Burma Newscasts

Monday, June 1, 2009

Thailand’s Crisis: Lessons for Burma

By PAVIN CHACHAVALPONGPUN
MAY — JUNE, 2009 - VOLUME 17 NO.3
The Irrawaddy News

Power-holders must learn that the voice of the majority is the true voice of democracy

WHAT does Thailand’s protracted political crisis tell its neighboring countries? What are the lessons to be learned from the Thai experiences? And what is the most vital message for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), of which Thailand is a member, as the organisation moves toward a greater regional integration?

The current political stalemate in Thailand is the work of two competing networks: one that supports former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and the other the old establishment.

Thaksin is represented by the red-shirt movement which comprises the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), the poor in far-flung regions and underprivileged Thais. The old establishment is supported by the Bangkok elite, part of the military and big business. Its proxy agent is the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), whose members wear yellow shirts that symbolize the king’s color.

The battle between the two political networks has been ferocious. When red-shirted protesters forced the cancellation of the Asean summit in Pattaya on April 11 and raged in the streets of Bangkok days later, it signalled that at least one side of the network was willing to engage in a warlike fight to undermine its opponent. In the process, leaders of both networks claimed to act for democracy. But their brands of democracy have so far failed to untie the political deadlock.

The deep turmoil in Thailand reveals certain realities that have long existed in the countries of Southeast Asia. Yet, leaders in the region have pretended not to see them. This time, as Thailand found itself on the brink of becoming a failed state, a few lessons could be learned by its neighboring countries.

First, the continuing crisis and escalating violence imply that democracy has remained a fragile commodity. A decade ago, Thailand was praised for its rapid economic development and progressive democratization. Today, its political domain is transformed into a battlefield between two powerful forces possessing different ideologies.

The Thai case shows that an elected government with excessive power, living on corruption and lack of respect for human rights, can be vulnerable; that traditional power-holders must face up to modern-day reality whereby the voice of the majority is the true voice of democracy; that the military has to be depoliticised for the sake of democracy; and that violent means employed to serve political purposes only further alienate democracy.

The rise of the red-shirt movement has the potential to unleash a new political wave in certain Southeast Asian states where people have been denied democratic rights. Not every member of the red shirts supports Thaksin. Some have participated in the rallies genuinely for the return of real democracy.

Second, although the power struggle is a part of Thailand’s democratic evolution and this proves that the country has come a long way since the political transition in 1932, its political drama does not necessarily encourage positive changes in certain parts of the region. It could send out the wrong message.

The message, for example, that anti-government activities must not be tolerated because stability is more precious than democratic rights; that challenges to the ruling regime must not be allowed; and that Western democracy is not really compatible with Asian societies—a canard fostered by Asian leaders for generations.

In other words, the Thai conflict could convince illegitimate regimes elsewhere, including Burma, to tighten their grip on power in fear of public disobedience and uncontrollable situations.

Third, Asean has been led to believe that the sole major obstacle to regional integration stems from the widening gap between the more and the less economically developed members. Unless Asean closes this economic gap, regional integration will remain largely elusive.

Yet, Asean leaders have overlooked the fact that a widening political gap, in terms of different levels of democratic development, has also affected the process of regionalism. The Thai political unrest has already delayed Asean gatherings. The political storm has held back the Thai leadership in Asean. The organisation has been operating on autopilot since last year. Its slow response to the global financial crisis proved this point.

However, this is not Thailand’s problem alone. The gap in the levels of democratization in the region has so far tarnished the good work Asean has achieved in other areas.

This existing political gap has produced different mentalities and attitudes among Asean leaders as they look ahead into the future. Some are enthusiastic about Asean’s newborn regionalism. Some are using Asean as merely a symbol of their duplicitous embrace of international norms and practices.

Both Thailand and Asean have a long way to go to meet their objectives. The crisis in Thailand can be used to remind its neighbors that true democratization is an extremely arduous process. But its postponement would only make this exercise even more excruciating and troublesome.

Character Assassination, or Something Worse?

By KYAW ZWA MOE
MAY — JUNE, 2009 - VOLUME 17 NO.3
The Irrawaddy News

Burma’s rulers may take their efforts to silence Aung San Suu Kyi a step further

THE ruling generals in Naypyidaw must be smiling as their nemesis goes to trial charged with a crime that they did nothing to prevent. In Burma, that is the kind of perversion of justice that truly delights the country’s brutal junta.

The case against Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been accused of violating the conditions of her house arrest by allowing a “guest” to stay overnight in her home, is as ludicrous as it is outrageous. But the people of Burma are not laughing, because they know the consequences of this absurd episode could be deadly serious.

The guest in question is, of course, John William Yettaw, the “wretched American” denounced by Suu Kyi’s lawyers and other Burmese for exposing the country’s revered pro-democracy leader to yet another assault on her indignity by Burma’s generals.

There is nothing to suggest that Yettaw is anything more than a misguided individual who happened to hit upon the bright idea of swimming to Suu Kyi’s lakeside home, where she has spent most of the past two decades under house arrest, as a way to get an interview.

Conspiracy theories are flying fast and furious, but none is more convincing than the suggestion that the junta somehow put him up to this foolhardy plan. We know that the authorities were aware of the fact that he breached the perimeter of her tightly guarded residential compound once before, late last year, but did nothing about it. Nor did they try to prevent him from entering the country in late April, when he returned determined to repeat his improbable feat.

This may not be enough to prove that the regime had a hand in this violation of Suu Kyi’s rights, but it is infinitely stronger than any evidence against “the Lady” herself, who is accused of contravening Section 22 of the Law Safeguarding the State from Dangers of Subversive Elements. And it certainly shows a deplorable disregard for her safety, which has often been disingenuously cited as a reason for locking her up in the first place.

In the first few days after the state-run media reported Yettaw’s arrest, pro-junta blogs set up by the Burmese Ministry of Information had a field day offering their own “theories” about what happened between May 3 and 5. Some even suggested Yettaw was a CIA agent, no doubt plotting some dastardly deed to undermine the “peace and security” that the generals have bestowed upon Burma.

Still others made crude innuendoes about a supposed tryst between the 63-year-old Suu Kyi and 53-year-old Yettaw. Such despicable slurs could hardly have been expected to convince the Burmese public, but they probably earned some ambitious young sycophant a pat on the back from a pleased superior officer, who is now in line for a promotion by Snr-Gen Than Shwe, a man who is said to show rage at the mere mention of Suu Kyi’s name.

As Than Shwe and his cohorts move forward with their efforts to force Burma to accept their dead-end “road map” to a military-dominated “democracy,” they are showing growing impatience with the world’s obsession with Suu Kyi. They know, as they learned to their infinite chagrin in 1990, that they would not stand a chance in a fair election that pits them against her party, the National League for Democracy. So they want her silenced, once and for all.

This raises the fear—the very real fear—that the generals have more in store for Suu Kyi than just a sham trial to justify barricading her in her home for another half-decade or so of less than splendid isolation. If they think they can get away with it, they will happily leave her in her “guesthouse” in Insein Prison to spend the remainder of her rapidly passing years.

What is truly frightening about this prospect is that Burma’s prisons are notoriously hazardous to the lives of their inmates, particularly those doing time for displeasing the powers that be. Suu Kyi is known for her indomitable spirit, but it is doubtful that this alone would help her to withstand the rigors of life in a Burmese gulag, especially given her recent health problems.

The question that many Burmese are now asking themselves is whether the regime will stop this time at character assassination—a tactic that they have used against Suu Kyi in the past, to absolutely no effect. What the people of Burma fear most is that they will lose another leader to martyrdom—not in a hail of bullets like her father, but at the hands of jailers who have killed countless others with their policy of malign neglect.

Burma’s generals have shown how far they’re ready to go to silence Suu Kyi, most infamously with the Depayin attack of 2003, which served as the pretext for her current incarceration. Regardless of how the farcical trial against her plays out, it is clear that the regime’s ultimate goal is to permanently remove her from her unassailable position of moral authority, by any means necessary.

Chronicle of a Cooked-up Crime

By THE IRRAWADDY
MAY — JUNE, 2009 - VOLUME 17 NO.3

(Illustration: Harn Lay/The Irrawaddy)

As rumors swirled around the arrest and trial of Aung San Suu Kyi and her uninvited American visitor, The Irrawaddy pieced together the known facts of this bizarre case

Aung San Suu Kyi’s lakeside home on Rangoon’s University Avenue is one of the city’s most secure locations, with at least a dozen security men posted outside its high fence at all times.

In late 2008, an American citizen, Vietnam War veteran John William Yettaw, stayed for several weeks in the Thai-Burmese border town of Mae Sot and talked openly there about a visit he claimed to have made in November to Suu Kyi’s home. He reportedly told Mae Sot residents he had swum to her waterfront compound across Rangoon’s Inya Lake. According to National League for Democracy sources, Suu Kyi asked her personal physician to report the incident to the authorities, but they did nothing.

Yettaw returned to Thailand from his home in the US earlier this year after telling his family he was working on a book. on May 2, he entered Burma again.

Immigration officials at Rangoon International Airport, trained to spot suspicious visitors, issued him with a tourist visa.

Yettaw booked into Rangoon’s Beauty Land Hotel.

On May 7, the state-run newspaper The New Light of Myanmar broke the news of Yettaw’s arrest, reporting that he had spent two days and nights at Suu Kyi’s home after swimming there across Inya Lake. The report said that Yettaw set off during the night of Sunday, May 3, and stayed at Suu Kyi’s home until late on May 5. At 5.30 a.m. On May 6, security officials spotted him swimming in the lake near the International Business Center on Pyay Road, more than a mile from Suu Kyi’s home, and arrested him. Yettaw is 53 years old, suffers from asthma and diabetes and lives modestly in the US on an ex-serviceman’s disability pension. He allegedly strapped a pair of home-made flippers to his feet to help him swim to Suu Kyi’s home and back.

In 2003, Burmese authorities argued they were putting Suu Kyi under house arrest for her own safety. The lapse in security that allowed Yettaw to enter her home was not an issue, however, when Suu Kyi was transferred to Rangoon’s Insein Prison on May 14 and charged with violating the conditions of her detention order. Under the terms of the order, unauthorized visitors are banned. Yettaw’s fateful visit was clearly not authorized—and certainly not by Suu Kyi.

Sink or Swim

By AUNG ZAW AND NEIL LAWRENCE
The Irrawaddy Magazine
MAY — JUNE, 2009 - VOLUME 17 NO.3

Can efforts to relax US sanctions against Burma stay afloat in the wake of John William Yettaw’s fateful swim across Inya Lake?

NOBODY knows for sure what inspired John William Yettaw to don a pair of homemade flippers and swim across Inya Lake to the home of Burmese democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi. But if his intention was to frustrate efforts to open a new chapter in US relations with Burma’s ruling regime, all we can say is: Mission Accomplished.

Suu Kyi enters the Insein Prison building where the trial is being held.

Of course, Yettaw should not be the one held accountable for the hardening of attitudes toward the Burmese junta in the wake of this incident. For that, Burma’s generals have only themselves to thank.

It was the regime’s decision to exploit this episode as a pretext for extending Suu Kyi’s illegal detention that prompted US President Barack Obama to renew sanctions on Burma on May 15, ending months of speculation that the new administration was steering away from the hard-line stance of Obama’s predecessor, George W Bush.

This is a serious blow to those who had hoped that Obama’s message of change would somehow reach Burma, where the junta’s obstinate grip on power has long been met with an equally unyielding adherence to sanctions by the world’s superpower.

Suu Kyi is escorted to a car after a session of the trial attended by reporters and diplomats.

Critics of the US sanctions policy say that it has failed to have any real impact on Burma, apart from putting its people more at the mercy of the generals, whose regional allies, such as China, India and Thailand, have shown little compunction about engaging with the junta to advance their own commercial and geopolitical objectives.

Soon after taking office, new US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged the limited effectiveness of sanctions as a policy tool. Speaking during a tour of Asia in February, she noted that neither sanctions nor engagement had succeeded in moving Burma closer to democracy. This set off a vigorous debate among Burmese exiles and other close observers about the possible outcome of a review of US policy on Burma.

Sources close to the action in Washington said they wouldn’t be surprised if Obama signaled a more conciliatory approach to Burma by referring to the country as “Myanmar,” its official name under the current regime. Others suggested he might upgrade the American diplomatic mission in Burma, where the US has a huge new embassy, but has had no ambassador since the junta seized power in 1988.

But even such symbolic gestures now seem unlikely, as the junta moves forward with its efforts to marginalize the democratic opposition by going after its major figurehead with a zeal that we have not seen since the Depayin massacre of May 2003, when Suu Kyi and her supporters came under attack from murderous pro-junta thugs.

With Suu Kyi facing imprisonment for allegedly violating the conditions of her house arrest—a charge stemming from Yettaw’s uninvited visit—the Obama administration has shown that it is in no mood to cut the regime any slack.

“We reject their baseless charges against Aung San Suu Kyi, their continuing resistance to a free and open electoral process,” Clinton told senators at a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on State and Foreign Affairs.

“If they stay on the track they’re on, their elections in 2010 will be totally illegitimate and without any meaning in the international community,” Clinton warned.

By linking Suu Kyi’s arrest and detention in Insein Prison to the credibility of elections planned for next year, Clinton underscored the longstanding US insistence that Washington will not accept the junta’s “road map” to a military-dominated quasi-democracy unless it includes the democratic opposition.

Barricades are set up at a road junction in Rangoon
amid high security in the former capital. (Photo: Reuters)

This refusal to embrace a junta-engineered end to Burma’s political deadlock contrasts with the attitude of many other governments—including not only those of Burma’s Asian neighbors, but also some in Europe—that have been more inclined to regard the 2010 elections as a potential watershed in a gradual transition to genuine democracy.

While many have focused on next year’s elections as an opportunity to advance the cause of Burmese democracy, others have identified last year’s devastating Cyclone Nargis as a turning point in Burma’s engagement with the outside world.

Nargis, which revealed the extent of the country’s desperate need for humanitarian aid, also supposedly opened up the possibility of large-scale cooperation between the regime and the international community.

On May 8, several prominent proponents of humanitarian engagement with the junta held a meeting at a US Senate office building to discuss the “view from the ground” in the cyclone-stricken Irrawaddy delta. The gathering, co-sponsored by the US-Asean Business Council and the relief agency Refugees International, also included speakers representing the governments of Thailand, Singapore, Norway, Japan and Australia.

Police and security forces man a checkpoint
outside Insein Prison. (Photo: Reuters)

It remains to be seen what impact, if any, this meeting will have on US policy on Burma. But it is interesting as evidence of the coalition of disparate interests that is forming around this issue, and the growing momentum of the movement to challenge decades of sanctions-based policies in favor of an approach that will inevitably involve bestowing some measure of legitimacy upon Burma’s present rulers.

For now, however, the push to do away with sanctions appears to be dead in the water, as the Yettaw affair has served as a reminder of the sort of intransigence that the regime displayed in the crucial early weeks after Cyclone Nargis, when countless lives were lost because of the junta’s xenophobic response to offers of foreign assistance.

If opponents of US sanctions are hoping for any breakthroughs, they will have to keep a keen eye on Snr-Gen Than Shwe, the man who holds all the cards. Until he demonstrates that he is prepared to meet the expectations of countries that care about the rule of law, there will be little talk in Washington of relaxing sanctions.

Than Shwe now has three options: He could give in to international demands and release Suu Kyi; he could say sanctions be damned and throw her in prison; or he could restore the status quo and put her back under house arrest.

Of these three, the third seems most in keeping with the method that usually lies behind Than Shwe’s madness. By escalating fears about Suu Kyi’s safety and then simply sending her back to her home, he would be showing the world that he is willing to “compromise.”

But at this stage, such a display of false magnanimity will probably do little to help the pro-engagement camp. Advocates of major changes in US policy on Burma may believe that they have a strong case to make, but as long as they are at the mercy of Than Shwe’s cynical ploys, they will just be treading water.

Recession bites: compounding misery for migrants

By Joseph A. Allchin

(DVB)–The economic recession became real to Yomana in March. Seven years of working up to 13 hours a day came to an end when, like most in his garment factory, he was laid off.

His story could prove quintessentially 21st Century. Yomana (not his real name) joins approximately 4000 factory workers in Mae Sot, on the Thai-Burma border, who have lost their jobs in recent months as a result of the recession. But according to Moe Swe of Yaung Chi Oo Workers Association (YCOWA) the recession has come late to Mae Sot precisely because the wages are so suppressed here. Despite this Moe Swe estimates that as many as 12 factories have closed.

Yomana’s days of toil were rewarded invariably with less than the Thai minimum wage, and his overtime went unpaid. A thirteen-hour day therefore could result in him being paid under US$2. The conditions were exacerbated by a system that, whilst relieving great desperation in the first place, verges on bonded labour.

As a farmer in Mon state, Burma, he left his lands as erosion ate into his dozen acres of rice paddy; a peril that will perhaps come to inflict many this century as a result of global warming. His journey was orchestrated by brokers, who for a large fee escorted him and his young family the short distance over the border into Mae Sot.

Arriving in Thailand illegally puts workers in Mae Sot in a particularly difficult place. According to Thetis Managahas of the UN’s International Labour Organisation (ILO), there is very little that the Thai authorities can do to regulate migrant workers; they arrive from Burma with no documentation.

As such, businesses in Mae Sot are able to pay pitiful wages, ones that would not be paid to Thais, and the local authorities and the business community enjoy what Mangahas terms a ‘built-in relationship’, and turn a blind eye. Moe Swe of YCOWA confirms this relationship, saying that “everybody knows that workers in Mae Sot are exploited but nobody does anything”.

The ugly truth is that the commodity of cheap labour is treated as such, with workers reporting suffocating factory floors with little fresh air and intense pressure to produce more. These conditions encourage injury and accident. All ‘wastage’ must come out of the pitiful wages, and workers speak of being punished or threatened with violence from factory bosses.

The majority of Burmese migrants are forced to stay in Mae Sot. Few towns outside of war zones can have quite such strict departure measures. On leaving the town on the main road away from the border, one is liable to pass through as many as five different army checkpoints where Burmese are systematically targeted. ‘Fees’ to leave and travel freely in Thailand can be paid, but would dwarf most salaries.

An overarching responsibility for the worker is also placed on the employer in Thailand, putting the lives of workers such as Yomana in the hands of their employers. He says his bosses would levy ‘security’ charges out of wages and look after their work permits. Fees are also often levied for food and other things, giving bosses an almost parental control over workers. Inspections are rare and, according to Moe Swe, done as part of the ‘cosy’ relationship, with hand-picked workers reportedly rolled out for the inspectors.

Thai law further forbids migrant workers the right to unionise. Whilst they are allowed to join Thai unions, none are present in Mae Sot purely because there are so few Thai workers here.

All this makes for suffocating working conditions before the recession, and with the rise in the value of the Burmese currency, the Kyat, things were tough enough. As a footnote, the rise of the value of Kyat occurred partly as a result of a sudden influx of aid money in the wake of cyclone Nargis. This makes the hope of sending remittances back to impoverished family members even more unlikely.

As the recession bit and orders dried up, Yomana’s job ended. A few remained in the factory who would work even longer hours for even less remuneration and, as the desperation mounted, workers further undercut each other. He now takes daily wage labour work, when it comes - he gets a few days work a month and is sheltered by an NGO. Every now and then, particularly in these tough economic times, the Thai police erect check points or go house-to-house, factory-to-factory, rounding up the ‘aliens’ in what Mangahas describes as a “nice political release”; essentially a proverbial scapegoat.

Transnational economic migrants are an essential plank of the Thai and global economies. The Federation for Thai Industry acknowledge the value of the foreign currency that the rock bottom wages in Mae Sot bring into the Thai economy. Yet their labour here is rewarded with subsistence wages, no security and backbreaking work at the best of times.

In other parts of the world they call such a space an ‘export processing zone’ or a ‘special economic zone’; a space where regulations and taxes are particularly favourable to business. Mae Sot is such a space with only semi-official recognition and no fancy acronym to conceal the money-making that feeds off desperation.

Suu Kyi Trial Sparks Helpless Outrage in Burma

The Irrawaddy News

RANGOON (AP)— The spray-painted demands appear overnight: "Free Aung San Su Kyi" read the scrawls on walls across this city—only to be whitewashed by security forces as soon as they are discovered.

Since the trial of Burma's pro-democracy leader began two weeks ago, these small signs of defiance hint at the undercurrent of anger over the treatment of a woman considered to be a living icon by many of her compatriots.

But out in public, under the watchful gaze of the military regime, supporters feel helpless to do more as the trial winds to an end, with closing arguments scheduled for Friday.

There is little sign that private anguish will explode into the mass protests—all violently suppressed—that have marked the history of Burma, since the military began its rule in 1962.

"I'm so upset about what has happened in my country," said Zin, a 28-year-old housewife who, like most Burmese, won't give her full name for fear of retaliation. "People are angry and people are sad, but we can't do anything for her. We have no power."

Suu Kyi, 63, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is being tried on charges of violating her house arrest after an American, John W. Yettaw, swam uninvited to her lakeshore home and stayed for two days.

Suu Kyi has already been held in detention for 13 of the past 19 years, including the past six years. Closing arguments have been delayed until Friday, but expectations are high that she will be found guilty since Burma's courts operate under the command of the ruling military.

The trial has drawn condemnation from the international community and Suu Kyi's local supporters, who worry that the military junta has found an excuse to keep her detained through elections planned for next year.

But with memories of the government's bloody crackdown against the Buddhist monk-led uprising in 2007 still vivid, few people are willing to challenge a regime with no qualms about using violence against its own citizens. At least 31 people were killed that September, including a Japanese journalist, the UN says.

Aung, a 55-year-old businessman who witnessed the military's response to the protests two years ago, said the Burmese learned a bitter lesson from that experience. Thousands were detained in the aftermath of demonstrations that drew 100,000 people into Rangoon's streets. Hundreds of activists were sentenced to lengthy prison terms.

"The person who becomes involved in protests, their whole family is persecuted. If you want to be brave, OK, but do you think all your family must be brave too?" he said. "Nobody wants to risk that now."

Longtime observers say it is unlikely that major public demonstrations will follow Suu Kyi's sentencing.

"If Suu Kyi is found guilty and jailed, there will be much popular anger, but it won't make a real difference because (the government) is well-equipped and experienced in dealing with the people's protests," said Donald Seekins, a Burma expert at Japan's Meio University.

Seekins said the regime has already posted soldiers throughout Rangoon, the largest city, "and can suppress demonstrations with little difficulty."

For a nation still recovering from the devastation of Cyclone Nargis last year, which left at least 138,000 dead, the ongoing economic hardship makes coping day-to-day—not politics—the priority for many Burmese, said Aung.

"People are so disturbed, so angry" about Suu Kyi, he said, clenching his fist for emphasis. "But Nargis was a big hit. Everybody's suffering and when people suffer, they don't have time to think about anything."

In the streets of Rangoon this past week, there was little evidence of heightened tension, with businesses operating normally.

However, increased security could be seen around Suu Kyi's gently decaying lakeshore home as well as near her party's headquarters as a key anniversary was marked—19 years since Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won a landslide victory at the ballot box but were prevented from taking office.

A few political stalwarts have still managed to keep the faith. At a small celebration Wednesday attended by foreign diplomats, senior party members wore T-shirts calling for Suu Kyi's freedom and then released a total of 64 doves and balloons into the air at the dilapidated party offices. She will turn 64 on June 19.

Meanwhile, several dozen faithful, including 80-year-old former political prisoner Win Tin, have been holding daily vigils in the rain outside the gates of Insein Prison, where Suu Kyi is being held, despite the presence of plainclothes security videotaping their movements and recording their identities.

Acknowledging the difficulties faced by regular Burmese, Win Tin said last week that "everyone is angry, but people are concerned with earning their daily bread. They are afraid, and there is no leadership."

Even if people wanted to talk about the incarceration of "The Lady," as Suu Kyi is known, the dangers of criticizing the ruling regime too openly are known to everyone, said Thein, a 48-year-old English teacher.

Instead, he said, political discussions are reduced to secret whisperings in neighborhood teashops and small gatherings in private homes.

"People have been frustrated a long time," Thein said. "We don't trust anything. We don't trust each other. Always we think, 'Is he a spy?' The rule is: 'Don't talk politics.'"

Soldiers Commit Gang rape in Karen State: Villagers

By SAW YAN NAING
The Irrawaddy News

A gang rape against an ethnic Karen woman committed by Burmese soldiers has been reported in Karen State in eastern Burma

Villagers in Kawkareik Township claimed that a 30-year-old Karen woman was taken from her farm hut to the jungle and raped by soldiers of Infantry Battalion 283 led by Capt Htay Win on May 25'09, according to the Karen Information Center, a Karen news organization.

On May 27, the UN human rights special rapporteur Sergio Pinheiro urged the UN Security Council to undertake an investigation into crimes against humanity in Burma committed by the Burmese military regime.

Pinheiro said that for the past two decades, ethnic minorities in Burma—more than one-third of the population—have not received enough of the world’s attention, adding that, “For Burma's process of national reconciliation to be successful, the
plight of the minorities must also be addressed.”

In 2007, the Karen Women’s Organization (KWO) released a report titled: “State of Terror,” highlighting the campaign of abuse against women in Karen State, including rape, torture and forced labor.

The KWO said it documented more than 4,000 cases of abuse, including rape, murder, torture and forced labor over the past few years in more than 190 villages by troops from more than 40 Burmese Army battalions. Many of the human rights violations were from late 2005 through 2006.

Many of the abuses took place during ongoing military offensives in eastern Burma since early 2006, which have displaced more than 25,000 civilians and have forced thousands of refugees to seek safety along the Thai-Burmese border, he report said.

The UN human rights envoy also advocated that the UN Security Council form a commission of inquiry into crimes against humanity and impunity in Burma.

Meanwhile, Zipporah Sein, the general secretary of the ethnic Karen National Union, said that it is time for the UN Security Council to take action against the Burmese regime’s use of systematic rape in ethnic minority areas.

In a statement, Pinheiro said that he received a report in 2000 estimating 625 women were systematically raped in Burma's Shan State over a five-year period. However, there was not a single account of a successful prosecution, he said.

The UN special rapporteur said in December 2008 a Burmese soldier went into an ethnic Karen village in eastern Burma and abducted, raped and killed a 7-year-old girl. Authorities refused to arrest the soldier; instead, officers threatened the parents with punishment if they did not accept a cash bribe to keep quiet.

During the past 15 years, the Burmese Army has destroyed more than 3,300 villages in a systematic and widespread campaign to subjugate ethnic groups, Pinheiro said. UN reports indicate that Burmese soldiers have recruited child soldiers, used civilians as minesweepers and forced thousands of villagers into slave labor, he said.

Bangladesh, Burma Work to Resolve Rohingya Repatriation

By ARKAR MOE
The Irrawaddy News

The influx of Rohingya refuges into Bangladesh will not stop until there is a change in Arakan State and Burmese officials agree to repatriation, Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dipu Moni said at a press conference on Friday.

“If there is no qualitative change in the place they come from, the influx will be continuing no matter how serious we are in trying to resolve the crisis,” Dipu Moni said.

She made the comment in response to media reports that more Rohingya refugees were entering Bangladesh through the Cox’s Bazar and Bandarban districts.

The foreign minister said nearly 30,000 Rohingya currently reside in two makeshift camps in Cox’s Bazar District and many more live outside the designated camps.

The foreign minister recalled that Burma claimed that the Rohingya were Bangladeshi at the Bali Conference on human trafficking in April.

“But I presented the historical facts and necessary evidence on the Rohingya, their origin in Burma, at the conference to convince the international community,” she said.

During her visit to Burma on May 16-17, Dipu Moni said the Burmese government agreed to take Rohingya refugees back if a proper list was provided. “Progress has been made in this regard,” she said.

“We will provide the list to Rangoon in consultation with the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHRC) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM),” she said.

The UNHRC earlier called the Rohingyas issues a “protracted” humanitarian problem that began 30 years ago.

Khine Mrat Kyaw, an editor at the Bangladesh-based Narinjara news agency, told The Irrawaddy on Monday that he didn’t believe the Rohingya issue would be easily solved.

Under a subsequent tripartite agreement between Dhaka, the UN refugee agency and Rangoon, Burma had agreed to take back Rohingya following Bangladesh refusal to shelter them for an indefinite period, calling it an "economic burden."

Khine Mrat Kyaw said, “When I asked them [Rohingya], they don’t want to go back to Burma. If the Bangladesh government sent them by force, they would protest and demonstrate. Bangladesh needs to negotiate with the UNHRC and Burma.”

Bangladesh Foreign Secretary Touhid Hossain told the press briefing: "Unless the situation in Burma improves to restore the confidence of the Rohingya, the problem is unlikely to be resolved despite the tripartite agreement or Rangoon's statements."

Rohingya have alleged widespread, systemic human rights abuses by Burmese authorities, saying the government deprives Rohingya citizens of free movement, education and rightful employment.

Rohingya have migrated to Bangladesh since the late 1970s, and, more recently, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Burmese Army on High Alert After Unidentified Reconnaissance Plane Spotted

Buthidaung (Narinjara): The Burmese army in the Buthidaung cantonment has been put on high alert after an unidentified reconnaissance plane was spotted taking photos of military bases in the area last week, said a source close to the army.

The source said, "An unidentified reconnaissance plane flew over Buthidaung last week secretly snapping photos but the authorities knew a plane intruded into Burma's airspace on that day."

After the incident took place, high army authorities put security forces in the area on high alert.

The town of Buthidaung, 80 miles north of Sittwe, is the largest military base in western Burma, with at least 15 army battalions, including an artillery battalion, stationed there. A brigade, called Sakakha 15 in Burmese, and the military operation planning bureau are also stationed in the area.

The source reported that a military official said, "The Burmese army officials suspect the reconnaissance plane was from the US Air Force, but have not officially disclosed that this happened."

The Burmese military authorities in the area are anxious about the unidentified plan intruding into their territory.

It has also been learned that Kha Kha Kyi, the defense bureau in Burma's new capital Naypyidaw, also knew of the incident and some high technical officials from the air defense force have been sent to Buthidaung to investigate the incident.

Fifty two Burmese nationals pushed from Bangladesh

ROHINGYA ARE NOW CALLED "BURMESE MUSLIM NATIONALS"

Teknaf (Narinjara): Fifty two Burmese nationals, all Muslims, were pushed back by the Bangladesh Rifles, the country’s border security force to their home lands on Saturday through border crossing points, said an official report.

Lt. Colonel Abdul Khaleque, Commanding Officer of the BDR’s 42 Rifles Battalion based in Teknaf said that among the 52 deportees, 20 are children and 10 are women while the rest are men.

The BDR pushed back 45 of them to Burma from Naitong Hill Point in Teknaf Township, located on the bank of Naff River, while seven were sent back to Burma from the Gundum-Taungbro land crossing border point.

The Colonel said recently 400 Muslims from Burma were caught at several border points after illegally entering Bangladesh. They were subsequently pushed back to Burma.

Earlier, many Muslim people were pushed back to Burma after Bangladeshi border security forces stopped them at the border. Most of the Burmese nationals entered Bangladesh from several border points including Naitong border point on Naff River, St Martian Island located at the mouth of the Naff River, Nila border point and the Gundum –Taungbro border points.

The exodus of Muslims from Burma to Bangladesh has increased after the Burmese junta authorities started to erect barbed wire fences along the border.

Bangladeshi border security forces are closely watching the border after many Muslims from Arakan state started entering Bangladesh.

Burmese Muslims are entering Bangladesh at a time when the Bangladesh government is preparing to repatriate Muslim refugees from two refugee camps located in southern Bangladesh to Burma.

Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Dipu Moni said at a press conference in Dhaka on Friday that the Burmese military authorities told her during her latest trip that the country would take back the Burmese Muslim refugees.

During her visit on May 16 and 17, the junta leaders admitted that the Muslim are Myanmarese and agreed to take them back, she said

She also said the Burmese regime has sought a list from Dhaka on the number of Muslim Refugees living in Bangladesh as part of the repatriation process.

She observed that the influx of Burmese refugees from Myanmar was not a new development, rather the Arakan people were continuously intruding into Bangladesh for a long time.

Her rather candid comments came as the Bangladeshi media reported massive intrusion of Burma Muslim refugees in Cox's Bazaar and Bandarban districts.

Dipu Moni said the refugee flow would not stop unless Burma military authorities guaranteed "qualitative change" in Arakan state.

"Muslims from Burma infiltrating has always been there. They have been coming continuously," she said.

Jailed farmers’ lawyer refused appeal - Pho Phyu

(DVB)–An appeal for a renowned lawyer jailed after helping Burmese farmers complain to the United Nations of land confiscation by the military was last week rejected by court authorities, his lawyer said.

In January this year, lawyer Pho Phyu was arrested and then sentenced in March under the Unlawful Associations Act to four years in prison.

He had been assisting farmers in Magwe division, central Burma, to file complaints to the UN’s International Labour Organisation regarding the confiscation of over 5000 acres of farmland by the Burmese army.

“The court rejected our request to reconsider his sentence so his term remains at four years as before,” said lawyer Myint Thwin.

“We are to take our appeal to a higher level court.”

Min Lwin Oo, spokesperson for the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission denounced the court decision and charges, pointing out that Pho Phyu had not formed any association under which he could be charged under the Act.

“The organisation never existed and there is also no evidence that Pho Phyu was drawing plans to form one,” he said.

“Yet they still passed the sentence upon him before they could prove anything and it is very wrong to reaffirm that at court.”

The ILO’s liaison office in Rangoon was unavailable for a comment.

The Unlawful Associations Act outlaws groups and organizations deemed by the government to be a threat to national stability.

It has been used to sentence numerous activists and politicians, often under very spurious grounds given the arbitrary criteria under which groups are deemed ‘unlawful’.

In April, the exiled Burma Lawyers Council called for abolishment of the Act, citing the malleability under which the government uses it to sentence opposition members, journalists and activists.

Reporting by Aye Nai

Burma reiterates warning to neighbours

(DVB)–A senior member of Burma’s ruling junta has issued what appears to be a warning to allied countries that interfering in the trial of Aung San Suu Kyi could muddy bilateral relations and upset regional stability.

Referring to the trial of Suu Kyi, Burma’s deputy defence minister, Major-General Aye Myint, told a meeting of regional defence officials in Singapore over the weekend that “internal problems in countries that can be solved only on their own proceedings”.

Burma has become increasingly isolated over the past two weeks as even close allies such as Thailand and Singapore piled pressure on the regime to release Suu Kyi.

At the same meeting, the United States’ defense secretary Robert Gates singled Burma out as an anomaly in a region pushing further toward democratic reform, describing it as "one of the isolated, desolate exceptions to the growing prosperity and freedom for the region."

Burma’s retort came in the form of a warning from Aye Myint to neighbouring leaders that interference in domestic matters “may possibly affect the mutual understanding and friendly relationship between countries”.

He added that the trial of Suu Kyi was a necessary move to ensure the country fulfils its ‘Seven-Step Roadmap to Democracy’, and that the opposition leader was undoubtedly complicit in the visit of US citizen John Yettaw, which triggered the charges.

“It is no doubt that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has committed a cover-up of the truth by her failure to report an illegal immigrant to the authorities concerned,” he said. (JEG's: ok.. on failure... to whom was she to report when she is a prisoner and the guards where doing anything but patrolling her premises - either way, if she was to leave her detention to report she would had breached her detention laws, and if she did not report it to the ones who were to stop the intruder she still breached her detention... I love the junta's reasoning... hillariously backwards)

“She permitted him to stay. She communicated, provided him food and shelter.”

Meanwhile, Britain's Minister for International Defense and Security, who was also at the meeting, renewed calls for Suu Kyi’s release.

"The continued imprisonment of Aung San Suu Kyi is a reminder that we cannot take for granted the institutions of democracy,” said Ann Taylor.

“We say to the generals: now is the time for transition to democracy, starting with the release of Aung San Suu Kyi."

Reporting by Francis Wade and AFP

Suu Kyi ‘bears no grudge’ toward Yettaw

(DVB)–Burma opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi told her lawyer over the weekend that she bore no grudge against John Yettaw, the man whose actions threaten a lengthy continuation of her imprisonment.

Nyan Win, and fellow lawyers Kyi Win and Khin Hyay Kywe, met with Suu Kyi and her two caretakers at the ‘guesthouse’ where they are being held inside Rangoon’s Insein prison.

The group was able to talk freely “without any intereference”, Nyan Win said, and discussed next week’s summation of the trial, although he was unable to report specifically on what was covered.

“What I can tell you, however, is what Daw Aung San Suu Kyi told me,” he said.

“The first concerns Mr Yettaw and she said she bore no grudge against Mr Yettaw or his family.”

Earlier this month the US citizen swam to Suu Kyi’s compound, where she is held under house arrest, and stayed for two nights.

The stay triggered charges that Suu Kyi had breached conditions of her house arrest. If convicted, she could be sentenced for up to five years.

On Thursday Yettaw was taken back to Suu Kyi’s compound to reenact the events surrounding his visit. According to Nyan Win, Suu Kyi found this “completely unacceptable”.

“She said it was her home and the way things were conducted there without informing her amounts to lawlessness or disrespect for the law,” he said.

Suu Kyi did however say that her health had improved, following reports she was suffering severe leg cramps and lack of sleep.

“A specialist came to her [two days ago] and asked her to stop taking two medicines that she was taking daily,” said Nyan Win.

“She told us that since then the situation had improved.”

He confirmed that the next hearing had been adjourned to 5 June, but denied that it had been done on health grounds.

Reporting by Htet Aung Kyaw

Tiananmen: A Battle of Remembering vs. Forgetting

By CHARLES HUTZLER / AP WRITER
The Irrawaddy News

BEIJING — As a young poet, Cui Weiping was not much interested in politics. But she says she could never shake the image of her husband returning home on a June night 20 years ago, his pants mottled with the blood of people shot by the Chinese army.

Now Cui is speaking out, trying to rescue the memory of the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy movement and its violent end from a powerful government heavily invested in suppressing their very mention.

Thousands of people take part in a demonstration on the streets of Hong Kong on May 31, 2009 in the run-up to the 20th anniversary of Beijing's crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square. (Photo: Getty Images)

With the approach Thursday of the 20th anniversary of "six-four," Chinese shorthand for the June 4 crackdown date, this Beijing Film Academy professor feels a duty to remember.

"Opening fire was not our responsibility these 20 years. But not talking about six-four has been our responsibility these 20 years," said Cui, a slight, soft-spoken woman with a pixie-ish haircut.

In mid-May, 53-year-old Cui gave a speech on the duty to speak out to small gathering of like-minded liberals. She posted her comments — "Are we intending to continue this silence?" — on her blog. They were excised by censors from the Chinese site but then reposted by others and removed again repeatedly.

Two decades on, the events in the heart of the Chinese capital and elsewhere remain an essential issue for some Chinese even as the authoritarian government has largely succeeded in turning it into a non-issue for many, using stunning economic growth, sophisticated propaganda and repression to stifle public discussion.

The struggle matters because as China becomes economically and diplomatically stronger, its leaders and supporters point to their system as a model, an alternative to the capitalist, democratic West teetering in financial crisis. Gleaming rebuilt cities like Shanghai and the grand, flawless Beijing Olympics are what the Chinese leadership wants to be associated with, not the crackdown. Tiananmen Square has been remodeled too, with patches of grass to make it look less cold and forbidding.

This file photo taken on June 2, 1989 shows hundreds of thousands of Chinese gathering around a 10-metre replica of the Statue of Liberty (C), called the Goddess of Democracy, in Tiananmen Square demanding democracy despite martial law in Beijing. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of protesters were killed by China's military on June 3 and 4, 1989, as communist leaders ordered an end to six weeks of unprecedented democracy protests in the heart of the Chinese capital. Dissidents and human rights advocates around the world will mark on June 4, 2009 the twentieth anniversary of China's bloody crackdown on the pro-democracy protests. (Photo: Getty Images)

The trouble is, the memories keep percolating. "Eighty-nine is like a dead rat in the Chinese political system. It's getting stinkier by the day," said Anne-Marie Brady, a Chinese politics expert at New Zealand's University of Canterbury. "It has to be dealt with at some point."

The Tiananmen movement rose from a ferment of reform bubbling through China and the Soviet Bloc. When a popular reformist leader died, students in Beijing marched to Tiananmen to demand change, later occupying the square for weeks and drawing as many as a million people. People from other parts of China joined them, thronging around a makeshift statue of liberty. After hard-liners reasserted themselves, the military assault came, killing hundreds. In one iconic moment of resistance, a lone man holding shopping bags stood in front of a column of tanks.

Though they rarely talk about it, people in their 30s and older in Beijing and elsewhere remember the demonstrations and the months of martial law.

An advertisement circulated on the Internet in March for T-shirts marked with the dates of the crackdown in Roman numerals — VIIIIXVIIV for '89 6-4 — until being expunged. Last July, the plucky Beijing News tabloid ran two pages of photographs of China in the 1980s, one of them of a black-and-white Associated Press image titled "The Wounded" showing young men in bloodstained shirts on the back of a three-wheeled cart. No caption explained the context, but many knew the photo was from the crackdown. The government removed the spread from the Internet and ordered the paper recalled from newsstands.

Stunned by the protests and communism's collapse in Eastern Europe, Beijing opened a multi-front campaign to keep the Communist Party in power. Free market reforms were unleashed, raising living standards. The propaganda departments that supervise all media were reinvigorated. They adapted the flashy techniques of modern Western advertising and Hollywood entertainment and tamed the Internet. A new nationalistic message was peddled: that the party remained a bulwark against a hostile U.S. intent on thwarting China's rise to greatness.

Above all, the leadership set about reforming the party. Its elite think tanks studied the lessons of communism's fall elsewhere. The party opened its doors to entrepreneurs, thus co-opting a potential source of opposition. It restructured and retrained the bureaucracy to make government responsive to people's needs, if not open and democratic. Tax revenues swollen by the expanding economy provided means to buy off redundant factory workers and poor farmers left behind in the boom.

"Any ruling party, no matter how mighty its power, how senior its qualifications, how long its rein, if it's stuck in a rut, standing still and not making progress, conservative and rigid and not thinking about forging ahead, then its creativity will fail and its vital energy stop." Vice President Xi Jinping said reiterating this message to senior officials at the Central Party School last September.

Imposing a silence over Tiananmen and the arrest and harassment of political critics are blunter tools in this strategy. To Cui, the poet, the taboo is a humiliation the leadership uses to make people complicit in preserving the party's political monopoly.

"To allow such a hole to exist in our lives has made our ethics blurry and problematic," she said in addressing the May 10 gathering of academics and activists at a hotel function room in Beijing's Western Hills.

Cui was at home the night of the crackdown; her husband, like many in the city, had stayed on the streets. For years, Cui said, depression clouded her memories of the event. Translating into Chinese the book "Open Letters" by Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright and post-communist president of Czechoslovakia, helped her recover her memories and voice. Her blog, hosted on China's biggest Internet portal, often features pointed social commentary. Government censorship is a frequent target.

Cui believes that the crackdown remains a sore point for many Chinese, including younger Chinese who are supposed to be apolitical. Friends pass around pirated DVDs of "The Gate of Heavenly Peace," a 1995 documentary about the Tiananmen movement. Some bulletin board sites host furtive discussions about what to wear to commemorate the anniversary. Some are suggesting white, the traditional color of mourning.

Online, however, Cui said a different idea has been voiced for what to wear this June 4. "Some say we ought to wear a white shirt and blue trousers just like tank man," Cui said.

People Anxious About Ailing Daw Aung San Suu Kyi

By Takaloo, Sittwe (Narinjara): The wide-spreading news of the deteriorating health of Burma's detained democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is causing worry among people around the country, report residents in Arakan.

"Almost everyone in our locality is worried for her on hearing that she is ill in prison. As she is our sole hope for democratic reform in our country, we hope for her good health and pray for her well-being," said a female shopkeeper in Sittwe, the capital of Arakan in western Burma.

Anxious over the trial of Aung San Suu Kyi, most people are listening to the foreign-based radio news from the BBC, RFA, and VOA, so they can keep up with her latest situation. Local media and newspapers, which are heavily censored by the military regime, rarely publish news about political dissent in Burma.

"I don't hear people talking about the price of merchandise here for days since the detention of Daw Aung San Suu in Insein prison. They start to open their mouth with the latest news about her heard from the BBC, RFA, or VOA radio programs. People are feeling great concern for her and wish for her good health," said another woman, a cross-border trader from Maungdaw on the border with Bangladesh.

Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is being detained in the notorious Insein prison and is on trial on new charges of breaking her house arrest conditions after an American man intruded into her lakeside residence earlier this month. She could face a minimum of five years in prison if convicted.

Critics say the regime has put Daw Aung San Suu Kyi on trial amid a storm of international pressure in order to keep her in prison during its 2010 general elections, which are widely believed to be an effort to legitimize and entrench military rule in Burma.

Her party stated last Friday that it was gravely concerned about her health as she could not sleep due to leg cramps at night and called for urgent medical care for her.

"Anxiety for her is clearly growing among the people after hearing the news of her deteriorating health because everyone regards her as a democracy leader and believe that Burma can not become a democracy without her," said U Pinnyadipa, a Buddhist monk from Mrauk-U, an ancient city of Arakan.

According to Narinjara reporters inside Arakan, the military authorities have stepped up security measures in the main towns of Arakan Sate, especially restricting the travel of monks and keeping close watch on some big monasteries in case Aung San Suu Kyi's trial triggers social unrest and protests in the area.

People Anxious About Ailing Daw Aung San Suu Kyi

Myanmar overshadows ASEAN

by Martin Abbugao

South Korea (AsiaOne)- Military-ruled Myanmar and its treatment of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi are casting a cloud over the ASEAN bloc as it tries to focus on strengthening international trade links.

Analysts said trade, investment and the threat of a nuclear-armed North Korea were the dominant themes at a summit of Southeast Asian leaders with their South Korean host in the island of Jeju.

But the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) cannot brush aside new questions about its credibility after its most troublesome member Myanmar brought fresh charges against Aung San Suu Kyi, they said.

Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, the current ASEAN chair, was trying to convene a meeting of its leaders later Monday on the sidelines of the ASEAN-Korea Summit, diplomatic sources said.

Abhisit said in Bangkok Sunday that Aung San Suu Kyi?s trial, which has drawn strong international condemnation, would be discussed.

Aung San Suu Kyi is on trial for violating the terms of her house arrest after an uninvited American swam to her lakeside home. She has been under various forms of detention without trial for more than 13 of the past 19 years.

"ASEAN was bogged down (by Myanmar) last week in its meeting with Europe," said Bridget Welsh, a Southeast Asia specialist at the Johns Hopkins University in the United States.

She was referring to last week's gathering in Hanoi of Asian and European foreign ministers.

"The failure of ASEAN to take a strong stand on Myanmar has seriously undermined the credibility of the organisation. ASEAN as an organisation cannot evolve without Myanmar taking steps to show it genuinely respects the norms of the international community," she told AFP.

Analysts and diplomats said the problem has become especially acute since ASEAN members including Myanmar signed a charter, or mini-constitution, which came into force last year.

Under the charter they commit themselves "to strengthen democracy, enhance good governance and the rule of law, and to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms."

Myanmar however is "behaving as if it has not signed the charter at all," a Southeast Asian diplomat told AFP.

"Even with Myanmar on its back, ASEAN is doing quite well expanding its trade ties. Imagine what it can do without having to deal with the baggage of Myanmar," he said on condition of anonymity.

"ASEAN members are fed up with Myanmar, and although they are not saying so publicly, many would like Myanmar to leave," said Welsh.

"Its intractable failure to respect basic human rights stains ASEAN and every ASEAN country indirectly.? She said however that expelling Myanmar from the 10-nation grouping was not the solution.

"More pressure on Myanmar to act responsibly is essential. ASEAN needs to work with all the Asian countries to send a consistent message that their treatment of Aung San Suu Kyi is not acceptable," Welsh added.

Negotiations for a region-to-region free trade pact between ASEAN and the European Union have failed to make significant progress due largely to European concerns over human rights abuses and lack of democracy in Myanmar.

Some European countries are now proposing that the EU negotiate trade pacts with individual ASEAN states rather than with the bloc as a whole.

Analysts said Myanmar will also be a sticking point should ASEAN and the United States seek a free trade pact.

"The continued imprisonment of Aung San Suu Kyi by the Burmese regime is a reminder that we cannot take for granted the institution of democracy," Ann Taylor, Britain's Minister for International Defence and Security, told a security forum in Singapore on Sunday.

Myanmar has rejected the international condemnation, saying it will resist interference in its domestic affairs.

Panitan Wattayanagorn, spokesman for Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, told AFP discussions about Aung San Suu Kyi at international forums involving ASEAN could not be sidestepped.

"You cannot avoid this issue," he said, adding however that Myanmar needs more time to put reforms in place.

Germany has just approved heroin assisted treatment - should we?

by Croakey

Dr Alex Wodak, President of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation, reports on the implications of Germany’s recent decision to allow heroin assisted treatment:

Last week by a majority vote of 63%, the Bundestag decided to allow heroin assisted treatment to become available in Germany as a therapeutic option for severely dependent heroin users who had not benefited from any previous treatment.

At present, heroin assisted treatment is an option for treatment resistant patients in three countries (England, Switzerland and the Netherlands). Later this year, Denmark will start making heroin assisted treatment available after all nine political parties agreed in 2008 (without requiring additional research).

Randomised controlled trials of heroin assisted treatment have now been conducted in five countries (Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain and Canada). All had very favourable results which showed that this treatment is effective, safe and cost-effective.

In the trial in the Netherlands, 55% of patients receiving heroin assisted treatment showed at least 40 % improvement in at least one of the outcome domains (physical, mental or social) compared to 22% of patients receiving only methadone treatment. When heroin assisted treatment was withdrawn from therapeutic responders, 82% deteriorated substantially within two months. Spain decided not to permit heroin assisted treatment despite the favourable results of their trial. The trials in Canada have not yet been published but positive results have been presented at conferences. Randomised controlled trials of heroin prescription treatment are now underway in the United Kingdom and Belgium.

Heroin assisted treatment has been provided to 5% of the 20,000 heroin dependent individuals undergoing treatment in Switzerland at any time. That proportion has been very stable for some time. Although heroin assisted treatment is more expensive than methadone treatment, it is reserved for more severe cases where the full range of treatments have been tried but without success. Economic benefits are about twice the cost of this treatment.

In the United Kingdom, a confidential 2003 report commissioned by the Blair Cabinet (later leaked to the public), estimated that the highest offending 10% of heroin and crack users account for more than half the drug related crime committed in the country. There are very compelling arguments for far greater flexibility of treatment options to ensure that this most severely dependent group of drug users are attracted , retained and benefited by treatment. This would benefit these individuals, their families and the entire community.

Perhaps reflecting the growing international scientific evidence for heroin assisted treatment, community support for heroin trials in Australia jumped in the absence of any sustained advocacy from 26% in 2004 to 33% in 2007. Almost half the community supported heroin trials when Federal Cabinet blocked further scientific research on this treatment in August 1997 on the grounds that such research would ‘send the wrong message’.

Annual heroin overdose deaths peaked at 1,116 in 1999. The number of these deaths has declined since the commencement of the heroin shortage in Australia in late 2000 and has been less than 400 per year for several years.

However, there is increasing evidence that heroin availability is starting to increase in Australia. Heroin use and overdose deaths are certainly increasing in the USA. If heroin availability continues to increase in Australia, it is inevitable that the number of heroin overdose deaths will unfortunately also increase.

Sooner or later, discussion will inevitably turn once again to an Australian trial of heroin assisted treatment or, like Denmark, accepting that the evidence is strong enough after half a dozen major trials without the need for more research. Australia should also substantially expand methadone and buprenorphine treatment.

Afghanistan is now producing more than 90% of the world’s heroin. World production of heroin more than doubled in the last ten years. Virtually all the heroin reaching Australia comes from Burma (Myanmar) where production has been increasing again in the last few years. According to the theory of market balance, markets in glut usually eventually start supplying markets with scarcity. This suggests that there is always a risk that some of the stockpiles from production in Afghanistan may soon start heading our way.

This issue should be debated in Australia. Let’s hope that the next debate on this issue will be more rational, more based on evidence and more compassionate than the disgraceful ‘debate’ in 1997.

It's incumbent upon Thailand to lead Asean on Burma

By Kavi Chongkittavorn
The Nation

AFTER THE ASEAN CHARTER came into force on December 15 2008, members were obliged to follow objectives, principles and norms set forth in the document. These include the promotion and protection of human and other fundamental rights. What the Burmese regime has done against the opposition of Aung San Suu Kyi and its other citizens is not part of Asean's standards or practices.

Before the charter's drafting, it was customary for Asean members to defend their colleagues to ensure continued unity. As a regional organisation, Asean also protected members from outsider pressures and scrutiny. Under such conditions, the principle of non-interference was the mantra to glue Asean together and silence criticisms from within. Even before Burma joined Asean in 1997, the grouping was providing the most effective shield to the regime - first as an Asean observer (1995) and a signatory to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (1996) - over Burma's preponderance for using force against its own people. The East-West divide also augmented Asean's determination to admit Burma, despite repeated warnings of the consequences.

During the deadly Depayin incident in May 2003, when Suu Kyi was almost killed by junta-sponsored thugs, Asean leaders were uncharacteristically silent. At the summit in Phnom Penh six months later, the Asean leaders gave a vote of confidence to the newly appointed Burmese prime minister Lt General Khin Nyunt, hoping he could lead changes from the inside. Former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra also backed the new leader saying Burma deserved a second chance. In October 2004, Khin Nyunt was purged from power and placed under house-arrest.

Now Asean has shown some backbone in handling Burma's situation and the plight of Aung San Suu Kyi, as well as with its Western dialogue partners, after Asean gained the charter. The Asean chair's statement calling for her release was the strongest ever from a country with which it shares one of the longest common borders in Southeast Asia.

At the Asean-EU Ministerial meeting in Phnom Penh last week, the Asean foreign ministers, except Burma, expressed strong support for the chair's statement. The Asean leaders are anxious to meet Burmese Prime Minister General Thein Sein on the side-lines of the Asean-South Korea Commemorative Summit scheduled today and tomorrow in Cheju Island, South Korea to gauge the regime's latest attitude.

In engaging the dialogue partners over Burma, Asean used to be insecure and easily angered whenever criticism or disagreements came to the fore.

Throughout the past two decades, Asean was often up in arms against the West's criticism defending Burma's record and the decision to admit the pariah state into the family. Now, it is a different story.

For instance, joint statements from the Asean-Asem and Asean-EU ministerial meetings issued last week in Hanoi and Phnom Penh respectively would not have been possible without the new Asean attitude. It was a far-cry from the atmosphere of earlier Asean-EU ministerial meetings, especially after the May 1990 polls; the two sides often traded insults and blamed each other for lack of understanding of their distinctive political environment and cultures. Burma is no longer a wedge, albeit remaining a problem, dividing Asean and EU as they see eye to eye that Burma needs to open up political space, support the UN role, free all political prisoners and hold inclusive elections.

The EU has in recent months become one of the most enthusiastic Asean dialogue partners, collectively and individually. Last week, the EU became the first regional organisation to sign a protocol to accede to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation which now boasts 17 signatories, apart from the 10-member Asean. TAC was amended to allow EU ascension as an entity. Nearly half the 27 members have already appointed their ambassadors attached to Asean.

Asean can now ponder how best to tackle the current Burmese situation. First of all, the Asean leaders have to determine if the current trial of Suu Kyi and political oppression inside Burma are considered a serious breach of the Asean charter. This is a tough but unavoidable question as it will set a precedence for the grouping's own future.

Asean Secretary-General Dr. Surin Pitsuwan's role will also be crucial in interpreting the charter. Indonesia's draft of the joint Asean statement on Burma, which was diluted by the new Asean members in Phuket last month, specifically linked the charter with Burma's intransigence. Jakarta's position was clear that it was a breach of the charter and Rangoon failed to take up collective responsibility as part of the Asean family. The other five core Asean members including Brunei were on the same page.

As the grouping's leading democracy, Indonesia can urge the Thai chair to put the Burmese issue on the agenda of the upcoming summit to work out appropriate responses.

Indonesia, as the country that initiated drafting of the Asean Charter, feels that the charter must be taken seriously both in words and spirit, otherwise Asean's future and creditability are at stake. Protecting the charter and giving it teeth is a priority shared by Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines.

The second approach would be the initiative of the Thai chair. To take Burma to task, the government must be firmer on overall Thai-Burma relations. Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya must not abandon the much respected Burmese policies of their predecessors from 1997-2001. To do so, Thailand urgently needs to review ties with Burma and design a new and more comprehensive policy that lessens dependence on Burma's energy and resources-based imports.

Thai-Burmese border security, which has been neglected for the past several years, must be beefed up. Quite often, when the junta leaders faced a continuous international community bombardment, they would pick on Thailand to rally domestic support.

At the Asean summit in Laos in 2004, Burma skipped the Asean chairmanship due to sustained outside pressure both from Asean and the EU. But this time, the outcries over Suu Kyi's trial were louder and broader in every way. Parliamentarians from Asean countries recommended suspension of its membership.

It is incumbent on the chair to call for a meeting among the leaders on the issue.

Suspension of Burma's rights and privileges within Asean is possible if Rangoon remains defiant and Suu Kyi continues to be held. For the membership's suspension, it would require extraordinary courage for the chair as well as the leaders of core Asean members to kick off the debate.

Either approach gives life and blood to the charter, which will set the future yardstick for compliance.

The Asean leaders must be ready to protect the charter,
not a pariah member in their midst.

Thousands march in Hong Kong to mark Tiananmen crackdown

(SMH) -Thousands of protesters marched through Hong Kong on Sunday to commemorate the crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing 20 years ago, including one of the leaders from Tiananmen Square.

Organisers said around 5000 people rallied through the streets of the city to mark the anniversary of the military crackdown, which left hundreds, possibly thousands dead following weeks of protests in the capital.

Among the marchers was Xiong Yan, a leading student protester during the 1989 demonstrations who now lives in exile in the United States.

He was surprisingly allowed into Hong Kong on Saturday.

Lee Cheuk-yan, a pro-democracy legislator in Hong Kong and one of the organisers of the annual march, said it was crucial that the city continued to mark the events of 20 years ago.

"We are the only place on Chinese soil that can commemorate June 4," he told AFP.

"Hong Kong has become the conscience of China to remember ... the crime of the Tiananmen Square massacre and push the regime (in Beijing) to admit their mistakes."

The attendance at the march was sharply up on last year's figures. An annual candlelit vigil on Thursday is expected to attract tens of thousands.

Xiong, who was put on a list of the authorities' 21 "most-wanted" student protesters after the occupation of Tiananmen was broken up, spent two years in jail before being smuggled to the US via Hong Kong.

His entry was unexpected because of China's sensitive attitude to any criticism of the crackdown. Other 1989 campaigners have been refused entry in the past.

"I was very surprised as I have tried many, many times to come," said Xiong, who arrived on Saturday night, the first time he had set foot on Chinese soil in 17 years.

"I hope in the future I can not only go to Hong Kong, but also to Beijing," he added.

The marchers gathered in the city's Victoria Park, waving banners with slogans such as "Pass the torch on, relay the message of democracy to those who come after us" and "Speak the truth, never forget".

The rally included a small group of mainland Chinese students, who wore T-shirts citing former Communist leader Mao Zedong: "Whoever suppresses student movements is going to have a bad ending."

"I am very excited to see so many people, as this is forbidden on the mainland," said one of the students, 20, who did not want to be named.

"(It shows) there is hope," he added.

Meanwhile, a Danish sculptor who flew to Hong Kong to protest the bloody crackdown was refused entry.

Jens Galschiot, whose sculpture commemorating those who died in the 1989 military crackdown, Pillar of Shame, is displayed at Hong Kong University, was stopped by officials Saturday and sent back to Zurich, an immigration spokesman confirmed.

Albert Ho, chairman of the Democratic Party and a lawyer, said the Dane was detained for five hours before being put on a flight to Zurich late on Saturday. Ho said he was looking at possible legal action over the decision.

Hong Kong has a different legal system from the mainland, including the right to protest.

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Aung San Suu Kyi hid truth: junta

(News.com) -OPPOSITION leader Aung San Suu Kyi "covered up" the truth by failing to report an American man in her home, a senior Burmese official said today, warning foreigners not to interfere in the case.

"It is no doubt that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has committed a cover-up of the truth by her failure to report an illegal immigrant to the authorities concerned," Major General Aye Myint, Burma's deputy defence minister, told a security forum in Singapore.

"Thus there was no option but to open legal proceedings in accordance with the law," he said.

"She permitted him to stay.... She communicated, provided him food and shelter," Major General Myint said.

Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace laureate, is facing up to five years' detention on charges relating to the surprise visit of an eccentric American to her lakeside prison home in early May.

In his speech to regional security officials and experts, the general said the case against Aung San Suu Kyi was an internal matter for Burma to resolve without foreign intervention.

"Countries should refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of Myanmar (Burma) that will affect peace and security of the region," said Major General Myint.

"Solving one's internal affairs through its legal system with legal proceedings in accordance with law does not amount to the threat of peace or breach of security of the region," he said in an apparent reaction to criticism of the charges against Aung San Suu Kyi from other forum participants.

Ann Taylor, Britain's minister for international defence and security, said at the meeting earlier today that Aung San Suu Kyi should be released.

"The continued imprisonment of Aung San Suu Kyi by the Burmese regime is a reminder that we cannot take for granted the institution of democracy," she said.

"The people of Burma have suffered for nearly half a century of conflict and isolation, but Aung San Suu Kyi is not alone," Taylor said.

"People all around the world are standing with her and the Burmese people and we say to the generals: Now is the time for transition to democracy starting with the release of Aung San Suu Kyi."

Burma's Government in Exile Plans New Political Strategy for Democracy

By Ron Corben

(VOA-Bangkok) -Burma's government in exile says it is changing its strategy to reach democracy, following the military government's decision to prosecute Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Tensions in Rangoon are reported to be rising as the trial progresses.

The government in exile, the National Coalition Government for the Union of Burma, says it will announce its new strategy for a transitional process to democracy in late June. It says the trial of opposition-leader Aung San Suu Kyi has undermined the credibility of the military's planned 2010 elections.

A representative for the government in exile, Thaung Htun, says the new plan will ask all stakeholders to to join a credible political process."

"Aung San Suu Kyi is the key partner for dialogue, the key person for reconciliation," said Thaung Htun. "The regional players in the international community should say in one voice that 2010 election planned by the regime - if it is not inclusive - if it excludes Aung San Suu Kyi and other key ethnic leaders and the key stakeholders - that stand has to be made clear. After that in cooperation with the U.N. Secretary General, the regional players should have to push for a real inclusive democratic transition in Burma."

Thaung Htun says tensions are rising in Rangoon before the verdict, amid stepped up security and fears of public unrest if Aung San Suu Kyi is found guilty. She is charged for breaching her house detention order. The case is seen as a pretext for extending her detention and preventing her from participating in next year's elections.

On Sunday, the military government defended its prosecution of Aung SanSuu Kyi, saying that no one in the country is "above the law" and warned other countries against "meddling in the internal affairs of Burma".

Diplomatic efforts to pressure Burma's military towards reform and to release political prisoners have accelerated with the trial.

Several countries, including the United States and the European Union, have sanctions imposed on the military, while a broad range of countries, including Asian states, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and and the Philippines have called for Aung San Suu Kyi's release.

A verdict in her case is expected Friday. If found guilty the 1991 Nobel laureate faces up to five years in jail. She has spent 13 of the past 19 years under detention.

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