers and as a representative to purchase arms and ammunitions.

The source claimed that the Manipuri man was able to rent a house and stay in Kalemyo because of his connection with the Burmese Army, which has provided several Indian insurgent groups a safe haven in Burma.

Another source involved in arms smuggling across the international boundary said, most of the North-eastern Indian insurgents rely on Burma for supply of arms and ammunition. Earlier, the insurgents would wait for smugglers, who used Burma as a route to bring arms and ammunition up to the Indo-Burma border and purchase it.

But since early 2002, the source said, Manipuri insurgents are seen frequenting Mandalay, Burma's second largest city that connects China's border town of Ruili, and smugglers no longer need to supply arms.

"There are a lot of Manipuri insurgents residing in Burma's border towns like Tamu and Kalemyo. They are liaison persons who deal with Burmese Army officials and the key person to strike deals for arms," the source added.

A former arms smuggler, speaking to Mizzima on condition of anonymity said, "Some insurgent officers even marry local Burmese women and establish business in smuggling of arms and ammunitions."

He said, with a Chinese made AK-47 costing only about 1.5 million Kyat (Approximately USD 1100) in Kalemyo, it is a lucrative business as it can be sold off at an estimated Rs. 200,000 to insurgents on the Indo-Burma border. Currently, an Indian rupee is worth 25 Kyat.
Earlier, in 2005 and 2006, Mizzima's sources said that Manipuri insurgents were able to live in nearby forests in Tamu Township. But sources added many Indian insurgents are now seen in places as far as Kalemyo.

While Tamu Township is in the immediate border of India's Moreh town of Manipur state, Kalemyo is about 100 miles east of Tamu town and has a military brigade based in the town. It is also well connected with the rest of Burma including Mandalay and Rangoon through roadways as well as by flights.

19 North Korean Defectors Arrested in Myanmar

2008-12-23T09:42:00.001-06:00

According to the International Herald Tribune Myanmar authorities arrested 19 North Korean defectors in a town near the border with Thailand, a government official said Saturday.

The arrests were made two weeks ago in Tachilek, a border town about 340 miles (550 kilometers) northeast of Yangon, the country's largest city, the official said on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

The detainees, including children and elderly women, will likely be tried for illegally entering the country, the official said.

"North Korean defectors usually travel though China to countries such as Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand" before making their way to South Korea, said a diplomat from the South Korean embassy, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing protocol.

The detainees could face two to three years in prison if they are charged with illegal entry, he said, adding that a request by the embassy to visit them has not been granted.

Thousands of people have fled North Korea in recent years, citing hunger and harsh political oppression. Many escape taking a risky land journey through China to Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries before seeking asylum in South Korea, which is home to nearly 14,000 North Korean defectors.

Myanmar severed relations with North Korea in 1983 following a bombing in Yangon by North Korean secret agents targeting former South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan. He was unhurt, but 21 people were killed.

The two countries have been quietly working to normalize relations for the past few years, and agreed to resume diplomatic ties in April 2007.

Myanmar Government Cancels 84 Tourism Shops

2008-12-19T17:40:00.001-06:00

Chiang Mai, Thailand - Eighty four tour and travel companies have been stripped off of their license by Burma’s directorate of Hotels and Tourism for failing to renew their license, officials said.

An official from the office the directorate of Hotels and Tourism told Mizzima that the license of the tour companies, which have been operating for two years, were cancelled as they failed to renew their license.

“Those that have been stripped off their license do not include popular tour companies. These companies are the ones that failed to report for more than two years, and defaulted in paying taxes,” the official at the directorate office of Hotels and tourism in Naypyitaw, Burma’s new capital, said.

The 84 tour companies are smaller operators among the over 500 tour companies operating in Burma.

“We issue a license for two years, and tour companies are required to renew them after two years. We can still accept it with a late fine for about six months. But these companies have disappeared for years. For some we don’t even know the addresses anymore,” the official added.

Sources in the tour industry said, the companies include a firm with foreign investments, and 20 companies that collaborate with foreign investors, while the rest are owned by local Burmese tour operators.

Tour companies in Burma have experienced a boom since mid-1990s, with the country receiving large numbers of foreign tourists. The lucrative business attracted private tour operators who rushed to apply for licenses and have effectively conducted tour operations.

However, the tourism industry suffered a jolt following the September 2007 monk-led protests, and smaller companies faced difficult times. Besides, more and more tourists avoided visiting Burma, when in May the ruling junta responded poorly to a natural disaster - Cyclone Nargis - that swept through Burma’s coastal divisions of Rangoon and Irrawaddy.

Following the devastation by the cyclone, the junta’s referendum on a draft constitution in May 2008, and the September 2007 mass protests, several private tour companies and smaller agencies folded up as the tourism business slid into doldrums.

An official of a Rangoon based Tour Company said, “Most of the tour companies that were stripped of their license are smaller companies that had rushed in when tourism boomed. It does not include those that are still actively doing business.”

“For those continuing in business, even if tourism is not doing as well as earlier, they are still able to survive and have not come to a point where they have to shut down operations,” the official added.

Chin Will Not Accept 2010 Election

2008-12-15T20:03:00.001-06:00

The ethnic rebel group Chin National Front announced today they will not accept the junta’s planned general election scheduled for 2010.

The CNF passed the resolution during their Fourth Congress held on the Indo-Burma border from the 8th to the 13th of this month, according to the organization.

“We are facing real challenges in politics now. There may be changes too. So it is very important to us regarding how to respond to the 2010 election. We would like state our position on the election to the people in advance,” CNF General Secretary Paul Sitha told Mizzima.

The Congress also urged the Chin people to fulfill their wills and desires if they wish to compete in the election either through the establishment of a political party or as individuals.

The CNF said they do not accept the junta’s political roadmap and want only to pursue progress via the tripartite dialogue, which comprises various ethnic representatives and democratic forces in addition to the junta.

“We shall continue our protest against the SPDC’s [Burmese military government’s] roadmap. Especially I’d like to urge other opposition forces to join with us in this protest,” Paul Sitha said.

Before the backdrop of an exodus of many Chin nationals due to unjust restrictions, repressions and violations of fundamental rights by the junta, the CNF believes the Chin are faced with a national security crisis which must be resolved collectively by all ethnic Chin people at home and abroad, says the resolution.

The CNF, which is struggling for the establishment of a genuine federal union based on self-determination and equality for all ethnic people, was founded in May 1988 and maintains an armed wing called the Chin National Army which is based in the jungle on the Indo-Burma border.

The Congress also elected 13 members to the Central Committee, including Chairman Zing Cung, Vice-Chairman (1) Thomas Thangnou, Vice-Chairman (2) Thang Yen and General Secretary Paul Sitha.

The CNF convenes a Congress once every five years.

So Far Just Literature

2008-07-19T11:51:00.001-05:00

Members of Burma’s battered and disparate opposition are growing disillusioned with the old methods of the pro-democracy movement and are seeking ways to escalate their armed struggle.

“There is a very real debate among us about how to begin a more sustained armed struggle,” an organizer of last September’s failed uprising told the Guardian. “We are ready for that kind of action, if we can get the supplies and training that we need.”

Speaking from exile in Thailand, Soe Aung, the chief spokesman for the National Council of the Union of Burma (NCUB), an umbrella group representing nearly all facets of Burma’s disparate opposition, said he was witnessing a significant shift in the public attitude across Burma.

“After the September uprising and then the terrible cyclone response, the anger is surging. Some are considering violent means … the Burmese people are not that kind of people, there has been a real change.”

Soe Aung spoke openly of how covert Western support, primarily from the US state department-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its subsidiary the International Republican Institute (IRI), had been fundamental to the success of the uprising.

“The US is certainly doing the most for the opposition. There has been real success in training and forming an underground movement through religious organizations and monastic organizations. These provide the best cover inside Burma. The monks can spread their training very effectively.”

The NED describes itself as a private organization but was created by, and remains accountable to, the US Congress. Set up under the Reagan administration in 1983, it has since played a leading role in influencing civil society and electoral processes in countries around the world unfriendly to US interests.

According to Brian Joseph, the man in charge of the group’s Burma project, the NED gave $3million to Burma in 2007. “We would send more, but there is a limit to what you can do in Burma,” said Joseph.

Opposition activists both inside and outside Burma largely describe the improvements in political awareness and spread of information as a result of NED-funded projects, but also attribute them to the introduction of the internet to Burma in 2003.

“We could see in September how the advances were utilized. It wasn’t just the monks but a massive increase of awareness among Burmese of all types. This was thanks largely due to media organs, the Democratic Voice of Burma, satellite TV, and, of course, the internet,” said Soe Aung.

REB

Press Release: National Council of the Union of Burma

2008-07-16T12:00:00.001-05:00

The democratic movement of Burma will be challenging the credentials of the Burmese military junta at the 2008 United Nations General Assembly session and object to its right to represent Burma at the United Nations. Since the endeavor is aimed at prompting reforms in the country as well as protecting the people of Burma from the ruthless suppression of the junta, we call upon the nations of the world to cooperate with us and to extend their active support for the effort.

For decades, the people of Burma have been peacefully endeavoring for political reforms in the country but the successive military regimes been resorting to murder, intimidation, and oppression to overcome these endeavors and maintain their power through brute force. The State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), formerly known as the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), is commonly recognized to be one of the most repressive and secretive governments in the world. The SPDC refused to honor the results of the last legitimate elections in 1990, when Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won 80% of Parliamentary seats. Despite years of work by activists from both inside and outside Burma, efforts to foster a peaceful negotiated transition to a democratic civilian government have made little headway. To date, the junta's leadership has failed to honor any promises made with respect to democratic change and has instead increased measures to silence pro-democracy groups.

Over the last year, the international community has witnessed numerous demonstrations of the brutal and callous tactics the SPDC uses to maintain power, including the ruthless crackdown on peaceful monks and citizens calling for democratic reform in the Saffron Revolution; the disregard for human suffering in refusing international assistance following Cyclone Nargis; the illegal extension of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's confinement; and the fraudulent constitutional referendum conducted just days after Cyclone Nargis, even before the government assessed the damage from the storm. The injustice of these latest crimes is compounded when viewed in light of the junta's past atrocities, such as its violent repression of 1988 protests, its refusal to honor the 1990 elections, and its murder of NLD members in the 2003 Depayin massacre.

The most fundamental principle of democracy is that sovereignty rests with the people. Although the military junta has brutally oppressed the Burmese people and scoffed at the requests and demands of the international community, United Nations Member States have continued to extend the junta the privilege of illegally representing the people of Burma at the United Nations. Because the SPDC does not and cannot legitimately represent the state or people of Burma, it is now time to revoke its privilege of representing Burma to the United Nations.

The pro-democracy movement for Burma, united in coalition throughout the world, calls upon the Member States of the United Nations to stand up for the principles of democracy and human rights and reject the credentials of the SPDC's delegation to the United Nations during the upcoming session of the General Assembly.

Explosion July 1st

2008-07-01T15:39:00.002-05:00

[Gleaned From Wire Services]

An explosion at dawn Tuesday rocked the office of a government-backed social welfare group whose members have been accused in attacks against Myanmar’s pro-democracy opposition, witnesses said. The witnesses, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of official reprisal, said the blast occurred at the office of Union Solidarity and Development Association office in the northern Yangon suburb of Shwepyithar. I have done a good bit of teaching in this industrial suburb. No casualties were reported.

Residents in Shwepyithar said riot police and security officials swarmed into the area after the explosion.

No further details were immediately available, and there were no immediate claims of responsibility. The government has not blamed any group for the bombing.

The USDA, a social welfare organization which was formed 15 years ago , claims to have more than 23 million members out of a national population of 57 million. Its members often have been accused of involvement in attacks against supporters of the pro-democracy opposition.

The organization, headed by junta chairman Senior Gen. Than Shwe, is to be transformed into a political party when general elections are held in 2010. Currently, the USDA is engaged in a wide range of social activities, from organizing health treatment in rural areas to planting trees.

The last explosion in Yangon, the country’s largest city, occurred in April when two bombs damaged some parked cars but caused no casualties.

The government often blames such attacks on anti-government dissident groups and separate ethnic rebels seeking autonomy.

Terrorism is rare but not unknown in Myanmar, which has been under military rule since 1962.

In 1990, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s party won a general election but was not allowed to take power by the military, which continues to tightly control the country.

Suu Kyi, who is currently under house arrest, has been in detention without trial for more than 12 of the past 18 years.

REB

From Irrawaddy

2008-06-28T18:02:00.001-05:00

There have been persistent but unconfirmed reports that Gen Thura Shwe Mann, 60, will take over the powerful position of commander in chief in the near future.

Expectations were renewed after a major reshuffle in the armed forces last week. Several heads rolled within the bureaus of special operations and new regional commanders were appointed.

Speculation is rife that the junta leaders and their closest allies are already preparing for the 2010 election and beyond.

As for Than Shwe, he will not be stepping down just yet. However, he will be considering which of his two most trusted generals will ultimately succeed him as head of the armed forces—either Thura Shwe Mann or Lt-Gen Myint Swe.

Shwe Mann has been with Burma’s defense ministry since 2001 and many of his peers believe he is being groomed to fill the top spot as commander in chief, a position currently held by Than Shwe.

At present, Shwe Mann is the No 3 man in the military hierarchy and holds the title of joint chief of staff. But reports suggest that senior army leaders who were former heads of the Bureau of Special Operations have resisted his command.

However, those around him tread carefully; Shwe Mann is considered to be one of Than Shwe’s protégés.

Graduating from the Defense Services Academy’s Intake 11 in 1969, Shwe Mann rose steadily through the ranks of the officers’ corps, becoming a major in 1988. What involvement he had in the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protestors that year remains unknown.

Shwe Mann earned the title “Thura,” meaning “bravery,” during offensive operations against the Karen National Liberation Army in 1989.

In 1991, he served as a tactical operations commander for Light Infantry Division (LID) 66, based in Prome, northern Bago Division.

By 1996, he had been promoted to brigadier-general and was appointed to oversee security in Rangoon as commander of the elite LID 11 based in Htauk Kyant, about 20 miles (32 km) west of the former capital.

One year later Shwe Mann got his big break. He was posted to Irrawaddy Division as commander of the Southwest Military Region as well as joining the fraternity as a de facto member of the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). Traditionally, most senior leaders, including Than Shwe, are posted in the delta before becoming head of the armed forces.

After serving three years in the delta, Shwe Mann was promoted to major-general and became a permanent member of the SPDC. He was transferred to the defense ministry where he assumed the prestigious position of joint chief of staff, permitting him an oversight of all commanders from the army, navy and air force.

The following year, he was awarded the newly minted position of Tatmadaw Nyi Hnying Kutkae Yay Hmu or Coordiantor of Special Operations, Army, Navy and Airforce, a lofty title, from where he could also keep an eye on the country’s bureaus of special operations.

In 2003, Shwe Mann was awarded his fourth star, reaching the rank of general.

Interestingly, very little has been heard from or about him in Burma’s official press since his attachment to the defense ministry.

Shwe Mann appears to shun the spotlight and rarely speaks in public. The one notable time he did make a public speech was when former premier Gen Khin Nyunt and his intelligence apparatus were purged from power in 2004.

“In the military everybody is liable for their failure to abide by the law. Nobody is above the law,” he told a gathering of businesspeople.

Burma’s aging military leadership is constantly searching for a young and trustworthy young gun to lead the country once they relinquish power. And the choice will not be Vice Snr-Gen Maung Aye, the current No 2, who is reportedly out of favor with Than Shwe.

Maung Aye, currently army chief and simultaneously deputy commander in chief of the armed forces is senior to Shwe Mann and a power struggle seems inevitable.

Observers speculate about how much real authority Shwe Mann really has. He runs day-to-day military affairs in the Ministry of Defense, but is allegedly bypassing Maung Aye and reporting directly to Than Shwe. In any case, if Maung Aye opposes promotion, it is unlikely Shwe Mann will reach the top post anytime soon.

Shwe Mann has a reputation of being down to earth and seems to have earned considerable respect among Burma’s foot soldiers, particularly those who served directly under his command.

He and his wife are also close to Than Shwe’s family on a personal basis, flying together on occasion to Singapore for shopping trips.

Like most of Burma’s top military leaders, Shwe Mann generally avoids talking about pro-democracy icon and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Some observers believe that he has specific reasons for avoiding the topic. He is certainly cautious not to attack her publicly.

In fact, Shwe Mann has not yet shown his hand with regard to a broad range of social, economic and political issues. His vision for Burma’s future is quietly unclear.

He has been quoted as saying, however, that the country’s future leaders must have in-depth knowledge in two specific areas—gems and rice.

This belief would appear to bear the hallmarks of self-interest though, as his family is involved in rice exporting, or at least they were before the cyclone struck.

Rumored to be taking steps to modernize Burma’s antiquated rice mills to improve export production, Shwe Mann and his son, Aung Thet Mann, enjoy a close working relationship with junta business crony Tay Za.

Aung Thet Mann is a director at Ayer Shwe Wah, which in 2005 became the first private company to be allowed to export rice to Bangladesh and Singapore. The company is part of Tay Za’s Htoo Trading Company and both companies and their directors are on the US sanctions list.

In 2000, the government presented Ayer Shwe Wah with more than 30,000 acres of wetlands and rice paddy in the Irrawaddy delta region. The company also received lucrative government contracts to supply fertilizers to farmers throughout the delta and is involved in construction projects in the new administrative capital, Naypyidaw.

During the early days of the cyclone crisis, the Shwe Mann camp leaked news that he supported more international cooperation, more aid and more UN assistance. However, he was apparently stonewalled by hardliners Than Shwe and Maung Aye.

As a leader, Shwe Mann would listen and look toward economic reform, some businessmen in Rangoon have said.

There’s no doubt that if Shwe Mann rises to become commander in chief of the armed forces, many of his associates and Burmese businessmen would welcome the move. In fact, they are banking on him.

REB

Finally - UN Visas Approved

2008-05-29T08:35:00.001-05:00

Myanmar's military rulers have approved visas for dozens of international relief workers and were allowing more foreigners into areas devastated by a cyclone that left millions in need of aid, the United Nations said Thursday.

It was an apparent sign that the isolationist regime planned to keep its promise to allow in humanitarian workers from all countries and give them access to the Irrawaddy delta, which took the brunt of the cyclone that landed May 2.

The last 45 pending visas were granted to U.N. staffers, while Save the Children, Doctors Without Borders and the U.N. Children's Fund have sent more than 14 workers in recent days into the delta region, a U.N. statement said.

Japan, which has so far donated $13 million in aid, sent a 23-member medical team to the country Thursday, the Foreign Ministry said in Tokyo.

"I went to some areas where no international relief personnel had been to, and the priorities for these people are food and shelter. We're going to be working very hard to deliver these items to them," Tony Banbury, regional head of the U.N. World Food Program, told AP Television News Thursday.

The storm left an estimated 2.4 million people in desperate need of food, shelter and medical care, according to the U.N. Myanmar's government says the cyclone killed 78,000 people and left 56,000 missing.

Myanmar's leaders are leery of foreign aid workers and international agencies, worrying they could weaken the junta's grip on power. The generals also don't want their people to see aid coming directly from countries like the U.S. that the junta has long treated as a hostile power.

They only allowed foreign aid workers in after U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met with junta leader Senior Gen. Than Shwe last weekend.

But state-run media took a swipe at the foreign aid on Thursday, saying that people in the delta could survive on "fresh vegetables that grow wild in the fields and on protein-rich fish from the rivers" if they could not get "bars of chocolate donated by the international community."

Commentary in the Myanma Ahlin newspaper said that while the country welcomed international aid, "Myanmar people are self-reliant and can stand on their own without foreign assistance."

While not naming the agency, the article slammed a monetary institution, saying its refusal to extend loans or financial aid to cyclone victims was "an act of inhumanity."

While garnering some praise for opening up to the international aid community, global powers have voiced outrage at a decision by the government to extend the detention of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi just days after donors pledged large sums of money to help the cyclone victims.

Several countries, including the United States, Britain and France, issued biting statements about the regime's order to keep the Nobel peace laureate under house arrest for a sixth year.

"This measure testifies to the junta's absence of will to cooperate with the international community," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said in a statement.

He called on Myanmar's government to "free without delay" Suu Kyi and other political prisoners and opposition members being held. Suu Kyi has been held for more than 12 of the past 18 years, becoming a symbol of the junta's intolerance of dissent.

Many nations critical of Myanmar's abuses had put politics aside to help survivors of Cyclone Nargis. Representatives from 50 nations pledged up to $150 million Sunday, while remaining quiet about Suu Kyi's plight.

The regime considers its biggest threat to be Suu Kyi, daughter of the country's martyred independence leader, Gen. Aung San. She was awarded her Nobel prize in 1991 for her nonviolent attempts at promoting democracy and is widely popular.

Under Myanmar law, people deemed security threats can be detained for a maximum of five years without trial. The regime has not officially announced its decision to extend Suu Kyi's detention or explain why it is violating its own law. An official confirmed the extension, but insisted on not being quoted by name because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Chris Beyrer in the Boston Globe Calls For Intervention

2008-05-21T07:47:00.001-05:00

THE UNITED NATIONS estimates that more than 100,000 people may have been killed in the devastating cyclone in Burma and that some 220,000 are reported missing. But approaching three weeks after the storm, some 75 percent of the 3 million or more severely affected have yet to receive any food, water, shelter, medication for the sick, or means of escape from flooded regions. The Burmese junta has denied access for the delivery of humanitarian aid to all but a handful of outsiders.

France Calls UN "Cowards" Says Junta Guilty of Crimes Against Humanity

2008-05-19T15:34:00.003-05:00

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Monday countries on the U.N. Security Council that did not agree to pressure Myanmar into opening its doors to foreign aid were guilty of “cowardice”.

France has tried unsuccessfully to convince the Council that Myanmar’s military rulers should let aid reach the victims of Cyclone Nargis under a “responsibility to protect” principle recognised in a 2005 U.N. resolution on armed conflicts.

China, Russia, Vietnam and South Africa have opposed Council involvement in what they say is a humanitarian, not a political issue.

“We denounce the impending death of thousands more civilians, and we are accused of meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign state,” Kouchner, who founded medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, said in an opinion piece in newspaper Le Monde.

Kouchner recognised that a U.N. resolution enshrining the “responsibility to protect” was only passed with armed conflicts in mind, and therefore did not apply to Myanmar, where the cyclone hit two weeks ago, leaving 134,000 dead and missing.

Instead he cited a 1988 resolution which states that leaving the victims of natural disasters without humanitarian assistance “constitutes a threat to human life and an offence to human dignity” and invites states in need of help to facilitate the work of aid groups.

“This is indeed a fundamental human right,” Kouchner said.

“International policy, the morality of extreme emergency demand that it be respected. The member states of the Security Council could only shy away from it at the cost of cowardice,” he added.

Kouchner’s comments were written before the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) said on Monday Myanmar would accept medical workers from southeast Asian countries and was ready to accept international aid agencies.

Humanitarian agencies say the death toll of Nargis, one of the most devastating cyclones to hit Asia, could soar without a massive increase of emergency food, water shelter and medicine to the worst-hit region, the Irrawaddy Delta.

France has sent a warship with around 1,000 tonnes of humanitarian equipment to the waters off the delta, but it has not received permission from the junta to deliver the aid.

Myanmar’s U.N. envoy accused France on Friday of sending a “warship,” a charge the French ambassador denied. France has said the junta is on the verge of a “crime against humanity”.

What Is Happening To The Aid?

2008-05-13T16:06:00.002-05:00

According to many sources inside Burma, what little aid is being allowed into the country is being confiscated by the generals and then some portion of it is either being sold to the people at outlandishly inflated prices or an inferior substitute is being put in its place while the original aid is kept for the generals and their families or those loyal to them.

A Rangoon resident said military trucks had come to Nyaungpinlay market in the city to sell instant noodle packets, but no one had bought them. In Bogalay, you can buy raincoats donated by the UN, as many as you like for 8000 [kyat]. Rolls of tarpaulin can be bought in Bogalay’s Chinatown for 100,000 a roll. Merchants bought all 100 rolls straight away,” he said.

“A shopkeeper who sold food to refugees in Bogalay on 4 May asked soldiers from Battalion 66 to help her keep order, but the soldiers took away all her merchandise and did not return it,” he went on. “Soldiers also took away all the goods from a boat that docked in Bogalay harbour after the storm and then sold them in the market four or five days later.”

National League for Democracy spokesperson U Nyan Win said party members had seen foreign relief supplies on sale in a Rangoon market. “Our storm relief committee went to buy quite a lot of towels from Mingalar market to donate them to refugees,” he said.

“When we looked at them back in the office, they were labeled ‘WFP’ and had a Japanese flag in the middle with ‘Donated by the people of Japan’ written underneath.” Nyan Win stressed the government’s duty to ensure relief supplies get to the people who need them most.

It is a hard thing to say that we should not make donations in such an emergency. But we certainly should not make donations through the usual channels. Why? Because it only further empowers the thugs who currently hold the lives of millions in their greedy fists.

If we make contributions it should be through established NGOs that are already on the ground in Myanmar with a proven track record of getting aid to people in distress.

REB

Finally, Some Good News

2008-05-09T16:55:00.001-05:00

While the UN, Red Cross, and others are having a terrible time getting into the nation of Burma because of the recalcitrance of the military junta, World Vision has already begun distributing things necessary for survival.

If you would like to make a difference, there is an organization that is already in Myanmar on the ground. They can give genuine help rather than simply further lining the pockets of the Tatmadaw.

Click Here. In just the last few days, they've distributed over 38 tons of rice and 4,500 gallons of fresh water, making a life-or-death difference for over 100,000 people.

P.S. In addition to a one-time gift, the most powerful way you can help is by sponsoring a child in need in Myanmar. There are children waiting for a sponsor like you — especially now. Please prayerfully consider becoming a Myanmar child sponsor today.

World Vision is a Christian humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children, families and their communities worldwide to reach their full potential by tackling the root causes of poverty and injustice.

REB

When Beggars Can Be Choosers

2008-05-09T14:39:00.001-05:00

The UN finally reached the end of its rope with the Burmese generals who are holding their nation hostage in the midst of a humanitarian crisis that is getting worse with each passing hour. On Friday the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) suspended aid to cyclone-devastated Myanmar (Burma) after the generals stole the food and disaster relief materials sent there by the UN. The WFP referred to the action of the military in Myanmar as "unprecedented."

WFP officials said they have “no choice” but to suspend their aid efforts following the unprecedented seizure by the secretive military government.

According to Irrawaddy, "Meanwhile, the regime’s TV is spending large amounts of time broadcasting 'vote yes' propaganda on the constitutional referendum on Saturday. Well-known singers and actors were shown in one spot dancing and singing while urging people to vote yes.”

Where is the outrage?

Meanwhile the same thugs who supported the generals back in October by clubbing and mugging the monks are now doing the same with relief workers who have not been hand-picked by Than Shwe.

Again, according to the Irrawaddy newspaper, "A convoy of vehicles carrying rice to cyclone victims in Rangoon’s Thanlyin Township was attacked on Thursday by armed members of Swan-Ar-Shin, a government-supported organization that helped suppress last September’s demonstrations, one Rangoon source reported. The attackers were armed with clubs and knives, the source said."

One NGO worker said permission had to be obtained from another pro-government organization, the Union Solidarity and Development Association [USDA], before relief supplies could be delivered.

REB

We Should Be Angry!

2008-05-09T08:44:00.005-05:00

The last time I was in Myanmar, the kind folks of that country were not being allowed to read this blog. The government has determined that it is not in the best interests of the regime there for folks to read this. So, along with pornography, the government censors such things as the internet and the free distribution of ideas.

There is an unelected "government" in Burma that, having usurped power from the elected government, is afraid of its own people. They are afraid of what people will think of them if they hear anything other than the official version of the truth. We should therefore not be surprised -- saddened, yes, but not surprised -- when we learn that the military government of Burma is now keeping food and other aid from its own citizens. Why? The only reason that one can give with these men is that it would make them look weaker in the eyes of their own citizens and would strengthen the resolve of the Burmese people to look elsewhere than their military for relief from the oppression of such calamities as Nargis.

But if the people see their own government for the cowards and weaklings that they are (weaklings with guns are still quite formidable, as the monks found out last October), then they will look to other options than keeping the Tatmadaw and Nasakha. The military disarmed most opposition groups during the 1960s and 70s. Now they are keeping food from those disarmed citizens.

Whatever else one may think of the UN or its World Food Programme, it is necessary to realize that there was a lot of high-energy food left sitting on the tarmac at Yangon's Mingaladon airport. But it was not the UN's fault. The Tatmadaw does not want anyone else but their own members handing out the food. This is because they would lose face in the eyes of the people. The opinion of the people is therefore more important to the military junta of Burma than are the lives of the people.

When does a government quit being the "powers ordained of God" and show itself to be simply an occupying force of thugs intent upon stealing the food and lives of the people? When it shoots its own citizens and religious leaders? When those being shot have done nothing more than peacefully present their own opinions in the public square? How about when it starves its own citizens?

General Than Shwe lavished presents on his daughter Thandar at her recent wedding -- gifts estimated by some to be worth over 25 million British pounds. But when it comes to allowing others to give presents to his people so they can survive, he shows himself to be far less generous. Nero reportedly fiddled while Rome burned. Whether that story is true, it surely is the case that Than Shwe is fiddling while Myanmar drowns and starves. Next the disease will begin. Cholera and Typhoid will begin running through the area where the dead bodies lie. The military junta of Burma have little public health understanding even when there is not a disaster. The death toll will mount...while Than Shwe fiddles.

What can happen? ASEAN can cut off ties to the junta; China can refuse any further aid to the generals (most of their aid is military -- the last thing the Burmese people need right now); the UN can insist that either aid will be distributed or the ruling junta of Myanmar will no longer be recognized as the rightful government of Burma.

REB

2008-05-08T09:56:00.001-05:00

Information on Cyclone Nargis has been posted daily since the fourth at my other blog:

http://fbpminister.wordpress.com

REB

2008-02-26T16:18:00.003-06:00

The Following Compiled By The Aquila Project

Last fall, monks, students, and citizens took to the streets to protest the brutal military regime in Burma (Myanamr).

Listed below is some information that has been gathered regarding what is now called the ‘Saffron Revolution’.

Saffron Revolution in Numbers(From Asia Pacific People’s Partnership on Burma (APPPB)

In total there have been 227 protests openly defying the military regime.

On September 24 alone, over 1,000,000 people took to the streets in 26 cities and towns across Burma, marching for freedom and a better life. (1)

In total, demonstrations have taken place in 66 cities across the country in all 7 states and all 7 divisions. (2)

So far an estimated 3000 protesters have been detained. This includes at least 1,400 monks and nuns. (3)

On August 21, 13 leaders of the 88 Generation Students Group were arrested. On average, they have already spent 30% of their life behind bars.

In the bloody crackdown that began on September 26, more than 200 people have been killed. (4) The ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) only claims that 9 have been killed.

In the crackdown, 1 Japanese journalist was killed, at least 5 other journalists were
arrested and 10 were injured or harassed. (5)

Before August 21, there were 1158 political prisoners in Burmese prisons. (6)

At least 1,000 people have been disappeared during the Saffron Revolution. (7)

At 11am on September 28, the SPDC shut down the country’s only public web server. This prevented Burmese people from getting urgent messages to the world.

The protests started after the SPDC increased the price of fuel by as much as 500%
90% of families in Burma live near or at the poverty line ($1 US a day). (8)

1 Forum for Democracy in Burma (FDB) estimate
2 FDB estimates.
3 Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) estimate
4 DVB estimate
5 Reporters Sains Frontiers (RSF) (30 September 07), ‘At least five journalists arrested in Rangoon,including Japanese daily’s correspondent’,
6 AAPP
7 AAPP
8 United Nations Survey

2008-02-26T11:01:00.000-06:00

New Daily Newspaper For Myanmar?

The publisher of the weekly Myanmar Times newspaper, Myanmar Consolidated Media Company, is to publish a daily newspaper from May this year, according to one of the company’s employees.

The Myanmar Times employee said a printing workshop for the daily newspaper is now being set up in Rangoon’s New South Dagon township with technicians from Australia, and a training process for reporters has been developed.

A journalist in Rangoon said the 20-page newspaper will be printed in Burmese and the first edition is expected to come out in May this year, after the national referendum.

“They have been recruiting reporters for the daily newspaper for the past two months. Anyone who is interested in journalism can apply for the training programmes,” said the journalist on condition of anonymity.

The Myanmar Times daily newspaper, if approved by the government, will be the first private newspaper to be published daily in Burma since general Ne Win’s military government took over national power in 1962.

2008-02-22T09:07:00.001-06:00

Broken Plane

Air Bagan has suspended its flights to Putao in Northern Burma’s Kachin State from today after an aircraft broke into two while taking off in Putao airport on Tuesday.

On February 19, an Air Bagan plane, ATR 72, failed to take off and broke into two. The aircraft overran about 300 feet off the airport’s runway. Air Bagan’s owner Tayza has left for Putao to inspect the plane.

There were six foreign tourists along with two officials of the American embassy in the aircraft, sources in the airline said.

While the pilot broke his hand, the rest of the 57 passengers were reportedly unhurt.

2008-02-21T10:38:00.002-06:00

Christian Science Monitor continues to monitor situation in Burma.

"We are ready for compromise," insists Mr. Han Than. "We are not at war with the government. All we want is to express our opinion – but even that we are not allowed." Under international pressure, the junta recently agreed to send an envoy to hold talks with Suu Kyi, but these have been going nowhere. Last month she sent word to her party that no progress has been made.

And so, reluctantly, most Burmese are left with faith in the long term. "We have no faith in these passing pronouncements," says the head of a monastery in the ancient town of Sagaing, who spoke anonymously for security reasons. "In any case, if we got democracy today we would lose it the next day because we would not know what to do with it.... We have been 'de-educated.' "

Although Burma used to be famous in Southeast Asia for its quality education, today the situation is abysmal as half of its budget goes to the 400,000-strong military and less than 1 percent to education. According to the UN, 50 percent of children here do not finish primary school.

2008-02-13T14:31:00.001-06:00

Swan Arr Shin On Patrol

Local residents in Rangoon [now known as Yangon], Burma’s former capital, say security has apparently tightened. They report seeing members of Swan Arr Shin, a junta-backed civil organization, patrolling the city.

Soldiers, police and Swan Arr Shin members can be seen conducting security checks on vehicles entering Rangoon, according to local residents.

“We don’t know why, but the authorities have been checking licenses and recording the number plates of vehicles as they enter Rangoon. And in the city about three truckloads of soldiers, with red ribbons around their necks, are on patrol,” a local resident of Kyuaktad Township told Mizzima.

“And in Ahlone and Kyimyindine Townships authorities have taken young people and made them put on Swan Arr Shin uniforms and patrol the city at night. The kids are excited as they are given uniforms and taken in vehicles to go on patrol,” he added.

2008-02-12T10:20:00.000-06:00

Christian Science Monitor Reports Censorship In Burma

Rangoon, Burma - Saw Wai is a Burmese poet known for his love songs. His eight-line Valentine's Day ode, about a brokenhearted man in love with a fashion model, was a particularly tender one. But there was one problem.

If read vertically, the first word of each line formed the phrase: "Power Crazy Senior General Than Shwe."

The senior general himself, head of Burma's (Myanmar's) military junta, could not have been amused. The head of the censorship board was urgently called to the capital; the weekly "Love Journal" has been shut down and copies of the offending edition were yanked from newsstands.
Saw Wai is now in jail, where apparently he will spend Feb. 14 in isolation, behind bars.

Extreme government censorship is as much a part of life in today's Burma as rice and pagodas.

Everything from TV programs to newspaper ads goes through a rigorous vetting board. But the junta is fighting a losing battle against a population hungry for information, armed with tools ranging from transistor radios to sneaky editors and myriad ways to bypass blocks on Internet sites.

Since last September's monk uprising, the censorship has increased. And criticism of the ruling junta is not all that is wiped out – so is most bad news, including reports on natural disasters and defeats of the national soccer team. Even good news can be cut if it's about countries out of favor with the government.

Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) Press Freedom Index placed Burma 164th out of 168 countries last year, just ahead of Cuba, Eritrea, Turkmenistan, and North Korea. This year, the country might do even worse.

"The police and army continue to hunt for journalists and activists who photographed and filmed the [September 2007] crackdown on the pro-democracy demonstrations," RSF says in its January report.

All TV and radio stations in Burma are government owned. The same is true for the country's three daily papers, which routinely run front-page stories along the lines of "Maj-Gen Khin Zaw of Ministry of Defense inspected bridges on the railroad yesterday," or Maj- Gen Tha Aye of the Ministry of Defense attended a ceremony to broadcast fertilizers for summer paddy."

Far more popular than the dailies are the 80-odd privately owned weekly and monthly magazines here – which are read, according to the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) World Service Trust, by some 40 percent of the urban and 20 percent of the rural population.

Yet these have to submit everything from their editorials to cartoons to a government censorship board before publication. Falling afoul of the board results in immediate punishment ranging from having the paper closed, to years of imprisonment.

Very slow Internet access – which, in any case, is found only in the biggest cities – while cheap, is still a luxury for many. It, too, is under government control. Officially, all e-mails go through the authorized government-run Internet service providers, where detailed data on users is collected, and the mail itself is scoured, sometimes causing days of delays. Popular e-mail sites such as hotmail.com and gmail.com, along with foreign newspapers and a long list of other supposedly undesirable sites, are blocked.

Following last year's riots, all Internet access was cut off for three weeks. And, according to several Internet café owners, since then, they have been pressured to register the personal details of all customers and save screen images every five minutes on each computer – all of which could be demanded at any time by authorities.

So how does news actually get in, out, and about? The commercial papers are locked in a never-ending game of cat and mouse with the censors, explains an editor of one popular weekly here, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns. For example, newspapers typically re-send the same stories to the censor board a few weeks later, rewritten, with a new headline. "If we fail the first time, we restick the main point about three quarters of the way down in the story and surround it with very technical language to get the censors bored. We can still say a lot," he explains.

"Journalism is a vehicle for doing what we care about – which is actively advocating for social and economic change," admits the publisher of another weekly, who also asked his name not be used.

Meanwhile, foreign shortwave radio services are enormously popular here, with an estimated 40 percent of Burmese tuning in to the BBC, Voice of America Burmese broadcasts, Radio Free Asia, and the Democratic Voice of Burma. Small Chinese-made radios cost as little as $5.

Watching satellite television is harder because of frequent electric outages, and the expense. Nonetheless, it is popular with Burmese gathering in tea shops to watch sports and catch news.

"My constituency is a small town in upper Burma, but even there we have small satellite dishes and radios, and everyone is listening to the radio or watching the tennis," says U Han Tha Even, spokesman of the opposition NLD. "Even the military is listening to the BBC. Where else would they get information?"

In addition, in Rangoon and Mandalay, months-old copies of The Economist or Time magazine pass like gold from hand to hand. At night, under generator-run lights, locals crowd into makeshift outdoor secondhand book markets, browsing.

The Internet cafes in these main cities are packed with youngsters overriding the blocks with endless formulas to reach proxy servers – and freely surfing the web, in open defiance of the law. They chat with friends across the border in Thailand, check gmail accounts, read news, search for scholarship opportunities overseas, and follow American celebrity antics.

"I think there as many ways to enter gmail through side portals as there are ways to block it," says Zaw Zaw, a young Internet cafe owner, who admits he does not follow rules about tracking customers, and, so far, nothing has happened.

"Media from the outside is so very important," stresses Burmese monk in exile Abbot U Uttara, who heads the Sasana Ramsi Vihara in London. "Not only to stay informed, but because it conveys to those within Burma that the world has not forgotten them."

The flow of information goes both ways. While Burma is notoriously strict about letting foreign journalists into the country and restricts travel within Burma, many do enter, and a lot of what the junta is trying to cover up is reported anyway. Meanwhile, courageous local journalists reporting for outside media are very active. Burmese news sites based outside the country – such as Irrawaddy.org and Mizzima.com – put out daily reports using journalists within.

During September's demonstrations, despite a heavy crackdown on media, and the shooting to death of a Japanese journalist (which the government claims was accidental), images of the beatings and shootings of unarmed protesters crossed the world within minutes of the events – courtesy, mainly, of local activist journalists who rushed to nearby cafes or embassies with photos and reports. Mobile phones, while more expensive in Burma than almost anywhere else, are also becoming popular – allowing for immediate sending of both photos and text messages.

Valentine's Day poet Saw Wai remains in jail, says the weekly publisher, but there is no doubt others will continue fighting the boundaries here by cheekily sending out subversive messages, flooding the censors with reworded news stories, buying more radios, and bypassing blocked sites. "The times where you could isolate a whole country will never return. It's just not possible," he says. "Ours are small victories, but they are still victories."

2008-02-12T10:08:00.000-06:00

Government In Exile Calls For Boycott

The leader of Burma’s US-based government in exile has called for a boycott of the junta-announced referendum on a draft constitution and of elections planned for 2010.Sein Win, prime minister of the National Coalition Government of Union of Burma (NCGUB), told The Irrawaddy neither a referendum nor an election would solve Burma’s problems and would only legitimize authoritarian military rule.

Sein Win said the announcement of a referendum, to be followed by an election in 2010, could not be accepted while opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi remained under house arrest. The regime hadn’t even started talks with opposition leaders and ethnic groups, he said.

By unilaterally announcing the planned referendum and election, Sein Win said, the junta had sent a message that it was moving ahead with its seven point road map. “This means that they do not want to take the opposition into confidence, and they are totally ignoring the 1990 elections. As such we are not confident of the next election,” he said.

The Washington-based NCGUB was constituted and endorsed by representatives elected in the 1990 elections in Burma. Sein Win, a cousin of Suu Kyi, has led it since 1990.

Sein Win said the NCGUB also opposed the regime’s plan for a referendum and election “because of the present situation when there is no freedom of media, and no rule of law. Under these circumstances, people should not take part in any of those processes.”

The regime should hold talks with Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy, and with ethnic leaders, Sein Win said. Then, he added, “we will have our solution.”

Sein Win said it was also time for the UN Security Council to give a stronger mandate to the UN Secretary-General’s Office and the UN Envoy to Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, allowing them to play an effective mediatory role in bringing about an equitable solution to the political deadlock in Burma.

Some observers have speculated that Saturday’s announcement may have been the result of pressure from China, concerned about a small but vocal movement to boycott the Beijing Olympics in August.

In a broadcast interview at the weekend, US first lady Laura Bush said China had not brought enough pressure to bear on the Burmese junta.

“They [China] have not pressed them enough to—for the regime to show any sort of movement,” Bush told PBS.

“And, of course, they have continued to support Burma financially by buying natural resources,” said Bush, who has taken a personal interest in the pro-democracy movement in Burma, especially since the September demonstrations.

2008-02-12T09:56:00.000-06:00

USDA Member Found Beheaded

The body of a Union Solidarity and Development Association was found beheaded in Htantabin township, Rangoon division, on 4 February, local residents said.The USDA member, whose name was not given, was from Thone Thate ward in Hlaing Tharyar township, Rangoon division.

A resident of Hlaing Tharyar said that the USDA member had been decapitated and his skin partially removed.

“All the nerves on his body were exposed and his head was stuck up on a bamboo pole,” the resident said.

The USDA member was reportedly known for treating people in the township badly when he was alive.

Other USDA members in the area were said to be shaken by news of the circumstances of the killing.

“It seems other that USDA members who have heard about this murder are so scared they might face the same fate that they have been much quieter recently and have not been harassing local people,” the resident said.

Residents have not heard of any arrests made so far in connection with the case.

Htantabin township police station was unavailable for comment.

2008-02-12T09:50:00.000-06:00

Christian Solidarity Worldwide

Christian Solidarity Worldwide: Burma: Proposed roadmap to democracy will rubber-stamp regime authority

Mon 11 Feb 2008 Filed under: News, Press Release

Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) has called the ‘roadmap to democracy’ announced by the Burmese military regime on Saturday a sham, which will serve only to ‘rubber-stamp the authority of this brutal regime’.

The announcement was made on the evening news for state radio and television on Saturday 9 February 2008, and outlined plans to hold a referendum on the proposed constitution in May 2008 and a general election in 2010. This is the first timetable that has been outlined for a constitution and elections.

The draft constitution is being written by the National Convention, where the overwhelming majority of delegates are handpicked by the regime. None of the nine pro-democracy parties which took part in the 1990 elections and won 90 per cent of the parliamentary seats are included in the constitution drafting process. In addition no major representatives from the ethnic nationalities which make up 40 per cent of the population of Burma are included.

Questioning or criticising the National Convention and communicating with the international media about the process are crimes under the regime’s Order 5/96 and carry a 20-year jail sentence.

CSW is currently in the region on a fact-finding visit and has obtained fresh evidence of systematic and widespread human rights violations including forced labour, rape and torture.

First-hand testimonies were obtained from Burmese monks who fled as a result of the September crackdown, Shan and Karen internally displaced people and refugees.

CSW’s Chief Executive, Mervyn Thomas, said: “Far from being a positive development, this timetable will simply rubber-stamp the authority of this brutal regime. For there to be real change in Burma the regime must immediately release Aung San Suu Kyi and all the political prisoners, open all parts of the country to unhindered access for international humanitarian and human rights organisations and enter into meaningful tripartite dialogue with the National League for Democracy and ethnic nationalities. We call on the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki- Moon, to go in person to Burma to facilitate these steps as a matter of urgency. The world must not be conned by this sham.”

2008-02-09T13:47:00.000-06:00

Christian Freedom International

MYAWADDY, BURMA – Christian Freedom International (CFI), a U.S.-based humanitarian organization, is urging the global community to call on Burma’s government to end the ethnic cleansing violence that has caused the deaths of thousands of its own citizens, with thousands more swarming into refugee camps.

The challenge comes as one of Hollywood’s latest films, Rambo IV, is being released in theaters around the world -- a movie where its writer, producer, and leading actor, Sylvester Stallone, began work on the script shortly after the devastation of the September 11, 2001 U.S. terrorist attacks. In the early stages of the script’s development, Stallone consulted with Soldiers of Fortune magazine and asked one crucial question: where is the one place on earth where the worst atrocities are taking place and getting the least amount of attention?

The answer was Burma.

In the latest installment of the 20-year-old Rambo movie franchise, Stallone attempts to revive his protagonist character, John Rambo, where the Vietnam veteran is living a solitary, peaceful life in Bangkok, Thailand -- until the day he’s summoned to escort a group of Christian missionaries up the Salween River to deliver relief aid to war-weary refugees in Burma. When the missionaries fail to return from their trip nearly two weeks later, the veteran is once again approached by the missionaries’ pastor, who pleads for his help in locating the aid workers that have been kidnapped by the vicious Burmese army.

CFI anticipates that the movie’s recent release will draw more attention to the grim reality of the world’s oldest civil war, in a country where Karen and Karenni Christians have been especially suffering for decades. Since 1996, Christian Freedom International has built schools, orphanages and field hospitals, as well as provided food, medicine and Bibles for thousands of suffering Christians in Burma.

The organization has also remained as an active voice in the political arena on behalf of Burma’s refugees, and in recent months worked closely with the U.S. State Department to assist with the resettlement effort that is allowing many of the country’s exiles to begin new lives in the United States.

Although thousands of refugees are now living safely on American soil, thousands more remain in grave danger as they continue to flee from the Burmese army. CFI president Jim Jacobson is currently on location in Burma, delivering Bibles and urgently needed medical supplies to Karen and Karenni refugees.

Jim Jacobson, a former White House policy analyst during the Reagan administration, has frequently visited Burma to personally deliver aid -- and encouragement -- to displaced Christians in the region.

Note: most of the Christians in Burma are Karen or Chin, but the suffering there is among all the people, Christian and non-Christian alike.

2008-02-09T11:20:00.000-06:00

Elections in 2010?

written by Aung Hla Tun
YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar's military government said on Saturday it would hold a referendum on a new constitution in May followed by multi-party elections in 2010, a move dismissed as worthless by the opposition without the release of Aung San Suu Kyi.

"We have achieved success in economic, social and other sectors and in restoring peace and stability," the junta announced on state television after sending in the army to quell Buddhist monk-led pro-democracy demonstrations in September.

"So multi-party, democratic elections will be held in 2010," said the statement issued in the name of Secretary Number One Lieutenant-General Tin Aung Myint Oo, a top member of the junta.

The elections would be the first since 1990, when Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) won multi-party elections in the former Burma.

The military, which has ruled the country since 1962, ignored the result, crushing pro-democracy demonstrations at the cost of several thousand lives.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Suu Kyi has spent much of the time since then in detention.
A spokesman for the Burmese government in exile, which includes MPs elected in 1990 but who fled after the junta refused to let the election result stand, said the announcement would mean nothing unless Suu Kyi was released and took part.

"Without the participation of Suu Kyi, the NLD and ethnic parties the people will not accept this constitution," said Zin Linn.

Saturday's announcement from the junta did not make clear whether the NLD would be allowed to take part, but the constitution is believed likely to disbar Suu Kyi from office by ruling out anyone married to a foreigner, as she was, and to ensure the top leadership comes from the military.

Suu Kyi's husband, British academic Michael Aris, died in March 1999.

"In accord with the fourth step of the seven-step roadmap to democracy, a nationwide referendum will be held in May 2008 to ratify the newly drafted constitution," the junta statement said.

The new constitution, now being drafted after the completion of a national convention first convened in the 1990s, will be finished soon, the statement added.

The NLD has refused to take part in the convention.

The government announced the seven-step roadmap in 2003 but had refused to set a firm timetable until now. Some Western powers dismissed the roadmap as little more than a sham to allow the junta to retain power.

2008-02-06T09:23:00.000-06:00

Mirror Mirror On The Wall

Burma’s censorship authorities have found new tools to monitor submitted written manuscripts before approval—mirrors and magnifying glasses.

Rangoon-based writers told The Irrawaddy that censors working in the Press Scrutiny and Registration Board office are now equipped with mirrors and magnifying glasses to help them seek out hidden messages in poems, novels, stories and advertisements.

The new tools were introduced following the discovery in a published poem of a clandestine message mocking junta leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe.

The first words of each line of the short poem, written by Saw Wai under the title “February 14” and published in the weekly “Love Journal,” made up the message: “Senior General Than Shwe is foolish with power.” Saw Wai was subsequently arrested.

The head of the censorship board, Maj Tint Swe—himself a writer, with the penname Ye Yint Tint Swe—was summoned to a meeting with high-ranking officials, where he had to explain the lapse. Sources say he may soon be fired.

Saw Wai’s ruse was the second of its kind to mock Than Shwe in this way. In July 2007, an advertisement in the English-language semi-official The Myanmar Times newspaper contained a hidden message calling Than Shwe “a killer.”

The advertisement was placed in the paper by a Danish satirical art group posing as "The Board of Islandic Travel Agencies Ewhsnahtrellik and the Danish Industry BesoegDanmark." When read backwards, the Danish-looking word "Ewhsnahtrellik" spelt out "Killer Than Shwe."

A Burmese editor living in Rangoon confirmed to The Irrawaddy on Monday that censors were now using mirrors and magnifying glasses to search for hidden messages in the texts they are required to check before publication.

Editors and publishers say the additional work is slowing up the censorship process. “The censors are even checking cover pages of magazines time and again.”

One Rangoon writer said he now had to submit his manuscripts one month ahead of publication, compared to one week in the past.

2008-02-06T08:53:00.000-06:00

U.S. Imposes More Sanctions to Press Myanmar’s Rulers

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The Bush administration on Tuesday imposed more financial sanctions against a business tycoon linked to Myanmar’s military rulers, this time aiming at companies used to purchase helicopters and other military equipment.

The action designates three companies controlled by the tycoon, Tay Za, and his Htoo Trading conglomerate, including a subsidiary based in Singapore, as supporters of a repressive government responsible for human rights violations, the Treasury Department said.

The action is the third set of American sanctions intended to put pressure on the leaders of Myanmar, formerly Burma, since a violent government crackdown on protesters last year.

“The president has made clear that we will continue to take action against the military junta and those who prop it up so long as human rights violations continue and democracy is suppressed,” said Adam Szubin, director of the Treasury’s sanctions arm, the Office of Foreign Assets Control.

The action prohibits Americans from doing business with the companies and with seven newly designated individuals, and seeks to freeze any assets they may have under United States jurisdiction.

Mr. Tay Za and five of his other companies, including the tourist airline Air Bagan, were blacklisted by the Treasury in October.

The designated companies included Myanmar Avia Export Company, which the Treasury said was used to purchase helicopters and aircraft on behalf of Myanmar’s military. The Treasury also designated Ayer Shwe Wah Company, a company for which the son of a Burmese general serves as a director, and Pavo Aircraft Leasing, a Singapore-based company that directs Htoo business ventures there.

The Singapore state broadcaster Channel New Asia quoted Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in November as speaking out against sanctions on Myanmar, saying no one in Southeast Asia supported them. Myanmar’s impoverished neighbors, Laos and Cambodia, have also condemned the sanctions.

From NY Times
RB

2008-02-05T10:15:00.000-06:00

Myanmar Arrests Blogger
(From NY Times of 1/31/08)

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- Myanmar's junta has stepped up surveillance of the Internet, arresting one blogger who wrote about the stifling of free expression in the military-ruled nation, a media advocacy group said.

The blogger, Nay Myo Latt, was taken into custody in Yangon on Wednesday after writing about the suppression of freedoms following last fall's crushing of pro-democracy demonstrations, Reporters Without Borders said.

Despite international condemnation and pressure following the demonstrations, there is little evidence that the junta is easing its repressive rule or moving closer to reconciliation with pro-democracy forces led by Suu Kyi.

The arrested blogger, a member of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, owns three Internet cafes, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said in a release seen Thursday.
Myanmar authorities have stepped up their surveillance of the Internet since the beginning of the month, pressuring Internet cafe owners to register personal details of all users and to program screen captures every five minutes on each computer, the release said.
This data apparently is sent to the Ministry of Communications, it said.

The only blog platform that had been accessible within Myanmar, the Google-owned Blogger, has been blocked by the regime since Jan. 23, preventing bloggers from posting entries unless they use proxies or other ways to get around censorship, the group said.

''This blockage is one of the ways used by the government to reduce Burmese citizens to silence. Burma is in danger of being cut off from the rest of the world again,'' the statement said.
Suu Kyi, who remains under house arrest, Wednesday warned the public to ''hope for the best and prepare for the worst'' in her country.

The democracy icon was allowed to meet with executives of her National League for Democracy party, who afterward voiced her unhappiness that there is no deadline for talks to bring about democratic reform.

2008-01-28T11:16:00.000-06:00

Rights Group Accuses Myanmar of Holding More Dissidents

2008-01-11T14:57:00.000-06:00

Daw Suu Kyi Meets With Junta?

(BBC News) Detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has had another meeting with an official from Burma's ruling junta.

Witnesses said Ms Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for 12 of the past 18 years, spent about one hour in talks at a military building in Rangoon.

It is thought she met Aung Kyi, the labour minister appointed as a liaison last year amid global outrage at the military regime's repression.

If confirmed, it would be the fourth time the pair have held talks.

Ms Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), said last month that meetings with the junta had so far yielded little.

The country's generals came under sustained international pressure late last year after brutally suppressing peaceful demonstrations.

The EU and US both introduced a raft of new sanctions and UN diplomats engaged in frantic diplomacy in a bid to rein in the generals.

But most Asian leaders have been reluctant to criticise the regime, and there have been few signs of genuine reform in Burma.

RB

2008-01-05T11:21:00.000-06:00

Burma marks Independence Day

(BBC News). Military ruler Gen Than Shwe used the occasion to reiterate the government's determination to continue with its seven-stage roadmap to democracy.

But critics say the plan is just a way to perpetuate the military's control. They used the anniversary to call for the release of political prisoners.

The British ruled Burma for 63 years, until shortly after World War II.

The BBC's Jonathan Head, reporting from neighbouring Thailand, said there was little sign of any celebration in Burma, 60 years on from independence.

The national flag was raised in Rangoon and in the new capital, Naypyidaw, at the exact moment that the British flag was lowered in 1948.

Than Shwe did not attend either event, but a statement was read out in which he called for national unity and discipline.

He said the people of Burma were working towards "the emergence of a peaceful, modern and developed discipline-flourishing democratic state".

He stressed his commitment to the democracy roadmap - a process which critics say is entirely controlled by the military and excludes the high-profile opposition figure Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD).

'Pretence'

The statement suggests the military leadership does not appear to have softened its stance since September's violent crackdown on pro-democracy campaigners, which resulted in the deaths of at least 31 people.

No mention was made of the protests, nor to Aung San, Ms Suu Kyi's father and the leader of Burma's independence struggle.

Sean Turnell, an expert on Burma at Australia's Macquarie University, said this was because "if he glorified the role of Aung San, in a sense, he was also glorifying Aung San Suu Kyi".

"It's like America celebrating the Fourth of July without mentioning Washington," he told the French news agency AFP, referring to the first US president.

Following September's protests, the military junta appointed an official, Aung Kyi, to liaise with Ms Suu Kyi and her NLD party, prompting hope that there could be a genuine dialogue between the two sides.

But NLD spokesman Nyman Win said the talks were a "pretence" and had made little progress since Aung Kyi and Ms Suu Kyi met in November, their only meeting so far.

"We don't know when they are going to meet again," he told AFP.

2008-01-03T18:15:00.000-06:00

The High Price of News

The military junta ordered a 160-fold increase in the annual satellite television tax in what appeared to be an attempt to keep people from watching international news broadcasts. The new cost, about $780, is three times the average yearly income. Without satellite, the only other television news is on rigidly state-controlled MRTV. The few private television stations avoid all current affairs in favor of soap operas and pop music. (Reuters)

RB

2007-10-09T17:05:00.000-05:00

An Eyewitness Account From Sule Paya

David Jimenez is a Spanish reporter who was on the ground at Sule Paya (Pagoda) on the day the military began shooting unarmed (and praying, according to Jimenez) civilians and monks. Click on the title above to see the article in The Star.

RB

2007-10-06T15:15:00.000-05:00

Christian Science Monitor

Reports from three monks who have reached Thailand.

2007-10-06T14:48:00.000-05:00

Suu Kyi Rejects Deal

The "Burma File" is reporting that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has 'rebuffed' Than Shwe and the ruling junta's offer of talks. A National League of Democracy (NLD) spokesman explained,

"NLD spokesman Nyan Win said the conditions set by Than Shwe for a meeting with Suu Kyi were tantamount to 'asking her to confess to offences that she has not committed.'"

The United States, together with Great Britain and France, has called for the immediate release of detained protestors and other political prisoners (which would include the lady).

The article by three permanent security council members will be presented to the entire security council on Monday. Burma File reports, "The 'statement', which has no inherent power of enforcement, will be presented on Monday to the UN Security Council, where China will be asked this time to withhold its veto and so signal that it also wants democratic change in Burma."

The Karen National Liberation Army has been operating in the Karen (Kayin) state almost since World War 2. Burma File reports regarding the Karen army, "Its political wing, the Karen National Union, offered assistance to the protesters in Rangoon at the height of the demonstrations, but the government’s security forces locked the city down before any practical alliance could be discussed."

The junta has from the beginning followed a policy of "divide and conquer" with the nation's numerous ethnic and tribal peoples. It seems unlikely that any kind of democracy or freedom will be achieved until the various people groups of the country can speak with a united voice.

RB

2007-10-03T11:14:00.000-05:00

UN Employee Detained By Junta

The follow-up to shooting protesters is now the "knock on the door" in the middle of the night. This regime has lost all moral authority to claim it is the proper government of Myanmar:

1. It was not only never elected, regular elections were overthrown ['nullified' is the fancy word they use for what in reality was a bloody coup d'etat] in 1990 when the NLD won an overwhelming majority at the polling booth.

2. The illegitimate "government" of the Union of Myanmar (Burma) is not held responsible by anyone. This arrangement makes the old discarded theory of the "divine right of kings" seem reasonable by comparison.

3. It has shot its own citizens and leading "clergy" (i.e. the Buddhist monks) for the simple crime of disagreeing with government policy and having the audacity to organize and assemble publicly.

4. It has now carried that to the ridiculous extreme of actually rounding up people in the middle of the night and intimidating others by means of loud-speaker trucks driving on the streets through the night.

5. In the midst of all this it is noticeable to many people that the American administration has been soundly condemned by world opinion for bringing democracy and freedom of choice (remember the purple fingers?) to the Iraqi people 'for oil,' while there is barely a whimper from anyone against the Chinese government which -- for oil -- is supporting a brutal and tyrranical bastard government that shoots its own people.

RB

2007-09-29T13:59:00.000-05:00

BBC Reports Saturday PM

"Information is patchy as mobile phones and internet access have been interrupted. But the BBC has learnt that there have also been at least three protests elsewhere in Burma, in Mandalay, Sittwe and Pakoku. "

US Looking For More Persuasive Approaches

"The administration seems to regard the violent crackdown on Burmese monks as a long-hoped-for opportunity to get other Southeast Asian nations to rethink their insistence that they should not interfere with the internal politics of their neighbors. The hope is that American pressure might force the Burmese leaders into a political process that would drive them from power, if not from the country.

"Voice of America and Radio Free Asia doubled their broadcasting into the country in Burmese to five hours a day."

Meanwhile, as Christians we believe we have immediate recourse to Providence. We should not simply "let events follow their own course," but understand that God directs all things to his glory. So, for our part, Christians should be asking God to spare the innocent and overthrow the oppressor, (Psalm 72:4) "He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor" and "Thus saith the LORD; Execute ye judgment and righteousness, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor: and do no wrong, do no violence to the stranger, the fatherless, nor the widow, neither shed innocent blood in this place" (Jeremiah 22:3).

I have been to Myanmar ten times since 2000. It is a land of beauty, peace, and wealth if it were not for the oppressors who have lost all moral authority as the right government of that land. The people of Myanmar voted overwhelmingly to oust Ne Win and his cronies in 1990. The dictator has changed, but the SPDC continues its oppressive ways.

The government of the US should be demanding the immediate release of Suu Kyi together with all the monks and others who have been arrested for nothing more than expressing their opinions.

What can we do in addition to prayers? We can work with the NGOs that will pledge to work with the Myanmar people without enriching the generals or their families. We can put pressure on China, which is the major trading partner of the illegitimate junta that is presently ruling without moral authority.

When the USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979, then president Carter cancelled US participation in the Moscow summer olympics. President Bush should consider such an action against Beijing if they continue unwilling to pressure the generals.

RB

2007-09-26T12:55:00.000-05:00

Robert Novak's Take on the Situation in Burma

"U.S. sanctions against Myanmar (the former Burma) reflect deep concern at the State Department about an upheaval in the China-aligned dictatorship along the lines of the 1956 Budapest uprising. The prospect is that the U.S. will do no more for freedom in this little Asian country than it did for Hungary a half century ago."

2007-09-26T12:17:00.000-05:00

A First-Hand Report Received Second-Hand

Monday, September 24, 2007

The situation in Yangon becomes worse. Yesterday the local council told me to stop our church. Fortunately, they didn't come because of some reasons.

But they checked many churches and Bible Schools. T____ went to the other area and led the worship service. My family and some members did worship at the candle house. We sang hymns lowly. Every day and night the security goes around the wards and towns.

The Buddhist monks continued doing demonstration every day. In spite of the political situation it was heavily raining every day and so we didn't get out from home for five days. The Buddhist Association of Myanmar announced that today at noon the monks will lead demonstrations in every town and the community will follow them. When they did a demonstration many women hold their hands one another and guarded the monks from disturbance by the military force. All the Buddhist monks from Hlaingthayar already went to downtown to perform
demonstration today.

[Note -- Hlaingthaya is the township where I stay when in Yangon. RB]

However, we had our Bible study safely last Saturday. At that time the local council members were rounding the ward and went the road beside our house but they didn't come into the house. We pray every day for the freedom of Christian ministry. Some stores are closed and many people remained at home waiting for any change. Prices of food stuff increased and many people are in trouble. The inland transportation is not going normally. People are afraid of violence. Please pray for the Myanmar people.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

The situation of Yangon is worse. Not only the Buddhist monks but many people involved in the demonstration. Demonstrations is performed at many places in Yangon every day. Military intelligence and spy are patrolling and investigating the movement of the people in city and in many towns every day and night. There are also many demonstrations done in other parts of Myanmar. Almost all Internet and telephone lines are closed.

Yesterday it was closed in the afternoon and I don't know if my Email can reach you or not. THE GOVERNMENT TRIES TO BLOCK FOREIGN COMMUNICATIONS AS POSSIBLE AS THEY COULD. Not only foreign but also inland communications are blocked in most parts. We can not make phone calls as before. Some are arrested every day. So public gathering is strictly prohibited. We don't dare to get out because the government will suspect us to be organizing people. But company workers and Government servants are doing their work every day, but some work only for half day. Since the demonstrations became increased we don't know what will be our near future. Many shops are closed. The prices of food stuff increased. Churches and Bible Schools and orphanage centers, and children home etc are still being on checked.

Today we will see if there is any strong demonstration or not. The government also is ready to do against the demonstrators. Thank you for all your concern, care and helps in the name of the Lord. The good God will open ways for us to serve Him freely.

In His Service,
Pastor [Name Withheld]

2007-09-24T10:35:00.000-05:00

Protests Reach 100,000 Mark

As many as 100,000 anti-government protesters led by a phalanx of Buddhist monks marched Monday through Yangon, the largest crowd to demonstrate in Myanmar's biggest city since a 1988 pro-democracy uprising that was brutally crushed by the military.

From the front of the march, witnesses could see a one-mile stretch of eight-lane road was filled with people.

Some participants said there were several hundred thousand marchers in their ranks, but an international aid agency official with employees monitoring the crowd estimated said the size was well over 50,000 and approaching 100,000.

It was the latest in a series of protests that began Aug. 19 as a movement against economic hardship in the Southeast Asian country after the government sharply raised fuel prices. But arrests and intimidation kept demonstrations small and scattered until the monks entered the fray.

The usually iron-fisted junta has so far kept minimal security at the protests, and diplomats and analysts said Myanmar's military rulers were showing the unexpected restraint because of pressure from the country's key trading partner and diplomatic ally, China.

The march kicked off, like the previous ones, at the Shwedagon pagoda, a historical center for political movements as well as the country's most sacred religious shrine. Some 20,000 monks took the lead, with onlookers joining in on what had been billed as a day of general protest.

In the central city of Mandalay, meanwhile, 500 to 600 monks set off shortly after noon on their own protest march.

The monks, who took over a faltering protest movement from political activists, already had managed to bring people into the streets in numbers not seen since the 1988 pro-democracy uprising snuffed out by the army at a cost of thousands of lives.

On Sunday, about 20,000 people including thousands of monks filled the streets in Yangon, stepping up their confrontation with authorities by chanting support for detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

The increasingly confrontational tone of the anti-government protesters has raised both expectations of possible political change and fear that the military might forcefully stamp out the demonstrations, as it did in 1988.

A Southeast Asian diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity as a matter of protocol, said the regime is under pressure from China to avoid a crackdown just as its larger neighbor has pressured it to speed up other democratic changes.

"The Myanmar government is tolerating the protesters and not taking any action against the monks because of pressure from China," the diplomat told The Associated Press. "Beijing is to host the next summer's Olympic Games. Everyone knows that China is the major supporter of the junta so if government takes any action it will affect the image of China."

China, which is counting on Myanmar's vast oil and gas reserves to help fuel its booming economy, earlier this year blocked a U.N. Security Council criticizing Myanmar's rights record saying it was not the right forum.

But at the same time, it has employed quiet diplomacy and subtle public pressure on the regime, urging it to move toward inclusive democracy and speed up the process of dialogue and reform.

Josef Silverstein, a political scientist and author of several books on Myanmar, said it would not be in China's interest to have civil unrest in Myanmar, also known as Burma.

"China is very eager to have a peaceful Burma in order to complete roads and railroads, to develop mines and finish assimilating the country under its economic control," Silverstein said.

The movement seemed to gain momentum Saturday, when more than 500 monks and sympathizers went past barricades to walk to the house where Suu Kyi is under house arrest. She greeted them from her gate in her first public appearance in more than four years. But access to her home was barred Sunday.

The meeting symbolically linked the current protests to Nobel laureate's Suu Kyi's struggle for democracy, which has seen her detained for about 12 of the last 18 years.

2007-08-28T17:49:00.000-05:00

Newest Protests Quashed

YANGON, Myanmar - Demonstrators on Tuesday tried to mount a new protest against rising prices, but marched only 30 yards before being beaten and wrestled into waiting trucks by civilians who back Myanmar's military government, witnesses said.
The two dozen protesters shouted slogans against a big fuel price hike and implored onlookers to join them, stressing they were marching peacefully for their rights, said witnesses, who asked not to be quoted by name for fear of reprisals from the regime.
The marchers were quickly set upon by pro-government toughs, who pummeled demonstrators with fists while dragging them into trucks, the witnesses said. At least one protester was reportedly dragged by his feet.
A prominent labor activist and former political prisoner, Su Su Nway, took part in the protest, but said she managed to escape in a taxi with several colleagues.
"Peaceful protests are brutally cracked down upon and I want to tell the international community that there is no rule of law in Myanmar," she told The Associated Press.
More than a dozen of the country's leading democracy activists, members of the 88 Generation Students group, were detained Aug. 21 before a similar demonstration.
Myanmar activists in exile claimed 200-300 people, including many Buddhist monks, took part in another protest Tuesday in Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine State in western Myanmar.
A report on the Web site of the Democratic Voice of Burma, an opposition shortwave radio station based in Norway, said witnesses reported the protest lasted for at least an hour without interference.
Protests triggered by fuel price hikes began Aug. 19 and have continued on an almost daily basis despite a security clampdown by the military government supported by organized bands of civilian toughs serving as law enforcers.
Myanmar's ruling junta, which has received widespread international criticism for violating the human rights of its citizens, tolerates little public dissent.

2007-08-23T10:39:00.000-05:00

Protests Continue Despite Arrests

YANGON, Myanmar - Defiant pro-democracy activists took to the streets Thursday for the third time this week, forming a human chain to try to prevent officers from dragging them into waiting trucks and buses.
The demonstration came a day after 300 people marched to protest the military junta's imposition of fuel price increases despite the earlier arrest of at least 13 democracy activists.
The protests have been one of the most sustained anti-government demonstrations in years. Myanmar's ruling junta, which has received widespread international criticism for violating the rights of its citizens, tolerates little public dissent, sometimes sentencing activists to long jail terms for violating broadly defined security laws. It has held opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace laureate, under house arrest for 11 years.
On Thursday, about 40 people, mostly from Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, walked quietly without placards for about two miles toward the party headquarters in eastern Yangon before being stopped by a security cordon.
Authorities ordered bystanders, and especially reporters, out of the area as the protesters were overwhelmed after a 30-minute standoff. Some reporters were roughed up by security personnel who shouted abusive language.
Protesters sat on the pavement and formed a human chain in an attempt to prevent officers from dragging them into the waiting trucks and buses. A dozen protesters, however, were dragged and shoved into the vehicles, where some were slapped around, said witnesses, who asked not to be identified for fear of being called in by the police.
A former political prisoner, Ohn Than, also staged an apparently solo protest outside the U.S. Embassy before being hauled away by plainclothes officers. He was holding a sign calling for U.N. intervention to make the government convene parliament, a witness said.
The NLD party called on the ruling junta to stop brutal suppression and inhumane treatment of protesters and demanded an immediate release of those arrested.
"Unable to bear the burden of spiraling consumer prices, the public express their sentiments through peaceful means. However authorities have arrested, tortured, beaten up and endangered the lives of those who are peacefully expressing their wishes," the NLD said in a statement.
Wednesday's march was broken up prematurely when a gang of government supporters assaulted some protesters with sticks and seized eight who were accused of being agitators, witnesses and participants said. The eight were later freed unharmed.
The demonstrations came after the arrests Tuesday of leaders of the group 88 Generation Students, the country's boldest, nonviolent dissident group. It has been defying the generals by staging petition campaigns, prayer vigils and other activities urging the release of Suu Kyi and other political prisoners and calling for an end to military rule that began in 1962.
"Though our leaders had been arrested, we will continue with our movement. We will not fear any arrest or threat," Mie Mie, a member of 88 Generation, said during the Wednesday march, which was monitored by plainclothes police.
State-controlled media reported earlier that 13 leaders of 88 Generation Students had been arrested and could face up to 20 years in prison.
The newspaper New Light of Myanmar said "agitators" in the group were detained Tuesday night for trying to undermine the "stability and security of the nation." On Sunday, they had led some 400 people in another march through Yangon to protest the doubling of fuel prices Aug. 15.
Leaders of 88 Generation Students were at the forefront of a 1988 democracy uprising and were subjected to lengthy prison terms and torture after the rebellion was brutally suppressed by the military.
The 1988 unrest was preceded by public protests over rising rice prices, a sudden government declaration that made most currency invalid, and other economic hardships.
Those arrested Tuesday included Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi, two of the most prominent activists, New Light of Myanmar said. Min Ko Naing spent 16 years in prison despite international calls for his release and numerous awards for his nonviolent activism for democracy.
"Their agitation to cause civil unrest was aimed at undermining peace and security of the state and disrupting the ongoing National Convention," the newspaper said, adding that such activity violated a 1996 law that mandates prison terms of up to 20 years.
Organized by the junta, the National Convention is drafting guidelines for a constitution as part of a so-called seven-step roadmap to democracy in Myanmar, which is also known as Burma. Critics call the process a sham.
The arrests drew condemnation abroad. The U.S.-based Human Rights Watch called for the release of all the detainees.
"The government's strategy of arbitrarily arresting its critics reinforces the severe hardship the people of Burma are going through," a statement from the group said. "Burma's military rulers run the country — and the economy — without any regard for human rights."

2007-08-23T10:34:00.000-05:00

More Protests In Yangon

YANGON (Reuters) - A gang of supporters of Myanmar's military rulers broke up a small protest in Yangon on Thursday as the arrest of 13 leading dissidents did little to quash public anger at soaring fuel prices and falling living standards.

A tense stand-off ensued before the 30 marchers, who had been walking towards the offices of the opposition National League for Democracy, were manhandled into trucks belonging to the junta's feared Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA).
A Reuters reporter was told not to take photographs and chased from the scene.
Later, ex-political prisoner Ohn Than staged a one-man demonstration outside the U.S. embassy, shouting slogans in English and Burmese for 10 minutes before being carted off by police.
The 61-year-old called for the military junta that has ruled the former Burma for the last 45 years to honor the results of a 1990 election it lost by a landslide then annulled, witnesses said.
There was no word in the army-controlled media on the fate of the 13 dissidents arrested on Wednesday night, who included Min Ko Naing, the country's second-most prominent activist after detained Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.
Five women and a man picked up by the USDA after a small demonstration on Wednesday in north Yangon were released.
For a second day, armed police and truckloads of USDA men armed with spades and brooms took up positions in the centre of the former capital.

SMALL SOP

However, in an apparent sop to the widespread outrage at last week's shock fuel price rises, bus fares for the shortest journeys were halved.
The junta's doubling of diesel prices and a five-fold increase in the cost of compressed natural gas had brought Yangon's bus networks to a standstill and stoked discontent in the city of 5 million people.
Analysts said the hard core of the dissident movement, centered on the still-influential leaders of a 1988 mass student uprising ruthlessly suppressed by the army with large loss of life, would continue to express public discontent.
However, the junta's coordinated action, starting with Wednesday's midnight swoops on the student leaders, had probably ensured the series of small but persistent social protests were not going to snowball into something larger.
"These people have vowed to continue the struggle at all costs. They have vowed to go all the way, and so for sure they will continue to protest," said Aung Naing Oo, a 1988 protester who fled to Thailand to escape the bloody military crackdown.
"But I doubt a large majority of people will participate. Small gatherings of 100 here, 200 there, will go on -- but the emphasis is on the word small," he said.
The world's largest rice exporter when it won independence from Britain in 1948, Myanmar is now one of Asia's poorest countries after more than four decades of unbroken military rule.
Suu Kyi, daughter of independence hero Aung San, who won the 1990 landslide election victory at the helm of her National League for Democracy party has spent most of the 17 years since in prison or under house arrest.

2007-08-22T14:01:00.000-05:00

In the fifth of a series of articles from inside Burma, the BBC's Kate McGeown looks at the strength of opposition to the country's hardline military government.

In a small house in the Burmese city of Mandalay, three comedians spend their days putting on shows for tourists.
Calling themselves the Moustache Brothers, they perform traditional Burmese vaudeville - a mixture of song, dance and slapstick humour.
But in reality, the show is more about politics than entertainment - and interspersed among their routines are jokes poking fun at life under the country's brutal military regime.
The reason the show is so popular is because it is such a rarity in Burma. Hardly anyone else dares to openly criticise the government, which is not surprising given the likely consequences - long prison sentences, hard labour or worse.
But the Moustache Brothers say they have little to lose; two of them have already served long jail terms and they are reduced to performing at home because they have been banned from all public venues.
"We're on the government blacklist already," said Lu Maw, one of the trio. "There is nothing more the authorities can do to us."
Most Burmese people, though, seem to have decided that after 40 years of military government, it is best to just get on with life rather than protest against the system they are living under.
One man, who was given a two-year jail sentence in the 1960s for being a student demonstrator, told me he had lost the spirit to fight.
Now a successful businessman with a wife and three children, he said: "Since I came out of jail, I've managed to build a life for myself as best I can, and keep out of any trouble - but I'm still very, very worried about my country."

Local resistance

While there is little open defiance, many people are still prepared to do what little they can to register their opposition to the military regime.
"I purposely avoid going to anything the government could use as propaganda, like the opening of a new pagoda or a celebration for something," one man said.
Another man, the head of a rural community, said his entire village stopped every evening to listen to at least one foreign radio broadcast.
"We never miss a day," he said proudly, explaining that it was the only way they could really find out what was happening in Burma because local media was so heavily censored.
But he acknowledged that while the villagers would like to take part in a more active form of resistance, they were simply too scared.
"We're waiting and hoping for change, but what can we do? Look at what the government has done to the Lady [Aung San Suu Kyi]. If they can do that to her, think what they would do to us," he said.
As leader of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) and daughter of independence hero General Aung San, Ms Suu Kyi is the focal point of Burmese opposition.
Many people consider her the country's rightful leader, because the NLD won national elections in 1990 but the military refused to hand over control.
She has been in some form of detention for 10 of the last 17 years, but however hard the military junta tries to make people forget about her, she remains at the forefront of many Burmese citizens' minds.
"The Lady is our best hope for the future. She is the one person who can unite everyone together," one man told me.
"I totally support the Lady in everything," said another man. "I will always support her and the NLD."

Waiting and hoping

In Ms Suu Kyi's absence, her party campaigns tirelessly for her release and for constructive dialogue with the regime.
"One day the nation will explode, and people will rise up against the government," said NLD spokesman Nyan Win. "Until that day comes, we will continue to push for dialogue and reconciliation."
But there are some people in Burma who say the NLD is too idealistic. "They won't compromise on anything, so nothing changes," said a Rangoon activist.
"It's got to the point where many people in Burma are just waiting for outside help to overthrow the regime, rather than doing what they can right now, to change things from within," he said.
Waiting is something the Burmese are getting very good at. After more than four decades of military rule, there is still no end in sight.
But whether they actively opposed the government or not, I found that the vast majority of people I spoke to still dared to hope that things could get better.
"One day I'm going to perform properly again," said Moustache Brother Lu Maw.
"Maybe this street will become like Broadway or the West End," he joked, looking out at the dusty alley he lives in.
The Moustache Brothers - and in fact everyone in Burma - know they have a long way to go for their dreams of democracy and freedom to be realised.
But despite everything, they have still not given up.

2007-08-22T13:57:00.000-05:00

In the fourth of a series from inside Burma, the BBC's Kate McGeown looks at how the government's abrupt decision to move its capital is affecting local people.

When Burma's military rulers began moving their seat of power to a semi-rural area near the town of Pyinmana last year, many people were mystified.
"I don't understand why they decided to leave Rangoon," said one man in the former capital.
"I don't know why they wanted to come here," added a villager not far from the site of the new city.
Many people said they had hoped the move would not actually happen, once the cost and complication became clear.
But now it seems there is no going back. The opening ceremony took place in March, and several locals who have seen the site - which the ruling junta has christened Naypyidaw (Seat of Kings) - said that half the buildings had been completed and were open for business.
But the new capital is not open to everyone. Almost all foreigners, especially journalists, are strictly forbidden from going anywhere near it.
Most ordinary Burmese are also denied access, and two Rangoon-based reporters were given three-year jail terms for attempting to film the area.

Precious cargo

To local people living near the site, many of whom are farmers and agricultural workers, the whole situation must be bewildering.
Until last year they were living in a rural hinterland. Now they are ploughing fields and raising cattle not far from their country's capital.
"I keep seeing new buildings, but I don't know what they're for," said one young woman on the outskirts of the city.
Those living along the main road to Pyinmana have got used to seeing large trucks laden with construction materials passing by, as well as cars carrying important members of the military.
"If you're driving down the road at the time they come past, you have to pull over and let them pass," said one woman.
Other people have been affected more directly by the move. One man said some of his neighbours had been thrown out of their homes, and had their land repossessed, with no compensation.
"I'm really scared that will happen to me, too," he said quietly.
Then there is the issue of who exactly is constructing the new capital. Definite evidence is hard to come by, but there are strong suspicions that the government is using forced labour.
"I've spoken to people who have fled Pyinmana, and have now come over the border into Thailand," said Maung Maung, the general secretary of the Federation of Trade Unions in Burma. "They say they were forcibly made to work on the roads, and clear areas of bush."

'Transfer of power'

Back in Rangoon, there are few obvious signs that the city is no longer the country's capital.
The one direct impact on local people is that the electricity supply - which was already erratic before the move - has now become even more unreliable.
"They've spent millions on the new capital. As a result, the services in Rangoon like electricity are getting worse and worse, but Pyinmana is all lit up," said one Western diplomat. "Locals joke that a 'transfer of power' has taken place."
Behind the scenes, there are other problems too. NGO workers and diplomats say the move is slowing down the process of government.
"Everything is taking twice as long, because you have to go to Pyinmana to get your documents stamped," the diplomat said. "There are containers stacked up in the ports because the necessary paperwork hasn't been signed."
Anyone who visits a government office in Rangoon will quickly notice something has changed. One businessman said that when he went to the Ministry of Culture for a meeting, he found it was virtually empty except for a few stray dogs and children playing games.
The ministers and officials might have gone to Pyinmana, but few seem to have gone willingly. Many were given little or no notice, and had to leave their families behind.
There are reports of several people retiring early, and rumours that an entire government department tried - and failed - to resign en masse.
In fact, many analysts say the enforced move was probably one of the main reasons government salaries were suddenly increased in April - in an attempt to persuade people to stay in their jobs.
Since the announcement of the capital move last November, there has been intense speculation about the reasoning behind it.
Some believe the military wants to move further inland for fear of a foreign attack. Others say that Burma's most senior military general, Than Shwe, wants to emulate the kings of old by building a new capital in his honour.
Others even say it could be due to the advice of fortune-tellers, who play a central role in Burmese life.
So I asked a local soothsayer if the capital move would bring good luck.
After studying his charts and making some calculations, he remained unconvinced.
But whatever the future holds for Burma, it looks likely that a former agricultural backwater near Pyinmana is set to play a pivotal role.

2007-08-22T13:53:00.000-05:00

In the third article of a special series from inside Burma, the BBC's Kate McGeown looks at the military government's record of caring for the health and education of its citizens.

Burma's hospitals and schools are secretive places.
Much of what goes on inside these tightly controlled buildings remains a mystery to the outside world.
But indications from the few people prepared to risk speaking out paint a disturbing picture.
One doctor described long queues of patients, many with the classic diseases of poverty such as TB, malaria and water-borne illnesses.
She said she was often unable to give people the treatment they needed, because the drugs were either too expensive or impossible to obtain.
"I get upset sometimes, but then I'm also used to it - every day's the same," she said.
Burma's military junta has been ruling the country for four decades, during which time many other South East Asian nations have seen dramatic improvements in their economies, government services and standards of living.
But many analysts believe that since it came to power, the Burmese government has done little to improve basic services, preferring to spend money on the military and expensive projects like building a new capital.
The World Health Organization estimates that Burma spends $10 per person per year on healthcare, compared with its neighbours Thailand and Malaysia, which spend $160 and $218 respectively.
One NGO estimated that the actual Burmese figure was even lower - more like $0.50.
The results of such policies are obvious. An estimated 150,000 Burmese children under the age of five die every year of malaria, acute respiratory infections and diarrhoea.
"There is no question that the government is not caring adequately for its people," one aid worker said.

Fight against HIV

Not all the news is bad, though. In the past few years, the authorities have increased their co-operation with local and foreign NGOs to tackle the spread of HIV/Aids - and according to UNAids, there have been some concrete results.
Condom use has tripled since 1999, needle exchange programmes are far more prevalent than a few years ago, and more people are both seeking and obtaining treatment.
But Burma still has one of the most serious HIV/Aids epidemics in South East Asia. UNAids estimates that 360,000 Burmese people are currently living with the disease - and other organisations put the figure as high as 600,000.
Despite these successes, there is evidently a long way to go in raising awareness, judging from one man who was brave enough to talk to me about his experiences.
Not only did he risk the wrath of the authorities - like everyone else I spoke to - he also risked exposing himself to the discrimination that comes from having a disease which is still seen as a taboo subject.
"There is a lot of discrimination," he admitted. "I used to share a flat with a friend, but when he found out I had HIV, he made me leave.
"Another man I know used to own a business, but when people found out, no one would buy anything from him anymore."
The man I spoke to is somewhat unusual, in that he is being given free anti-retroviral drugs - a rare luxury in Burma.
"I am one of the lucky ones," he admitted, adding that many Burmese died of Aids without ever knowing there was an alternative.

Education and propaganda

If little is known about healthcare, even less is known about Burma's schooling system.
Because of past student uprisings, the government sees schools and universities as potential hotbeds of dissent, and is therefore especially vigilant at keeping them free from prying eyes.
In fact, according to most of the teachers who were prepared to speak, the government seems to put more energy into stopping outsiders getting into schools than it does on educating the children inside them.
"I have about 80 children in my class," said one woman. "I have to shout so everyone can hear.
Much of a teacher's time is taken up with fulfilling government requests.
"I spent a lot of time being involved in government propaganda," said a woman who left the teaching profession last year in frustration.
"I kept being told to take the children outside to wait for hours at a time, so they could wave flags when important people came past."
The result is that many children leave school without an adequate education.
There are glimmers of hope, though, for even the poorest students.
A few charitable schools operate around the country. One in Mandalay provides free education to nearly 6,000 children.
Passing tourists are welcome to visit, and foreign volunteers are actively sought to help teach English.
It is a refreshing change from the majority of Burmese schools, where the doors remain firmly shut - not only to outsiders, but also to the hopes of Burmese children who want to improve their lives.

2007-08-22T13:49:00.000-05:00

In the second article of a special series from inside Burma, the BBC's Kate McGeown looks at the day-to-day problems facing ordinary people under the country's repressive military regime.

"I hate my life here. I'm just surviving one day at a time," a Burmese taxi driver said sadly, as he stopped to pay a bribe at yet another roadside checkpoint.
"Everything's so difficult. Prices keep going up, and there's too little fuel and electricity.
"There are so many restrictions on everything I want to do... and so much corruption," he said, handing some money to a surly teenager.
For most people in Burma, life under the military government is far from easy.
A farm worker told me he was lucky if he earned 1,000 kyats ($0.80) a day. Some days he earns half that. "I have enough to buy some poor-quality rice for my family, but not much else," he said.
What angers many people is that Burma has plentiful natural resources and was once one of the richest countries in South East Asia, before decades of military rule stifled the economy.
The situation has got far worse in recent months, because of a government decision to increase the salaries of state employees, in some cases by more than 10 times.
"Everyone knew the government couldn't afford it," said a Burmese journalist.
The result was predictable - locals estimate that prices have gone up by more than 30% since April, making it harder for ordinary people to make ends meet.
Andrew Kirkwood, the director of Save the Children in Burma, said malnutrition was a "serious problem", with half the children under five in some areas of Burma thought to be chronically malnourished.
"In some parts of the country, the situation is as bad as we've seen in sub-Saharan Africa," he said.
A man from the western state of Rakhaing said he had even heard reports of farmers selling their babies to child traffickers in exchange for food.

Two-tier system

But the problems that the Burmese face go much deeper than just a lack of money. There is a huge disparity between those allied to the ruling elite and the rest of the population - a distinction which permeates every aspect of day-to-day life.
For many goods, there is a two-tier pricing system. If you know someone influential, you can buy at the government price.
If not, you have to resort to the black market, which is at least twice as expensive.
One of the hottest properties at the moment is a telephone. The black market price is about $3,000 - way beyond most people's means.
Petrol is another commodity where the black market reigns supreme. An ordinary citizen is only allowed two gallons (nine litres) per day at the government price - and even then, queuing can sometimes take hours.
But there always seems to be plenty of petrol at the many black market stands throughout the country. "We're being robbed," one man said.
This climate of semi-official corruption has become so entrenched that whole swathes of the population earn their living from it.
To send a letter, you need to find a friendly "agent" who will make sure it is not pocketed by a postal worker. If you want to avoid paying constant traffic fines, or your child to do well at school, it is vital to know the right people and pay the right price.

Strange decrees

Burma's military rulers make their presence felt in other ways, too. Permission needs to be sought for almost every aspect of life.
"Everything I do is restricted," one man said. "Where I go, what I do, who I see... The authorities even have to give permission if I want anyone to stay the night."
The media, too, is heavily censored. "You only see two colours on TV - orange (for the Buddhist religion) and green (for the military)," said a former television employee.
The government is also unpredictable, and many people fall foul of policies that seem to change at whim.
"One minute farmers are told to grow potatoes to export to India," said a local NGO worker. "The next minute the authorities won't allow it, and all that investment has been wasted."
The latest government campaign is an initiative to grow nut trees, not only as a source of bio fuel but also because government fortune-tellers believe they will shore up the military's power.
Other government decisions, though, are far more sinister. Groups such as the International Labour Organization claim that the Burmese junta continues to use forced labour for its often ambitious construction projects.
Sometimes villagers are even thought to be co-opted as "porters" by the military, many being maimed or killed by landmines as they are made to trek through conflict areas ahead of the soldiers.
Despite living under one of the most draconian regimes in the world, some Burmese people still manage to find time for life's pleasures.
I spoke to a man in his early 20s who, over the last few months, has been using the rare moments of electricity to charge batteries so he can watch the World Cup.
I can imagine him now, glued to a television screen, escaping for a few precious hours from the chaos around him.

2007-08-22T13:42:00.000-05:00

The BBC's Kate McGeown has just returned from Burma, where she talked to people about life under its repressive military regime. In the first of a series of articles, she gives her impressions of a nation the international community seems at a loss to know what to do with.

As I stepped down from the plane onto Burmese soil, my head full of warnings about spies watching my every move, I was pleasantly surprised to find friendly faces rushing to greet me.
"Thank you so much for coming," said an elderly man, smiling through betel-stained teeth.
Where was the Orwellian nightmare I had been warned about? Where were the police ready to cart me off to jail because they had found out I was a journalist?
The sun was shining, the people were open and friendly... it seemed like any other Asian country. I found it hard not to wonder what all the fuss was about.
But it did not take long to find evidence of Burma's darker side.
Barely 20 minutes along the main highway from the airport, I saw a road leading off to the right that was completely shut off by heavily-armed police.
The tight security was not surprising, given that the road led to the home of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose term of house arrest had been extended just days before my arrival.
Local people never mention Ms Suu Kyi by name - they just call her The Lady, a term of deference towards a woman whom many Burmese, probably the vast majority, believe is the rightful leader of their nation.
Despite spending more than 10 of the last 17 years as a prisoner, she remains the main symbol of resistance against the military regime that has ruled Burma for four decades, and which often uses fear and intimidation to keep people in line.

Gossip

Against this backdrop, Burma's 50 million citizens carry on with their daily lives as best they can.
Down the road from Aung San Suu Kyi's house, the people of Rangoon queue for the city's crowded buses, huddle in shops with working generators during the frequent power cuts or play their own version of the Thai national lottery.
Then they do what all Burmese do, and stop in one of the many teashops to gossip about the weather and the football.
But that does not mean that their anger at the military regime has disappeared. If you talk to someone about their life, any veneer of contentment will usually evaporate.
One day, as we drove past a peaceful rural scene of villagers ploughing paddy fields with their oxen, I asked my taxi driver for his views on the political situation.
He had been singing a song to himself, but his face suddenly turned red and angry, and he said: "I hate the people who rule this country. My hatred of the government knows no bounds."
In fact he got so upset that we had to stop the car so he could calm down.
Another man became equally animated when I asked him about the secret military informants who lurk around ever corner.
"They're like a virus - a disease ripping this country apart," he said. "They are everywhere, and they see everything we do.
"So many of my friends have been caught and jailed over the years - some for doing hardly anything. So many lives have been ruined."

Speaking out

It is hardly surprising that emotions run so high.
I was only in Burma for a short time, but I quickly found out how uncomfortable it is to be under surveillance - albeit by a somewhat amateur spy.
On my first day, a man walked into the lobby of my hotel and pretended to read a newspaper near where I was sitting.
He did not turn the page for 20 minutes, but the real giveaway was that the paper - a week-old copy of The Straits Times - was upside-down.
Despite the obvious personal risks of talking to a foreigner, many Burmese people were still willing to put aside their fears and share their lives with me.
They told me about their healthcare system, their schools, their views on the government and the extraordinary decision to move the country's capital to what was, until a few years ago, a rural backwater.
One day a tour guide showing me round one of the Burma's many pagodas turned to me and whispered: "Please let other people know what it's like for us here. We need the outside world to understand."
In this series of articles, I will do my best to answer his request.

2007-08-22T13:37:00.000-05:00

Here are the "Main Players" in the military junta in Burma:

Than Shwe
Senior General Than Shwe, 73, is the head of the ruling junta and controls the army. He is the most hard-line leader, strongly opposed to allowing any political role for opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
After working in the Burmese postal service, Than Shwe joined the army at the age of 20 and his career included a stint in the department of psychological warfare.
He has acted as Burma's head of state since 1992, and was initially seen as more relaxed than his predecessor, General Saw Maung. Some political prisoners have been released, and human rights groups were allowed to visit Burma.
But he continues to suppress all dissent, and oversaw the re-arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2003.
He is said to be superstitious and to regularly seek the advice of astrologers.

Maung Aye
Maung Aye is also a career soldier and the second most powerful man in the country.
He is believed to have established strong ties with Burma's many drug lords in the Golden Triangle while operating as a colonel in the late 1970s and 80s, before he joined the military leadership in 1993.
He has a reputation for ruthlessness and xenophobia, and is also staunchly opposed to allowing Aung San Suu Kyi any future role.
He is also rumoured to be a hard drinker.

Soe Win
Lieutenant General Soe Win, 58, is seen a hard-line operator with close links to Than Shwe. He succeeded Khin Nyunt as prime minister in 2004.
Some diplomats and dissidents believe that, as a key figure in the Union Solidarity and Development Association - the civilian wing of the junta - he was behind a bloody attack on Aung San Suu Kyi's convoy in the north of the country last year, which led to the opposition leader being taken back into house arrest.
Earlier in his career, he commanded an infantry division which helped crush the democracy party in 1988 following Aung San Suu Kyi's overwhelming victory in national elections.
He joined the Defence Service Academy in 1965, and quickly worked his way up through the military ranks. He joined the junta in 1997, and was appointed as Secretary-2 of the council in February 2003, and Secretary-1 in August of the same year, replacing Khin Nyunt, who became prime minister.

2007-08-22T13:30:00.000-05:00

Junta breaks up rare Burma rally

Supporters of Burma's military junta have broken up protests against the doubling of fuel prices.
About 200 people marched in Rangoon in the rare demonstration, but dispersed after a number were bundled into cars and driven away.
A similar protest was held on Sunday, the largest such rally in a decade.
The junta arrested at least 13 activists before Wednesday's protest, including some of the nation's most prominent dissidents.
Veteran leaders
The latest protest took place on the northern outskirts of Rangoon.
The demonstrators, most of them women, were cheered by onlookers as they marched in defiance of the junta's strict controls on protests.
88 GENERATION STUDENTS
Group of former student activists in Burma
Named after the 1988 uprising, which was brutally crushed by the military
Key members have suffered long prison terms
"We are marching to highlight the economic hardship that Myanmar (Burma) people are facing now, which has been exacerbated by the fuel price hike," one protester told the Associated Press news agency.
Their path was blocked by supporters of the junta and plain-clothed officers, witnesses said, and the rally dispersed as up to 10 demonstrators were bundled into cars and driven off.
Last week's fuel price rises left many people struggling to find the money to travel to work.
Sunday's protest against the move had involved veteran leaders of the so-called 88 Generation Students group.

Many taxis and buses did not run after the price rises
The group was at the forefront of the 1988 pro-democracy uprising that was violently put down by the military.
Seven top leaders of the group were among the activists arrested this week.
They include Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi - some of Burma's most prominent dissidents after Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.
Burma's state media said the activists had been arrested for "undermining stability and the security of the nation".
The BBC's South-East Asia correspondent, Jonathan Head, says there have been several small demonstrations since February focusing on growing hardships as the economy declines under the impact of international sanctions and government mismanagement.
The latest rallies are by far the largest and our correspondent says the prospect of economic protests linking up with the 1988 veterans would be especially alarming to the military government.
It was this combination of factors that led to the near overthrow of the military regime during that first uprising 19 years ago.
On Monday the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) warned there could be further protests and security was stepped up in Rangoon.
The NLD's leader, 62-year-old Ms Suu Kyi, has spent most of the past 17 years under house arrest.
The NLD won landmark elections in 1990 but the junta never recognised the result.

2007-08-22T13:12:00.000-05:00

Myanmar arrests dissidents, halts fuel protests

YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar's military junta arrested 13 top dissidents and deployed gangs of spade-wielding supporters on the streets of Yangon on Wednesday to halt protests against soaring fuel prices and falling living standards.

Armed police also took up positions across the country's biggest city alongside truckloads of men from the army's feared Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA). Many were carrying brooms and shovels, pretending to be road sweepers.
Despite the clampdown and the overnight arrest of the prominent activists, 100 people staged an hour-long march before being dispersed. Five women and a man were arrested, although there was no violence, witnesses told Reuters.
"Onlookers applauded but failed to join the march," one said.
In a rare announcement in all state-run newspapers, the junta said the 13 had been arrested for "agitation to cause civil unrest" and "undermining peace and security of the state," charges that could put them in jail for up to 20 years.
Min Ko Naing, Ko Ko Gyi, Min Zeya, Ko Jimmy, Ko Pyone Cho, Arnt Bwe Kyaw and Ko Mya Aye -- all leaders of a 1988 student-led uprising crushed by the military with heavy loss of life -- were among those named. Friends and relatives confirmed the arrests.
Min Ko Naing, Myanmar's second-most prominent political figure after detained Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, was released in November 2004 after 15 years in jail. He was re-arrested in September for four more months.
"Military intelligence and government intelligence seized their houses and searched their houses," another dissident, Htay Kywe, said in a recording e-mailed to Reuters by Myanmar exile groups in neighboring Thailand.
Government agents had taken papers and mobile phones, added Htay Kywe, who had managed to evade capture during a raid on his home and had gone into hiding, one of the exile groups said.
TORTURE FEARS
The swoop came ahead of a planned protest on Wednesday against last week's shock hikes in fuel prices, the latest in a rare series of demonstrations against deteriorating living conditions and galloping inflation in the former Burma.
The Washington-based U.S. Campaign for Burma said it feared for the safety of the detainees, especially Min Ko Naing, winner of U.S., Canadian and European human rights awards.
"Min Ko Naing and the other leaders arrested have all been severely tortured during previous incarcerations and we are gravely concerned for their immediate well-being," policy director Aung Din said in a statement.
Min Ko Naing's 88 Generation Students Group led a march on Sunday tapping into public anger at the 500 percent rise in the price of compressed natural gas -- a hike that came without warning and brought Yangon's bus networks to a standstill.
Myanmar has some of Asia's largest natural gas reserves and has just decided to export production of two major fields worth billions of dollars to China.
Min Ko Naing -- a Burmese nom de guerre meaning "conqueror of kings" -- was not linked to Wednesday's protest planned by Ko Htin Kyaw, an activist already arrested four times this year.
The world's biggest rice exporter when it won independence from Britain in 1948, Myanmar is now one of Asia's poorest countries after 45 years of unbroken military rule.
Aung San Suu Kyi, 62, has been in prison or under house arrest for much of the past 17 years. Human rights groups and the United Nations say as many as 1,100 others are behind bars for their political beliefs.

2007-07-14T10:35:00.000-05:00

Latest Burmese News From Yangon

rb

2007-05-17T09:21:00.001-05:00

Nuclear Burma?

Excerpted from The Economist.

"To anyone who has strolled the streets of Yangon, Myanmar’s capital, and spotted the grim-looking government building devoted to atomic energy, this seems a most unlikely turn of events. But on Tuesday May 15th Russia announced that it would help the south-east Asian country’s ruling junta to set up a nuclear research reactor. Myanmar—once called Burma—had reportedly tried to strike a similar deal with Russia before, but the plan stalled over payment. Now Myanmar, flush with an annual trade surplus (the country is well endowed with natural resources, like oil), says it will pay cash, and Russia has accepted.

"...The plan is to build a 10 megawatt nuclear reactor that uses low enriched uranium. The centre would, reportedly, be under the control of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog. This is a long step from getting the means or the knowledge for building a bomb, but it is enough to spread jitters.

"...What America or others will do about Myanmar’s putative research programme is unclear. Putting nuclear materials in the hands of unstable regimes, or unpredictable dictators, seems far from a good idea. An American decision to provide the technology, in the 1950s, for a nuclear reactor in Kinshasa, in Congo, (in gratitude for uranium supplied by Congo to America for use in the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945), proved to be less than sensible. Nuclear-fuel rods were stolen in the 1970s and then traded by Italian smugglers, raising fears that terrorists could get their hands on such material.

"As in Congo, where a dictator was unable to ensure the secure storage of the nuclear material, or as in North Korea, where a dictator seems keen to develop nuclear weapons, the lesson for Russia over Myanmar should be clear: spreading nuclear technology to troubled countries is a bad idea."

2007-05-17T06:28:00.000-05:00

Siang Hope To America!

I heard from Pasiang yesterday and Lord willing, he will be in America for a short tour this summer. He will be studying how to teach ESL (English as a Second Language) at ITLI in Tulsa, OK. He also hopes to visit his uncle in Atlanta GA while he is in the US.

I'm hoping we can get him down here on July 4th for our local festivities.