Crackdown on Burmese Dissidents in Chiang Mai

By THE IRRAWADDY

Thai police officers on Sunday raided the offices of several exiled Burmese opposition groups including the Human Rights Education Institute of Burma, the Burmese Women’s Union and the National Health and Education Committee.

A Burmese source confirmed that 10 Burmese women from the Burmese Women’s Union who were attending a capacity-building workshop in Chiang Mai were apprehended and are now in custody.

The police came with information and photos of the locations of Burmese offices. The arrests took place on Sunday when many offices were closed for the weekend.

The offices of several Chiang Mai-based Burmese opposition groups and media organizations have remained temporarily closed on Monday. The motive for the arrests and the reason why Burmese human rights workers and dissidents have been targeted is not yet known.

Several exiled Burmese and foreign groups have opened NGOs and advocacy offices in Chiang Mai in recent years.

Burmese groups faced the most repressive times under Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s administration in the early 2000s. Many offices were shut down for several weeks due to fears of intimidation and crackdowns.

International human rights groups and Western governments expressed concern for the safety of exiled Burmese dissidents living in Thailand at the time.

Under the current Thai government, Burmese groups in Thailand have enjoyed relative freedom without any major harassment.

According to diplomatic sources, Western embassies in Bangkok are closely watching the situation.

Burma Newscasts - Crackdown on Burmese Dissidents in Chiang Mai
Monday, September 14, 2009

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INGOs Kept Waiting for Visas

By WAI SANN
The Irrawaddy News

RANGOON—International aid workers are being kept waiting several weeks to get visas to enter Burma, according to international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) that are working for the recovery of cyclone-affected areas.

"This is a big headache for us,” an official from one of the INGOs told The Irrawaddy on condition of anonymity. “I don't know why the TCG (Tripartite Core Group) stopped facilitating the process of visas for international aid workers.”

Until March this year, INGOS reported that the process for obtaining visas for their staff had become easier and did not take much time. They attributed this efficiency to the efforts of the TCG, which was established in May 2008 as a working mechanism for coordinating, facilitating and monitoring the flow of international assistance into cyclone-hit areas.

The TCG comprises a joint assessment team of representatives from the Burmese military government, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) and the United Nations.

The military government drew international criticism and condemnation for not allowing many international aid workers into the country in the wake of the Cyclone Nargis disaster on May 2-3 last year, which killed some 138,000 people in Burma and affected more than two million.

However, in the months following the cyclone, the TCG was relatively successful in persuading the military junta to allow international aid workers to obtain visas and get access to the cyclone-affected areas.

However, since March this year, the group has not been in a position to help the INGOs, forcing the aid workers to apply for visas by themselves in the traditionally slow and bureaucratic old system whereby aid workers have to apply for visas through the Burmese line ministries, which in turn submit their applications to the Foreign Affairs Policy Committee (FAPC).

The FAPC handles all kinds of visa applications, and reportedly meets only once a week to consider the INGO visa issues.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)/ Rangoon, there are over 200 visa applications pending with the FAPC.

“This bureaucracy mechanism certainly holds back our work, and slows down recovery efforts,” said an international aid worker working with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

According to UN sources, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) is currently frustrated by being unable to operate a helicopter for recovery efforts because one of its pilots has been waiting for a visa in Bangkok for more than three weeks.

“We UN personnel, and some NGO personnel, use this helicopter to go to places like Bogalay and Laputta. It will have a huge impact on our traveling to the cyclone-affected area, which in another way will also have impact on the recovery work,” an official from the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) said.

"My impression is that the government no longer wants to cooperate with us, and doesn't want us to be involved in the recovery efforts," said an official from an NGO that is helping cyclone survivors in Laputta Township.

He said that some of their international staff have been waiting outside the country for Burmese visas for over four weeks, but none of them has been informed why the FAPC has taken so long to process or review their visa applications.

"We're used to this sort of bureaucracy in Burma,” an NGO official said. “But the government should know this is a very important time for the cyclone survivors. We are helping those cyclone survivors whom they [the junta] don't want to help.

”The recovery phase has just begun,” the official added. “We need more assistance and more international aid workers.”

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A Nation in Need

The Irrawaddy News

A year ago, when deadly Cyclone Nargis slammed into Burma, the country was ill-prepared. The official death toll was at least 140,000, but some observers now say that it was even higher. We may never know the true figure, however, because the reclusive regime that at first refused to allow aid to flow freely into the cyclone-affected Irrawaddy delta has no desire for a full account of the consequences of their incompetence and callousness.

The junta eventually gave a green light to something approaching a full-scale relief effort, but it continued to assert its control in a heavy-handed manner. Military authorities hampered the delivery of aid to the delta, and local relief workers faced harassment and arrest if they failed to play by the regime’s rules. Traumatized villagers whose homes had been destroyed were told to leave temporary shelters and get back to work in their ruined fields. And foreign warships carrying aid materials were forced to withdraw because the repressive rulers in Naypyidaw feared not only an invasion, but also the very real danger that the presence of a force stronger than the Burmese military could inspire a massive uprising.

To add insult to injury, junta-controlled newspapers carried editorials reprimanding the international community for being tightfisted with its aid. They then claimed that Burma did not need help from the rest of the world, because people in the delta could easily survive on fish and frogs from nearby rivers.

The survivors of Cyclone Nargis have indeed been extremely resilient in the face of their tribulations. But it would be unspeakably cruel to use this as an excuse to deny them the assistance they so desperately need. They have lost family members, homes and livelihoods. The recovery process has been achingly slow, with recent data showing that some 500,000 people still have no permanent place to live, 200,000 have no access to fresh water and 350,000 are receiving food aid from the World Food Program.

Infrastructure—everything from schools, monasteries and churches to clinics, bridges and jetties—remains in ruins because there is not enough money to cover rebuilding costs.

The aid money is not forthcoming because of reports of extortion, misappropriation of aid and corruption in the initial stages of the relief effort and because of the regime’s horrific human rights record. The lack of accountability and transparency continues to plague pleas for more aid. According to a new recovery plan, the delta will need US $690 million in aid over the next three years, although aid groups say that it is unlikely they will be able to raise that much money.

One problem, say NGOs working inside Burma, is that some exiled Burmese groups have been lobbying against further funding for the delta. But the exiled groups deny that they are opposed to more aid; what they want, they say, are greater transparency and guarantees of accountability to ensure that aid is being used effectively and appropriately.

Foreign aid workers insist that the regime has not unduly interfered in their mission of helping the people of the delta to rebuild their lives. However, while we can readily acknowledge the value of the contributions that many NGOs inside Burma have made, it is impossible to ignore the fact that the junta remains intent on limiting their influence. International NGOs can and should continue to provide assistance; but they must also seek to expand the country’s exceedingly narrow humanitarian space, rather than merely working within the confines of what the junta considers acceptable.

Ultimately, it will be up to donor countries to decide how much they want to help the people of Burma, and how far they can trust the country’s rulers. We can only urge them to provide as much aid as possible for those in need, while advising an equal abundance of caution in dealing with the regime.

Finally, we should add that while the immediate humanitarian requirements of people in the delta are of the utmost importance, the debate over aid should not obscure the need to address Burma’s longstanding human rights issues and political impasse. After all, the regime’s disastrous response to Cyclone Nargis was not just an unfortunate mishap, but a manifestation of what happens when rulers are allowed to ride roughshod over the lives and rights of citizens for decades.

May 2, 2009

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