Burma Related News - Nov 23, 2006.
TIN KYI
BURMA RELATED NEWS - NOVEMBER 23, 2006.
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HEADLINES
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AFP - Thai PM's Myanmar visit invites uncomfortable comparisons
AFP - Thailand's PTTEP to begin new offshore drilling in Myanmar
IHT - UN panel rebukes Myanmar and Belarus
IHT - A tiny window on the U.S., prized by those peering in
CNA - Thai PM presses Myanmar for democratic reform
SFC - U.S. losing its foothold in repressive Burma
The Star - Employer caught applying for work permits for tourists
The Spokesman Review - Mission of mercy
VOA News - RSF holds day of support for jailed journalists
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Thai PM's Myanmar visit invites uncomfortable comparisons
Thu Nov 23, 7:56 AM ET
YANGON (AFP) - Thailand's army-installed premier was holding talks with
neighboring Myanmar's junta leader in a one-day visit that invited
comparisons between the two military juntas.
Largely in the hope of avoiding that comparison, Prime Minister Surayud
Chulanont made Myanmar the last stop in his series of visits around
Southeast Asia since the military appointed him after the September 19
bloodless coup.
Surayud flew to Myanmar's new capital, Naypyidaw, some 400 kilometers
(250 miles) north of Yangon and met with Senior General Than Shwe,
according to information ministry sources in Yangon.
The Thai premier also had a separate meeting with Prime Minister Soe
Win for about one hour, the sources said, without giving further
details. Surayud returned to Bangkok later in the day.
Myanmar poses especially prickly problems for Thailand, and there has
been bad blood between Surayud himself and the generals in Naypyidaw
over his past efforts as army chief to stop drug trafficking along the
border.
Before the coup, Thailand had been the region's main intermediary with
Myanmar, which has frustrated its neighbors with its refusal to follow
through on promises to make democratic reforms.
The new Thai government has said it will continue to press Myanmar to
reform, while acknowledging that argument is a tough sell coming from
another junta.
Pongthep Tesprateep, secretary to the prime minister, said before
Surayud's departure the premier would emphasize to the Myanmar junta
that Thailand planned to return to democracy within one year.
"Thailand's position is a difficult one but unlike Myanmar as we have a
clear timeline for the process" leading to elections, he said.
Analysts said Surayud was keenly aware of the inevitable comparison
with the dictatorship in the country formerly known as Burma, where the
military has ruled since 1962 by violently suppressing pro-democracy
movements.
"They are sensitive to this perception. Is Thailand retrogressing
toward Burma? Of course not, but the comparison will be made, and they
are walking a very fine line," said political analyst Thitinan
Pongsudhirak in Bangkok.
Surayud's government, and the junta that backs it, have insisted they
want to end the business dealings with Myanmar that ousted prime
minister Thaksin Shinawatra fostered.
However, they will find that difficult to do. Thailand last year was by
far the largest foreign investor in Myanmar, due to a six billion
dollar dam that the kingdom is building across the border to generate
electricity for its own use.
Thailand also pipes about one billion cubic feet of gas each day from
Myanmar's offshore reserves in the southeast, in the Andaman Sea.
The kingdom desperately needs those energy resources to keep its
economy growing and reduce its staggering import bill for oil.
Surayud shows no sign of backing away from these energy deals, which
have become a key source of revenue for Myanmar, one of the world's
poorest nations.
The economic deals have also helped the junta weather the impact of US
and European sanctions, imposed over its human rights abuses and the
house arrest of 61-year-old democracy leader and Nobel peace laureate
Aung San Suu Kyi.
Thai Energy Minister Piyasvasti Amranand accompanied Surayud on the
trip, and Thai media reported that Thailand hoped to discuss expanding
energy deals.
Thailand's energy giant PTT Exploration and Production said Thursday it
planned to begin new exploratory drilling in the Gulf of Martaban, in
southern Myanmar, next week.
Surayud was likely to have addressed other areas of concern, including
illegal migration and drug trafficking, during talks with the junta
leaders.
Migrants from Myanmar have become an important source of cheap labor
for Thailand. Some 500,000 Myanmar workers are registered in Thailand,
but another 800,000 are thought to be in the kingdom without papers.
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Thailand's PTTEP to begin new offshore drilling in Myanmar
Thursday November 23, 2006, 6:54 pm
YANGON (AFP) - Myanmar's state-run oil company and Thailand's PTT
Exploration and Production are set to begin new exploratory drilling
for natural gas in the Gulf of Martaban next week.
Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise and PTTEP, Thailand's largest oil
exploration firm, will begin drilling from Tuesday as part of a joint
venture in offshore field M-9, the official New Light of Myanmar said.
A spokesman for PTTEP confirmed that the new drilling would begin next
week and said it was part of a long-running project to search for new
natural gas reserves in the Gulf of Martaban which opens out into the
Andaman Sea.
"So far the exploration has not proved significant reserves but we
still believe that M-9 has high potential for commercial production," a
PTTEP spokesman said in Bangkok.
He said PTTEP had several other exploration projects underway in the
Gulf of Martaban but most of the company's activities so far have been
in the M-9 field.
PTTEP, a unit of Thailand's largest energy firm PTT Plc, is also vying
with India and China for rights to drill in the Gulf of Bengal off
western Myanmar.
Thailand's military-installed Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont paid a
visit to Myanmar's ruler Than Shwe on Thursday, and officials said
energy was among the issues they were expected to discuss.
Natural gas from Myanmar currently accounts for some 20 percent of
Thailand's supply.
That gas comes mainly from the Yetagun field -- operated by Malaysia's
Petronas, Japan's Nippon Oil and PTTEP -- and the Yadana field run by
France's Total, US firm Unocal and PTTEP again.
Myanmar is one of the world's poorest nations and is subject to US and
European economic sanctions because of human rights abuses and the
house arrest of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
But the impact of the sanctions has been weakened by the eagerness of
neighboring China, India and Thailand to tap Myanmar's vast natural
wealth to fuel their growing economies.
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The International Herald Tribune
UN panel rebukes Myanmar and Belarus
Published: November 23, 2006
UNITED NATIONS, New York (Reuters) - A key UN panel rebuked Myanmar and
Belarus for human rights abuses amid a growing debate about whether any
country should be named and shamed for rights violations.
The panel, a General Assembly committee examining human rights issues,
rebuked Myanmar in a resolution passed by a vote of 70 to 28 with 63
abstentions. The document said the country's government refused to
investigate widespread human rights violations, such as summary
executions, torture, forced labor, sexual violence and recruitment of
child soldiers.
The resolution singled out attacks by the military on villages in Kayin
state and other ethnic provinces, harassment and arrest of student
leaders and the continuing house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi and her
deputy Tin Oo, leaders of the opposition National League for Democracy.
Myanmar has long been criticized by UN human rights bodies for its
military leadership that refused to acknowledge Aung San Suu Kyi's
overwhelming win at the polls in 1990.
The United States asked the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution
that would pressure Myanmar to stop jailing political opponents and
flooding the region with refugees.
The Belarus resolution, introduced by the United States, was passed by
a vote of 70 to 31 with 67 abstentions. Its adoption is tantamount to
official passage by the full assembly.
The resolution faulted the Minsk government for rigged elections last
March, suppressing dissent, arresting dissidents and obstructing
opposition candidates.
Belarus in turn unsuccessfully sought a resolution against the United
States, expressing "dismay" at voting irregularities, detentions at
Guantánamo Bay in Cuba and listing criticisms by U.S. civil rights
groups on abrogation of liberties under legislation to combat terror.
That measure received six positive votes and 114 against with 45
abstentions. The six voting in favor were Cuba, Iran, Myanmar, North
Korea, Syria as well as Belarus.
But several countries, including Egypt and Algeria, said they voted
"no," mainly because they disagreed with any country-specific
resolutions - with the exception of Israel because it was an occupying
power. Belarus and Uzbekistan last week were successful in getting a
measure passed that discouraged UN human rights bodies from adopting
resolutions condemning violations in a specific country. The committee
adopted a resolution Tuesday on rights abuses in Iran and an earlier
one on North Korea.
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The International Herald Tribune
A tiny window on the U.S., prized by those peering in
By Jane Perlez / The New York Times
Published: November 23, 2006
YANGON, Myanmar: For a window into how people think in this closed and
cloistered Asian society, consider these eclectic interests in American
culture, found on the bulletin board and library shelves at the
American Center here.
"The Devil Wears Prada" is popular, but Edith Wharton's "Age of
Innocence" has fans. The Paris Review is in demand, but so are Vogue,
Vanity Fair and Architectural Digest.
The movie "Brokeback Mountain" is must viewing. "I would like to see
the movie 'Brokeback Mountain,' " wrote one man. "It is not available
here in Burma. P.S. I am not a gay."
More than 15,000 members come to the American Center to borrow books,
see DVDs and study in a modern reading room and computer area equipped
with high-speed Internet connections. An auditorium screens Hollywood's
latest. (Attendance at "Brokeback Mountain" outstripped all others this
year.)
a United States worried about its tarnished image in the world, the
bustling center is testimony to how an accessible library, seminars and
courses in English can burnish America's reputation and comfort those
living under autocratic rulers.
The center is so cherished in this poor and oppressed nation with a
passion for books that attendance far exceeds that at the American
library in democratic New Delhi.
The junta of Myanmar, formerly Burma, regards the United States as a
prime enemy, chiefly because Washington has imposed economic sanctions
for nearly a decade. Washington also insists that the government
recognize the 1990 election, which was won overwhelmingly by the
political party of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader, even
though she was under house arrest. (She remains so.)
Still, the government has allowed the American Center to operate.
"We're here to say this country deserves better than it has got," said
Todd Pierce, the public affairs officer at the American Embassy who
runs the center. "This country is a classic closed society where the
tea shops and the role of rumor are very large. So this is a place that
says, 'Let's throw it open.' "
The requests come thick and fast. Someone wanted books by the French
philosopher Michel Foucault. ("On order," Pierce replied via the
bulletin board.) Someone else wanted the collected poetry of John
Berryman. Also on its way, Pierce replied. There were requests for
books on starting online businesses. And more comics, please.
Pierce has revamped the interior of the whitewashed villa (formerly the
North Korean Embassy) with fresh paint; handsome, made-in-America
reading lamps; and tables and chairs that are often full, leaving
readers to spill onto the floor.
In addition to the information services, Pierce has introduced lighter
touches to draw the crowds. The center had an open house with door
prizes for the 800 people who turned up. An ex-political prisoner won a
copy of a chick-lit novel, "The Princess Diaries," by Meg Cabot.
All of this has led to a near doubling of the membership, to 15,899,
from about 8,000 in July last year.
Some Burmese say they are reluctant to visit the center, fearing
persecution by the government, which operates a pervasive intelligence
network. On some days, rumors circulate that the center is surrounded
by the military. When that happens, attendance often drops just a bit,
Pierce said.
"If someone is not comfortable in coming, I respect that," he said.
"The vast majority of people who come are not political. Some
government people come - they have to keep up with Vogue and W, too."
On a nearby street corner, tea shops have sprung up where people who
have been reading or studying can relax, gossip and eat. Pierce says he
regards it as the "campus."
At midday recently, a young man carried a thick book from the library -
"Nongovernmental Organizations and the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights" - while he nursed a cup of tea. Was he nervous about coming to
the center? "It's my right to have human rights," he said.
Despite the government's distaste for foreign influence, the American
Center is not the only place for Burmese to find things out. There is
the British Council, a less sprightly equivalent, and various news
media outlets.
Just after sunrise people can be seen walking around with transistor
radios glued to their ears listening to shortwave broadcasts in Burmese
by the British Broadcasting Corporation, the Voice of America and Radio
Free Asia.
More than two-thirds of all radio listeners said they tuned to the BBC
World Service, according to a recent BBC survey.
The government also allows American and European popular culture of
different sorts - often, it seems, as a diversion from declining living
standards.
Ultra-law-and-order movies like "Judge Dredd," with Sylvester Stallone,
are a favorite on the television sets of tea shops, where Burmese
dawdle over small cups of sweetened, milky tea.
At 2:30 a.m. one recent day, live screenings of two European soccer
games - Arsenal vs. CSKA Moscow and Manchester United vs. FC Copenhagen
- captivated an audience at a makeshift cinema of young men dressed in
traditional sarongs, Buddhist monks in ruby-hued robes, and even women.
As vibrant as the American Center is, it is actually a relic, one of
the last examples of what used to be a common and important tool in
Washington's public diplomacy. After the cold war ended, Washington
closed almost all the libraries it had set up to project the ideals of
the United States as a welcoming democratic nation.
At downtown city addresses in countries prominent and obscure, the
libraries provided books, information on scholarships, and sometimes
just quiet space to do
homework or read a newspaper.
With the terrorism threat now, the libraries, if they exist at all, are
usually hidden behind the walls of fortresslike American embassies that
many local people feel are too forbidding to penetrate.
Even in India, the State Department has ordered the free-standing
library to move, on the ground that it does not have enough security.
Here in Myanmar, the open and inviting nature of the American Center,
the availability of tea just across the way and, of course, the wealth
of information seem to be truly appreciated.
Just consider this note among the 40 or so on the bulletin board:
"Every moment of my time spending in this library is paradise."
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Channel NewsAsia
Thai PM presses Myanmar for democratic reform
Posted: 24 November 2006 0149 hrs
BANGKOK : Thailand's army-installed premier said he pressed
neighbouring Myanmar for democratic reform during his talks on Thursday
with its top military leader.
Surayud Chulanont met with Myanmar's Senior General Than Shwe at the
country's new capital of Naypyidaw, some 400 kilometres north of
Yangon.
"I asked Mr Than Shwe to consider democratic reform in Myanmar, which
is a member of ASEAN," Surayud told reporters after returning to
Bangkok on Thursday.
The premier said Myanmar's democratic reform would be further discussed
at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit next month
in the Philippines.
Myanmar was the last of his visits to the 10 nations of ASEAN which
group Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the
Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Asked about Myanmar's detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, Surayud
said he had "an informal talk" with Prime Minister Soe Win about the
opposition leader but declined to give further details.
The 61-year-old Nobel peace laureate has been under house arrest in
Yangon for most of the past 17 years in Myanmar, which has been ruled
by the military since 1962.
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San Fransisco Chronicle
U.S. losing its foothold in repressive Burma
Gas finds, China's patronage helping junta entrench
Jane Perlez, New York Times
Thursday, November 23, 2006
(11-23) 04:00 PST Sittwe , Burma -- In the balmy waters of the Bay of
Bengal, just off the coast, an Asian energy rush is on. Huge pockets of
natural gas have been found. China and India are jostling to sign
deals. Plans are afoot to spend billions on new ports and pipelines.
Yet onshore, in towns like this one, not a light is to be seen -- not a
street lamp, not a glow in a window -- as women crouch by the roadside
at dawn, sorting by candlelight the vegetables they will sell for 2
cents a bunch at the morning market.
Paraffin and wood are major sources of light and heat. People receive
two hours of electricity a day from a military government that is among
the world's most repressive.
But attempts at outside pressure to prod the government to address its
people's needs and curb abuses have faltered, in large part because
China's thirst for resources has undermined nearly a decade of U.S.
economic sanctions. Critics say that Washington's policy has handed
Burma, also known as Myanmar, to China.
The Asian energy rush is the latest demonstration of how the hunt for
oil and gas -- and China's economic leverage -- are reshaping
international politics, often in ways that run counter to U.S.
preferences.
In many respects, with the rise of China's economic power and its
unflagging support, the Burmese government here has become more
entrenched than ever, people inside and outside the country say.
"What can we do about it?" said a well-educated man, when asked about
the plans to sell the gas abroad in the face of the deprivation at
home. "What good would it do to protest? What would we get?" People
were too afraid of the 400,000-strong army equipped by China, Russia
and Ukraine to complain, he said.
In numerous encounters in Burma, where most speak with extreme caution
to foreigners and almost always anonymously for fear of jail, people
joked sardonically that China was the "big daddy," and that soon it
would "own" Burma. "China is a good friend of the government, not of
the people," said one woman. "They are like brother and
brother-in-law."
The Bush administration has pledged that it will not let up on its
sanctions against the government until it releases the opposition
leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for 11 of the
past 17 years.
Suu Kyi's political party won an overwhelming victory in elections in
1990, and Washington insists that the government recognize those
results, and release an estimated 1,100 political prisoners.
The Bush administration says it plans to file a Security Council
resolution at the United Nations in the coming weeks condemning the
government for its human-rights abuses, and tightening sanctions even
further.
The U.N. undersecretary-general, Ibrahim Gambari, met with the junta
leader, Gen. Than Shwe, on Nov. 11 in Burma and urged the government to
mend its ways on forced labor and political prisoners. The meeting
ended inconclusively, U.N. officials said.
With so much energy and other resources at stake, and given its
preference to shun outside interference in internal politics, China's
leaders are seemingly unbothered by what is happening inside Burma.
China's National Development Reform Commission approved plans in April
to build a pipeline that would carry China's Middle East oil from a
deep-water port off Sittwe across Burma to Yunnan, China's southern
province. This would provide China with an alternative to the Strait of
Malacca, which it now depends on for delivering its oil from the Middle
East.
Though no date has been announced for work on the new pipeline across
Burma, the military appeared to be getting ready to build the deep-sea
port on the island of Ramree, to the south of Sittwe, local people
said.
In another sign of the importance of Burma to China, the chairman of
the China National Offshore Oil Corp., Fu Chengyu, said in a speech
this year that the company would focus its investment in the medium
term on two countries: Burma and Nigeria.
Indeed, the company's engineers are currently exploring for oil on
Ramree, and the company has rights to other oil deposits in central
Burma, according to Burma government reports.
India, thirsty for energy to fuel its own fast-growing economy, sees
Burma as a place where it needs to contain China. In the late 1990s,
democratic India switched its policy toward Burma from antagonism to
friendship.
And Thailand, Southeast Asia's largest economy, spends about $1.2
billion a year for Burma's natural gas, giving the military government
badly needed hard currency.
In conversations with people in a number of towns, a portrait emerged
of a universally unpopular, deeply corrupt regime. People told of
worsening poverty, a collapsed education system and a health care
system that could deal only with those who paid. Tuberculosis, malaria
and AIDS were rampant, they said.
The government's budget for its AIDS program in 2004 was $22,000,
according to a recent health survey by John Hopkins University Medical
School.
The junta leader, Shwe, 73, whose early military training was in
psychological warfare, was described by many here as a master
manipulator of his minions. He insisted, apparently out of fear of a
coup, that the capital be moved this year from Rangoon, also known as
Yangon, to a new site in the jungle, Naypyidaw.
The move, costing millions of scarce dollars, was in step with the
general's belief that he marched in the footsteps of the old Burmese
kings -- the name of the new capital means "Royal City." Then, as now,
there was a fierce line between the rulers and the ruled.
For the first time, health workers said they were discovering severe
malnutrition among children in urban centers, a true anomaly in a lush
country that was once the world's biggest exporter of rice.
In Mandalay, the second-biggest city, almost-naked children scrounged
on the riverfront with distended bellies. In one village on the Thwande
River on the west coast, nomadic families were too strapped for food to
offer any to visitors, a traditional courtesy in Burma.
"Why is there severe malnutrition in this Garden of Eden? Because
people are poor," said Frank Smithuis, a physician who has worked in
Burma since 1994 and heads the Doctors Without Borders, Holland,
medical programs. "You don't see the malnutrition. Why? Because the
children don't walk around. Why don't they walk? Because they are too
weak."
In the village of Leat Pan Gyunt, south of Sittwe, villagers said they
could afford to send their girls to school for only three years. The
local school consisted of one dirt-floored room for all grades from
first to eighth grade. The desks were planks of wood supported on two
bricks.
Afraid of protests by students, the government dispersed the University
of Rangoon to sites outside the capital.
At the new Magway University, the medical students were learning
surgery from books and videos, without working on human corpses because
the government refused to pay for formaldehyde, two people familiar
with the situation said.
In contrast to the deepening poverty -- Burma's per capita income is
calculated at $175 a year, far below neighboring Bangladesh -- the
military leaders were amassing fortunes, people said.
The latest evidence was a video leaked to a Web site,
www.irrawaddy.org, based in Thailand, of the recent opulent wedding of
Gen. Than Shwe's daughter, Thandar Shwe. The video showed the bride,
with her father alongside her, decked out in a necklace of six ropes of
large diamonds, her hair looped with diamonds as well.
For those educated people who want change, the path is treacherous.
"I don't want to waste myself in jail," said one woman, who has two
relatives who are imprisoned. "They were not the same when they came
out."
In a similar vein to the dissidents in Eastern Europe in the 1980s, the
woman said she believed change had to come from inside the country. But
unlike Poland under Soviet rule, no unions are allowed in Burma, and
most kinds of formal associations are considered suspect.
She said she held classes at her home on how to be more confident, how
to strategize. She was trying to spread her classes to Buddhist
monasteries and Christian churches, she said.
"Only education can change people because people don't know anything,"
she said. "Only about 10 percent of the people know what is going on."
Sometimes she was in such despair, she said, that she believed that the
only way to win against the government was "to think like them."
"But we can't think like them," she quickly added, "nobody thinks like
them."
Not all opposition groups that work outside the country believe that
Washington's hard line is serving the best interests of Burma or the
United States.
With its policy of isolation, the Bush administration was allowing
China, and to a lesser extent, India, to have a free hand in Burma to
the exclusion of the United States, said Aung Naing Oo, who spent a
year at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
and who is the author of several books on Burma.
"The geopolitical situation favors the Burmese military," he said.
"China and India both want to support it, and the Asian nations have no
teeth."
Still, on a recent trip to Vietnam, a delegation of Burma officials
heard something that astounded them, he said. They went to find out why
Vietnam had become so suddenly prosperous.
"The Vietnamese said one word: 'The Americans.' The Burmese could not
believe that after fighting a war, Vietnam was friendly with the United
States."
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Thai premier meets military leaders in Myanmar
By IANS
Thursday November 23, 04:26 PM
Yangon, Nov 23 (DPA) Thai Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont met Myanmar
strongman Than Shwe during an official one-day visit here Thursday.
Chulanont arrived at Myanmar's new capital of Naypyidaw and met with
leaders of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) including
Prime Minister Soe Win.
Myanmar was the last of Chulanont's courtesy visits to the capitals of
the 10-member Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) since he
was appointed prime minister on Oct 1.
Thailand plans to invest in energy projects in Myanmar, including oil
and gas exploration and dams along their common border, the country's
Permanent Secretary for Commerce Pornchai Rujiprapa said Thursday.
Thailand's Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) signed a
memorandum of understanding with Myanmar concerning such projects in
2005.
Under the MoU, EGAT and Chinese investors would co-invest in the dam on
the Thai-Myanmar border.
However, environmental groups have raised fears of environmental
degradation in the undeveloped area.
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UNPO
Karenni: Myanmar Targeting Minorities
2006-11-23
Below is an article by Anthony Faiola, published by the Dallas Morning
News:
CAMP EITUTA, Myanmar - In a burgeoning encampment on Myanmar's
eastern frontier, Hay Nay Tha, a 30-year-old mother of three, awakens
in the darkness most nights to the sound of her children's screams.
"They keep having nightmares about our journey here," she said.
That journey, Ms. Hay recalled, began when she was four months pregnant
and government soldiers torched her village and forced local farmers
off their land. It ended four weeks later, after her husband died of
malaria en route to this camp. She and her children arrived this
summer, dehydrated and exhausted. She soon went into early labor with a
stillborn son.
"To be honest," she said, shyly gazing down at her hands, "I am having
nightmares, too."
Nightmares of all kinds are rife in this camp, where new clusters of
villagers arrive almost daily, a consequence of Myanmar's largest
military offensive against its own people in more than a decade,
according to aid groups and Western diplomats. The offensive has
targeted minorities such as Ms. Hay, a member of the restive Karen
ethnic group, which has long maintained a measure of autonomy.
Gauging the destruction
According to estimates by relief groups, Myanmar forces have burned
down more than 200 civilian villages here in Karen state, destroyed
crops and placed land mines along key jungle passages to prevent
refugees from returning to their home villages. Dozens of people have
died, and at least 20,000 have been displaced over the past eight to 10
months.
"What is now going on in Burma are crimes against humanity," said Sunai
Phasuk, head Myanmar consultant for New York-based Human Rights Watch.
Myanmar's military leaders have historically been secretive about their
actions. But observers say they are attempting to build a broad
security cordon around their new capital near the inland city of
Pyinmana, only a few miles from the border of Karen state. The result
has been an extraordinary use of force to clear out existing villages
in the area.
Since seizing control of the country in 1988, Myanmar's military junta
has taken a series of harsh measures to secure its grip on power, and
over the past several months, it has appeared to step up its arrests of
opposition figures.
Win Ko, a leading member of the National League for Democracy, was
arrested last month and sentenced to three years in prison after
staging a petition drive to free political prisoners. The party's
leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, remains
under house arrest.
Observers say the junta has reserved its most brutal treatment for
Myanmar's eastern ethnic groups, like the Karenni, the Shan and the
Mon, as well as the Karen, the largest minority in the region.
A fiercely independent group of approximately 3 million people, the
Karen speak a separate language from most Burmese, use their own
ancient writing system and have traditionally opposed the military
junta. Two decades of sporadic government campaigns have already driven
hundreds of thousands of Karen and other refugees into neighboring
Thailand, where at least 150,000 now live in official camps and an
estimated 1.5 million dwell illegally.
This year, the campaign assumed far larger dimensions.
New capital
Myanmar government officials did not return phone calls seeking comment
from their embassy in Washington. But observers say the campaign is
almost certainly tied to a desire to extend security around the new
capital, which is meant to serve as a protective jungle fortress for
the junta.
Economic development appears to be another motivation for the
offensive. Myanmar, a country that was once one of Southeast Asia's
richest nations and is now among its poorest, has sought to create
revenue by signing a deal with Thailand to build multiple dams on the
Salween River, which runs through Karen state.
"The new capital and the dam projects have become an incredibly
destructive pretext for the Burmese military to take control of Karen
state using indiscriminate force," said Jack Dunford, executive
director of the Thailand Burma Border Consortium, a U.S.-funded relief
group. "I fear this may be the beginning of the end there."
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The Star Online
Thursday November 23, 2006
Employer caught applying for work permits for tourists
PUTRAJAYA: Employers seem to be taking the easier and cheaper way out
to hire foreign workers by obtaining work permits for those who are in
the country on tourist visas.
And to ensure there are no glitches, they are falsifying approval
letters complete with the Immigration Department's letterhead.
One such case was discovered Thursday morning at the Immigration
Department.
Department enforcement division director Datuk Ishak Mohamed said what
gave the employer away was that the letter was not typed properly and
the names of the six Myanmar tourists missing from the department's
record.
"The address of the employer was typed on top of the line separating
the letterhead and the content. It was untidy typing which we do not
do.
"Also the names of employees should already be in our system before
the department issues the approval letter.
"We just discovered this and will be detaining the employer and the
six Myanmar tourists soon," he said, adding that the six had entered
the country on Aug 26.
Ishak said the employer had wanted the six tourists to work as
construction workers in Klang.
Speaking to reporters here on Thursday, he said the employer when
applying for the work permit with the false approval letter handed over
their passports to the department in the morning.
The employer is liable to a fine of RM10,000 for every person whose
visa he applied for and a jail term of not more than five years.
Ishak does not believe the false approval letter was an inside job as
it was easy to forge such things nowadays.
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The Spokesman Review
Mission of mercy
Kevin Graman, Staff writer
November 23, 2006
An East Central Neighborhood pastor and his wife are having a few extra
guests for Thanksgiving dinner this year, an extended family of 12
Burmese refugees.
The Rev. Eric Blauer and his wife, Lee Ella, are sponsoring the ethnic
Karen (pronounced Ca REN) family, which settled in Spokane in the fall
after spending nine years in a Thai refugee camp.
They are here with the help of World Relief, a church-based refugee-aid
network.
"It's a mission in reverse for us," said Eric Blauer, pastor of Jacob's
Well, a nondenominational ministry at 3016 E. Fifth Ave.
Blauer's brother Matt is a videographer who documents the ordeal of the
Karen and other Southeast Asian refugees for various nongovernmental
organizations, including the Free Burma Rangers.
"For us, it is an intense emotional link," Blauer said. "The people he
is helping there are the people we are helping here."
The government of Myanmar - so named by its military rulers who
usurped the authority of Burma's elected leaders - is one of the most
repressive in the world, according to international human rights
groups.
The three families the Blauers are supporting give testimony to the
barbarity of the government, which calls itself the State Peace and
Development Council.
The elder of the Spokane Karen goes by the English-language name he has
given himself, Moon Light. He has a limited understanding of English
and speaks through an interpreter on important matters.
His wife, Yoo Yoe, 36, is one of three sisters, each with a family, who
now live in rental homes in east-central Spokane. The three families
have a total of six children.
It will be interesting, the Blauers said, to see what the Karen think
of Thanksgiving dinner, with all the trimmings. Refugee camp diet
consisted of only rice, salt and a paste of fermented fish.
According to Sandi Solverson, a tutor at Sheridan Elementary School,
the older Karen children have been "hesitant about our food." But that
is not the case for Moon and Yoo's youngest child, Larde, who is 7.
"She tries everything," Solverson said.
More problematic is getting the children to remember their coats, she
said, since where they come from it rarely gets below 90 degrees. Socks
also were an issue for a while.
The story of Moon Light and his family is typical of thousands of
Burmese refugees, according to Stephen Dun, of World Aid Inc., a
Seattle-based humanitarian organization that sends aid to areas of the
world that larger relief agencies do not.
Dun often interprets via telephone for the Karen families in Spokane.
Born in Hmaw Bi, about 30 miles north of Rangoon, Moon Light, now 41,
farmed and tended a shop in Htmor in the Karen region of the country
until 1996. That year everyone in his village was given three days to
leave their homes or come under mortar attack by the Myanmar army.
Between 1996 and 2005, more than 2,800 villages like Moon's were
destroyed by the army, which is dominated by ethnic Burmans, the
largest of several ethnic peoples that constitute the former Burma.
Atrocities against the Burmese
» Atrocities committed by the military junta known as the State Peace
and Development Council against the Burmese people are documented by
numerous human rights groups. They include extrajudicial executions,
mass rape, forced labor and the military recruitment of children. The
Thailand Burma Border Consortium estimates that more than a million
people were forcibly displaced from their homes in eastern Burma
between 1996 and 2005.
» The SPDC, which has renamed the nation Myanmar, has enacted a policy
of forced relocation of villagers who might provide aid to resistance
fighters. Rather than submit to slavery and starvation, an estimated
100,000 people are in hiding in the country. Thousands more are living
in Thai refugee camps. Meanwhile, the leader of the Burmese democratic
movement, Nobel laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, continues to be kept
under house arrest.
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RSF holds day of support for jailed journalists
Nov 23, 2006 (VOA) International media rights watchdog Reporters San
Frontiers, or Reporters Without Borders, marked its 17th Day of Support
for
imprisoned journalists yesterday with calls for the release of media
workers in Burma, China and Cuba.
According to RSF, there are 139 journalists in prison around the world.
"These men and women have been put in jail just for doing their job.
Their criticism, their probing enquiries or their damning reports have
landed them in prison, in some cases just for a few months, in other
cases for as many as 10, 15 or 20 years - their lives destroyed for
failing to be sufficiently compliant, for failing to respect the taboos
imposed by authoritarian governments," an RSF statement said.
While estimates vary, at least seven journalists are known to be in
prison in Burma, including, Win Tin, Maung Maung Lay Ngwe, Aung Htun,
Thaung Tun, Ne Min, Thar Cho and Kyaw Thwin.
Win Tin, a former editor-in-chief of the Hanthawati publication, has
spent more than 18 years in prison in Burma. Now an elderly and ailing
man, Win Tin is also a senior National League for Democracy leader and
a former advisor to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
"The courage of U Win Tin in refusing to give way to the blackmail of
the military authorities, has never faltered . . . His stance in
support of freedom of expression and democracy cannot allow us to
forget the criminal attitude of the military junta, who is keeping in
prison a sick and elderly man of 76," RSF and the Burma Media
Association said in a joint statement earlier this year.
As part of the RSF Day of Support for imprisoned journalists, the group
has marked the worst prisons for media workers around the world on
Google Earth, including a marker for the notorious Insein prison on the
outskirts of Rangoon.
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