Halt war on ethnic nationalities immediately

Mizzima News - The Burmese military junta is relentlessly mounting pressure on ceasefire groups to amalgamate them under the total control of the Burmese Army. The regime ought to stop using its military might and the law of the jungle against the ceasefire groups, but find political solutions to the issue.

After successfully putting the Burmese pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi behind bars in a step to move her out of their planned 2010 general elections, another victim in their plans of elimination of all obstacles on its way to the seven-step roadmap is the Kokang ceasefire group known as Shan State Special Region No. 1 led by Peng Jiasheng. The generals from Naypyitaw attacked and captured the Kokang group territories in end August.

Clashes broke out in Kokang areas on August 27 after the junta’s troops raided and searched the house of the Kokang leader Peng Jiasheng on the pretext of searching for narcotic drugs. According to the defeated Peng Jiasheng’s sources, the two-day war left nearly 200 including civilians dead. The Burmese Army lost 26 men while 47 were injured.

Many houses were destroyed in the Kokang capital Lao Kai and over 30,000 civilians became war refugees and fled to neighbouring China within days.

The leader of the Kokang Army also known as the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), once put on a pedestal and highly revered by the ruling generals, has now turned into a drug-warlord in the eyes of the junta. Meanwhile, the group's deputy leader Bai Souqing has became a temporary ally of Naypyitaw.

It is rather ironic and interesting, to see the extremely nationalistic ruling generals, who have been in deep slumber for the past 20 years over drug production and trafficking in this region, suddenly waking up and implementing a drug eradication programme. Now the generals can afford to forget what these drug lords had contributed to them in terms of legitimacy and the financial support through their black money. Though these contributions were once crucial for the regime to consolidate power, it no longer seems to be as important for them as having control over the territories of the ceasefire armed groups.

The junta’s exploitation of the rift among ceasefire groups is a lesson to be learnt by all other ceasefire groups including Wa, Kachin, Mongla, Mon and Karen.

There can be no lasting peace in Burma unless the ethnic issues are resolved through negotiation and peaceful means. Equality, justice, peace and development can be best achieved only through political negotiation and not by repression.

Burma Newscasts - Halt war on ethnic nationalities immediately
5 September 2009

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Junta Continues its Campaign against Burmese Diversity

By SIMON ROUGHNEEN
The Irrawaddy News

Recent fighting in northern Shan state, between the junta’s army and the ethnic Kokang militia known as the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, has fuelled speculation that the regime intends to coerce Burma’s 17 ceasefire groups into accepting a plan to incorporate them into the state security apparatus as border guards.

The ceasefire groups are ethnic militias—most notably the United Wa State Army (UWSA), the Kachin Independence Army and the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army—that have fought on and off, in various guises, against central rule since Burma became independent in 1948. They are part of Burma’s remarkably diverse ethnic, religious and cultural demography—40 percent of the country’s population is comprised of non-Burman minorities. In total, the state recognizes 135 different ethnicities.

However, the Burmese regime’s army has fought brutal campaigns against these groups, with long-documented human rights abuses, including mass displacement, forced labor and conscription, as well as countless cases of rape and murder targeting civilians. Some analysts believe that the level of abuses ranks alongside or even exceeds that of Darfur in western Sudan.

In some cases, the junta has successfully co-opted proxy or splinter movements from ethnic insurgent groups as part of its ongoing strategy of “divide and rule” to weaken ethnically based opposition. But far from bringing peace to the country, this approach has served only to perpetuate ethnic tensions.

Indeed, some observers believe that the regime has little interest in resolving a problem that has long been its raison d’etre. “Burma’s ethnic diversity has been one of the main justifications for continued military rule,” said Win Min, an analyst of Burmese affairs based in Chiang Mai, Thailand, adding that the army has long seen civilian government as too weak to prevent potential secession by ethnic minorities.

Going back to the 1947 constitution, the military has always believed that civilian solutions to the problems posed by Burma’s ethnic divisions, such as local autonomy or federalism, with the option of secession in some cases, threaten national unity and foment instability.

The army goes by the maxim that diversity equals disunity, something seen in military-civilian political vehicles such as the National Unity Party, the junta-backed party that ran against the National League for Democracy in the 1990 elections, and the Union Solidarity and Development Association, a mass organization established in 1993 that is expected to be transformed into a pro-junta political party in time for elections in 2010.

The regime’s efforts to undermine ethnically based expressions of identity in Burma are also evident in the 2008 constitution, which circumscribes ethnic autonomy and is a digression away from the establishment of anything resembling a federal union—a demand of many ethnic groups.

“The constitution/election process is driving this policy to marginalize the ethnic groups,” said Sean Turnell, an economist at Australia’s Macquarie University whose research focuses on Burma. “This may come back to haunt the junta, as it has with previous governments,” he added.

If the junta proceeds with its military build-up in Shan State, close to the well-armed UWSA, it may be revisited by the ghosts of insurgencies past very soon. The prospect of renewed ethnic civil war in Burma’s borderlands has caused concern in neighboring countries, particularly China, which remains a key ally of the regime.

The Burmese generals issued an apology to Beijing after being reprimanded over the fighting in Kokang, which saw an estimated 30,000 refugees from this ethnically Chinese region cross into China’s Yunnan Province. The junta risks undermining its relationship with Beijing, as instability is perceived to be contrary to China’s interests.

As K. Yhome, an analyst at the Observer Research Foundation in India, put it: “Political stability in Myanmar [Burma] is a major concern for Beijing, particularly in the border regions.”

China’s port and pipeline plan linking the Burmese coast with Yunnan is due to get underway this month, and Beijing doubtless does not want the timeframe jeopardized by the junta’s domestic concerns. The pipeline will extend 1,200 km and allow Beijing to bypass the Strait of Malacca and the South China Sea when bringing oil imports from Africa and the Middle East into China.

Given that China has “run interference for the junta at the UN Security Council”—in the words of Walter Lohman, an Asia expert at the Heritage Foundation—sending refugees streaming into China seems a bitter payback. Only three weeks ago, Beijing told critics that the August 11 decision to return Aung San Suu Kyi to house arrest was an internal Burmese matter.

Ironically, the junta’s offensive along the Sino-Burmese border may have been intended to send the same message—that the regime manages its internal affairs autonomously—to Beijing. It could also be a hint that there are other options available, should the junta want to diversify its networks of foreign partners.

The regime certainly has reason to believe that Beijing is not its only friend. While China’s tally of oil blocks in Burma is 16, India has seven and Thailand five. Meanwhile, India, South Korea and half of Burma’s fellow members in the Association of Southeast Nations are investing in the country’s vast natural resources and competing with China for trade links with the generals.

According to Turnell, the regime may even be paying China back for entering into a series of gas contracts with Bangladesh over offshore fields in disputed seas between Burma and Bangladesh.

However, it remains to be seen how far the junta could push this attempt to needle China, or to diversify its foreign trade and investment relations. “Myanmar needs to remain focused on Chinese concerns,” said Jian Junbo, an assistant professor of international studies at Fudan University in Shanghai.

If the regime seeks to pick a fight with the UWSA or any of the other larger ethnic militias, it could be stirring a hornet’s nest. This type of political instability could threaten Chinese investments in Burma, and Beijing’s growing economy cannot afford that.

Just as it does not want an unstable Burma, Beijing is almost certainly on the alert for any rapprochement between the US and the junta. It is not clear whether the Kokang offensive is linked to the recent visit by Senator Jim Webb to Burma, but the growing military presence in Shan State has taken place while international attention has been focused on Webb’s visit, and the Suu Kyi trial circus that preceded it.

“In the long term, if the US improves its ties with Myanmar, it will have strategic implications for Beijing, which wants to reach the Indian Ocean through Myanmar and the oil and gas pipeline projects that it plans through Myanmar,” said K. Yhome.

3 September 2009
Burma Newscasts - Junta Continues its Campaign against Burmese Diversity

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Kokang Conflict Highlights Tatmadaw Xenophobia

By WAI MOE
The Irrawaddy News

The Tatmadaw of Burma, one of the most nationalistic armies in the world, demonstrated its xenophobia during the past two weeks following its capture of Kokang-Chinese territory.

According to reports from the region on the northeastern frontier of Burma, following the seizure of Laogai, the Kokang capital, on August 24, government soldiers questioned civilians about whether they were Burma-born Chinese or immigrants from China.

“After answering, Chinese from mainland China were beaten by soldiers,” said a source in Laogai.

Refugees who fled to China told reporters that shops, stores and other properties owned by Chinese had been looted in various towns in the Kokang region where an estimate 90 percent of businesses are owned by Chinese businessmen.

Anti-Chinese elements among government soldiers are not new. In 1967, an anti-Chinese riot in Rangoon and other cities led to dozens of deaths. Observers said late dictator Ne Win’s Burmese Socialist Programme Party used the Chinese as a scapegoat to deflect public anger at the government over a rice shortage in the country.

Anti-Chinese sentiment among Burmese has increased after the Chinese and Burmese governments signed border trading agreements in 1988, and the military junta signed ceasefire agreements with ethnic militias on the Sino-Burmese border in 1989.

After the opening of border trade and the ceasefire agreements, Chinese business interests and immigrants moved into Burma in large numbers, observers said. From the northern Shan State capital of Lashio to Madalay, the second largest city, to Rangoon, Chinese migrants and businesses along with the ethnic ceasefire groups, such as the Kokang and Wa, have taken on a higher profile among Burmese.

“They say they are Wa or Kokang, but we know they are actually Chinese,” said a businessman in Mandalay, citing his experience.

During two decades, Chinese have taken over businesses owned by Burmese in northern Shan State and Mandalay. Signs on many department stores, restaurants and shops in Mandalay and Lashio are printed in the Chinese language.

Intentionally or unintentionally, the special favors granted ethnic groups by Gen Khin Nyunt, the former Burma spy chief, produced a backlash against Kokang-Chinese and other ceasefire groups among the Tatmadaw’s soldiers.

From 1989 to 2004— before Khin Nyunt’s downfall—the Kokang and Wa were allowed to take their weapons to Rangoon and Mandalay. Kokang and Wa soldiers were untouchable under Khin Nyunt’s instructions even though they committed crimes.

When vehicles from Wa and Kokang groups passed army and police checkpoints, they were not searched.

In one incident in 1999, a member of the Wa army killed a businessman in downtown Rangoon after a business conflict. The police arrested the man but he was not charged, and later Wa officials took the man from police custody.

According to Mandalay residents, members of ceasefire groups such as the Wa and Kokang were known to use pistols in personal conflicts with local people in the early 2000s.

Chan Tun, a former Burmese ambassador to China, said that after ceasefire agreements were signed, the Wa and Kokang caused many problems in cities such as Rangoon and Mandalay, and many officers and soldiers in the regime’s army have developed a negative image of the two groups as a result.

The recent military conflict between the government and ethnic groups has divided public opinion in Rangoon and Mandalay, according to journalists.

“Some people here say it is the government bullying the Kokang-Chinese. But most people support the government,” said an editor of a Rangoon-based private journal.

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A Childhood Spent Scavenging

By SOE LWIN
The Irrawaddy News

RANGOON —Twelve-year-old Maung Chan Thar has only known poverty despite having a name that means “master of wealth.”

His parents gave him the name in the belief that it would bring good fortune to their eldest son.

With a meager household income, Maung Chan Thar's family of eight has to struggle to put enough food on the table each day, let alone buy clothes or things needed for school by his three younger brothers and two younger sisters.

The piles of rubbish in Rangoon are children’s sources of income. (Photo: The Irrawaddy)

Four years ago, when Maung Chan Thar was just eight, his parents sent him onto the streets to earn money because they could no longer afford to keep him at school.

Carrying a sack on his back, he has been working in the streets ever since, looking through the piles of rubbish on the streets, roaming the railway tracks, collecting empty water bottles, plastic bags—whatever he can resell.

The piles of rubbish at the markets and railway stations are his sources of income. On a good day, he can make the equivalent of more than US $1, but normally Maung Chan Thar only earns about 70 or 80 cents.

“I am so happy to see my mother smile when I put cash in her hands,” he said.

Maung Chan Thar is the second income earner in his family after his father, who makes about $1.50 a day pedaling a trishaw.

Though he is an important source of income for his family, his parents cannot take care of him.

Like tens of thousands of other street children in big cities such as Rangoon and Mandalay, Maung Chan Thar’s clothes are filthy and in tatters. His hair has not been washed for months, and his nails are long and dirty.

Maung Chan Thar thinks things are alright, however. He knows that in his job what matters is collecting as much recyclable material as possible.

"I hate seeing my younger brothers and sisters crying in hunger, so I work hard," he said, sifting through a pile of garbage near Kyimyindaing Railway Station. “I don’t want them to ever do work like this. I want them to keep going to school.”

When he started on the street, he was often bullied by stronger street children, who would sometimes steal what he made.

"I will never forget when three larger boys beat me up and took all my money,” Maung Chan Thar said. “When I got back home, my father beat me up again for being so weak."

Maung Chan Thar has learned how to avoid such incidents, and he has many friends who will come to his help him if someone picks on him.

His worries are far from over, however. The municipal police and staff from the Yangon [Rangoon] City Development Committee are constantly making arrests.

The risk of arrest is higher when he sleeps at railway stations or bus stops in the downtown area, he said. Since his home is located in Shwepyithar in the outskirts of Rangoon, he often sleeps downtown with his friends if it is too late to go back.

“I’ve never been arrested,” he said. “I’m good at avoiding the police.

“People look down on street children like us, thinking we are thieves,” he said. “When we go around below large buildings picking up plastic bags, residents sometimes threaten us. We have to switch collecting sites quickly when that happens.

“I don’t understand why they look down on us like that,” Maung Chan Thar said, adding that he always followed his mother’s advice.

“My mother always told me never to steal or beg, but to work hard and be honest,” he said.

Though Maung Chan Thar seems destined to keep doing his lowly job, he firmly believes he will be rich one day.

“Every night my mother has this dream in which I am a rich man,” he said, squatting on the rubbish.

“Perhaps I will find something very precious in this rubbish one day,” he said. “Who is to say that I won’t?”

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UWSA will be in a spot if Wei sides with junta

by Brian McCartan

Mizzima - Much has been made of the junta’s ‘divide-and-rule’ tactics, but often overlooked is the fact that Burma’s military rulers do not create many of these situations, but exploit existing divisions. One that could have potentially serious consequences to follow-on moves against the ceasefire groups is that between the northern and southern Wa under Wei Xuegang.

The territory under the control of the United Wa State Army (UWSA) is split between a northern region along the Sino-Burma border and a southern region on the Thai border. The northern region is the former operating area of the Burmese Communist Party (BCP) from which the Wa mutinied in April 1989 before signing a ceasefire with the government later in the year.

The southern area was originally the operating area of a non-communist Wa group that eventually joined northern Wa after the mutiny. The southern Wa was led by Maha Sang, a former Wa prince and his lieutenant, an ethnic Chinese from the Sino-Burma border area, Wei Xuegang. Designated the 171st Military Region, the area eventually came under the firm leadership of Wei and his brothers Wei Xueyin and Wei Xuelong.

In addition to the leadership of the southern Wa, Wei and his brothers are considered by many Burma watchers as the bankrollers of the UWSA. Appointed a central committee member of the group’s political wing, the United Wa State Party, in 1996, Wei was also the UWSA’s finance head from July 2006 until December 2007.

Wei’s financial standing in the UWSA comes largely from his control of heroin and methamphetamine production facilities along the Thai border and international trafficking connections. The huge profits made by Wei and his associates enabled the UWSA to greatly expand its control over areas of Shan State as well as increase its number of soldiers and quality of equipment and weapons.

Further reinforcing Wei’s position was the forced relocation of tens of thousands of Wa villagers from the China border to the southern Wa area in 1999. The Wa came to dominate the area, establishing new villages and towns and largely forcing the original Shan inhabitants out. Many of the old strongholds of former opium warlord Khun Sa, which the Wa had fought against for years, were absorbed by Wei’s group after his surrender in 1996. Many of those areas were along the Thai border giving the organization increased opportunities for trade in various forms of contraband including narcotics.

Where Wei and the rest of the UWSA leadership differ is in their political outlook. While many of the ethnic Wa leaders of the UWSA have definite nationalist interests as well as business, Wei is known to be dismissive of politics and interested more in ensuring the continued expansion of his business interests.

An outbreak of fighting with the Burmese Army would certainly not be good for business from Wei’s standpoint. Most of his more legitimate businesses are in central Burma and he would stand to lose them. Hostilities could also potentially disrupt narcotics production and trafficking, particularly if Thai security forces support Burmese moves on their side of the border.

The junta certainly understands this as well and has made several attempts to persuade Wei to make his own peace and transform his forces into a government-backed militia. Although details are sketchy, it can be assumed any arrangement would include a provision wherein Wei would be granted non-interference in his narcotics production and trafficking.

Should Wei cast his lot with the junta, it would put the UWSA in serious financial difficulty. Lost would be access to Thailand and the large amounts of cash generated by Wei’s narcotics business. Cross-border trade to China would not be able to make up for the shortfall and a prohibition on narcotics trafficking to China is reportedly a condition for Chinese assistance on development projects and other forms of cross-border aid as well as political support against Burma’s generals. While victory would by no means be as swift as against the Kokang last week, without Wei’s forces and financial backing, the UWSA would find it all the harder to resist the Burmese Army.

So far, the southern Wa have resisted the junta’s overtures saying that all negotiations must be with Panghsang and Wa troops are reportedly on standby for any outbreak of hostilities. The rapid fall of the Kokang last week and the replacement of Peng Jiasheng with a rival backed by the government, however, may give Wei reason to rethink his options. After all, a precedent has already been set by the retirement of Khun Sa in 1996. The old warlord went on to live very comfortably in Rangoon until his death in 2007.

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Monk accused of suicide produced in court

by Phanida

Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – Ashin Sanda Dika, who was charged with attempted suicide by setting himself on fire, was produced in court on Thursday, sources in the court and opposition said.

The monk Ashin Sanda Dika (36) was disrobed and had to face trial in court inside the Insein prison. Sub-Inspector of Police Zaw Phone Win acted as prosecutor at the Bahan Township court in the case under section 295(a) of the Penal Code (insulting religion). The monk sojourned at Laykyun Mannaing monastery, Daesun pagoda in Pegu Division.

“The four witnesses were called and three of them were examined. The prosecutor also testified,” the High Court source told Mizzima. According to another source, all the witnesses were police personnel.

Nyi Nyi Lwin-turned-Ahsin Sanda Dika defended himself.

“Restriction of movement of a monk in this place is not in accordance with the Canon Law of Buddhism. The Sayadaw (abbot) came here with permission during Buddhist lent. He did not insult the religion. He asked these questions and raised these issues in the court himself,” a person close to the accused said.

The Bahan police station personnel arrested him on August 11, after he visited places near the National League for Democracy (NLD) headquarters and the Insein prison to find about the court’s judgment on Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s trial on that day.

The three men took Ashin Sanda Dika to the police station in Rangoon North District and at least two policemen beat him up with bamboo poles, the Asia Human Right Commission (AHRC) said.

According to the examination by both prosecution and defence lawyers in court, there was no material evidence such as kerosene found at the scene of the crime. And there were no independent witnesses, the AHRC said.

Meanwhile other monk-related incidents have taken place in Chauk, Yenanchaung and Pakokku townships in Magwe Division on August 27 and August 31. These places were searched and some arrests were made, the All Burma Monks Organization said.

“In fact, the SPDC (junta) is insulting the religion. Our monks are living under the order of Dhama. Arresting monks and charging them with various sections of various laws make us suffer from inferiority complex in comparison to other religions. We are losing face in the world,” U Dhama Wuntha from the monk organization said.

According to War Office sources in Naypyidaw, the junta is expecting another uprising led by monks and it has ordered tightening of security and is closely watch monasteries.

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Burmese Army might be targeting UWSA: Observer

by Mungpi

New Delhi (Mizzima) - After having overrun and occupied the Kokang area in north-eastern Shan State and driving away its leader, the Burmese military junta might have initiated its move against one of the largest ceasefire groups, the United Wa State Army, an observer said.

Khuensai Jaiyen, editor of the Thailand-based Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN), who is close to UWSA, said Wa leaders in Panghsang in eastern Shan state have received a letter from the Burmese Army demanding the extradition of Kokang leader Peng Jiasheng and three others. The junta had issued arrest warrants against them.

“Nobody is sure where Peng and his group are staying right now. It is absurd that the Burmese Army has demanded that the Wa hand over Peng. It seems to me that the junta is starting to pick on the Wa,” Khuensai said.

The letter dated September 1, 2009 was received by Wa leaders in Panghsang on September 2. Worried over the issue, the Wa leaders sat at a meeting on Thursday morning and decided not to respond to the letter, he added.

“The Wa leaders believe that the demand could be a point to pick by the junta and so decided to remain silent without replying to it,” said Khuensai.

He said, whichever way the Wa replies, the junta could find fault. Even by remaining silent, the junta could still find fault and find reasons to launch an attack.

Peng Jiasheng, the once supreme leader of the Myanmar Nationalities Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), also known as the Kokang Army, was forced to flee Loa Kai, capital of Kokang region, after the Burmese junta issued an arrest warrant for him along with three others including his brother on charges of running an arms and ammunition factory and trafficking.

Peng’s flight left his deputy Bai Suoqing and a few other MNDAA soldiers, who support the junta. The MNDAA was later reformed with the help of the Burmese Army and Bai was appointed the new leader.

“When I asked Wa leaders about the whereabouts of Peng, they told me that he would most probably be with his son-in-law but did not deny or agree that Peng might be in Wa controlled area,” Khuensai said.

According to the Wa leader’s response, Peng and his troops are most likely to be with the Nationalities Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA) or Mongla, whose leader Sai Leun is Peng’s son-in-law.

While the information on the junta’s demand to the Wa to extradite Peng cannot be independently verified, a Sino-Burma border based military analyst Aung Kyaw Zaw said, he does not believe any such demand has been made.

“I have not heard of the demand but I think it is unlikely and Brig Gen Win Maung commander of the Regional Operations Command (ROC) in Lao Kai has no such power to make the demand as the case is to be handled by the Ministry of Home Affairs,” he added.

But he said, in connection with the conflicts last week in Kokang region, Burmese Deputy Home Minister Phone Shwe and a team of delegates, earlier this week, visited Kun Ming, capital of China’s North-western province of Yunnan, and met regional Chinese officials.

Aung Kyaw Zaw said, while the junta is determined to neutralise ethnic armed groups, particularly the ceasefire groups, in eastern Shan State, the UWSA might not be the first target to choose.

Observers agreed that the junta is unlikely to declare war on the UWSA, which is believed to have up to 20,000 soldiers, but use different tactics including ‘divide and conquer’ by exploiting the differences between the leaders, Wei Hsueh-kang and Bao You-Xiang.

READ MORE---> Burmese Army might be targeting UWSA: Observer...

The Coils of Custom

By AYE CHAN MYATE
The Irrawaddy News
SEPTEMBER, 2009 - VOLUME 17 NO.6

As tourism drops, many Padaung abandon the tradition of putting bronze coils on the necks of their daughters

Though likened to “human zoos” whose residents are seemingly caged like exotic birds, the Padaung tourist villages of Mae Hong Son Province used to be relatively prosperous.

U Ladu, the Padaung headman of Ban Nai Soi, said they can no longer count on tourists coming to see their “long neck” women, who are famous for the bronze coils wound around their necks, since the numbers of foreign visitors coming to the province has dropped sharply.

Padaung women are a major tourist attraction in Mae Hong Son Province in Thailand.

“The tour companies have stopped contributing to the individual monthly incomes of 1,000 to 1,500 baht (US $30-$45) received by our women,” said U Ladu. “They no longer provide food rations of beans, pulses and cans of fish.

“We’ve got enough rice for six or seven months, but we no longer get any regular income or food donations. We haven’t been provided for on a regularly basis for almost eight years. Sometimes supplies come, and sometimes they don’t. The worst is when we get sick—we can no longer afford medical care,” he said.

A sub-tribe of Burma’s Karenni people, the Padaung were among almost 200,000 refugees that left Burma for Thailand by 2005, according to estimates by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).

Driven from their homes in the Demawsoe area between Loikaw and Kyaphogyi in Karenni State by economic distress and military oppression, they migrated to Thailand over a 20-year period.

The 500 Padaung who settled in Thailand came as a windfall for Thai businessmen and provincial authorities, who placed them in three fenced-off villages—Ban Nai Soi, Ban Sua Thao and Huai Pu Keng—near Mae Hong Son in northwestern Thailand. The Padaung were not given official status, but they were free to leave the villages provided they did not go too far, though in practice this was discouraged.

Foreign tourists wanting to see and photograph the Padaung women wearing their iconic bronze coils had to pay 250 baht ($7.30) to enter the villages.

During the boom years of Thailand’s tourism in the 1990s business was good. The Padaung women could earn up to 3,000 baht ($120 at that time) per month by having their photographs taken and selling handicrafts. A 2008 report in the The Irrawaddy said Ban Nai Soi, the largest Padaung village, attracted around 1,200 tourists annually.

Travel writers observed that the Padaung were better off in the tourist villages in Thailand than they would have been in Burma. The local authorities who promoted them as a tourist attraction and the tour operators were happy.

In 1998, however, a scandal broke out when a Thai businessman was charged with luring some Padaung to Thailand, promising to take them to their relations in Mae Hong Son Province, but allegedly forcing them to live as virtual prisoners in a camp in Thaton, a small tourist town in the north of Chiang Mai Province.

The scandal died down when they were sent to join their relatives in Mae Hong Son, but the taint of “human zoos” tarnished Thailand’s reputation.

In 2008, the Thai government was accused of denying exit visas to 20 Padaungs who were being offered opportunities for resettlement in Finland and New Zealand. Observers accused the Thais of keeping the Padaungs because they did not want to lose tourist business.

The Thai authorities were reluctant to give an explanation for denying the Padaungs exit permits, but according to U Lay Maung, the chairman of the Karenni Refugee Committee, the Thais are now saying the Padaung can qualify for resettlement provided they live in a UNHCR camp. A UNHCR source said that to get an exit permit the Padaung women must also remove their neck rings.

“Even though they are not providing regular food, the Thai authorities are giving them [the Padaung] a choice: they can move into the refugee camp, in which case they must hold a UNHCR refugee card, or they can get legal permits to stay in Thailand. If they stay in Thailand, the Thai authorities are saying their children will be able to enroll at the village schools,” U Lay Maung said.

With regional competition, political disturbances and the global economic crisis causing a dramatic decline in numbers of tourists entering Thailand—in the first four months of 2009 numbers fell by almost 20 percent from the same period in 2008—the Thai offer may not be enough to keep the Padaung.

“Only 20 tourists came to the village in the last 10 days,” said U Ladu, adding that these had been the busiest days all month. As he spoke, three Chinese tourists were wandering around and taking photographs. “The villagers will only get money if they can sell their handicrafts,” he said.

U Lay Maung said, “Many of the villagers have been totally without income for the whole year,” adding that they had to eke out an existence by farming small plots. When the Padaung villagers asked for food from the Karenni refugee camp, they were refused because supplies were already insufficient and there was no additional budget, he said.

The children, however, can get an education. “Many of the village children go to the school in Karenni Refugee Camp-1, which is an hour’s walk from the village,” U Lay Maung said, “and more and more Padaungs are no longer putting the coils on their daughters’ necks if they go to school.”

U Ladu’s wife, Ma Hu Htee, wears the bronze coils, but she says they are not putting them on their daughter, a 9th grade student at the school in the refugee camp.

“Originally, about 50 of us wore coils in this village,” Ma Hu Htee said, “But now only 23 still wear them. The older ones can deal with the looks when we go out, but we don’t want our children to suffer when they go to school.

“We don’t really know how we came to wear them. My parents began putting them on my neck when I was 6-years old, just as their mothers and fathers had done before,” she said.

Some think the coils made the women look more beautiful and were a display of wealth, others that the coils protected them from abduction by other tribes by making them look ugly. A tribal myth suggested that the coils protected the women from tigers, but whatever the reason for wearing them, the coils are injurious to the wearer.

As a child grows, more coils are added each year, pushing down the collarbones and squashing the vertebrae, and making the neck look longer. A full set worn by an adult may have more than 20 coils and weigh 5 kilograms.

In the three Padaung tourist villages, fewer women wear the traditional coils, according to U Lay Maung.

“In times of robust tourism, private Thai companies used to take care of [Padaung] education and provide scholarships for their children,” U Lay Maung said, adding that every tourist brochure for Mae Hong Son Province would have a picture of a Padaung woman wearing coils in it.

“But many of the younger generation want to abandon the coils to get an education,” he said, saying that some of the young girls were adept at learning languages and could make money working as tourist guides.

A few Padaung families live outside Mae Hong Son Province in at least three small tourist villages in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai provinces. How long they will be willing to stay remains to be seen, however, especially when they hear their kin in Mae Hong Son are being resettled in third countries.

U Ladu knows what he wants for his daughter. “She could marry someone from around here in the next three or four years and be stuck here,” he said, “but I want her to resettle in a third country where she can continue her education.”

READ MORE---> The Coils of Custom...

The Grass is Greener

By SAW YAN NAING
The Irrawaddy News
SEPTEMBER, 2009 - VOLUME 17 NO.6

Despite the difficulties and challenges facing Shan migrants seeking work in Thailand, their numbers are increasing

I feel my life in Thailand is more secure than in Burma. It is easier to make a living here,” said Sam Htun, a 56-year-old Shan construction worker, who said he left Burma because of oppression, dangerous working conditions and dismal economic circumstances.

Many Shan migrant workers in Thailand live in makeshift camps. (Photo: Saw Yan Naing/The Irrawaddy)

Sam Htun earned 10,000 to 20,000 kyat (about US $9 to $18) a month—barely enough to get by—working on construction sites in Taunggyi, the capital of Shan State. For this, he risked injury daily from hazards like falling objects, exposed wiring and unsafe scaffolding.

“Safety standards on Thai building sites can vary from poor to very high, but in Burma safety is a joke,” Sam said.

In Thailand, Sam can earn around 4,500 baht ($130) a month, from which he usually manages to send back 17,000 kyat ($15) every month to his family.

Some Shan workers do relatively well. Sai Maung, who works as a building subcontractor in Chiang Mai, said he transfers about 100,000 baht ($1,940) each year to his parents in Lang Kho in Shan State.

Of the 2 to 4 million Burmese migrants currently living in Thailand, 500,000 are thought to be ethnic Shan living and working in northern Thailand, according to Burmese and regional labor rights groups.

The Shan in Thailand are one of the largest groups remitting money to their families in Burma. How much they are sending back home is hard to estimate as they tend not to use hundi agents—go-betweens who transfer money to workers’ families in Burma—preferring to entrust their savings with close friends who go back, or take it themselves.

Jackie Pollock, a founder of the Migrant Assistance Program (MAP), a Chiang Mai-based NGO, said migrant workers leave Burma because of poor economic prospects and human rights abuses committed by the Burmese regime.

Sam Htun, center, at a workshop for migrant workers in Chiang Mai, Thailand. (Photo: Saw Yan Naing/The Irrawaddy)

“Even though the migrants are paid less than the minimum daily wage (about $4.75) and do not have very much freedom in Thailand, it is still more than they would earn in Burma.

“In Thailand, if you get a decent employer, then you may make quite a reasonable salary. There is no chance of this in Burma,” she said.

Migrants have the chance to complain and can resort to the Thai legal system, but if they are exploited and abused by their employers in Burma, “they can do nothing,” Pollock said, adding that abuse in Burma can include extortionate taxes, forced labor and land confiscation.

Labor rights observers say that, while Shan workers want to escape oppression in Burma, the availability of work and the higher wages offered in Thailand are major incentives, and migrants are prepared to pay considerable amounts to get across the border.

Sai Maung said four relatives who had arrived in Chiang Mai in late 2008 had to pay 100,000 kyat ($90) each to authorities and militias for their trip to Thailand.

Sein Kyi, editor of the Chiang Mai-based Shan Herald Agency for News, said at least 200 Shan migrant workers with border passes cross daily into Thailand, using the bridge between Tachilek in Shan State and Mae Sai in Thailand’s Chiang Rai Province. Many others, however, cross illegally.

Illegal migrant workers not only have to bribe the Burmese army, but also the armed groups whose territories they must cross on their journey to Thailand. Both the Shan State Army and United Wa State Army are said to be involved in the smuggling process. A one-way trip reportedly costs around 10,000 to 11,000 baht ($290 to $320). When they get to Thailand the migrants then have to pay the Thai authorities.

Andy Hall, the migrant justice program director of the Human Rights and Development Foundation, which focuses on migrant safety in the workplace, said, “The migration will surely go on as Thailand still needs workers—perhaps another 2 or 3 million more.”

Culture also plays a role. “Shan migrant workers are very special for Thai employers because their language is similar to Northern Thai, and their culture is very close to the Thai culture,” Hall said.

However, once the migrants have arrived in Thailand, their troubles are far from over.

“Some of the riskiest work for migrants in Thailand is in the construction industry, where substandard safety procedures often lead to accidents,” said Hall, adding that little if any compensation is paid in such circumstances.

Sai Leng, who is the chairman of the Kuang Gor camp for Shan refugees in Chiang Mai’s Wieng Heng District, said Shan migrants take jobs that Thai people do not want because the work is difficult, dirty and dangerous, and the pay is low.

Kuang Gor camp is home to more than 600 Shan who are not officially refugees, but who are allowed to work outside the camp. Kuang Gor is assisted by the Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC), which supplies basic foods such as rice, cooking oil, salt and yellow beans to the migrants.

Sally Thompson, the deputy director of the TBBC, said the camp’s Shan occupants do not have proper protection and risk arrest and repatriation.

Unlike refugees in the nine other camps along the Thai-Burmese border, the Shan in Kuang Kor are not treated as refugees and have no chance of resettlement in third countries because they are not registered with the Thai Ministry of Interior and the UNHCR, Thompson said.

“They aren’t just vulnerable to arrest, detention and deportation at any time. Unlike properly registered refugees, they have no access to health care, and their children don’t get any education,” said Thompson.

Jackie Pollock described how MAP had helped a Shan migrant after he was caught in a police sweep at a building site in Chiang Mai.

“First, his wife had to go to her husband’s employer to get his papers, but he wouldn’t give them to her unless she paid him 2,000 baht [$60]. When she showed them at the police station, the police weren’t interested.

“They kept him in jail for 48 days, which is the legal maximum they could hold him without charges, before releasing him—and he was a registered migrant worker, not an illegal,” said Pollock.

Pollock described how it was common practice for the police to round up all workers in a sweep, whether registered or not, and put them in jail. The migrant workers are encouraged to pay “fines” if they want to get back quickly to their families and work.

Sai Leng said arrest is a big threat facing migrant workers in daily life. If arrested, they have to pay relatively large amounts of money to be released.

“We want the Thai authorities to make it easier for the migrant worker to travel from one place to another. If they treated us migrants better, they would get more work out of us,” he said.

Despite enjoying a better life in Thailand, Sai Leng said he still hoped to go back to his hometown in Burma when conditions improve.

READ MORE---> The Grass is Greener...

Cracks in the Castle Wall

By MIN ZIN
The Irrawaddy News
SEPTEMBER, 2009 - VOLUME 17 NO.6

Loopholes in the new Burmese constitution could be exploited by opposition groups to win influence after next year’s election

In politics, a direct, frontal attack is rarely wise; co-opting the opponent’s game plan for one’s own purposes is a more powerful ploy. Opponents of Burma’s military junta should bear this in mind as they consider their strategy for dealing with next year’s election.

Min Zin is a Burmese journalist in exile and a teaching fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Journalism. A longer version of this article is available on www.irrawaddy.org

Most mainstream opposition groups, including the National League for Democracy (NLD) and major ethnic ceasefire groups, have announced that they will not take part in the 2010 election unless the constitution is revised and the political process is made more inclusive. They say they can’t accept the constitution as it stands because it denies fundamental ethnic rights and allows the military to seize power again “if there arises a state of emergency.”

A closer examination of the junta’s constitution reveals, however, that it is not the impregnable fortress that it at first appears to be. There are a number of weaknesses in the castle battlements that opposition groups can exploit if they are prepared to take a multi-pronged approach.

The first vulnerability lies in the fact that after the 2010 election, there will be two power centers, the military and the government, which will inevitably be at loggerheads over the command structure and personal interests. No matter who pulls the strings, this new power arrangement will lead to either a serious internal split or the inefficiency of the ruling body.

Another Achilles’ heel is the constitution’s de facto demotion of regional military commanders. Although the constitution enshrines ultimate power in the commander in chief of the military, it fails to provide similar authority to regional commanders in their localities. As key pillars in the military regime’s power structure, the regional commanders are like warlords in their domains. However, under the new constitution, they are under the control of the chief ministers of the regions or states, who in many cases may be civilians. This could result in a situation where regional commanders oppose not only local power arrangements but also Naypyidaw’s control.

The third loophole in the constitution is that if non-military parties sweep to victory or win a clear majority of the 75 percent of seats not reserved for the military, a non-military candidate could become president. Failing this, non-military parties could gain control of the legislative agenda, giving them influence over everything from defense and foreign affairs to the economic and social sectors. Thus Snr-Gen Than Shwe, who leads the ruling junta, appears to be determined to fill the remaining parliamentary seats with members of a military-backed political party based upon the membership of the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), a mass organization formed by the junta in September 1993.

Snr-Gen Than Shwe votes in the referundum election on the new constitution.

However, this leads to the fourth problem facing the regime. As a political party, the USDA’s existing nationwide organizational structure (and its thuggish reputation, which could be used to intimidate voters) would give it a great advantage in the 2010 election. The problem is that the new constitution bars parliamentary candidates from receiving any support directly or indirectly from the state. As the USDA currently enjoys such advantages, it would run afoul of the regime’s own constitution if it sought to field candidates in the election. Therefore, if the military wants to create a new political party or parties, it must ensure that they do not bear any resemblance to the USDA in terms of name recognition, resources or intimidating power.

Perhaps these concerns are the reason the regime keeps delaying the promulgation of the electoral law, which was reportedly ready to be published early this year: Than Shwe wants more time to secure his bet for more power. Meanwhile, however, the credibility of the election and the legitimacy of the new power arrangement it is intended to put in place have already been hurt by the likely non-participation of the NLD and the refusal of several ethnic ceasefire groups to disarm or participate.

In fact, the opposition could create leverage by remaining outside the regime’s election process while opening a new proxy front within the regime’s game plan. Even if opposition groups don’t take part in the election using their current organizational identities, they could set up proxy political parties to participate in the 2010 election. Through these proxy parties, the opposition could attempt to maximize civilian control of the post-election parliament.

At the same time, opposition groups such as the NLD, the New Mon State Party and others must stand strong in opposing the “illegitimate” constitution and election and continue their fight for genuine reconciliation. Just because they loathe the undemocratic constitution, the opposition should not consider total disengagement from mainstream politics. The opposition must be savvy in combining both inside-out and outside-in strategies to usher in political change.

In fact, the formation of proxy parties and participation in the 2010 election will help prevent a split within the opposition groups. Otherwise, policy disagreements between moderates and radical activists within the NLD as well as individual ethnic groups might lead to open splits when the election law comes out and the junta plays more rounds of divide and rule. Proxy tactics could also help bring new recruits to the opposition movement.

However, no one should harbor any illusion that the presence of opposition proxy parties in the 2010 election will spark a magical power shift to civilian control. That will happen only if there is sufficient public pressure to challenge the military-dominated status quo, forcing the military to negotiate with the opposition, which would then be in a position to push for a genuine transition to democratic rule.

Another factor that could determine the success or failure of the approach outlined here is the ability of non-military MPs to maintain a sense of common purpose. There is a danger that parochial interests will blind non-military MPs to broader issues, or that self-interest will lead them to compromise their reform agenda. Non-military MPs would not necessarily form a monolithic bloc or be unanimous in their approach to the military’s domination. Vote rigging and intimidation in the election could further undermine the chances of a genuine opposition presence in the parliament.

That said, however, the contradictions embedded in the constitution will provide unprecedented opportunities for those who seek to break the military’s hold on power. If a moderate military leadership emerges in a post-Than Shwe era, those proxy MPs and ministers who are in the mainstream can work with them for gradual reform. In the event of mass demonstrations on the streets, proxy parties will be well-placed to play a role.

The opposition should be creative in opening a new proxy front as part of a multi-pronged strategy to exploit the cracks in the junta’s fortress.

READ MORE---> Cracks in the Castle Wall...

The Yunnan Connection

By LARRY JAGAN
The Irrawaddy News
SEPTEMBER, 2009 - VOLUME 17 NO.6

Closer ties between Burma and China’s southwestern province raise concerns in Beijing

Yunnan, China’s southwestern province bordering Burma, has always taken the lead in forging closer relations with its neighbor, usually with Beijing’s blessing. But in recent years, this special relationship has caused some irritation among China’s political leaders in the north.

In the past, China’s political supremos were happy to leave trade to those based in the southwestern region, while taking responsibility for all political issues. This relationship between Burma and China’s border areas has a long history.

The Joint Check Centre of Ruili on the northern Sino-Burmese border is an important economic zone where trade is increasing. (Photo: Kyaw Zwa Moe/The Irrawaddy)

Long before becoming chairman of the Kachin Independence Organization in 1975, Brang Seng moved thousands of Kachins into Yunnan for safety after declaring war on the Burmese government.

The Wa leaders, who formed a significant section of the Burma Communist Party, were all trained in the Yunnan capital, Kunming, and fondly remember those times.

At the start of Mao Zedong’s disastrous “Great Leap Forward” in 1958, more than 100,000 Chinese fled across the border into Burma for safety, according to a senior Chinese official. Most of them may never have returned, he added. In the past 10 years more than 200,000 Chinese have crossed into northern Shan State in search of work and financial opportunities. In Panghsan, the Wa capital, the local authorities run a casino school which trains young Chinese from across the border how to become croupiers.

Around 50 pupils at a time pay the school 300 yuan (US $45) for one month’s training; they qualify for jobs on graduation in the casinos along the border and some even find work in Cambodian casinos along the border with Thailand.

A quarter of Panghsan’s population are Chinese who have settled in the Wa area since 1997, according to a senior Wa leader. An entire Chinese Wa village even relocated in Burma six years ago to take advantage of the UN’s rice cultivation scheme—part of the organization’s support for alternative crop programs intended to replace opium production. In Mong La, further along the border, more than one in eight residents within the city limits are recent Chinese arrivals, according to the city’s mayor.

The business life of hundreds of small towns and villages along the Burmese border with China is dominated by Chinese immigrants who migrated to the area in the last 10 years.

Families often send their children across the border to China for education, and many of the Wa leaders’ sons and daughters study in Kunming. The daughter of the former Mong La mayor recently graduated from a university in Shanghai. Many others are receiving higher education in Chengdu, Guilin and Kunming.

While traditional links have helped fuel this close cross-border relationship, in the past 25 years it has been trade that has been the main locomotive.

Since 1993, according to local Chinese officials, cross-border trade has mushroomed. Trade between Yunnan and Burma represents around half of the total bilateral trade between the two countries. Official Burmese government figures put this at $2.4 billion in the 2007-2008 fiscal year, almost double the previous year’s.

This trade, however, has primarily benefited the Chinese—almost all the increase has been the result of the massive rise in the volume of Chinese imports, as the value of Burmese exports has remained relatively constant since 1988.

As part of plans to further promote trade between the two countries, special economic or free trade areas are also being set up. The border crossing between Muse and Ruili is the biggest trade route at present. The Yunnan provincial government has recently proposed setting up a Ruili cross-border economic cooperation zone, while the Dehong zone county government, in which the area falls, proposes to construct a Ruili-Muse free trade area. The Burmese government is also in favor of the plans, so the project is expected to move ahead in the near future.

Burma agreed more than three years ago in principal to establish a tax-free trade area near Muse. Nearly 300 square kilometers have been designated for the zone, known now as “Muse 105 Ma.” Chinese exports are free to enter Burma through Muse, Jiugu and Nankang, and are processed in the zone. Although yet to be officially announced, according to Chinese officials, this has already made Muse and Jiugu a very special economic zone, which offers Chinese goods extremely preferential treatment.

A border export processing base has also been established at Kunming, Honghe, Dali, Baoshan and Dehong, forming the main trade hubs in the zone. Many enterprises which produce export products have set up offices and factories near the border areas to directly benefit from the growing border trade.

The Yunnan authorities understand that protecting the growing trade with their neighbor is extremely important to the province’s long-term economic future. The provincial government recently drew up detailed plans to further promote border trade with Burma. This has included favorable customs and visa procedures, and streamlined bureaucracy. But there are fears that because of the low level of trade, there may be central government interference in the future.

“The preferential policies protecting cross-border trade [which had been approved by Beijing in 1996] are vitally important to Yunnan Province, although the trade is relatively small,” a senior Kunming customs official told The Irrawaddy.

“Yunnan would be seriously affected should the preferential policies be removed by the central government,” he said.

The central authorities are currently concerned that the system may contravene World Trade Organization rules. But local officials at the Yunnan commerce department reject this view, pointing out that the US and Mexico, adjacent to each other, have preferential policies.

While Beijing may not be concerned about the official trade between the province and Burma, the central government there is more concerned about the unofficial and illegal trade that is taking place, in the form of drugs, timber, wildlife and human trafficking.

Local Chinese merchants once benefited from the abundant supply of high grade timber imported from Burma. “We love Myanmar [Burmese] timber because it is good quality,” a businessman in Fujian province, on China’s southeastern coast, told a Chinese academic. “We can process it into furniture and then sell it on to Japan and the US.”

Between 2001 and 2005, imports of timber represented around one-fifth of the volume of Burma’s bilateral trade with Yunnan. But that ended abruptly when Chinese President Hu Jintao intervened after several Chinese loggers were arrested in Burma. If Chinese lives are at risk, national and political considerations overrule local economic business interests. Illegal logging has been effectively banned by the Chinese and very little now makes its way across the border, timber merchants in Kunming told The Irrawaddy.

Fears that unofficial cross-border trade—especially in arms, drugs and people—was getting out of hand a few years ago also prompted the central authorities to intervene. In late 2003, in a move to tighten border controls, Beijing assigned the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to replace the border police along the Sino-Burmese border. In December 2004, the Burmese junta’s No 3, Gen Thura Shwe Mann, and Gen Ge Zhenfeng, the PLA’s deputy chief of staff, signed a Memorandum of Understanding that established a mechanism of meetings, talks and contacts between the Chinese and Burmese armies to deal with border affairs.

This seems to be the new pattern. Yunnan and other border areas may be pushing for greater trade and contacts between Burma and China, but Beijing wants to limit anything that may be unintentionally promoting corruption and crime, including drugs smuggling and human trafficking.

The overall concern in Beijing is that Chinese policy in practice should not indirectly make the border areas unstable and insecure. The divergent interests of Kunming and Beijing may yet be put to the test if the Burmese military government’s attempts to disarm the ethnic rebel ceasefire groups, especially the United Wa State Army, and form a force of guards on the Burmese side of the border fail and the danger arises of renewed armed conflict.

READ MORE---> The Yunnan Connection...

China’s Troublesome Little Brother

By AUNG ZAW
The Irrawaddy News
SEPTEMBER, 2009 - VOLUME 17 NO.6

Behind displays of friendship, Beijing is showing signs that it is losing patience with Burma’s politically inept ruling generals

When Vice Snr-Gen Maung Aye, the second most powerful figure in Burma’s ruling junta, led a high-level delegation to Beijing in mid-June, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency dutifully reported that the visit—the general’s third in six years—was aimed at strengthening friendly and cooperative ties between the two neighboring countries.

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, left, holds a welcoming ceremony in honor of Gen Maung Aye, right, vice-chairman of Burma’s ruling junta at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on June 16, 2009.
(Photo: www.english.cpc.people.com.cn)

Behind the scenes of the outwardly amicable visit, however, the story was not so simple. According to businessmen close to the regime in Naypyidaw, before departing for Beijing, Maung Aye complained that China was meddling in Burma’s affairs. A former commander of the Burmese army’s northern region who once fought several fierce battles against the Chinese-backed Communist Party of Burma in the 1970s and 1980s, Maung Aye has never really trusted Beijing. Now, he grumbled, Chinese leaders were trying to tell Naypyidaw how it should deal with Aung San Suu Kyi, who was facing imprisonment on charges of violating the terms of her house arrest.

On the Chinese side, too, feelings were far more ambivalent than the Xinhua report would have us believe. Since the 2004 ouster of former Prime Minister Gen Khin Nyunt, Beijing’s relations with the Burmese regime have been on a less secure footing. Unlike the relatively open-minded Khin Nyunt, the current leadership in Naypyidaw consists entirely of dyed-in-the-wool xenophobes. Even a friendly word of advice was likely to strain the relationship carefully built up over the past two decades.

In the end, Maung Aye’s visit passed without incident. Although Beijing had earlier joined Burma’s other neighbors in calling for the release of Suu Kyi, and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told the Burmese regime’s No 2 that he hoped the military would help to promote democracy in Burma, the pro-democracy leader herself was not mentioned directly in discussions between the two sides. Significantly, however, news of the international outcry over the trial of Suu Kyi aired on Beijing television during Maung Aye’s visit, perhaps sending a message that world opinion could not be ignored, even in Communist-controlled China.

Despite such subtle hints, however, it is clear that Beijing is not about to depart from its long-held policy of noninterference in Burma’s political affairs—a policy that it has maintained even under more trying circumstances.

Chinese workers seal the pipeline along the 1,272-kilometer transnational natural gas pipeline in Luoyang in central China’s Henan Province on Dec 11, 2008. China’s demand for oil and gas has expanded rapidly in recently years to fuel its double-digit economic growth, as the country imported nearly 200 million tons of oil in 2007, up more than 10 percent from 2006. (Photo: AFP)

When Burmese troops and security forces were killing monks on the streets of Rangoon in September 2007, provoking international outrage, Beijing made it clear that it wasn’t going to join in the chorus of criticism. Instead, it reacted by issuing an anodyne statement calling on all parties to exercise restraint—and for the rest of the world to mind its own business. Soon after the dust settled, the Burmese regime’s leader, Snr-Gen Than Shwe, returned the favor by sending an envoy to Beijing to explain the situation. And so the whole episode was reduced to a mere bump in the road of Sino-Burmese relations.

It came as no surprise, then, that when a Burmese court sentenced Suu Kyi to a further 18 months under house arrest on August 11, Beijing did not deviate from its script.

“International society should fully respect Myanmar’s [Burma’s] judicial sovereignty,” said a spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry, adding that Beijing would not back any calls for UN action against the Burmese regime. Two days after the sentence was announced, the UN Security Council, of which China is a permanent member with veto powers, expressed “concern” over the court’s ruling and reiterated its call for a “genuine dialogue” aimed at achieving national reconciliation.

During Maung Aye’s visit to China, Burma’s state-run press noted with evident satisfaction that Beijing is the regime’s staunchest defender on the international stage. But why has China remained such a faithful patron of this miscreant regime? The answer, quite simply, is that Burma is a resource-rich country with the means to help China satisfy its hunger for energy and raw materials.

Maung Aye’s visit highlighted this key aspect of the bilateral relationship. While he was in China, the two countries signed three documents—an agreement on economic and technical cooperation, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the development, operation and delivery of electricity from hydropower projects in Maykha, Malikha and upstream of the Irrawaddy-Myitsone river basin, and an MoU relating to the development, operation and management of the Burma-China crude oil pipeline project.

Around the same time as Maung Aye’s trip, Burma’s Ministry of National Planning and Development released a report showing that foreign investment in Burma had jumped from $172.7 million in the 2007-2008 fiscal year to $984.9 million in 2008-2009. The ministry said 87 percent of the total invested in Burma came from China.

China’s investment in Burma is focused mainly on energy and natural resources—hydropower, mining and oil and gas projects. Construction of the pipeline, which will transport gas and oil from the port town of Sittwe on the Arakan coast to China’s landlocked southwestern province of Yunnan, is set to begin in September.

In exchange for access to Burma’s resources and strategically important ports, China provides not only diplomatic cover, but also soft loans for the regime and weapons for its oversized army. It hopes in this way to ensure that Burma remains a part of China’s long-term strategy for economic growth. Although Beijing professes to refrain from interfering in Burma’s political affairs, it is clearly determined to protect its interests by providing the regime with the military means to maintain stability. If the junta proves incapable of containing unrest, Beijing will reconsider its backing; but until then, the generals can count on Chinese support.

China has little interest in promoting Burma’s democratization, but it has been happy to play along with UN efforts to end the country’s political stalemate. When UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon traveled to Naypyidaw in June, Chinese officials said they welcomed the move. But when the regime refused to allow Ban to meet with Suu Kyi, China’s deputy UN ambassador, Liu Zhenmin, said it was “understandable” under the circumstances. He also said that the Burmese regime should be treated with less arrogance and prejudice, and ruled out any possibility of Beijing using its influence to persuade the regime to change its ways.

By the time Maung Aye returned from his visit to China, his misgivings about Beijing’s reliability as an ally appeared to have vanished. Soon after his trip, he visited the Sino-Burmese border and announced plans to build an international airport there. He also reportedly told local businessmen and accompanying ministers that if Burma’s relationship with China continued to grow, Burma would have no need for Western—particularly US—assistance.

This must have been music to Beijing’s ears, but it seems to have done little to allay Chinese concerns about potential US rivalry for influence in Burma. Despite its policy of isolating the Burmese regime, Washington has played a very active role in Burma, primarily through its support for Suu Kyi and pro-democracy groups inside and outside the country. Chinese officials who regularly travel to Thailand to meet exiled Burmese groups often ask them questions about the support they receive from the US.

To offset Washington’s role as the primary sponsor of the democratic opposition, China has expanded its network of contacts within the exiled dissident community. Chinese officials from various government departments based in Yunnan Province, which borders Burma, have been meeting with exiled Burmese groups in Thailand with increasing frequency. More remarkably, they have even allowed conferences and seminars on Burmese issues to take place in China. This is something the Chinese have learned from watching exiled Burmese civil society groups operating in Thailand.

For their part, Burmese dissidents realize that although they already have strong political backing from the West, they also need to lobby China to reconsider its policy toward the repressive regime. The National League for Democracy (NLD), Burma’s main opposition party, has sent several letters to the Chinese embassy in Rangoon, signaling that it sees China as a potentially positive influence. However, there has been no official response to these letters, which were signed by NLD Chairman Aung Shwe, and which expressed a desire to forge a “fraternal relationship” with China and asked for Beijing’s support in Burma’s stalled national reconciliation process.

This lack of a response contrasts starkly with China’s overtures to the NLD in 1990, when the party had just won a landslide victory in Burma’s last democratic elections.

Chinese leaders were among the first to congratulate the NLD on its convincing win and called on the Burmese regime to release Suu Kyi from house arrest. But when it became clear that the junta had no intention of honoring the results of the election, China changed its tune, remarking on the military’s role in winning Burma’s independence from colonial rule—implying that this gave the junta a mandate to hold onto power.

Nearly 20 years later, Beijing may have few regrets about its decision to throw its weight behind the junta, but it is growing increasingly wary of the cost of backing a regime that has failed to resolve any of the potentially explosive issues that continue to threaten stability on China’s doorstep. As Chinese analyst Wen Liao wrote in a recent issue of Foreign Policy magazine, Burma is an unreliable client for China. The fact that the Burmese regime is morally reprehensible is not an issue for Beijing, but the overwhelming evidence of the ruling generals’ incompetence is a serious cause for concern, Wen wrote.

Beijing is not only worried about being dragged through the mud every time Burma’s rulers commit a new outrage. Naypyidaw’s secret missions to Pyongyang and its shady nuclear ambitions are emerging as a new threat to regional stability, and Burma’s restive ethnic ceasefire groups, many based along the Sino-Burmese border, are becoming a major headache for Beijing. As Wen wrote, despite Burma’s importance as part of China’s so-called “string of pearls” policy, which attempts to build naval and intelligence bases around the Indian Ocean, the benefits of those strategic assets have come at a price.

While Washington’s review of US policy on Burma has attracted considerable attention in recent months, perhaps it is time to ask if Beijing is also re-examining its approach. According to Wen, Chinese leaders are now considering the possibility that Suu Kyi’s party may be a more reliable partner for long-term bilateral cooperation after all.

It seems unlikely at this stage that Beijing will actually make another dramatic shift like it did in the 1980s, when it withdrew its all-out support for the Communist Party of Burma. But don’t be surprised if Beijing begins to introduce subtle policy changes that could undercut the alliance that has been the junta’s main lifeline for the past two decades.

READ MORE---> China’s Troublesome Little Brother...

Is China Two-timing the Generals?

By WAI MOE
The Irrawaddy News
SEPTEMBER, 2009 - VOLUME 17 NO.6

Burma’s military junta has to compete with ethnic groups such as the Wa, the Kokang and the Shan to win Beijing’s favor

China is the Burmese military junta’s most influential partner—economically, politically and militarily. But despite the close relationship, Beijing has long enjoyed a discreet affair—a private relationship with the ethnic groups along Burma’s northeastern frontier.

As far back as the 1960s, Mao Zedong’s revolutionary government armed and funded several Shan, Kachin, Kokang and Wa ethnic armies, drawing them into the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) and backing their struggle against the socialist government of Gen Ne Win.

The United Wa State Army is among the strong ethnic armies in northern Burma that Chinese officials are courting.
However, the anticipated opening in 2012 of a gas pipeline from Burma to China, which will traverse many of the ethnic areas, and the regime’s need to consolidate its power over unruly factions before next year’s election, might force the generals in Naypyidaw to confront the superpower about its relations with the ethnic insurgents.

Many Chinese businessmen, for their part, would rather continue to enjoy the profits they are able to generate from the mostly illegal trade—such as narcotics, jade, exotic animals and timber—from Shan and Kachin states.

And Beijing has shown recently that it is willing to exert a subtle—and not so subtle—influence on behalf of the ethnic groups.

On August 8, about 10,000 villagers fled to the Sino-Burmese border to escape a possible skirmish between the Burmese army and the Kokang troops of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA).

Tensions had been brought to a head when a unit of Burmese government soldiers attempted to raid a warehouse—probably thought to be an arms cache—belonging to Kokang leader Peng Jiasheng.

When Chinese and Burmese officials met the following day to discuss the issue of the fleeing villagers, the Chinese delegation reportedly scolded their Burmese counterparts and told them it was their responsibility to resolve the matter peacefully.

It was a slap in the face for the Burmese generals who, more than ever, needed their friends in Beijing to stand on their side.

In the last few months, Burmese military commanders have been busy traveling to the mountainous jungle terrain of Kachin and Shan states to meet the leaders of the ethnic armies deemed least likely to conform to the junta’s plans to transform their soldiers into “border guard forces”— the MNDAA, the United Wa State Army (UWSA), the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), the National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA) and the Shan State Army-North.

Although the five ethnic armies are among 17 groups that have signed ceasefire deals with the junta, they have refused to accept the border guard role, which would include placing their troops under the control of Burmese regional commanders.

A deadline for the ceasefire groups to respond to the regime’s border guard plan went unanswered at the end of June.

“On July 29, Maj-Gen Aung Than Htut and his deputy, Brig-Gen Hla Myint Aung of the Northeast Command went to the Kokang region [home of the MNDAA] and two days later, traveled to Wa territory,” said Aung Kyaw Zaw, a Burmese military analyst on the Sino-Burmese border. “However, they failed to convince the ethnic leaders to join them.”

In an attempt to intimidate the ethnic armies, the junta sent three additional battalions to areas near the Wa and Kokang territories in late July.

However, with an estimated 20,000 armed men, the UWSA is a force to be reckoned with. As a standoff continued into August, the matter of Chinese favoritism came significantly into play.

In December 2008, Wa and Kachin leaders wrote a joint letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao requesting their support in the struggle for autonomous rights for ethnic groups on the Sino-Burmese border.

“We solemnly ask the Chinese government to relay our request to the Myanmar [Burmese] government: first, we support the constitutional reform. When the new government forms in 2010, the leadership based on national public elections should promise to leaders of the autonomous states that they will be part of the high leadership of the new government… and build upon the method of management of China’s autonomous regions,” they wrote.

The Burmese junta, in turn, also reportedly asked Beijing to help resolve the tension with the ethnic groups. Chinese negotiators sat in the privileged position of being able to hold separate meetings with representatives of both camps.

One ethnic leader who asked not to be identified said Beijing had assured him that his group will not have to disarm.

However, China well understands that the generals in Naypyidaw are their highly valued and consistent business partners, and they hold the key to strategic interests in the Indian Ocean.

On the other hand, many of the commanders of the armed ethnic groups, in particular the Wa, the Kokang and the NDAA, have long been allies of the Chinese Communist Party and, in some cases, fought alongside the Chinese People’s Liberation Army decades ago.

When the Wa, Kokang, the NDAA and other ethnic troops split from the CPB in 1989, Communist insurgency came to an abrupt end in Burma.

The UWSA, the MNDAA and the NDAA signed ceasefire agreements later that year with the Burmese regime, which was fronted by former spy chief Gen Khin Nyunt.

Then, in 1994, another major armed faction, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), signed a ceasefire agreement with the Burmese generals.

In hindsight, the Burmese leaders may feel that their ceasefire agreements with the Wa and Kokang in particular were too focused on temporary strategies rather than being based on political agreements aimed at long-term stability.

However, it seemed at the time that the traditionally pro-Chinese ethnic insurgents were being lured into Rangoon’s sphere of influence.

The Burmese regime has often turned a blind eye to the trafficking of heroin and opium from the northern states. With the freedom to conduct a trade in narcotics, many warlords in Shan state modernized their operations by shifting production to amphetamines and methamphetamines, the drugs of choice for the younger generation.

The proliferation of the drugs trade has forced Beijing to rethink its drugs policy along the Yunnanese border because drug addiction has exploded in the past decade in its southwestern province.

Beijing introduced its Green Drug Prevention Plan to encourage opium farmers in the Golden Triangle area of Burma, Laos and Thailand to grow alternative crops. In 2006, the Chinese State Council approved 250 million yuan (US $36.5 million) for a plan that widened its support for opium farmers in Laos and Burma.

In response to Beijing’s anti-narcotics policy, the Kokang followed suit by suppressing poppy farming in 2003 while the Wa declared their state an opium-free zone in 2005.

China proudly declared that—thanks to its initiatives—poppy farms had been reduced in the Golden Triangle region from 36,000 hectares in 2004 to 13,000 hectares in 2006.

However, according to an official report from Yunnan Province, between 2005 and 2008, Chinese police seized 12.9 tons of heroin, 4.5 tons of opium and 9.3 tons of crystal methamphetamine (known on the street as “ice”), which had been smuggled from Burma.

Chinese officials and experts recognize that the Sino-Burmese border issues have wider implications.

Although Chinese diplomats had steadfastly repeated at the United Nations Security Council that the Burma issue was an internal affair, they began criticizing the junta leadership privately during bilateral talks in 2007.

“Decades of turmoil in Myanmar have shown that the problems the country have today are not only political, but also economic, and above all, ethnic,” said Xiaolin Guo, the author of “Towards Resolution: China in the Myanmar Issue.”

“The Chinese government, which itself completed the necessary steps of state-building within half a decade after the founding of the PRC [People’s Republic of China], now sees the imperative of national reconciliation in Myanmar as a necessary step in achieving political integration,” she said.

According to an official statement, China’s current policy on Burma is specifically oriented toward three goals—stability, development and national reconciliation.

What Beijing’s strategists are undoubtedly weighing up at the moment is whether their traditional allegiance to the ethnic groups along their Burmese border is worth jeopardizing the relationship with their fickle mistress in Naypyidaw.

READ MORE---> Is China Two-timing the Generals?...

An ‘Evening with Rohingya People’

KPN - An ‘Evening with Rohingya People’ was an event organized by the London based Burmese Rohingya community with the help of the Burma Campaign UK to share the dilemma of the Rohingya and discuss other Burmese multi-ethnic conflict topics on August 27, at 28 Charles Square London, said Tun Khin, the president of Burmese Rohingya Organization UK (BROUK).

An Evening With Rohingya People

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Kokang campaign still on

Shanland - Despite victory over rebellious Kokang army announced yesterday through state-run media, the Burma Army has yet to slow down its war machine, reported sources from Shan State.

People in Muse, opposite China’s Ruili, and northwest of Kokang, were still being snatched by the official porter collectors yesterday and in Lashio, the capital of Shan State North, southwest of Kokang, civilian trucks were still in demand.

The Burma Army is proceeding with a mopping-up operation against isolated Kokang fighters who are still putting up a guerrilla resistance in the 22,000 sq.km territory, according to a source on the Sino-Burma border. Up to 30% of the original Kokang force (estimated strength, 800) loyal to the deposed leader Peng Jiasheng are believed to be still on Burma’s side of the border.

On the Thai-Burma border, militia units placed under full alert two days ago have been allowed to relax. “Civilian trucks requisitioned by the Army in Monghsat (opposite Thailand’s Mae Ai) have also been permitted to return home,” reported a local.

The United Wa State Army (UWSA)’s Thai-border based 171st Military Region, comprising 5 brigades, under the command of Wei Xuegang, however, have yet to come down from their mountain bases. “Unlike in the past, when Wa trucks passed by Burma Army checkpoints without being searched, they are now being subjected to thorough going-overs,” said another local source.

On the other hand, sources in eastern Shan State are betting that the next target for the Burma Army should be Mongla, the UWSA’s southern neighbor and ally. Kokang that fell on 29 August is the Wa’s northern neighbor and ally.

Even Mongla, 80 km northeast of Shan State East’s capital Kengtung, has become edgy, according to them.

Yesterday, some 470 Burmans working or seeking work in Mongla were rounded up by the National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA) officials, loaded in trucks and dumped at Taping, the Lwe crossing that marks as the border between the NDAA and Burma Army controlled areas. “We used to have about 100 people working here,” explained one of the officials, on condition of anonymity. “But the number had jumped up to over 400 in a matter of weeks. We believe many of them, not all, must be spies.”

The Shan State Army (SSA) ‘South’, that has been fighting against Naypyitaw, meanwhile is yet to issue any official statements on the latest developments in Burma. “We are still closely following the developments,” said one of the senior officers.

One Thai border source reported that the UWSA has begun liaising with the SSA South. “There has been no such thing as yet,” replied the same SSA source.

Tension between the ceasefire groups and the ruling military junta has been growing since April when the former were demanded to transform themselves into Burma Army run Border Guard Forces.

READ MORE---> Kokang campaign still on...

The fall of Kokang raises questions

Shanland - After three days of heavy fighting, 27-29 August, the bulk of the anti-Naypyitaw Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), the name given to their armed force by the Kokang, moved yesterday into China where they were disarmed by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

The biggest question raised by the fall of Qingsuihe (Chinshwehaw), opposite Namteuk (Namtit), where the Kokang’s strongest ally United Wa State Army (UWSA)’s 318th Division is headquartered, may be: What were the Wa doing when the Kokang were being attacked at Qingsuihe?

At first, both the Wa and other sources reported that at least 500 UWSA fighters had been deployed to assist the embattled Kokang. However, on the 29 August evening, the Wa source told SHAN Qingsuihe had fallen, as the UWSA had decided only to make a stand along the Namting that forms as a boundary between Wa and Kokang territories in order to prevent any spillovers from the fighting.

What happened to the ‘all for one and one for all’ agreement reached earlier among the Wa, Kokang and Mongla? SHAN asked. But Panghsang has yet to answer the question, which has naturally prompted more questions:

• How strong is the Peace and Democracy Front (PDF), now that it has done practically nothing against the Burma Army’s attack on Kokang?

• Now that the UWSA has allowed Kokang its northern ally to go, is it ready to let go other allies, namely the Shan State Army (SSA) ‘North’ in the west and Mongla aka National Democratic Alliance Army-Eastern Shan State (NDAA) too?

• Does it think the UWSA will be able to make a lone stand against the Burma Army, after its allies have gone?

• What was China’s role in the Kokang debacle? Has the UWSA been advised that the Burma Army will not be allowed to make further attacks against it and its remaining allies?

Kokang’s deposed leader Peng Jiasheng has also voiced similar doubts in his special statement issued late in the evening of 28 August, a day before Qingsuihe’s fall:

• We have vowed that we would together overthrow the common enemy, the ruling military dictatorship clique. I request that we put our vow into practice starting today.

• If the Kokang force has been swallowed, the other allies armed forces will also be swallowed not long after. We therefore request you to counter attack the SPDC forces starting today.

Another big question arose when a report by a usually reliable source said that the mutiny in early August against Kokang’s supreme leader Peng Jiasheng was masterminded by a Liu Guoxi, a disgruntled member of the Kokang leadership, in cooperation with the deputy police of Burma.

With details lacking, SHAN as yet has no way to confirm the report, though Liu has been known in the past to be a colleague of Mong Hsala, the leader of now defunct Mongkoe Defense Army (MDA). MDA went into oblivion and its top leaders either jailed or executed in 2000 by the Burma Army during a mutiny against Mong Hsala.

Granted that the report is true, questions arise:

• Are there more Liu Guoxis among the ranks of the UWSA and its allied armies?

• Is the Burma Army in cahoots with them?

• Wei Xuegang, Commander of the UWSA’s Thai-border based 171st Military Region, is said to be close to Prime Minister Thein Sein. How close are they?

At present, the questions are hard to answer.

But investigations by the media and concerned agencies in the next few weeks will find whether the ideal goal of forming a grand alliance against the hated military regime is too late or can still be a dream come true.

READ MORE---> The fall of Kokang raises questions...