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BURMA RELATED NEWS - MARCH 03, 2011
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AFP - Myanmar court mulls bail for Australian editor
AP - Myanmar suspends rice exports to control price
Sydney Morning Herald - Australian publisher in Burma seeks bail
Independent - Editor goes on trial as Burma's junta cracks down on media
Asian Correspondent - Burma’s Facebook revolution
Scoop.co.nz - UN: Myanmar and the Human Rights Council review
Strategy Page - China Is Your Special Friend
The Temasek Review - Migrant workers reveal hidden side of Singapore
Eurasia Review - Sino-Myanmar Relations And Its Impact On The Region
Asia Times Online - Fog lifts on Myanmar-North Korea barter
Business Recorder - Myanmar, Bolivia, Venezuela fail in drugs fight: US
Mizzima News - Germany offers Burmese diplomats training and football tickets
Mizzima News - Shan committee member replaced
DVB News - Brothers in corruption: Maldives and Burma
DVB News - Burma implicated in major oil fraud
DVB News - Bid for media freedom reignited
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Myanmar court mulls bail for Australian editor
2 hrs 4 mins ago
YANGON (AFP) – A Myanmar court agreed Thursday to consider a bail request from an Australian newspaper boss arrested in a high-profile case that some observers have suggested is the result of a power struggle.
Ross Dunkley, co-founder of the Myanmar Times, the country's only newspaper with foreign investment, appeared in Kamaryut Township court in handcuffs for a second hearing. He is accused of assaulting a 29-year-old woman.
"We will give a decision on the bail application after the next hearing on March 8," the judge said at the court, where lawyers from both sides questioned witnesses including nightclub staff, a taxi driver and Dunkley's neighbours.
Dunkley, who is also charged with breaching immigration rules, was arrested three weeks ago and is being held in Yangon's notorious Insein prison.
The woman, Khine Sar Win, last week asked for her complaint to be withdrawn, saying she was pregnant and unable to travel to court, but her request was rejected.
David Armstrong, a business partner in Cambodia, where Dunkley is a key shareholder in the Phnom Penh Post daily, said in a statement that he had been told all six prosecution witnesses in Thursday's hearing "gave evidence contrary to the woman's story".
He said in normal circumstances bail would not be granted for the immigration charge, however bail could be given if "it seems to the court that the accused may not have committed a crime," he added.
Armstrong has previously suggested the newspaper editor is the victim of a business dispute in military-dominated Myanmar.
His arrest "coincides with tense and protracted discussions" between the foreign and the domestic investors in the paper, Armstrong said in a statement shortly after Dunkley's arrest.
Dunkley, who has also worked in the media in Vietnam and Cambodia, co-founded the Myanmar Times in 2000 with local partner Sonny Swe, the son of an influential member of the junta's military intelligence service.
But Sonny Swe was jailed in 2005 and his 51 per cent stake in the paper's publisher Myanmar Consolidated Media (MCM) handed to Tin Tun Oo, who is believed to be close to the regime's information minister, in unclear circumstances.
While in jail Dunkley was last month replaced by Tin Tun Oo as chief executive of MCM, which is 49-percent controlled by the Australian and his foreign partners.
Tin Tun Oo told AFP on Thursday that there was no business dispute and said he had signed Dunkley's bail application to help his request.
"Ross's case is not linked to business or politics. I think it's just a personal matter," he added. "It's not true that it happened at my instigation. I will try to help him."
He said the ownership structure of MCM had not changed.
"So it is not true that this case happened because I wanted to take control of the business from Ross."
In his statement, Armstrong confirmed Tin Tun Oo had supported the bail application.
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Myanmar suspends rice exports to control price
Thu Mar 3, 6:49 am ET
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) – Myanmar has suspended rice exports in an effort to keep prices down while also grappling with higher fuel costs due to the turmoil in OPEC member Libya.
A rice exporter says the suspension began in the last week of February, and apparently seeks to ensure rice prices are not driven higher by shortages. He spoke on condition of anonymity because discussing the matter could draw official disapproval.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture had projected that Myanmar would export about 500,000 metric tons of rice this year, far behind neighboring top-exporter Thailand's 10 million tons, but enough to make it the world's 10th biggest exporter after Argentina and Brazil.
Myanmar's ruling junta, which is supposed to hand over power to an elected but military-dominated government soon, is aware that political unrest can be triggered by economic factors such as rising living costs.
The junta came into power in 1988 after violently suppressing vast pro-democracy demonstrations which followed discontent triggered by currency changes that invalidated most bank notes. Similarly, the roots of major protests in September 2007, also violently quashed, were in small-scale demonstrations demanding lower commodity prices after a knock-on effect from a sudden big rise in fuel prices.
Local fuel prices have recently gone up due to the unrest in Libya and other Arab countries, with a gallon of diesel fuel selling for 4,000 kyat ($4.55) this week, up 11 percent from the previous week.
As commodities such as food are distributed around the country, higher transport costs are reflected in the goods' final costs for consumers.
The government in the past held a monopoly on sales of fuel, which it also subsidized, but it privatized gas stations in June last year.
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Sydney Morning Herald - Australian publisher in Burma seeks bail
Ron Corben
March 4, 2011 - 12:29AM
AAP
Lawyers for Australian Ross Dunkley, publisher of the Burma-based Myanmar Times, has applied for bail during a court appearance over charges of breaching Burma's immigration laws and assault, company sources say.
Dunkley, 55, appeared at the Kamaryut Township Court on Thursday in Rangoon, where he has been held at Burma's notorious Insein prison since his arrest on February 10.
The bail application will be considered on March 8.
The case appears to have been tied to a fight for control of the Rangoon-based publishing company, Myanmar Consolidated Media (MCM), analysts say.
Dunkley and investors, including Australian mining magnate Bill Clough, hold a 49 per cent share in MCM.
The remaining 51 per cent share is held by Burmese businessman Tin Htun Oo.
An agreement was reached last month to appoint Htun Oo as chief executive officer and editor of the Burmese-language Myanmar Times.
Clough, also CEO of Twinza Oil, with a $30 million stake in Burma's oil industry, took up the post of acting managing director and editor-in-chief of the English-language version of the newspaper.
David Armstrong, chairman of Post Media, an investor in MCM, said the agreement reached marked a "compromise" between the foreign and Burmese shareholders.
Armstrong said in a statement Dunkley's bail application came with Htun Oo and another senior executive, U Wei Lin, applying to stand as guarantors.
Dunkley's lawyers have applied for bail on the basis of the weakness of the criminal case and on the ground that police filed the charge under the immigration law even though no court had found him guilty of an offence, he said.
Dunkley's lawyer, Saw Yan Naing, told The Irrawaddy online magazine the Australian faced two charges - breaching Burma's immigration laws and assault of a Burmese woman, translated as harassing a woman's dignity.
Saw Yan Naing said the trial could take three months. A guilty verdict on either charge could mean a prison term.
Armstrong said police had rejected an application by the woman to have the charges withdrawn.
The court heard testimony from six witnesses.
Armstrong expressed his support for Dunkley.
"I'm sure he's innocent of these charges," Armstrong told AAP.
Dunkley purchased a Cambodian daily, the Phnom Penh Post, in 2008 and had invested in media in Vietnam in the 1990s.
In 2000, he took a share in the Myanmar Times, which also publishes two Burmese-language magazines and employs more than 350 people.
Human rights activists say the fighting over control of MCM reflects the military's moves to tighten its grip on the media.
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Independent - Editor goes on trial as Burma's junta cracks down on media
By Phoebe Kennedy in Rangoon
Thursday, 3 March 2011
An Australian newspaper publisher accused of providing a mouthpiece for Burma's military junta goes on trial today after a dramatic fall from grace.
Ross Dunkley, 53, the editor-in-chief of the Myanmar Times, is languishing in a notorious Rangoon prison after being charged with immigration offences and drugging and assaulting a woman. He faces up to five years in prison if convicted, according his lawyer.
The brash, chain-smoking journalist was arrested at his home in the city on 10 February and has been held since in Insein prison, infamous for its atrocious conditions and the routine torture of political prisoners. Like other inmates, Mr Dunkley sleeps on a concrete floor, is forbidden to smoke, and must have food delivered to him if he is to eat anything other than stale rice.
His arrest came less than two weeks after the convening of Burma's new parliament, which followed the country's first elections in two decades.
Western governments denounced the elections as a sham, and the parliament as a puppet of the regime, but the generals may nevertheless be anxious to ensure their hold on power is not diminished by the new structure. The arrest of Mr Dunkley, the country's lone foreign publisher, could be a sign of nerves and may mark a tightening of already stringent restrictions on the media.
"During this transition from direct to slightly more indirect military rule, they want to make sure there is no opposition or criticism from any quarter," said Bertil Lintner, an expert on the region and author of several books on Burma.
Mr Dunkley, who founded the dual-language Myanmar Times (using the regime's official name for Burma) in 2000, has never been regarded as a critic of the regime.
His first Burmese business partner, Sonny Swe, was the son of a senior official in the powerful Military Intelligence, or MI, and the paper gained a reputation for being a propaganda arm of the spying department, which was headed by Prime Minister Khin Nyunt.
The good times lasted until 2004, when Khin Nyunt and MI were purged by the top generals, wary of their rising power.
Sonny Swe was thrown in prison but the straight-talking Mr Dunkley managed to persuade the junta to install a new partner, and the weekly paper, printed in English and Burmese, survived.
Exiled Burmese democracy activists have accused the newspaper of simply being a regime mouthpiece. But Mr Dunkley argued that the Myanmar Times, which employs about 350 people, could do more good working within the system. A former colleague who did not want to be named, said: "Ross did not have a showdown with the authorities over censorship – which he would most certainly have lost – but the less obvious contribution to training journalists could be considered just as important to the long-term development of a robust print media in Burma."
Mr Dunkley and his newspaper have had run-ins with the authorities before. In 2007, shortly before the failed uprising led by Buddhist monks, the Myanmar Times mistakenly published a bogus advertisement placed by a Danish group, which contained the concealed message "Killer Than Shwe", referring to the head of the Burmese junta.
Taking advantage of a slight relaxing in censorship in the run-up to last November's election, Mr Dunkley tried to prove his independence by giving ample space in the paper to opposition parties, and allowing an Australian TV documentary crew – who were later deported – to make a film about the Myanmar Times in the weeks before the vote.
Insiders say Mr Dunkley's regime-installed Burmese business partner, Tin Tun Oo, an election candidate for the military's proxy party, was angered by the election coverage, and hatched a plot to oust the Australian editor.
David Armstrong, a business partner of Mr Dunkley's in Cambodia, said: "The arrest coincides with tense and protracted discussions Mr Dunkley and the foreign ownership partners in the Myanmar Times have been conducting with local partners about the future direction of the publishing group, ownership issues and senior leadership roles – all this at a time of significant political and economic change (in Burma)."
Since his arrest, Mr Dunkley has been removed from his post as editor-in-chief of the Burmese-language version of the Myanmar Times and CEO of the company that owns the newspaper.
Both positions have been taken by Tin Tun Oo.
No News Today
Burma is 174th in Reporters Without Borders' Press Freedom index. Four countries are below it:
Iran Nearly 30 journalists in custody. The security services recently started checking content before publication for the first time since 1979.
Turkemenistan The state media is routinely criticised by the government for failing to be enthusiastic about reforms. Journalists risk death if they work independently.
North Korea Kim Jong-il controls the media with an iron fist. A number of journalists are said to have been sent to "revolutionisation" camps for making spelling mistakes.
Eritrea Under the regime of Ali Abdu, some 29 journalists are imprisoned; four more have died in prison since 2001.
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Asian Correspondent - Burma’s Facebook revolution
By Asia Sentinel Mar 03, 2011 11:34AM UTC
Activists denounce the dictatorship, writes Asia Sentinel’s Ba Kuang
In an attempt to emulate the democratic revolution in Egypt that was sparked by a Facebook campaign, a group of Burmese activists operating inside the country have set up a Facebook page dubbed “Just Do It Against Military Dictatorship.”
The social networking campaign denounces the country’s military dictatorship, calls for Burmese military chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe and his family to leave the country and urges the army to join with the people.
The campaign began on Feb. 13–just two days after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigned from office under pressure from protesters.
The Facebook page, now known simply as “JD,” has prompted the distribution of anti-government material in a number of places across Burma and raised security levels in Rangoon.
“We are not daydreaming,” said an activist in Rangoon who said he was a JD supporter. “No dictator can resist a popular movement, we know.”
The campaign has now received the support of over 1,000 activists in Burma, according to one of the organizers who declined to be named due to personal safety concerns.
The organizer told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday that JD supporters have distributed anti-government pamphlets in Mandalay, Burma’s second largest city, and in Taunggyi Township in Shan State.
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Scoop.co.nz - UN: Myanmar and the Human Rights Council review
Thursday, 3 March 2011, 9:48 am
Press Release: Asian Human Rights Commission
Myanmar: The problem of a U.N. member state disconnected from a normative framework: Myanmar and the Human Rights Council review
1. In a separate submission to this session of the Human Rights Council, the Asian Legal Resource Centre has analyzed how the Government of Myanmar recently treated the Universal Periodic Review process not as an opportunity for dialogue of the sort that the process envisages but as an opportunity to present an almost entirely fictionalized account of human rights conditions in its country. The ALRC explained that the reason for the government delegation's gross misrepresentations is not so much the consequence of a strategy to thwart the UPR process in Geneva, as it is the consequence of the disconnection of the government from any type of normative framework for the protection of human rights, international or domestic alike. Whereas the UPR process is premised upon the existence of a domestic framework for the implementation of normative international standards on human rights, in Myanmar, no such normative basis for the protection of rights exists. On the contrary, the Government of Myanmar's conceptualization of rights is that these are entitlements that can be extended or withdrawn according to circumstances. Consequently, gross misrepresentation of the human rights situation in the country is not so much strategy as it is inevitability.
2. In this submission, the ALRC considers the implications of this disconnect between the norms-based language and activities of the global human rights movement and the norm-less reality of a member state. This disconnect is not merely a disconnect between rhetorical aspirations and hard truth. It is a much more significant problem of the gap between a norms-based system and a norm-less one, and unless it is properly understood and accounted for in the work of the Human Rights Council and other international agencies, the many functional and technical proposals being put forward during the ongoing Council review process will have little if any relevance to the situation of human rights in Myanmar, or other countries with analogous conditions.
3. The problem of the gap between a norms-based international system and a norm-less domestic one is a difficult problem to approach and understand for people who have been trained in and are accustomed to norms-based systems, which is perhaps one of the reasons that it attracts relatively little of the debate about the work of the Council. However, the problem is often implicit in questions and exchanges about human rights issues in member states, such as those raised in the lead up to the UPR Working Group's tenth session, this January 2011. Two of the Government of Japan's questions to Myanmar were particularly interesting because of their implicit acknowledgement that the problem of systemic rights abuse in Myanmar is less a problem of refusal to engage with the standards of the international community, less a problem of engagement with international law, than it is a problem of engagement with domestic law, or rather, with any standards of law whatsoever. These questions ran:
"Although the Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar provides for the right of peaceful assembly and freedom of association, concerns over restrictions on such freedoms continue to be expressed in UN reports and resolutions. Likewise, the continued practice of arbitrary detention and torture, while prohibited by the Penal Code, has been raised as a matter of concern. We would like to request that the Myanmar Government explain how its understanding of the provisions laid out in its Constitution and Penal Code relates to the concerns and issues pointed out by the UN…
"What are the prospects for Myanmar becoming a signatory to the international conventions on human rights that it is currently examining, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Political Rights (ICESCR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the rights of the Child on the sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography? In this connection, we would also like to inquire as to why the Convention Against Torture and the Optional Protocol on the Convention on the rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict are not also under examination for signature by Myanmar."
4. While it is not correct to say that the constitution and Penal Code protect people in Myanmar from abuses of the sort mentioned by Japan, the first question is essentially correct in that it raises the basic problem of the government's routine failure to comply with its own domestic law. This is not merely a practical problem of the gap between what is on paper and what goes on in real life of the sort found to one degree or another in all jurisdictions. It is, rather, a consequence of the imperative for all institutions in Myanmar to follow instructions on the implementation of policy, irrespective of law. It is a consequence of the disengagement of the state in Myanmar with any firm concept of law, properly understood as the product of a legislature, for over two decades. The gap between domestic law and reality in Myanmar is not a simple consequence of practices that engender rights abuses; it is a matter of policy. This is a primary cause of chronic rights abuse in Myanmar, yet it is one that has not yet been properly or fully acknowledged by the Human Rights Council.
5. Where a state is as a matter of policy disengaged from any meaningful concept of law nationally, it can hardly be expected to engage with international law. Thus, as Japan indicates in the second paragraph, there is a vast gap between the development of human rights standards internationally and the recognition of these by the government of Myanmar. Decades after the rest of the world passed core covenants of the international bill of rights, Myanmar still has not joined them; and, while more and more countries in Asia join the Convention against Torture and introduce domestic legislation of varying quality to prohibit its use, Myanmar still has not seemingly even recognized the convention's existence. But the important point in coming to terms with this second type of engagement is the linkage with the first, since even where a state pretends to engage with law internationally, if it is not doing the same domestically then any such apparent engagement will have few or no practical consequences.
6. This incapacity to engage with basic norms for the protection of human rights at either an international or domestic level is manifest in the 70 recommendations "that do not enjoy the support of Myanmar" listed in the UPR Working Group's draft report on Myanmar (A/HRC/WG.6/10/L.7, 2 February 2011, paragraph 107). While rather awkwardly insisting that it is in compliance with international standards, the government rejected recommendations that included, among many others, the following:
a. "Amend the Constitution… in compliance with international human rights treaties and humanitarian laws (Denmark)";
b. "Begin a transparent and inclusive dialogue with all national stakeholders… aimed at reviewing and reforming all relevant national legislation to ensure that it is consistent with
international human rights law (Maldives)";
c. "Repeal laws that are not in compliance with international human rights law and review its legal system to ensure compliance with the rights to… a fair trial and respect for the rule of law (New Zealand)";
d. "Cooperate with the international human rights mechanisms and humanitarian agencies, specifically by issuing a standing invitation to the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council and allowing full and unhindered access to all persons in need of humanitarian assistance (Republic of Korea)";
e. "Take appropriate measures to end de-facto and de-jure discrimination with all minority groups (Pakistan)";
f. "Investigate and punish all cases of intimidation, harassment, persecution, torture and forced disappearances, especially against political dissidents, journalists, ethnic and religious minorities and human rights defenders (Uruguay)"; and,
g. "Seek technical assistance from United Nations to reform judiciary, to establish accessible judicial remedies as well as to alleviate poverty (Turkey)".
7. It would be difficult to understand why any government with a commitment to international standards would not in principle at least agree with any of the above non-specific recommendations. However, when a government has disengaged from human rights norms both in international and domestic law not only is it understandable that such recommendations would be rejected, but it is also imperative that they be rejected. For a government divorced from any normative framework for human rights, arbitrary, inconsistent and contradictory positions on human rights standards are both necessary and unavoidable. In the absence of adherence to any consistent set of standards, whether at home or abroad, there is no body of principles against which decisions can be made and policies applied. Decision-making is relativised and situation-specific; recommendations are accepted or rejected according to expediency.
8. The problem of what the U.N. can do with a member state that is disconnected from any normative framework for the protection of human rights urgently needs to be taken up in the ongoing Human Rights Council review process (in accordance with General Assembly resolution 60/251, 15 March 2006).
9. There have been some initiatives in the lead up to the review; however, many of the issues raised, such as at the Algiers retreat in February 2010, are technical in nature or concerned mainly with the inevitable politicization of the Council processes, rather than the more difficult problem of a member state operating according to an entirely different conceptualization of human rights than that on which the work of the international human rights system is premised, and one disconnected from any standards for the application of human rights not only at the international but also at the domestic level. Consequently, challenges facing the Council, such as the apparent ineffectiveness of special sessions, are discussed mainly in superficial terms, with reference to specific difficulties associated with specific identifiable outcomes, and without critical examination of possible underlying reasons for failure.
10. The problem that a norm-less state in a normative framework presents is also in part due to the confusion caused by apparently common language that disguises fundamental differences in conceptions, which are revealed only through careful study of circumstances and rhetoric. Although the discussions around the review acknowledge the importance of dialogue, they implicitly take any exchange of views to be a form of dialogue. They also presuppose that member states in the UPR process will in fact engage in frank discussion of their human rights problems and challenges. They fail to recognize and grapple with the problem of what happens when a member state, while apparently talking in the same language as the international community, in fact holds or expresses views that are profoundly contradictory to the values and human rights goals of the latter.
11. The most important problem for the Human Rights Council regarding Myanmar is not a functional problem, but a problem of understanding. The Council review process presents an opportunity for the Council to go into more significant conceptual and epistemological questions about how to engage with a member state that is disengaged from human rights standards both internationally and domestically. If the Council can couple its examination of procedural and technical issues with genuinely substantive questions of this nature, then the review process will yield fruit. If not, the Council will continue to offer little to people in countries like Myanmar, who lack avenues to address violations of their human rights not for want of the language of rights, but for want of a normative framework in which rights can be realized.
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Strategy Page - China Is Your Special Friend
March 3, 2011: The new democracy in Myanmar is very much the same old military dictatorship. The recent elections were rigged and the parliament is full of supporters of the generals. Thus the military has gotten 23 percent of the government budget for the next year. The generals expect to get more for their money, mainly because North Korea just lost a lot of its weapons customers with the overthrow of several Arab dictatorships. As a result, Myanmar can demand more for less from a desperate North Korea. The trade has been going on since 2007, when diplomatic relations were resumed with North Korea, and a barter trade (rice from Myanmar for weapons and other goods from North Korea) established. This avoided problems with international embargos on North Korean arms exports. Cargo ships coming from North Korea had cargos described as "cement" and "general cargo." These ships were unloaded in heavily guarded, military controlled, port areas.
The extra cash for the military is going to pay for new weapons from China and Russia. Later this month, Russia is expected to begin delivering 20 MiG-29 fighters that were ordered two years ago. Indian firms will provide maintenance and technical support. India has long used MiG-29s and has built an infrastructure to support this aircraft. While most Indians do not approve of the generals running Myanmar, they do appreciate the cooperation of the generals in defeating tribal separatists and communist rebels in India's northeast.
India is also building a road to connect with Myanmar in the northeast, to encourage trade and help build the economy in the thinly populated area that borders China and Myanmar.
China has replaced Thailand as the largest foreign investor in Myanmar. The Myanmar generals see China as their economic savior, and China is eager to have an ally so close to India. Increased maritime trade with Myanmar is but the beginning of a process that will lead to Chinese warships eventually operating out of Myanmar ports. This is a nightmare for India, which is trying to make nice with the Myanmar generals, in an attempt to halt the growth of Chinese influence, and presence, in the area.
February 27, 2011: A bomb exploded in the capital, wounding four people. No one took credit for it.
February 19, 2011: Tribal rebels in the east killed four civilians, during an encounter with troops.
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The Temasek Review - Migrant workers reveal hidden side of Singapore
March 3rd, 2011 | Author: Online Press
by Katherine Pohl
Everything in Singapore ticks over like clockwork. The metro train arrives every couple of minutes. The streets are clean. There is zero tolerance when it comes to corruption. Money is made, taller buildings are built and the wealth of the nation grows.
But behind the facade there is another force that keeps this island nation afloat – the more than 850,000 migrant workers that call Singapore home.
Each year thousands of women from across Asia travel to Singapore in search of a better life.
From Indonesia, the Philippines, Bangladesh and Burma they come in the hope of earning money as a maid that will help sustain their families back home.
But for many of these women the experiences are life-changing in the worst way possible.
In a small apartment block in Singapore, dozens of women sit in front of us. They all have a story to tell.
Judith Catoras, 36, has three children back home in the Philippines and is working to help send them to university. She has been working as a maid in Singapore for the same employer for the past three years.
She left her job after she was abused but cannot go into the details because it is before the court.
Another woman from the Philippines, Niza De La Cruz, 34, stands up eager to speak. She says her employer accused her of stealing by using the home telephone to call home.
Her employer never showed her the bill but her case is still being finalised.
As we are about to finish, Siti Mushorafah, 42, from central Java speaks up, telling us she left her employer because if she made a mistake, she would be beaten with a stick.
These women work up to 16 hours a day, rarely have time off and are beholden to their employers, who control their work permits.
Debt
Even before they set foot in Singapore, they are often in debt to their employer or a recruitment agent.
In the world of the migrant worker, the employer has the final say.
We are only just scratching the surface at the women’s shelter and there are many more women who have suffered abuse at the hands of their employers, often from the woman in the household who they ironically call their ‘mother’. In some situations, it sounds like modern-day slavery.
These stories are not confined to Singapore. In Malaysia, we meet with a migrant workers’ organisation and I leave the meeting feeling overwhelmed and depressed at the state of human nature.
While most workers enter Singapore legally, about half of Malaysia’s migrants are undocumented.
We are told about child labour in plantations, forced prostitution, baby trafficking, mail-order brides, sex trafficking and fishermen who in some cases spend years out on trawlers.
As we drive around Kuala Lumpur in the evening, you can see workers on construction sites, high up in partly built apartment blocks with no safety gear. A friend tells me they are mostly Bangladeshis and often work all night.
In developing countries, it is the poor who are the most vulnerable. In places like Singapore and Malaysia, migrant workers are left out to dry.
Refugee advocates believe some responsibility should fall to other countries in the region, like Australia.
One woman tells us that while the Australian Government has contributed a lot in funding to migrant causes in the region, she does not believe the country takes an empathetic position.
She says the Australian Government’s stance on refugees provides countries like Malaysia with an excuse not to sign conventions._*This article is from a three-part series exploring development challenges. Read the instalments on Indonesia and Malaysia.*__Katherine Pohl visited Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore as part of an Asia Pacific Journalism Centre fellowship.
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Eurasia Review - Sino-Myanmar Relations And Its Impact On The Region
Written by: SAAG
By C. S. Kuppuswamy
Though engaging with Myanmar may be part of China’s overall economic offensive as a “soft power” in the South East Asian region, its relationship with Myanmar is on a special footing because of strategic and geo-political reasons, particularly the access to the Indian Ocean. China is also known to protect the rogue states of the world which includes Myanmar along with the likes of Sudan, Iran and North Korea. Energy Security is another important factor for China to cultivate Myanmar with its abundance of natural gas. China is involved in over 62, hydro, oil, gas and mining projects in Myanmar.
“Beijing’s influence in Burma may be waning but its political leverage over Naypyidaw is still greater than that of the US and EU combined” writes Ko Ko Thett (The Irrawaddy, September 11, 2010). The US is concerned over China’s activities in SE Asia and the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) met in February 2010 and again on January 26.2011 to study the implications for US interests in the region. The Barrack Administration has also started realigning in its policy over South East Asia in general and Myanmar in particular.
“paukphaw” Relationship of Sixty Years
The relationship between China and Myanmar is often referred to in Burmese language as “paukphaw” (fraternal). China and Myanmar celebrated the 60th anniversary of their diplomatic relations in June 2010 when Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visited Myanmar. Myanmar (Burma) was one of the first countries to recognize the PRC on Dec. 17, 1949 and established diplomatic ties on June 8, 1950. In 1954 China, Myanmar and India jointly proclaimed the Panchsheel (or the five principles of co-existence) which became the basis for international relations and was adopted by the Non-Aligned Movement. These principles were included in the Sino-Burmese Joint Declaration of 29 June 1954.
This sixty-year relationship has progressed steadily with frequent exchange of high level visits. China was perhaps the sole country which did not condemn the crackdown on the pro-democracy uprising in Myanmar 1988. Myanmar reciprocated identically on the Tiananmen incident in 1989. Since then China has been supporting Myanmar, diplomatically, economically and militarily and has recently surpassed Thailand as the largest investor in Myanmar.
On the negative side, China was supporting the Communist Party of Burma from 1968 to 1985. The relations were marred in 1967 when there were anti-Chinese riots in Yangon and the Chinese embassy was stormed. There was a setback in the relations in August 2009 when the Myanmar military action in Kokang close to Chinese border caused an influx of over 30,000 refugees into China
Diplomatic Relations
In the last 60 years of diplomatic relations between these two countries, China has used pressure, persuasion, economic and military assistance, and protection from the international community for the military regime in order to achieve its strategic and economic goals.
“China’s action at the UNSC (exercising the veto power) underscores its confirmed position as Burma’s most valuable ally. Since the early 1990s Burma has viewed China’s veto power at the UN as its ultimate insurance policy against an East-Timor-Style international intervention” — Kanbawza Win (Burma Digest – 13 January 2011). If the sanctions of the West had no impact on the military regime it was all due to the whole hearted support of China though it had its own vested interests. China has stood by the military regime, at the time of pro-democracy uprising in 1988. China had supported the former primer Khin Nyunt (an ethnic Chinese) and had high hopes on him to help its influence over Myanmar and hence was upset when he was purged (2004).
Though the military rule suited China, it’s attitude towards Myanmar seems to have undergone a change since 2006. Some analysts are of the view that China had exerted pressure on the military junta to move towards political reforms and adopt a less confrontational course with the UN. China hailed the multiparty elections held in November 2010, which was condemned by most of the western nations. It has also felicitated Myanmar for convening the parliament on 31 January 2011 after two decades and thereby completing its road map to democracy. China was the first to commend Myanmar’s new leadership. President Hu Jintao sent his congratulations within hours (on February 4, 2011) to Thein Sein who was appointed president.
China and Ethnic Groups of Myanmar
China has a 2192 km long land border with Myanmar in the Kachin & Shan states where some of the major ethnic armed groups are present with some major tracts under their control. The major groups are the United Wa State Army (UWSA), Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO) and National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA). Some of these groups are ethnic Chinese. China’s main concern is stability on its border and economic development of the landlocked inland states.
Since 1985 when China stopped supporting the CPB, these groups are not getting any moral or material support from China but are looking up to China for negotiation or mediation with the military junta in helping their cause. These ethnic groups entered into a ceasefire at the first instance under pressure or advice from China. The ethnic nationalities are aware that China’s support is provisional and driven by its own economic and security interests.
Since April 2009, the ethnic armed groups are under pressure to disarm and transform into border guards. The military junta was aiming to achieve this transformation prior to the elections in November 2010 which did not materialise.
China was taken by surprise when the military junta launched an attack against the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance (the Kokang Group) in August 2009 that forced over 20,000 Kokang residents (ethnic Chinese) to flee into China. Hence China is apprehensive that the military junta may attempt such ventures with other armed groups on its border to enforce them to disarm and transform into border guards.
There is divergence between Beijing and Kunming in their interaction with the ethnic groups. Most border groups interact directly with the Yunnan government. This is mainly due to the provincial (Yunnan) government’s desire to expand the trade opportunities, while Beijing is more worried about the security of the border areas.
China has a key role to play in the future of these cease fire agreements. Till now China has manipulated both the ceasefire groups and the military junta to negotiate to ensure peace on its border and economic development of the neighbouring provinces.
Military Assistance
The armed forces of Myanmar have grown exponentially since 1988. Analysts are of the view that the expansion is not based on the fears of external threat but more because of the continuing civil war with ethnic armed groups and inhibition for national reconciliation with the pro-democratic opposition groups.
Most of the military equipment that Myanmar has is from China. Though there are no definite figures, it is estimated that under an arms deal in the early 1990s China had supplied US $ 1 to 2 billion worth of arms under which Myanmar acquired Chinese made F-7 jet fighters, naval patrol boats, tanks, armed personal carriers, light arms, anti-aircraft guns and missiles, ammunition and other logistic and transportation military equipment. China undertook to train Myanmar’s air force and army personnel. Another US $ 400 million worth of arms were supplied in 1994. Besides training armed forces officers, seats were earmarked for the Myanmar officers in the Chinese Staff Colleges.
Though the Myanmar armed forces were not happy with the quality of the arms supplied to them, they had no choice since no other country had come forward to meet their requirements and secondly they were supplied to them under “friendship prices” with interest free loans.
From 2002-2004, China trained Burmese Navy officers and conducted joint naval exercises along Burma’s Southern Coast.
In 2003, China helped Myanmar by building an 85 metre jetty along with reconnaissance and electronic intelligence system on the Coco Island, close to India’s Nicobar Island.
The first ever port call to Myanmar by the Chinese Navy was in end August 2010 when two Chinese warships (Guangzhou and Caogu class) visited Rangoon’s Thilawa port and were docked there for five days. These ships were on their way home after participating in international piracy efforts in the Gulf of Aden.
Recently (2010) the Myanmar air force acquired 50 K-8 Karakorum jet fighters from China.
Since the 1990’s China has been assisting Myanmar in modernisation of the Myanmar naval facilities at Hainggyi Island, Great Coco Islands, Akyab, Kyaukpyu and Mergui, all in the Bay of Bengal.
Bilateral Trade
Chinese commodities account for 80 per cent of Myanmar’s imports. A media report indicates that out of 20 billion dollars of foreign investment for big projects that have come up since 1988, China’s share is 12.3 billion dollars.
“Chinese investment and trade in Myanmar is growing dramatically. The amount of Chinese investment between April and August 2010 was two thirds of China’s total investment in the country over the past two decades. Chinese companies have invested $8.17 billion since March 2010 alone, including $ 5 billion in hydropower, $ 2.15 billion in the oil and gas sector and $997 million in mining. Accompanying this increase in Chinese investment is fast growth in bilateral trade in the first four months of 2010, it jumped 76.8 percent. Total trade in 2009 climbed by 10.7 percent, a figure expected to continue to rise sharply in 2010. While trade is increasing, so is Myanmar’s trade deficit with China. In the first four months of 2010, China exports were four times the amount of those from Myanmar.” – International Crisis Group update briefing dated 21st September 2010.
China’s imports from Burma are timber, teak, gem, seafood, marble, coal and nickel.
China exports to Burma are electronic devices, heavy construction machines, electric cables, communication equipments, household appliances, chemical, medicines and agricultural machine and technology. Burma plans to export to China 596 items, including meat, diary products, fruits and vegetables.
China is Myanmar’s second largest trading partner for long and the top investor now. China is already Myanmar’s top provider of Foreign Direct Investment.
Oil and Gas
According to a report of Earth Rights International, 16 Chinese oil companies were invested in Myanmar in 2008. Since then more companies must have entered into the fray.
Pipeline — China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), China’s largest oil company, is constructing a dual oil and gas pipeline from Myanmar’s western coast to China’s Yunnan Province. Within Myanmar the Company will build a 793 km – long gas pipeline and a 771 km – long crude pipeline. The construction of the pipelines officially started on June 3, 2010 after premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to Myanmar.
In a related project China’s Qingdao Port has signed an agreement with CNPC to build and operate a wharf in the Arakan Coastal town of Kyauk Phyu in Myanmar. The deep sea port of Kyauk Phyu is also being developed by China. It is estimated China will annually Channel 22 million tons of oil and 12 billion cubic metres of gas to Yunnan Province from this wharf at Kyauk Phyu.
Exploration — According to a Reuters report (January 6, 2011) Myanmar has been exploring oil/ gas in 49 onshore and 26 offshore blocks. Media reports indicate that Sinopec International Petroleum (SIPC) has discovered proven reserves of 909 billion cubic feet of gas 7.16 million barrels of concentrate in Pathilon field (central Myanmar) and in Mahutaung region (520 miles northwest of Yangon) with a capacity of 2.1 million cubic feet per day. Sinopec has been exploring oil and gas in Myanmar since 2004. A Xinhua new agency report of Jan 2007 indicated that China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) has signed production sharing contracts with the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise for oil and gas exploration in a number of onshore and offshore blocks.
Hydro Electric Projects
In February 2010 Myanmar’s Ministry of electric Power and the Chinese companies signed an agreement for the Upper Salween (Kunlong) Hydropower project with a projected energy – generating capacity of 2400 kilowatts. This is close to the Chinese border and the area occupied by the UWSA.
The Irrawaddy (31 January 2011) reports that almost all of the electricity expected to be generated by hydropower dams now under construction in Myanmar will be sold to China and Thailand, with just one per cent going to domestic consumers. The report adds that Chinese companies are involved in all but one of 21 major dam projects currently underway in Myanmar. A project report on the impact of these dams on rivers in Myanmar indicates that “since China is the main investor in the dam projects, it will receive most of the electricity. China will get 48 %, while 38 % will go to Thailand and 3 % to India. Only 1 % will be available for domestic consumption”.
The biggest project is the Myitsone dam in Kachin state where China Power Investment has reportedly invested 120 billion RMB with the output expected to surpass the Three Gorges Dam. This Chinese project has been criticised by many human rights groups for having displaced over 15000 locals, depriving them of their livelihood and altering the bio-diversity of the area and the river.
Airport Construction
A Chinese company has been entrusted with the construction of an airport near Nay Pyi Daw, the capital of Myanmar. The work started on this project in 2009 and is expected to be completed in early 2011. China Communications Construction (CCC), has invested over US $ 100 million in this project for which the total outlay is around US $ 250 million.
Rail Links
A proposal is under construction for a 1920 km rail link between Kunming, the capital of China’s Yunnan Province and Yangon, with plans to extend the line up to Tavoy where a major port development project of Thailand is coming up.
There are also plans to construct a railway line along the dual gas and oil pipeline (already under construction) linking Kyauk Phyu in the Arakan state and Kunming.
A rail link running through Shan state from Kunming to the Thai town of Chiang Rai is being planned. This link will be connected to the Thai rail network.
Media reports indicate that two more rail links between the Chinese town of Dali with Myitkyina and Lashio are being planned.
China has also agreed to upgrade Myanmar’s rail stock.
Drugs
One of the major concerns of China in its relations with Myanmar, is the drugs flowing into Yunnan (China) especially through the Ferry crossings on the Mao-Ruli river that serves as the boundary between China and Myanmar in this area. A report of the UN office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) indicates that much of the drugs move into China from the three self-administered regions in the Shan state of Myanmar.
Loans & Aids
Between 1962 and 1994 China gave Burma roughly $62.5 million aid (Genser Jared. Testimony to U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. August 3, 2006)
Consequent to Senior General Than Shwe’s visit in 2003, China offered Myanmar a preferential loan of US $200 million and a US $6.25 million grant.
In 2005, China has committed US $100 million in aid to Burma (Japan Focus, 2006).
In June 2006, China publicly agreed to provide Burma with a special low-interest loan of $ 200 million for five unspecified government ministries. (Genser, Jared. Testimony to U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, August 3, 2006).
In 2009 Myanmar had received a loan of US $ 1.2 billion for economic development and information technology development.
The Irrawaddy (September 21, 2010) reports that China has agreed to give Myanmar a 30 billion Yuan (US $ 4.2 billion) interest free loan during the visit of Senior general Than Shwe to China (September 7-11, 2010). “The 30 year loan is intended to help fund mass hydropower projects, road construction, rail development and information technology development”.
A Chinese media report indicates that on 28 January 2011, the Ministry of Finance and Revenue of Myanmar and the Export-Import Bank (Exim bank) of China had signed agreement on bank loans for mutually beneficial cooperation and for a project concerning new air port at Nay Pyi Taw.
Telecommunications
According to the country’s Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, most CMDA phones used in Burma are imported from a Chinese company called Huawei Co. Ltd.
Roads
China is involved in renovating the Stilwell road constructed during the Second World War. According to the The Telegraph, the road which stretches from Myitkyina to Pangsau near the Indian border will be rebuilt by the Yunnan Construction Engineering Company in a joint venture with Burma’s Yuzana group.
A China-Myanmar-Bangladesh tri-nation road network is under consideration.
The “Irrawaddy Corridor” which envisages establishment of road links between China’s Yunnan Province with Myanmar and a railway connection between Kunming (China) and Lashio (Northern Myanmar) will help the economic development of China’s SW provinces (Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan).
Chinese Population in Myanmar
According to a media report, Myanmar is home to more than two million Chinese nationals without taking into account the illegal Chinese population in the border areas especially in areas occupied by ethnic armed groups and those involved in illegal border trade in and around Ruili, the border town in the Yunnan state. In the city of Mandalay alone there are over 200,000 Chinese, who control the business in the city with the Chinese currency and with direct contacts with Kunming (Yunnan Province). This is an additional source for economic gains to China from Myanmar.
Impact of the Sino-Myanmar Relations on other Countries
ASEAN: In the early 90s, Thailand also a neighbouring country of Myanmar was becoming wary of China’s strategic inroads into Myanmar. ASEAN was also worried about the increasing influence of China over the other countries in the region. To balance this and to adopt a common strategy towards China, ASEAN (under Thailand’s insistence) decided to accept Myanmar and Laos as members of the grouping in 1997 and Cambodia in 1999.
Since then ASEAN has resorted to “constructive engagement” with Myanmar (despite pressure from US) and the member nations also increased their diplomatic and trade relations with Myanmar.
However China-ASEAN relations have greatly improved in the last decade or so.
European Union (EU): The European Union has adopted a similar position to that of the US in imposing sanctions. The EU has exerted pressure more on ASEAN to use its influence for effecting political reforms in Myanmar.
The Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), which strongly favoured sanctions, is now divided because countries like France and Germany have begun to have economic engagement with Burma.
Japan: The Japanese government’s policy is to put peer pressure on the intransigent regime by means of restrictive economic cooperation with support from the international community. It has been refraining from providing large-scale official development assistance in the form of yen denominated loans since 1988, while extending comparatively generous humanitarian assistance. Safely stated, Japan’s policy toward Myanmar is one of “constructive engagement”.
Cut aid to Burma in October 2007.
India: One of the reasons for the “volte face” in India’s policy on Myanmar, from the ideal to the pragmatic, was Myanmar’s increasing tilt towards China. India has figured that China was making friends with all neighbouring countries of India to contain the rise of India in the region with the strategy being called as “the string of pearls”. As part of its “Look-East” policy India raised the level of interaction with ASEAN in general and Myanmar in particular. It suited Myanmar to have India on its side to counter balance its total dependence on China for all its military and economic needs. There was frequent exchange of visits even at the level of the head of state. India had also played the “Buddhist” card for cementing the relations.
With a 1642 km land border with Myanmar on India’s eastern flank and China getting an access to Indian Ocean through Myanmar, it was strategically important to improve relations. The security of the North-East was also being endangered from the Indian insurgent Groups operating from Myanmar soil. Myanmar could also act as a land bridge for the economic development of the North-East. These factors along with the abundance of Gas available in Myanmar has egged India to maintain close relations.
However, India cannot offset China’s influence over Myanmar with all the economic and military assistance provided by China and the diplomatic protection it has given to Myanmar so far.
U.S.: US interest in Myanmar declined after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Cold War. The attitude towards Myanmar worsened after the 1988 democracy uprising. Since 1990 it has followed a policy of imposing economic sanctions which have hardened over the years.
Stanley A Weiss writes that Washington’s Burma policy has isolated Washington and not Burma. “It is time to engage Myanmar as the real issue in Myanmar lies in the business sector. This is where Yankee ingenuity can lead by example.”
In February 2009, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton announced a comprehensive review of US policy towards Myanmar primarily to contain the Chinese influence in Myanmar and the region. Since then the Obama administration has decided to engage the military junta diplomatically, while strictly enforcing the sanctions. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell visited Myanmar in November 2009 and met the military leaders and Aung San Suu Kyi. Campbell and his deputy Scot Marciel are the highest level American dignitaries to visit Myanmar since 1955
The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission held a lengthy hearing on China’s activities in South East Asia in February 2010 and again in January 2011.. Concern about China’s rising influence and implications for the US interests in this strategic region were analysed. China has surpassed the US as ASEAN’s third largest trading partner, behind the EU and Japan.
Post Suu kyi’s release the US has made no headway despite the conduct of the elections and formation of a “civil” government in Myanmar.
Conclusion
The basis on which the Sino-Myanmar relations have progressed in the last decade or so is the joint statement signed in June 2000 between the Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan and Foreign minister U Win Aung on “Future Cooperation in Bilateral relations between the People’s Republic of China and Federation of Myanmar.
If the Sino-Myanmar relations have prospered and gained strength over the years, the prime cause has been the US attitude towards Myanmar with its obsession, for democracy and human rights, for release of Aung San Suu Kyi and the imposition of economic sanctions that have become harsher over the years. The EU adopting a similar stance has further contributed to this cause.
China’s Myanmar policy has been in accordance with its overall policy towards a stable external environment for its own modernization and development.
“By the year 2050, China is expected to achieve world-class blue water naval status, and Myanmar would be crucial for China’s multi-directional access to both Pacific and Indian Ocean”—Lixin Geng of Yunnan University
Myanmar’s significance to China both from the strategic and economic point of view can be summed up as under:
Myanmar’s location at the tri junction of South Asia, South East Asia and China
Myanmar providing an access to the Indian ocean
Strong ties with Myanmar help China to contain the influence of India and other powers in South East Asia.
Myanmar acts as a “land bridge” for the economic development of its South Western States.
The abundance of natural gas and hydro electric power that is made available to China
China will not be dependant of on Malacca Straits for transportation of oil and gas from the Middle East once the pipelines through Myanmar are ready.
Myanmar is pivotal to the development of the Greater Mekong Subregion.
The political instability and the continuing civil war with the ethnic groups in Myanmar have also helped China to improve the relations to its advantage.
There have been a few instances when the relations between these two nations have been strained or had a set back. In 1949 the presence of the Kuomintang (KMT) troops in Shan State posed a threat to Myanmar’s security. There was an anti-Chinese riots in Yangon in 1967. The Chinese support to the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) till 1985 was a major irritant. Recently Myanmar’s military attack on the Kokang Group in August 2009 resulting in a large influx of refugees had ruffled the Chinese administration.
From Myanmar point of view, to avoid the impact of the sanctions, it had no recourse except to improve the relations with China especially when the help was forthcoming. China’s diplomatic protection with its veto power and condoning the anti-democratic policies has made Myanmar bounden to China. With some major ethnic armed groups on the border areas with China, Myanmar needs the support of China to settle with these groups. China has scant regard for human rights and regards national reconciliation in Myanmar as an internal issue.
Myanmar is highly sensitive about its sovereignty. Despite all the bonhomie exhibited it is wary and cautious in pursuing its relations with China. Myanmar would not like to be cowed down by China’s diplomatic and economic pressure or military might.
China’s image in the eyes of the common man in Myanmar, especially in ethnic controlled areas, has been tarnished over the years as the benefits that accrue to them from the
Chinese ventures are minimal, as China brings its own labour instead of employing the locals, as the locals have often been displaced and deprived of their livelihood without adequate compensation.
Myanmar by conducting the elections and installing a seemingly “civilian” government is hoping for the West to ease the sanctions. The recent change in US policy to engage with Myanmar without lifting the sanctions is a shot in the arm for Myanmar. To overcome its excessive dependence on China, it has started buying military hardware from other countries like Russia and Korea. With this aim Myanmar is also improving relations with India, Thailand and ASEAN countries.
Myanmar is a staunch ally of China due to circumstances, while China is Myanmar’s ally by design. If the relations between China and Myanmar are very sound it is for mutual benefit – for China to achieve its national goals and ambitions and for Myanmar (the military leadership) to consolidate its own power and rule the country.
As of now, it is inevitable even for the “civilian” government now in power to maintain the strong relations with China.
(This paper is based on the presentation made at an interaction session on 26.02.2011 at the Observer Research Foundation, Chennai)
About the author:
SAAG is the South Asia Analysis Group, a non-profit, non-commercial think tank. The objective of SAAG is to advance strategic analysis and contribute to the expansion of knowledge of Indian and International security and promote public understanding.
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Mar 4, 2011
Asia Times Online - Fog lifts on Myanmar-North Korea barter
By Bertil Lintner
BANGKOK - With the Middle East and North Africa in turmoil, North Korea risks losing some of its oldest and most trusted customers for military hardware. Pyongyang has over the years sold missiles and missile technology to Egypt, Libya, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, Syria and Iran, representing an important source of export earnings for the reclusive regime. The growing uncertainty among those trade partners could explain why North Korea is now cementing ties with a client much closer to home: military-run Myanmar.
In April 2007, North Korea and Myanmar resumed diplomatic relations. Those ties were after North Korean agents planted a bomb in the then capital of Yangon in October 1983, killing 18 high-ranking South Korean officials who were on a visit to the country. Only days after the restoration of diplomatic ties, a North Korean freighter, the MV Kang Nam I, docked at Thilawa port, 30 kilometers south of Yangon.
Officials claimed at the time that the ship docked to seek shelter from a storm. However, two local reporters working for a Japanese news agency were turned back and briefly detained when they went to the port to investigate, indicating that there could have been other, more secret reasons for the Kang Nam I's arrival.
The same ship was put on global radar in June 2009 when it was pursued by the USS John S McCain and then reversed course. It was believed that it was on its way back to Myanmar with more unspecified cargo. Military observers tied the Kang Nam 1 incidents to the arrival of another North Korean ship, MV Bong Hoafan, at a Myanmar port in November 2006 before the resumption of diplomatic relations. Curiously, it was also reported to have been "forced" to seek shelter at a Myanmar port because of "adverse weather conditions".
An Asia Times Online investigation has found that those were not isolated incidents. Shipping records from Myanmar show that North Korean ships have been docking regularly at Thilawa and Yangon ports for almost a decade. Even the ill-fated Kang Nam 1 had docked in Myanmar long before the 2007 and 2009 incidents. The ship made its first voyage to Myanmar in February 2002, carrying what was declared as "general cargo," according to the shipping records.
North Korean shipments are almost invariably specified as "general goods" and sometimes "concrete", but both in and outgoing cargo is usually handled by Myanmar's Ministry of Heavy Industry 2, which supervises the country's defense industries, the armed forces' Directorate of Procurement, and the military's own holding company, the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings (UMEH).
When the MV Bochon, another North Korean ship, arrived at Thilawa in October 2002, the Myanmar military's high command sent a document marked "top secret" to the port authorities, requesting them to clear the entire docking area for "security reasons". They were also advised, according to the shipping records, that some "important cargo" would be offloaded within 36 hours.
When the MV Chong Gen approached Thilawa on April 12, 2010, it asked for permission to fly a Myanmar flag instead of its North Korean one, according to the shipping records. The captain also requested a Myanmar SMC card (smart media card) for a mobile phone, along with coastal charts. These were odd requests for a ship that was officially carrying 2,900 tons of cement and 2,105 tons of "general goods" from the North Korean port of Nampo.
Bizzare barter
Indeed, the requests made by North Korean ships traveling to Myanmar have often been outright bizarre. MV Du Man Gang appears to be one of the most regular North Korean visitors at Thilawa. On one of its many trips to Myanmar, in July 2009 it asked for 150 crates of Myanmar brandy. In March 2010, when another North Korean ship, the MV Kan Baek San, arrived in Myanmar, the North Korean ambassador asked for an unspecified quantity of Myanmar vodka to be sent to the ship, according to the shipping records.
The involvement of North Korean diplomats in these shipments is otherwise more convoluted. In September 2009, the MV Sam Il Po docked at a smaller terminal in Yangon and both the North Korean ambassador Kim Sok Chol and defense attach้ Kim Kwang Chol were present to inspect the cargo along with Lt Col Thein Toe from the Myanmar military. The unspecified cargo was received by UMEH, which in return supplied 1,500 tons of rice which was taken back to North Korea.
That was not the only incident when North Korean freighters returned with Myanmar rice. The MV So Hung arrived in November 2008 with 295 tons of material for the Ministry of Defense and left with 500 tons of rice. When the MV Du Man Gang docked in July 2009 it left with not only brandy but also 8,000 tons of rice. In June 2010, the MV An San arrived with 7,022 tons of what was alleged to be "concrete" and left in July with 7,000 tons of rice.
All this seems to confirm what diplomatic observers have long suspected: that Myanmar and North Korea, two countries with limited access to bank and other international financial trade facilities, are engaged in barter trade. Myanmar's ruling generals want more weapons but often don't have the foreign funds handy to pay for them - or at least they don't want such transactions to show up in their bank records. North Korea, meanwhile, is starved for food and likewise lacks the finances to pay for imports.
When money is involved in North Korea-Myanmar trade, transactions are always done in cash and thus untraceable. Like all other ships, North Korean ones have to pay port fees in Myanmar. The MV Du Man Gang, for instance, asked to pay US$30,994 in cash rather than make a bank transfer. Other ships have made similar requests which has led to speculation about the kind of currency the North Koreans, notorious for counterfeiting US dollars, may be using.
Large quantities of counterfeit US notes have recently shown up in areas around Myanmar. In July and August 2009, a customer tried to change U$10,000 in fake notes at the State Bank of India's main office in Imphal, Manipur. The fake bills were all of the US$100 denomination and of excellent quality, according to sources. It was the first such incident in Manipur. Although it is not clear whether the bogus notes were printed in North Korea, Imphal is located just over 100 kilometers from Moreh, an Indian town opposite Myanmar's Tamu where a virtually unregulated border trade is booming.
Trade between North Korea and Myanmar is also apparently being done through front companies. In June 2010, the North Korean freighter MV Ryu Gong arrived with 12,838 tons of what was also described as "cement". While the shipment was handled by the Ministry of Heavy Industry 2, the stated recipient was a little-known company known as Shwe Me, or "black gold" in Myanmar.
Port documents show that the company has nearly a million US dollars in assets but what it actually intended to do with all that cement is unclear. Just as puzzling is the involvement of Singapore-based shipping companies, which handle most of the cargo's logistics and operate under innocuous sounding names including words like "maritime" and "services". One of the companies has a distinct Korean name but is actually based in Singapore.
Port records point to a brisk trade between North Korea and Myanmar, all of which is handled by Myanmar's military rather than civilian-owned private companies. In August last year, then prime minister and now president Thein Sein visited Pyongyang. According to the official Korea Central News Agency, he said that "the government of Myanmar will continue to strive for strengthening and development of the friendly and cooperative relations between the two countries."
With those intentions publicly well-stated, Myanmar may well be on its way in overtaking Egypt, Libya and other traditional military trading partners in the Middle East and North Africa as North Korea's main market for its military hardware.
Bertil Lintner is a former correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic Review and the author of several books on Myanmar. He is currently a writer with Asia Pacific Media Services.
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Business Recorder, Pakistan
Myanmar, Bolivia, Venezuela fail in drugs fight: US
Thursday, 03 March 2011 22:02
WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama has determined that Myanmar, Bolivia and Venezuela "failed demonstrably" last year to fight the drugs trade, a new US government report said Thursday.
They were among 20 countries, including Afghanistan, Colombia and Mexico, that are listed as "major illicit drug producing and/or drug-transit countries," according to the report sent to the US Congress.
The report contained a September 15 letter from Obama in which he said: "I hereby designate Bolivia, Burma, and Venezuela as countries that have failed demonstrably during the previous 12 months to adhere to their obligations under international counternarcotics agreements."
Like US government officials, the annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report refers to Myanmar by its previous name of Burma.
In Myanmar, described as second only to Afghanistan in opium production, "the low risk of enforcement and prosecution make it appealing to the criminal underground," the report said.
It also stressed that "political arrangements between traffickers and Burma's ruling military government allow organized crime groups to function with minimal risk of interdiction."
Turning to South America, the report said that "a porous western border with Colombia, a weak judicial system, inconsistent international counternarcotics cooperation, and a generally permissive and corrupt environment have made Venezuela" a major drug-transit country.
It said the country run by socialist President Hugo Chavez was "one of the preferred trafficking routes out of South America to the Eastern Caribbean, Central America, the United States, Europe and western Africa."
The report came down on Bolivia for money laundering activities which it linked "primarily to narcotics trafficking, corruption, tax evasion, and smuggling and trafficking of persons."
Despite the designations, the US government will still pursue cooperation with the two Latin American countries in fighting the drugs trade, the report said. As for Myanmar, there was no cooperation to begin with, officials said.
"I have also determined... that continued support for bilateral programs in Bolivia and limited programs in Venezuela are vital to the national interests of the United States," Obama said in his letter.
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Germany offers Burmese diplomats training and football tickets
Thursday, 03 March 2011 14:13 Thomas Maung Shwe
Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – Over the past three years, the German government has regularly invited Burmese diplomats to take part in an annual month-long training programme conducted by the German Foreign Office’s Foreign Service Academy in Berlin, according to documents available on the government’s website.
The training of a handful of Burmese diplomats was also attended by diplomatic colleagues from other Asean member countries.
The training included ‘special courses in diplomatic skills, e.g. international negotiation, diplomatic reporting, public speaking and media training’. Participants were also treated to tickets to Germany’s elite Bundeslig football game and a visit to the office of aircraft maker Airbus.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government says the programme was an effort to foster human rights and promote democracy in Burma.
While it is perhaps impossible to judge the effectiveness of the diplomatic training program and its long-term pros or cons, critics have raised important questions.
Some Burma democracy advocates claim the training, company visits and perks are not in accord with the EU’s publicly stated line on sanctions against the military regime accused of human rights abuses and failure to foster genuine democracy, a claim German officials dispute. Furthermore, the activists claim Burmese diplomats are instrumental in monitoring exiled dissidents and blocking journalists and human rights activists from entering Burma.
Germany and other European Union governments are said to be poised for weeks of difficult discussions over the future of economic and other sanctions against Burma ahead of the annual renewal set for April 30, according to the Friends of Europe, a European think tank.
A leaked US diplomatic cable disclosed by WikiLeaks suggest that Germany along with Italy and Spain have been advocating an EU ‘re-engagement’ with Burma. A related cable dated August 2008 quotes a British official telling American diplomats that in contrast to the UK and other EU members who support sanctions, ‘At the far end opposing sanctions are the Germans and Austrians’.
The EU sanctions were introduced in 1996 and include an arms embargo and a ban on sales of equipment for internal repression. Over the years, the EU’s sanctions were strengthened to add targeted financial sanctions and an EU-wide travel ban for the senior members of the military regime and their family members.
While the EU has been hotly debating sanctions and engagement with the Burmese military junta, the German government has actively trained and engaged with at least four Burmese diplomats, according to documents obtained by Mizzima.
The training of the Burmese representatives coincides with the German government’s decision to increase training of diplomats from nation’s with questionable human rights practices, including Syria, Sudan, Iran and Zimbabwe under similar training programs for diplomats from the Middle East and Africa.
Press reports surfaced last year that in the lead up to a UN general assembly vote, Germany was advancing its bid to be elected to the Security Council by wooing government officials from African and other places in the developing world with free trips to Germany for them and their spouses. In a response to questions from Inner City Press about these trips, a spokesperson for the German mission to the UN responded that their aim is to ‘make insights available and thereby improve the understanding of Germany. It goes without saying that Germany – as a keen multilateralist – has an interest to provide decision-makers with opportunities of firsthand information’. Ultimately, Germany was voted to the 2011-2012 Security Council with a healthy margin of support.
Apart from providing training in diplomatic skills and public speaking, the Burmese diplomats were given lectures on international law and visited the offices of Deutche Welle and Theo Sommer, the editor of the weekly Die ZEIT. On two separate occasions in 2010 and 2009, the diplomats were taken to meet the German Asia-Pacific business association, (Ostasiatischer Verein or OAV), a Hamburg-based industry trade group, whose membership includes more than 500 firms. One of OAV members, Trumpf, has been accused of supplying elements of Burma’s secretive weapons program.
At least four Burmese diplomats have been trained over the last three years. Last September, Burmese diplomat Htuann Naung was trained in Berlin under the four-week programme which in addition to a visit to the offices of Airbus, included meeting with a German-Asia business council, OAV, and a visit to the offices of Chancellor Merkel. The diplomat and the other trainees were also taken to the offices of German chemical manufacturer BASF for a meeting with the firm’s director for Asia-Pacific affairs.
Htuann Naung and his two Burmese colleagues who took part in the training programme in 2009 and 2008 were also taken to Brussels and the Hague to learn about the EU and the International Criminal Court.
It is unclear if Htuann Nuang has a military background as many Burmese diplomats are known to have had. A German government spokesperson declined to answer whether the German government would specifically exclude someone who had a military background from the training programme.
The German government reports show that in 2009 Burmese diplomat Sandar Tin took part in the training programme, which included attending a German Bundesliga football game. Sandar Tin and the other diplomats on her programme were also treated to a trip to Hamburg which included a visit to Airbus and a meeting with representatives of OAV.
UN documents show that Sandar Tin was previously accredited as the junta’s Second Secretary and Alternate Permanent Representative to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome.
In 2008, the Burmese diplomat trained was identified as Lei Lei Sein, who is presently registered as the First Secretary at the Burmese embassy in Singapore. According to the report, Lei Lei Sein also had a meeting at the headquarters of Deutche Bank. Lei Lei Sein and her fellow diplomats also had a photo session with Germany’s then Minister of Foreign Affairs Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Reached for comment, Germany’s foreign office spokesperson Sebastian Fischer told Mizzima that the training programmes ‘are part of the wider effort of the German Foreign office to foster respect for human rights, promote democracy and contribute to international conflict prevention’.
Fischer told Mizzima, ‘the German Foreign Office acts in full compliance with the restrictive measures of the European Union against Myanmar [Burma]. This of course also applies to our training programmes for junior foreign diplomats’.
The training programmes were held yearly in August and September.
Zin Lin, a vice-chairman of the Thailand-based Burma Media Association (BMA) told Mizzima that the German government’s claim that the training of Burmese diplomats would promote democracy was further complicated because the division of the training programme has been for the last three years headed by Dr. Peter Christian Hauswedell, a German official whose remarks following the monk-led protests in 2007 caused great controversy in the activist community.
Hauswedell, the programme director for Asia-Pacific International Diplomat Training at the Foreign Service Academy, led a delegation of European scholars to visit Burma that coincided with the protests that were violently suppressed by the military authorities. In an interview with Der Spiegel magazine published in October 2007, Hauswedell downplayed the violence used to repress the monks and their supporters. According to Hauswedell, ‘The generals only used violence with extreme restraint’.
Prior to working at the Foreign Service academy, Hauswedell was director-general for Asia and the Pacific at the German Foreign Office from 2002-2006. During that time, he had considerable involvement in Burma-related affairs and attended several high level international ministerial meetings devoted to Burma’s future.
In December 2007, Hauswedell wrote the introduction to a German language report published by the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation on the economic situation in Burma. In the preface, Hauswedell said that the EU sanctions policy towards Burma was a failure and should be abandoned, a position sure to raise the ire of the Burma activist community.
In a report summarizing the month-long 2009 diplomatic training seminar in which a Burmese diplomat took part, Hauswedell wrote, ‘Our training programme is especially valuable for states which subsequently decide to send the participants to work at their embassies in Berlin. By applying the knowledge they have gained from the course, alumni can thus contribute to the day-to-day work of the embassies’.
Many members of Burma’s exiled opposition have long held the belief that Burmese embassy staff are engaged in monitoring the activities of exiled dissidents and draw up blacklists of journalists and human rights activists who should be denied visa entry to their country.
Aung Lin Htut, a former deputy chief of mission at Burma’s embassy in Washington who sought asylum in the United States, told the Irrawaddy magazine recently that he and his colleagues spent a considerable amount of effort attempting to lift sanctions and sideline pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Khun Myint Tun, an NLD MP elected in 1990 who now lives in Thailand, told Mizzima that he doesn’t see 'how taking junta representatives to Airbus factories and expensive soccer games help human rights’.
The ethnic Pa-O politician who spent more than seven years in prison for boycotting the junta’s National Convention added, ‘If the German government really cares about human rights, they would support the creation of a UN commission of inquiry to investigate human rights abuses in Burma’.
Last November, a German government spokesperson told Mizzima that with regards to the call for a commission of inquiry ‘to ensure that this new initiative [the inquiry] is successful and has positive consequences, it is important to continue to monitor the situation and crucial to find some co-operation mechanism with the [Burmese] national authorities’.
In a preface to his organization’s most recent state of the world report, Human Rights Watch’s executive director Kenneth Roth criticized the German government spokesperson’s claim that a commission of inquiry needed the assistance of the Burmese regime to move forward. According to Roth, ‘obtaining such cooperation from the Burmese military in the absence of further pressure is a pipe dream’.
With evidence that some Burmese diplomats actively work to counter the democracy movement and dissent, questions hang over the German training programme for diplomats, small though the numbers may be.
Khun Myunt Tun told Mizzima that he and his NLD colleagues would write to the German government urging them to take a stronger stance with the Burmese regime and reconsider their diplomat training program.
According to Khun Myunt Tun, ‘If Germany wants to spend money on Burma they can help refugees or train doctors and nurses. This would be much better than helping [General] Than Shwe’s diplomats’.
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Shan committee member replaced
Thursday, 03 March 2011 22:06 Ko Wild
Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – A Shan Nationalities Democratic Party (SNDP) party MP who was selected as a member of the Public Account Committee (PAC) in the Lower House on Thursday was replaced by a MP from the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).
SNDP MP Sai Zaw Tun (Momauk) was replaced by USDP MP Moe Zaw Hein (Katha), said MPs who attended the session.
Speaker Thura Shwe Mahn announced 15 nominees for the PAC committee on the third day of the Lower House regular sessions, which have been devoted to organizing committees and apponting chairmen.
In the first announcement, two MPs from the SNDP, Sai Thiha Kyaw (Mai Ye) and Sai Zaw Tun (Momauk), were appointed to the committee.
A short while later, the speaker changed his mind and apponted an MP from the USDP, citing his desire to give equal numbers to other minority parties.
‘First we were surprised to see two MPs from the SNDP in the nominations. I think they thought Sai Zaw Tun was a USDP MP. Then they replaced him with an MP from the USDP to give equal numbers to other parties’, said an MP.
Sai Zaw Tun, 26, from Momauk, is the sole elected SNDP MP in Kachin State.
USDP MP Thurein Zaw was appointed chairman of the PAC. He served as a deputy minister in the National Planning and Economic Development Ministry and is a retired colonel, and a USDP MP from Min Hla constituency, Pegu Division Maung Toe, a USDP MP from Min Hla constituency in Pegu Division, was named PAC secretary.
Pac members are are Sai Thiha Kyaw aka Sai Hap (Mai Ye) from SNDP; Mahn Maung Maung Nyan (Pantanaw) National Unity Party (NUP) party and a former central committee member of Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP); Tin Nwe Oo (North Dagon Township), National Democratic Front (NDF); Khun Maung Thaung (Pinlaung), Pa-O National Organisation (PNO); Khun Lein (Falam), Chin Progressive Party (CPP); Soe Myint (Nyaunglaybin), (USDP); Kyi Tha (Gwa), USDP; Aung Mya Than (Nyaungdon), USDP; Hao Kham Man (Tunzan), USDP; Aung Lin Hlaing (Boakpyin). USDP; Dr. Win Myint (Hlaing), USDP; Mi Yin Chan (Kyaikmayaw), USDP; and Moe Zaw Hein (Katha), USDP.
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DVB News - Brothers in corruption: Maldives and Burma
By JOSEPH ALLCHIN
Published: 3 March 2011
Burma’s relationship with North Korea has proved a sensational story of how autocrats share their ill-gotten gains and maniacal plans. But as the Maldives comes to grips with its own autocratic past, the scale of the former dictator’s malpractice has astonished observers: what a UK-based accounting firm found when probing the rule of Maumoon Abdul Gayoom and his family was a corrupt nexus that went well beyond the white beaches of the Indian Ocean nation, and which implicates the Burmese junta in a massive international scam.
The accountants, Grant Thornton, discovered that the former president of the tiny island nation was receiving a large allocation of cut-price oil from the Muslim-dominated Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cartel, channelled through a Singaporean branch of the Maldivian State Trading Organisation (STO). The scale of the $US800 million fraud was noted by a Maldivian government official to be not significantly different to the GDP of that country, $US1.4 billion.
Ships carrying the oil from Singapore had records demonstrating that they embarked but never arrived in the Indian Ocean archipelago. Instead the vessels were selling on the bounty to international buyers on the black market, including Burma’s military junta.
Among the companies who did business with the Maldivians was Kanbawza Bank, owned by Aung Ko Win, who is close to Burmese vice-general Maung Aye. Perhaps the business was being done on behalf of Maung Aye.
Kambawza is no stranger to controversy, and was recently at the centre of a row over Burma’s flag carrier, MAI. The bank was started in Shan state by the then-unknown and apparently ‘asset-less’ teacher, Aung Ko Win, who happened to meet and befriend Maung Aye. From mysterious profits made in the Shan hills – once the world’s largest source of opium – the bank has grown to become one of the biggest and most important financial institutions in Burma.
The Maldives is given a special, cheap allocation of oil by OPEC because of the cartel’s preferential treatment for 100 percent Sunni Muslim nations, so the tiny island state under Gayoom would assume a far larger allocation of oil than the residents of the country needed.
Gayoom and his half brother, Abdullah Yameen, set up a joint venture called Mocom Trading Pvt. Ltd., incorporated in 2004, to sell this allocation from Singapore. It was a joint venture between Mocom Corporation Sdn Bhd, a Malaysian company, and the Maldivian State Trading Organisation (Singapore), of whom Yameen is also the chairman.
“STO Singapore appear to have purchased fuel from Shell Eastern, the Singapore Petroleum Company and Petronas, and then sold it to STO, its parent company, or to third parties,” the Grant Thornton audit says, indicating also that Mocom was set up specifically to sell diesel to Burma.
“STO Singapore wished to sell oil to Myanmar, however as Mocom had the contract, it was agreed that STO Singapore and Mocom would form a joint venture, known as Mocom Trading Pte Ltd, incorporated in Singapore.”
Indeed Mocom would have been enlisted specifically, being one of only four foreign companies, along with Korea’s Daewoo and Hyundai, and Malaysia’s Petronas, to supply Burma with petroleum products.
The allegations also allege that books were “fudged” so that proceeds from the sales could be illegally siphoned off.
“STO Singapore and Mocom Singapore each generated sales invoices addressed to Myanmar for each delivery showing the quantity of barrels delivered and the unit price. The content of the invoices are alike, except for the price per barrel,” the Grant Thornton report states.
It adds however that from April 2004, the oil shipments to Burma “appear to have been discharged in the Maldives instead of Yangon, as per the sales invoices” and that “shipments invoiced to Myanmar may have been delivered to a third party”.
Thus not only were the Burmese buying diesel that had been earmarked specifically for the Maldives by OPEC, but they appear to have been facilitating, through fraudulent paper work, its sale to other countries, thus allowing the Maldivians to cover their tracks.
The Gayoom family is said to be well connected in Burma and allegedly holds strong links with Lo Hsing Han and his family, who own the Asia World Group. The powerful conglomerate takes on many lucrative construction contracts, including the running of public infrastructure. Moreover the company was allegedly built on the back of drug profits, with the US government’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) terming Han “the godfather of heroin” and regional expert Bertil Lintner claiming “there is simply no other way” Asia World could have risen to its heights.
Indeed the Grant Thornton report indicates that several sanctions listed companies owned by Lo Hsing Han’s son and his Singaporean daughter in law, Cecilia Ng, were also doing business with the Maldivian STO. These companies include Golden Aaron and S H NG Trading Pte Ltd which, invoices show, were only actively trading with the STO in 2002. The audit says that from 2001 to 2002, “revenue increased dramatically” to $US78.8 million, and then began to fall after 2006.
Singaporean press in 2004 had indeed marvelled at how Golden Aaron, a mysteriously diverse and small company with a so-called specialisation in the import-export industry, could win large oil contracts in Burma.
The main vehicle for the scam, the Maldives STO, is 92.29 percent owned by the Maldives state. Its Singapore branch was formed in 1997 and is primarily used for the purchase of petroleum products in the City State from companies such as Petronas and Shell Eastern, but with the OPEC discount.
Its managing director from 1993 to 2008 was a man named Mohamed Maniku, of whom the audit reports: “We have reviewed various purchase invoices regarding [his] visits to Malaysia and Myanmar from the STO Singapore office, which clearly indicates that Mr Maniku was acutely involved in the STO Singapore oil strategy involving Myanmar and other third parties.” Indeed a trip to Burma was recorded in 1998, before which, on 30 April of that year, the Business Times reported him “seeking profitable international ventures”. This referred to an alleged lubricant deal with the Malaysia-based Stephen Hansford company.
This preceded a trip to the country he made roughly two weeks later with Yameen. According to the New Light of Myanmar, they stayed for three days between 10 and 13 May, meeting with the Myanmar Import Export services and agreeing to purchase “parboiled rice”.
The Gayoom regime, which had ruled the Maldives since 1978, was ousted in a 2008 election won by former political prisoner, Mohamed Nasheed. His tenure however left stains on the picturesque Indian Ocean archipelago that are only now being slowly tackled. Indeed as the Maldivian President’s Member on the Judicial Services Commission (JSC), Aishath Velezinee, told the Minivan News recently, “Leaders of the former administration are continuing with criminal activities they have allegedly been carrying out for a long, long time”.
He said that the raft of corruption allegations remained just allegations “because they have never come up before a court of law in all this time. There is widespread public perception that certain members of parliament are behind all the serious organised crime going on in this country. This includes serious drug issues, gang violence, stabbings. It is a much discussed issue, but it has never come up in the courts. I can see now that perhaps it may be true – otherwise why prevent the formation of an independent judiciary? I don’t think they would have confidence that they would get away free”.
Indian investigative journalist Sumon Chakrabarti, who is writing a book about the Gayoom years, believes that drugs are a “huge issue” in the Maldives and that “a generation was lost to heroin.”
The “eruption” of heroin there, as Gary Lewis of the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) puts it, seemingly occurred in two stages: Maldivian government sources estimate that the drug first became available in the Maldives in the 1990s, largely seen to be of Afghan or Pakistani origin. But Lewis states that ‘China White heroin’, the vast majority of which is produced in Burma and which a senior Maldivian journalist says is now “common” on the streets of the capital, Male, first appeared around 2003.
The date follows on the heels of the marriage between companies associated with Lo Hsing Han, SH Trading and Golden Aaron, and the Maldivian STO, as well as involvement from Kanbawza Bank, which is seen by economic commentators as an expert in the laundering business. Perhaps more pertinently, however, it’s also when “revenue increased dramatically”, as the audit notes.
The chairman of the STO, Yameen, has also been explicitly accused by the Maldivian parliament of involvement in the heroin trade.
Maldivian police refused to talk when contacted by DVB. Government officials, who requested anonymity, suggested they police be too scared to talk to the press, but noted that a large proportion of the country’s youths were heroin addicts.
In 2002 all the Burmese companies involved, from the military-run UMECH to Kanbawza Bank and the two Asia World-linked businesses, paid commission to a man of Burmese origin named Myint Lwin Oo – in Malaysia, however, he is known as Kamal Bin Rashid, as is one of the directors of Mocom. The money was paid to a United Overseas Bank account in his name in Singapore.
“It remains very unclear to us what STO Singapore’s role in the process had been, given that Mocom already had the contract to sell oil to Myanmar,” said the Grant Thornton audit. “It would have been more profitable for Mocom to set up a trading arm in Singapore and purchase the fuel itself, benefiting from all related profits.”
It continues that the post-2005 decrease in the STO’s revenue may have been down to a change in the organisation’s structure after it became a joint venture, but added that “It is unclear why STO Singapore paid commission to Mr Rashid [Myint Lwin Oo] and on what basis.”
So why did the Burmese companies, those associated with the narcotics industry, stop paying? Did payments go the other way as part of a “profitable international venture” of the STO’s then-director Maniku, and former chairman, Yameen?
The details of the Gayoom family’s legacy on the tiny island nation are unravelling, and more reports are expected. At present they ask more questions than they answer, but the unrivalled power of one autocrat is, it seems, here served by a close relationship with others, namely the Burmese, whose shared corruptions were worth hundreds of millions and which will take generations to fully recover.
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DVB News - Burma implicated in major oil fraud
By JOSEPH ALLCHIN
Published: 3 March 2011
An investigation in the Maldives has implicated the Burmese military and a number of private companies in an $US800 million money-laundering scam involving the sale of Maldivian cut-price oil.
The allegations were made after the Maldivian government in March last year hired a UK-based auditing firm called Grant Thornton to investigate the corruptive practices of former president and autocrat Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who left office in 2008.
The audit unearthed fudged accounts that showed that the unit prices of barrels of oil differed in invoices for different accounts, with one irregularity amounting to over $US5 million. A Maldivian government official who asked to remain anonymous told DVB that the total scale of the fraud was more than half the country’s GDP.
The scam, which can be read in full here, used a joint venture between the Singaporean subsidiary of the Maldivian State Trading Organisation (STO), set up by Gayoom’s half brother, Abdul Yameen, and a Malaysian company called Mocom, also based in Singapore. Amongst the management and directors of the joint venture were several people of Burmese origin, namely Gemyl Aung and Kamal Bin Rashid, also known as Myint Lwin Oo.
Ships carrying the oil from Singapore, which had been channeled through the two companies, had records demonstrating that they embarked but never arrived in the Indian Ocean archipelago. Instead the vessels were selling on the bounty to international buyers on the black market, including Burma’s military junta. The Burmese then helped hide the fraudulent transactions to create a “super profit”, as the Grant Thornton audit puts it.
The companies which show up on invoices seen by the auditors were the powerful Kanbawza Bank, which is owned by junta crony Aung Ko Win, the Golden Aaron Pte Ltd. and SH Trading, both owned by members of the same family which owns Asia World, namely Steven Law and his Singaporean wife, Cecilia NG. The junta parastatal company, the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings (UMEH), also appeared to have played a role.
The Singaporean police are reportedly investigating the situation, but failed to respond to DVB’s request for confirmation.
Both Gayoom and Yameen both strenuously deny the charges. Gayoom claims that the investigation is an attempt to “tarnish [his] reputation” following his party’s recent success in local elections in the Maldives. Yameen meanwhile described the charges as “absolute rubbish”, according to the Minivan News.
The Gayoom regime was unseated in a 2008 election and replaced by the government of Mohamed Nasheed, who had been a political prisoner under Gayoom. The former president had been Asia’s longest serving head of state after coming to power in 1978.
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DVB News - Bid for media freedom reignited
By AHUNT PHONE MYAT
Published: 3 March 2011
Ongoing imprisonment of journalists and a ban on media inside Burma’s new parliament has prompted opposition politicians to resubmit a bill demanding a relaxing of press laws.
Such is the extent of limitations on media in Burma that domestic publications are banned from covering debates by politicians and parliamentary representatives. The only footage that emerges from the chamber is taken by CCTV camera
Thein Nyunt, deputy chairman and a Nationalities Parliament representative for the opposition National Democratic Force (NDF), described media as the “fourth pillar of the country” but lamented the tightening noose around reporters’ necks.
“We have witnessed how much effort the [reporters] are putting in to cover the parliamentary sessions,” he said. “As a lawmaker, I am required to do what is worthwhile in the next parliament session.”
He said that he would meet with media workers prior to writing the proposal, which follows a similar submission on 3 February which lawmakers had yet to discuss.
The Burmese regime maintains one of the world’s strictest press environments, and last year ranked 171 out of 175 on the Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index. More than 20 media workers are in jail, some serving sentences of up to 27 years.
The former editor of the Myanmar Times, Ross Dunkley, is due to make his second appearance in court today. While the charges he faces relate to visa violations and the alleged assault of a female sex worker, observers say a power struggle at Burma’s only English-language daily may have been a significant factor in his arrest.
Dunkley has said in the past that some 20 percent of Myanmar Times articles submitted to the government’s censor board, a requirement under Burmese law, are rejected, throwing into sharp relief the problems that publications disobedient to strict instructions face.
Officials have said that the Australian national’s case may take up to three months. He is being held in a cell in Rangoon’s Insein prison.
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BURMA RELATED NEWS - MARCH 03, 2011
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AFP - Myanmar court mulls bail for Australian editor
AP - Myanmar suspends rice exports to control price
Sydney Morning Herald - Australian publisher in Burma seeks bail
Independent - Editor goes on trial as Burma's junta cracks down on media
Asian Correspondent - Burma’s Facebook revolution
Scoop.co.nz - UN: Myanmar and the Human Rights Council review
Strategy Page - China Is Your Special Friend
The Temasek Review - Migrant workers reveal hidden side of Singapore
Eurasia Review - Sino-Myanmar Relations And Its Impact On The Region
Asia Times Online - Fog lifts on Myanmar-North Korea barter
Business Recorder - Myanmar, Bolivia, Venezuela fail in drugs fight: US
Mizzima News - Germany offers Burmese diplomats training and football tickets
Mizzima News - Shan committee member replaced
DVB News - Brothers in corruption: Maldives and Burma
DVB News - Burma implicated in major oil fraud
DVB News - Bid for media freedom reignited
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Myanmar court mulls bail for Australian editor
2 hrs 4 mins ago
YANGON (AFP) – A Myanmar court agreed Thursday to consider a bail request from an Australian newspaper boss arrested in a high-profile case that some observers have suggested is the result of a power struggle.
Ross Dunkley, co-founder of the Myanmar Times, the country's only newspaper with foreign investment, appeared in Kamaryut Township court in handcuffs for a second hearing. He is accused of assaulting a 29-year-old woman.
"We will give a decision on the bail application after the next hearing on March 8," the judge said at the court, where lawyers from both sides questioned witnesses including nightclub staff, a taxi driver and Dunkley's neighbours.
Dunkley, who is also charged with breaching immigration rules, was arrested three weeks ago and is being held in Yangon's notorious Insein prison.
The woman, Khine Sar Win, last week asked for her complaint to be withdrawn, saying she was pregnant and unable to travel to court, but her request was rejected.
David Armstrong, a business partner in Cambodia, where Dunkley is a key shareholder in the Phnom Penh Post daily, said in a statement that he had been told all six prosecution witnesses in Thursday's hearing "gave evidence contrary to the woman's story".
He said in normal circumstances bail would not be granted for the immigration charge, however bail could be given if "it seems to the court that the accused may not have committed a crime," he added.
Armstrong has previously suggested the newspaper editor is the victim of a business dispute in military-dominated Myanmar.
His arrest "coincides with tense and protracted discussions" between the foreign and the domestic investors in the paper, Armstrong said in a statement shortly after Dunkley's arrest.
Dunkley, who has also worked in the media in Vietnam and Cambodia, co-founded the Myanmar Times in 2000 with local partner Sonny Swe, the son of an influential member of the junta's military intelligence service.
But Sonny Swe was jailed in 2005 and his 51 per cent stake in the paper's publisher Myanmar Consolidated Media (MCM) handed to Tin Tun Oo, who is believed to be close to the regime's information minister, in unclear circumstances.
While in jail Dunkley was last month replaced by Tin Tun Oo as chief executive of MCM, which is 49-percent controlled by the Australian and his foreign partners.
Tin Tun Oo told AFP on Thursday that there was no business dispute and said he had signed Dunkley's bail application to help his request.
"Ross's case is not linked to business or politics. I think it's just a personal matter," he added. "It's not true that it happened at my instigation. I will try to help him."
He said the ownership structure of MCM had not changed.
"So it is not true that this case happened because I wanted to take control of the business from Ross."
In his statement, Armstrong confirmed Tin Tun Oo had supported the bail application.
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Myanmar suspends rice exports to control price
Thu Mar 3, 6:49 am ET
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) – Myanmar has suspended rice exports in an effort to keep prices down while also grappling with higher fuel costs due to the turmoil in OPEC member Libya.
A rice exporter says the suspension began in the last week of February, and apparently seeks to ensure rice prices are not driven higher by shortages. He spoke on condition of anonymity because discussing the matter could draw official disapproval.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture had projected that Myanmar would export about 500,000 metric tons of rice this year, far behind neighboring top-exporter Thailand's 10 million tons, but enough to make it the world's 10th biggest exporter after Argentina and Brazil.
Myanmar's ruling junta, which is supposed to hand over power to an elected but military-dominated government soon, is aware that political unrest can be triggered by economic factors such as rising living costs.
The junta came into power in 1988 after violently suppressing vast pro-democracy demonstrations which followed discontent triggered by currency changes that invalidated most bank notes. Similarly, the roots of major protests in September 2007, also violently quashed, were in small-scale demonstrations demanding lower commodity prices after a knock-on effect from a sudden big rise in fuel prices.
Local fuel prices have recently gone up due to the unrest in Libya and other Arab countries, with a gallon of diesel fuel selling for 4,000 kyat ($4.55) this week, up 11 percent from the previous week.
As commodities such as food are distributed around the country, higher transport costs are reflected in the goods' final costs for consumers.
The government in the past held a monopoly on sales of fuel, which it also subsidized, but it privatized gas stations in June last year.
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Sydney Morning Herald - Australian publisher in Burma seeks bail
Ron Corben
March 4, 2011 - 12:29AM
AAP
Lawyers for Australian Ross Dunkley, publisher of the Burma-based Myanmar Times, has applied for bail during a court appearance over charges of breaching Burma's immigration laws and assault, company sources say.
Dunkley, 55, appeared at the Kamaryut Township Court on Thursday in Rangoon, where he has been held at Burma's notorious Insein prison since his arrest on February 10.
The bail application will be considered on March 8.
The case appears to have been tied to a fight for control of the Rangoon-based publishing company, Myanmar Consolidated Media (MCM), analysts say.
Dunkley and investors, including Australian mining magnate Bill Clough, hold a 49 per cent share in MCM.
The remaining 51 per cent share is held by Burmese businessman Tin Htun Oo.
An agreement was reached last month to appoint Htun Oo as chief executive officer and editor of the Burmese-language Myanmar Times.
Clough, also CEO of Twinza Oil, with a $30 million stake in Burma's oil industry, took up the post of acting managing director and editor-in-chief of the English-language version of the newspaper.
David Armstrong, chairman of Post Media, an investor in MCM, said the agreement reached marked a "compromise" between the foreign and Burmese shareholders.
Armstrong said in a statement Dunkley's bail application came with Htun Oo and another senior executive, U Wei Lin, applying to stand as guarantors.
Dunkley's lawyers have applied for bail on the basis of the weakness of the criminal case and on the ground that police filed the charge under the immigration law even though no court had found him guilty of an offence, he said.
Dunkley's lawyer, Saw Yan Naing, told The Irrawaddy online magazine the Australian faced two charges - breaching Burma's immigration laws and assault of a Burmese woman, translated as harassing a woman's dignity.
Saw Yan Naing said the trial could take three months. A guilty verdict on either charge could mean a prison term.
Armstrong said police had rejected an application by the woman to have the charges withdrawn.
The court heard testimony from six witnesses.
Armstrong expressed his support for Dunkley.
"I'm sure he's innocent of these charges," Armstrong told AAP.
Dunkley purchased a Cambodian daily, the Phnom Penh Post, in 2008 and had invested in media in Vietnam in the 1990s.
In 2000, he took a share in the Myanmar Times, which also publishes two Burmese-language magazines and employs more than 350 people.
Human rights activists say the fighting over control of MCM reflects the military's moves to tighten its grip on the media.
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Independent - Editor goes on trial as Burma's junta cracks down on media
By Phoebe Kennedy in Rangoon
Thursday, 3 March 2011
An Australian newspaper publisher accused of providing a mouthpiece for Burma's military junta goes on trial today after a dramatic fall from grace.
Ross Dunkley, 53, the editor-in-chief of the Myanmar Times, is languishing in a notorious Rangoon prison after being charged with immigration offences and drugging and assaulting a woman. He faces up to five years in prison if convicted, according his lawyer.
The brash, chain-smoking journalist was arrested at his home in the city on 10 February and has been held since in Insein prison, infamous for its atrocious conditions and the routine torture of political prisoners. Like other inmates, Mr Dunkley sleeps on a concrete floor, is forbidden to smoke, and must have food delivered to him if he is to eat anything other than stale rice.
His arrest came less than two weeks after the convening of Burma's new parliament, which followed the country's first elections in two decades.
Western governments denounced the elections as a sham, and the parliament as a puppet of the regime, but the generals may nevertheless be anxious to ensure their hold on power is not diminished by the new structure. The arrest of Mr Dunkley, the country's lone foreign publisher, could be a sign of nerves and may mark a tightening of already stringent restrictions on the media.
"During this transition from direct to slightly more indirect military rule, they want to make sure there is no opposition or criticism from any quarter," said Bertil Lintner, an expert on the region and author of several books on Burma.
Mr Dunkley, who founded the dual-language Myanmar Times (using the regime's official name for Burma) in 2000, has never been regarded as a critic of the regime.
His first Burmese business partner, Sonny Swe, was the son of a senior official in the powerful Military Intelligence, or MI, and the paper gained a reputation for being a propaganda arm of the spying department, which was headed by Prime Minister Khin Nyunt.
The good times lasted until 2004, when Khin Nyunt and MI were purged by the top generals, wary of their rising power.
Sonny Swe was thrown in prison but the straight-talking Mr Dunkley managed to persuade the junta to install a new partner, and the weekly paper, printed in English and Burmese, survived.
Exiled Burmese democracy activists have accused the newspaper of simply being a regime mouthpiece. But Mr Dunkley argued that the Myanmar Times, which employs about 350 people, could do more good working within the system. A former colleague who did not want to be named, said: "Ross did not have a showdown with the authorities over censorship – which he would most certainly have lost – but the less obvious contribution to training journalists could be considered just as important to the long-term development of a robust print media in Burma."
Mr Dunkley and his newspaper have had run-ins with the authorities before. In 2007, shortly before the failed uprising led by Buddhist monks, the Myanmar Times mistakenly published a bogus advertisement placed by a Danish group, which contained the concealed message "Killer Than Shwe", referring to the head of the Burmese junta.
Taking advantage of a slight relaxing in censorship in the run-up to last November's election, Mr Dunkley tried to prove his independence by giving ample space in the paper to opposition parties, and allowing an Australian TV documentary crew – who were later deported – to make a film about the Myanmar Times in the weeks before the vote.
Insiders say Mr Dunkley's regime-installed Burmese business partner, Tin Tun Oo, an election candidate for the military's proxy party, was angered by the election coverage, and hatched a plot to oust the Australian editor.
David Armstrong, a business partner of Mr Dunkley's in Cambodia, said: "The arrest coincides with tense and protracted discussions Mr Dunkley and the foreign ownership partners in the Myanmar Times have been conducting with local partners about the future direction of the publishing group, ownership issues and senior leadership roles – all this at a time of significant political and economic change (in Burma)."
Since his arrest, Mr Dunkley has been removed from his post as editor-in-chief of the Burmese-language version of the Myanmar Times and CEO of the company that owns the newspaper.
Both positions have been taken by Tin Tun Oo.
No News Today
Burma is 174th in Reporters Without Borders' Press Freedom index. Four countries are below it:
Iran Nearly 30 journalists in custody. The security services recently started checking content before publication for the first time since 1979.
Turkemenistan The state media is routinely criticised by the government for failing to be enthusiastic about reforms. Journalists risk death if they work independently.
North Korea Kim Jong-il controls the media with an iron fist. A number of journalists are said to have been sent to "revolutionisation" camps for making spelling mistakes.
Eritrea Under the regime of Ali Abdu, some 29 journalists are imprisoned; four more have died in prison since 2001.
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Asian Correspondent - Burma’s Facebook revolution
By Asia Sentinel Mar 03, 2011 11:34AM UTC
Activists denounce the dictatorship, writes Asia Sentinel’s Ba Kuang
In an attempt to emulate the democratic revolution in Egypt that was sparked by a Facebook campaign, a group of Burmese activists operating inside the country have set up a Facebook page dubbed “Just Do It Against Military Dictatorship.”
The social networking campaign denounces the country’s military dictatorship, calls for Burmese military chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe and his family to leave the country and urges the army to join with the people.
The campaign began on Feb. 13–just two days after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigned from office under pressure from protesters.
The Facebook page, now known simply as “JD,” has prompted the distribution of anti-government material in a number of places across Burma and raised security levels in Rangoon.
“We are not daydreaming,” said an activist in Rangoon who said he was a JD supporter. “No dictator can resist a popular movement, we know.”
The campaign has now received the support of over 1,000 activists in Burma, according to one of the organizers who declined to be named due to personal safety concerns.
The organizer told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday that JD supporters have distributed anti-government pamphlets in Mandalay, Burma’s second largest city, and in Taunggyi Township in Shan State.
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Scoop.co.nz - UN: Myanmar and the Human Rights Council review
Thursday, 3 March 2011, 9:48 am
Press Release: Asian Human Rights Commission
Myanmar: The problem of a U.N. member state disconnected from a normative framework: Myanmar and the Human Rights Council review
1. In a separate submission to this session of the Human Rights Council, the Asian Legal Resource Centre has analyzed how the Government of Myanmar recently treated the Universal Periodic Review process not as an opportunity for dialogue of the sort that the process envisages but as an opportunity to present an almost entirely fictionalized account of human rights conditions in its country. The ALRC explained that the reason for the government delegation's gross misrepresentations is not so much the consequence of a strategy to thwart the UPR process in Geneva, as it is the consequence of the disconnection of the government from any type of normative framework for the protection of human rights, international or domestic alike. Whereas the UPR process is premised upon the existence of a domestic framework for the implementation of normative international standards on human rights, in Myanmar, no such normative basis for the protection of rights exists. On the contrary, the Government of Myanmar's conceptualization of rights is that these are entitlements that can be extended or withdrawn according to circumstances. Consequently, gross misrepresentation of the human rights situation in the country is not so much strategy as it is inevitability.
2. In this submission, the ALRC considers the implications of this disconnect between the norms-based language and activities of the global human rights movement and the norm-less reality of a member state. This disconnect is not merely a disconnect between rhetorical aspirations and hard truth. It is a much more significant problem of the gap between a norms-based system and a norm-less one, and unless it is properly understood and accounted for in the work of the Human Rights Council and other international agencies, the many functional and technical proposals being put forward during the ongoing Council review process will have little if any relevance to the situation of human rights in Myanmar, or other countries with analogous conditions.
3. The problem of the gap between a norms-based international system and a norm-less domestic one is a difficult problem to approach and understand for people who have been trained in and are accustomed to norms-based systems, which is perhaps one of the reasons that it attracts relatively little of the debate about the work of the Council. However, the problem is often implicit in questions and exchanges about human rights issues in member states, such as those raised in the lead up to the UPR Working Group's tenth session, this January 2011. Two of the Government of Japan's questions to Myanmar were particularly interesting because of their implicit acknowledgement that the problem of systemic rights abuse in Myanmar is less a problem of refusal to engage with the standards of the international community, less a problem of engagement with international law, than it is a problem of engagement with domestic law, or rather, with any standards of law whatsoever. These questions ran:
"Although the Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar provides for the right of peaceful assembly and freedom of association, concerns over restrictions on such freedoms continue to be expressed in UN reports and resolutions. Likewise, the continued practice of arbitrary detention and torture, while prohibited by the Penal Code, has been raised as a matter of concern. We would like to request that the Myanmar Government explain how its understanding of the provisions laid out in its Constitution and Penal Code relates to the concerns and issues pointed out by the UN…
"What are the prospects for Myanmar becoming a signatory to the international conventions on human rights that it is currently examining, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Political Rights (ICESCR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the rights of the Child on the sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography? In this connection, we would also like to inquire as to why the Convention Against Torture and the Optional Protocol on the Convention on the rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict are not also under examination for signature by Myanmar."
4. While it is not correct to say that the constitution and Penal Code protect people in Myanmar from abuses of the sort mentioned by Japan, the first question is essentially correct in that it raises the basic problem of the government's routine failure to comply with its own domestic law. This is not merely a practical problem of the gap between what is on paper and what goes on in real life of the sort found to one degree or another in all jurisdictions. It is, rather, a consequence of the imperative for all institutions in Myanmar to follow instructions on the implementation of policy, irrespective of law. It is a consequence of the disengagement of the state in Myanmar with any firm concept of law, properly understood as the product of a legislature, for over two decades. The gap between domestic law and reality in Myanmar is not a simple consequence of practices that engender rights abuses; it is a matter of policy. This is a primary cause of chronic rights abuse in Myanmar, yet it is one that has not yet been properly or fully acknowledged by the Human Rights Council.
5. Where a state is as a matter of policy disengaged from any meaningful concept of law nationally, it can hardly be expected to engage with international law. Thus, as Japan indicates in the second paragraph, there is a vast gap between the development of human rights standards internationally and the recognition of these by the government of Myanmar. Decades after the rest of the world passed core covenants of the international bill of rights, Myanmar still has not joined them; and, while more and more countries in Asia join the Convention against Torture and introduce domestic legislation of varying quality to prohibit its use, Myanmar still has not seemingly even recognized the convention's existence. But the important point in coming to terms with this second type of engagement is the linkage with the first, since even where a state pretends to engage with law internationally, if it is not doing the same domestically then any such apparent engagement will have few or no practical consequences.
6. This incapacity to engage with basic norms for the protection of human rights at either an international or domestic level is manifest in the 70 recommendations "that do not enjoy the support of Myanmar" listed in the UPR Working Group's draft report on Myanmar (A/HRC/WG.6/10/L.7, 2 February 2011, paragraph 107). While rather awkwardly insisting that it is in compliance with international standards, the government rejected recommendations that included, among many others, the following:
a. "Amend the Constitution… in compliance with international human rights treaties and humanitarian laws (Denmark)";
b. "Begin a transparent and inclusive dialogue with all national stakeholders… aimed at reviewing and reforming all relevant national legislation to ensure that it is consistent with
international human rights law (Maldives)";
c. "Repeal laws that are not in compliance with international human rights law and review its legal system to ensure compliance with the rights to… a fair trial and respect for the rule of law (New Zealand)";
d. "Cooperate with the international human rights mechanisms and humanitarian agencies, specifically by issuing a standing invitation to the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council and allowing full and unhindered access to all persons in need of humanitarian assistance (Republic of Korea)";
e. "Take appropriate measures to end de-facto and de-jure discrimination with all minority groups (Pakistan)";
f. "Investigate and punish all cases of intimidation, harassment, persecution, torture and forced disappearances, especially against political dissidents, journalists, ethnic and religious minorities and human rights defenders (Uruguay)"; and,
g. "Seek technical assistance from United Nations to reform judiciary, to establish accessible judicial remedies as well as to alleviate poverty (Turkey)".
7. It would be difficult to understand why any government with a commitment to international standards would not in principle at least agree with any of the above non-specific recommendations. However, when a government has disengaged from human rights norms both in international and domestic law not only is it understandable that such recommendations would be rejected, but it is also imperative that they be rejected. For a government divorced from any normative framework for human rights, arbitrary, inconsistent and contradictory positions on human rights standards are both necessary and unavoidable. In the absence of adherence to any consistent set of standards, whether at home or abroad, there is no body of principles against which decisions can be made and policies applied. Decision-making is relativised and situation-specific; recommendations are accepted or rejected according to expediency.
8. The problem of what the U.N. can do with a member state that is disconnected from any normative framework for the protection of human rights urgently needs to be taken up in the ongoing Human Rights Council review process (in accordance with General Assembly resolution 60/251, 15 March 2006).
9. There have been some initiatives in the lead up to the review; however, many of the issues raised, such as at the Algiers retreat in February 2010, are technical in nature or concerned mainly with the inevitable politicization of the Council processes, rather than the more difficult problem of a member state operating according to an entirely different conceptualization of human rights than that on which the work of the international human rights system is premised, and one disconnected from any standards for the application of human rights not only at the international but also at the domestic level. Consequently, challenges facing the Council, such as the apparent ineffectiveness of special sessions, are discussed mainly in superficial terms, with reference to specific difficulties associated with specific identifiable outcomes, and without critical examination of possible underlying reasons for failure.
10. The problem that a norm-less state in a normative framework presents is also in part due to the confusion caused by apparently common language that disguises fundamental differences in conceptions, which are revealed only through careful study of circumstances and rhetoric. Although the discussions around the review acknowledge the importance of dialogue, they implicitly take any exchange of views to be a form of dialogue. They also presuppose that member states in the UPR process will in fact engage in frank discussion of their human rights problems and challenges. They fail to recognize and grapple with the problem of what happens when a member state, while apparently talking in the same language as the international community, in fact holds or expresses views that are profoundly contradictory to the values and human rights goals of the latter.
11. The most important problem for the Human Rights Council regarding Myanmar is not a functional problem, but a problem of understanding. The Council review process presents an opportunity for the Council to go into more significant conceptual and epistemological questions about how to engage with a member state that is disengaged from human rights standards both internationally and domestically. If the Council can couple its examination of procedural and technical issues with genuinely substantive questions of this nature, then the review process will yield fruit. If not, the Council will continue to offer little to people in countries like Myanmar, who lack avenues to address violations of their human rights not for want of the language of rights, but for want of a normative framework in which rights can be realized.
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Strategy Page - China Is Your Special Friend
March 3, 2011: The new democracy in Myanmar is very much the same old military dictatorship. The recent elections were rigged and the parliament is full of supporters of the generals. Thus the military has gotten 23 percent of the government budget for the next year. The generals expect to get more for their money, mainly because North Korea just lost a lot of its weapons customers with the overthrow of several Arab dictatorships. As a result, Myanmar can demand more for less from a desperate North Korea. The trade has been going on since 2007, when diplomatic relations were resumed with North Korea, and a barter trade (rice from Myanmar for weapons and other goods from North Korea) established. This avoided problems with international embargos on North Korean arms exports. Cargo ships coming from North Korea had cargos described as "cement" and "general cargo." These ships were unloaded in heavily guarded, military controlled, port areas.
The extra cash for the military is going to pay for new weapons from China and Russia. Later this month, Russia is expected to begin delivering 20 MiG-29 fighters that were ordered two years ago. Indian firms will provide maintenance and technical support. India has long used MiG-29s and has built an infrastructure to support this aircraft. While most Indians do not approve of the generals running Myanmar, they do appreciate the cooperation of the generals in defeating tribal separatists and communist rebels in India's northeast.
India is also building a road to connect with Myanmar in the northeast, to encourage trade and help build the economy in the thinly populated area that borders China and Myanmar.
China has replaced Thailand as the largest foreign investor in Myanmar. The Myanmar generals see China as their economic savior, and China is eager to have an ally so close to India. Increased maritime trade with Myanmar is but the beginning of a process that will lead to Chinese warships eventually operating out of Myanmar ports. This is a nightmare for India, which is trying to make nice with the Myanmar generals, in an attempt to halt the growth of Chinese influence, and presence, in the area.
February 27, 2011: A bomb exploded in the capital, wounding four people. No one took credit for it.
February 19, 2011: Tribal rebels in the east killed four civilians, during an encounter with troops.
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The Temasek Review - Migrant workers reveal hidden side of Singapore
March 3rd, 2011 | Author: Online Press
by Katherine Pohl
Everything in Singapore ticks over like clockwork. The metro train arrives every couple of minutes. The streets are clean. There is zero tolerance when it comes to corruption. Money is made, taller buildings are built and the wealth of the nation grows.
But behind the facade there is another force that keeps this island nation afloat – the more than 850,000 migrant workers that call Singapore home.
Each year thousands of women from across Asia travel to Singapore in search of a better life.
From Indonesia, the Philippines, Bangladesh and Burma they come in the hope of earning money as a maid that will help sustain their families back home.
But for many of these women the experiences are life-changing in the worst way possible.
In a small apartment block in Singapore, dozens of women sit in front of us. They all have a story to tell.
Judith Catoras, 36, has three children back home in the Philippines and is working to help send them to university. She has been working as a maid in Singapore for the same employer for the past three years.
She left her job after she was abused but cannot go into the details because it is before the court.
Another woman from the Philippines, Niza De La Cruz, 34, stands up eager to speak. She says her employer accused her of stealing by using the home telephone to call home.
Her employer never showed her the bill but her case is still being finalised.
As we are about to finish, Siti Mushorafah, 42, from central Java speaks up, telling us she left her employer because if she made a mistake, she would be beaten with a stick.
These women work up to 16 hours a day, rarely have time off and are beholden to their employers, who control their work permits.
Debt
Even before they set foot in Singapore, they are often in debt to their employer or a recruitment agent.
In the world of the migrant worker, the employer has the final say.
We are only just scratching the surface at the women’s shelter and there are many more women who have suffered abuse at the hands of their employers, often from the woman in the household who they ironically call their ‘mother’. In some situations, it sounds like modern-day slavery.
These stories are not confined to Singapore. In Malaysia, we meet with a migrant workers’ organisation and I leave the meeting feeling overwhelmed and depressed at the state of human nature.
While most workers enter Singapore legally, about half of Malaysia’s migrants are undocumented.
We are told about child labour in plantations, forced prostitution, baby trafficking, mail-order brides, sex trafficking and fishermen who in some cases spend years out on trawlers.
As we drive around Kuala Lumpur in the evening, you can see workers on construction sites, high up in partly built apartment blocks with no safety gear. A friend tells me they are mostly Bangladeshis and often work all night.
In developing countries, it is the poor who are the most vulnerable. In places like Singapore and Malaysia, migrant workers are left out to dry.
Refugee advocates believe some responsibility should fall to other countries in the region, like Australia.
One woman tells us that while the Australian Government has contributed a lot in funding to migrant causes in the region, she does not believe the country takes an empathetic position.
She says the Australian Government’s stance on refugees provides countries like Malaysia with an excuse not to sign conventions._*This article is from a three-part series exploring development challenges. Read the instalments on Indonesia and Malaysia.*__Katherine Pohl visited Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore as part of an Asia Pacific Journalism Centre fellowship.
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Eurasia Review - Sino-Myanmar Relations And Its Impact On The Region
Written by: SAAG
By C. S. Kuppuswamy
Though engaging with Myanmar may be part of China’s overall economic offensive as a “soft power” in the South East Asian region, its relationship with Myanmar is on a special footing because of strategic and geo-political reasons, particularly the access to the Indian Ocean. China is also known to protect the rogue states of the world which includes Myanmar along with the likes of Sudan, Iran and North Korea. Energy Security is another important factor for China to cultivate Myanmar with its abundance of natural gas. China is involved in over 62, hydro, oil, gas and mining projects in Myanmar.
“Beijing’s influence in Burma may be waning but its political leverage over Naypyidaw is still greater than that of the US and EU combined” writes Ko Ko Thett (The Irrawaddy, September 11, 2010). The US is concerned over China’s activities in SE Asia and the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) met in February 2010 and again on January 26.2011 to study the implications for US interests in the region. The Barrack Administration has also started realigning in its policy over South East Asia in general and Myanmar in particular.
“paukphaw” Relationship of Sixty Years
The relationship between China and Myanmar is often referred to in Burmese language as “paukphaw” (fraternal). China and Myanmar celebrated the 60th anniversary of their diplomatic relations in June 2010 when Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visited Myanmar. Myanmar (Burma) was one of the first countries to recognize the PRC on Dec. 17, 1949 and established diplomatic ties on June 8, 1950. In 1954 China, Myanmar and India jointly proclaimed the Panchsheel (or the five principles of co-existence) which became the basis for international relations and was adopted by the Non-Aligned Movement. These principles were included in the Sino-Burmese Joint Declaration of 29 June 1954.
This sixty-year relationship has progressed steadily with frequent exchange of high level visits. China was perhaps the sole country which did not condemn the crackdown on the pro-democracy uprising in Myanmar 1988. Myanmar reciprocated identically on the Tiananmen incident in 1989. Since then China has been supporting Myanmar, diplomatically, economically and militarily and has recently surpassed Thailand as the largest investor in Myanmar.
On the negative side, China was supporting the Communist Party of Burma from 1968 to 1985. The relations were marred in 1967 when there were anti-Chinese riots in Yangon and the Chinese embassy was stormed. There was a setback in the relations in August 2009 when the Myanmar military action in Kokang close to Chinese border caused an influx of over 30,000 refugees into China
Diplomatic Relations
In the last 60 years of diplomatic relations between these two countries, China has used pressure, persuasion, economic and military assistance, and protection from the international community for the military regime in order to achieve its strategic and economic goals.
“China’s action at the UNSC (exercising the veto power) underscores its confirmed position as Burma’s most valuable ally. Since the early 1990s Burma has viewed China’s veto power at the UN as its ultimate insurance policy against an East-Timor-Style international intervention” — Kanbawza Win (Burma Digest – 13 January 2011). If the sanctions of the West had no impact on the military regime it was all due to the whole hearted support of China though it had its own vested interests. China has stood by the military regime, at the time of pro-democracy uprising in 1988. China had supported the former primer Khin Nyunt (an ethnic Chinese) and had high hopes on him to help its influence over Myanmar and hence was upset when he was purged (2004).
Though the military rule suited China, it’s attitude towards Myanmar seems to have undergone a change since 2006. Some analysts are of the view that China had exerted pressure on the military junta to move towards political reforms and adopt a less confrontational course with the UN. China hailed the multiparty elections held in November 2010, which was condemned by most of the western nations. It has also felicitated Myanmar for convening the parliament on 31 January 2011 after two decades and thereby completing its road map to democracy. China was the first to commend Myanmar’s new leadership. President Hu Jintao sent his congratulations within hours (on February 4, 2011) to Thein Sein who was appointed president.
China and Ethnic Groups of Myanmar
China has a 2192 km long land border with Myanmar in the Kachin & Shan states where some of the major ethnic armed groups are present with some major tracts under their control. The major groups are the United Wa State Army (UWSA), Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO) and National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA). Some of these groups are ethnic Chinese. China’s main concern is stability on its border and economic development of the landlocked inland states.
Since 1985 when China stopped supporting the CPB, these groups are not getting any moral or material support from China but are looking up to China for negotiation or mediation with the military junta in helping their cause. These ethnic groups entered into a ceasefire at the first instance under pressure or advice from China. The ethnic nationalities are aware that China’s support is provisional and driven by its own economic and security interests.
Since April 2009, the ethnic armed groups are under pressure to disarm and transform into border guards. The military junta was aiming to achieve this transformation prior to the elections in November 2010 which did not materialise.
China was taken by surprise when the military junta launched an attack against the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance (the Kokang Group) in August 2009 that forced over 20,000 Kokang residents (ethnic Chinese) to flee into China. Hence China is apprehensive that the military junta may attempt such ventures with other armed groups on its border to enforce them to disarm and transform into border guards.
There is divergence between Beijing and Kunming in their interaction with the ethnic groups. Most border groups interact directly with the Yunnan government. This is mainly due to the provincial (Yunnan) government’s desire to expand the trade opportunities, while Beijing is more worried about the security of the border areas.
China has a key role to play in the future of these cease fire agreements. Till now China has manipulated both the ceasefire groups and the military junta to negotiate to ensure peace on its border and economic development of the neighbouring provinces.
Military Assistance
The armed forces of Myanmar have grown exponentially since 1988. Analysts are of the view that the expansion is not based on the fears of external threat but more because of the continuing civil war with ethnic armed groups and inhibition for national reconciliation with the pro-democratic opposition groups.
Most of the military equipment that Myanmar has is from China. Though there are no definite figures, it is estimated that under an arms deal in the early 1990s China had supplied US $ 1 to 2 billion worth of arms under which Myanmar acquired Chinese made F-7 jet fighters, naval patrol boats, tanks, armed personal carriers, light arms, anti-aircraft guns and missiles, ammunition and other logistic and transportation military equipment. China undertook to train Myanmar’s air force and army personnel. Another US $ 400 million worth of arms were supplied in 1994. Besides training armed forces officers, seats were earmarked for the Myanmar officers in the Chinese Staff Colleges.
Though the Myanmar armed forces were not happy with the quality of the arms supplied to them, they had no choice since no other country had come forward to meet their requirements and secondly they were supplied to them under “friendship prices” with interest free loans.
From 2002-2004, China trained Burmese Navy officers and conducted joint naval exercises along Burma’s Southern Coast.
In 2003, China helped Myanmar by building an 85 metre jetty along with reconnaissance and electronic intelligence system on the Coco Island, close to India’s Nicobar Island.
The first ever port call to Myanmar by the Chinese Navy was in end August 2010 when two Chinese warships (Guangzhou and Caogu class) visited Rangoon’s Thilawa port and were docked there for five days. These ships were on their way home after participating in international piracy efforts in the Gulf of Aden.
Recently (2010) the Myanmar air force acquired 50 K-8 Karakorum jet fighters from China.
Since the 1990’s China has been assisting Myanmar in modernisation of the Myanmar naval facilities at Hainggyi Island, Great Coco Islands, Akyab, Kyaukpyu and Mergui, all in the Bay of Bengal.
Bilateral Trade
Chinese commodities account for 80 per cent of Myanmar’s imports. A media report indicates that out of 20 billion dollars of foreign investment for big projects that have come up since 1988, China’s share is 12.3 billion dollars.
“Chinese investment and trade in Myanmar is growing dramatically. The amount of Chinese investment between April and August 2010 was two thirds of China’s total investment in the country over the past two decades. Chinese companies have invested $8.17 billion since March 2010 alone, including $ 5 billion in hydropower, $ 2.15 billion in the oil and gas sector and $997 million in mining. Accompanying this increase in Chinese investment is fast growth in bilateral trade in the first four months of 2010, it jumped 76.8 percent. Total trade in 2009 climbed by 10.7 percent, a figure expected to continue to rise sharply in 2010. While trade is increasing, so is Myanmar’s trade deficit with China. In the first four months of 2010, China exports were four times the amount of those from Myanmar.” – International Crisis Group update briefing dated 21st September 2010.
China’s imports from Burma are timber, teak, gem, seafood, marble, coal and nickel.
China exports to Burma are electronic devices, heavy construction machines, electric cables, communication equipments, household appliances, chemical, medicines and agricultural machine and technology. Burma plans to export to China 596 items, including meat, diary products, fruits and vegetables.
China is Myanmar’s second largest trading partner for long and the top investor now. China is already Myanmar’s top provider of Foreign Direct Investment.
Oil and Gas
According to a report of Earth Rights International, 16 Chinese oil companies were invested in Myanmar in 2008. Since then more companies must have entered into the fray.
Pipeline — China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), China’s largest oil company, is constructing a dual oil and gas pipeline from Myanmar’s western coast to China’s Yunnan Province. Within Myanmar the Company will build a 793 km – long gas pipeline and a 771 km – long crude pipeline. The construction of the pipelines officially started on June 3, 2010 after premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to Myanmar.
In a related project China’s Qingdao Port has signed an agreement with CNPC to build and operate a wharf in the Arakan Coastal town of Kyauk Phyu in Myanmar. The deep sea port of Kyauk Phyu is also being developed by China. It is estimated China will annually Channel 22 million tons of oil and 12 billion cubic metres of gas to Yunnan Province from this wharf at Kyauk Phyu.
Exploration — According to a Reuters report (January 6, 2011) Myanmar has been exploring oil/ gas in 49 onshore and 26 offshore blocks. Media reports indicate that Sinopec International Petroleum (SIPC) has discovered proven reserves of 909 billion cubic feet of gas 7.16 million barrels of concentrate in Pathilon field (central Myanmar) and in Mahutaung region (520 miles northwest of Yangon) with a capacity of 2.1 million cubic feet per day. Sinopec has been exploring oil and gas in Myanmar since 2004. A Xinhua new agency report of Jan 2007 indicated that China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) has signed production sharing contracts with the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise for oil and gas exploration in a number of onshore and offshore blocks.
Hydro Electric Projects
In February 2010 Myanmar’s Ministry of electric Power and the Chinese companies signed an agreement for the Upper Salween (Kunlong) Hydropower project with a projected energy – generating capacity of 2400 kilowatts. This is close to the Chinese border and the area occupied by the UWSA.
The Irrawaddy (31 January 2011) reports that almost all of the electricity expected to be generated by hydropower dams now under construction in Myanmar will be sold to China and Thailand, with just one per cent going to domestic consumers. The report adds that Chinese companies are involved in all but one of 21 major dam projects currently underway in Myanmar. A project report on the impact of these dams on rivers in Myanmar indicates that “since China is the main investor in the dam projects, it will receive most of the electricity. China will get 48 %, while 38 % will go to Thailand and 3 % to India. Only 1 % will be available for domestic consumption”.
The biggest project is the Myitsone dam in Kachin state where China Power Investment has reportedly invested 120 billion RMB with the output expected to surpass the Three Gorges Dam. This Chinese project has been criticised by many human rights groups for having displaced over 15000 locals, depriving them of their livelihood and altering the bio-diversity of the area and the river.
Airport Construction
A Chinese company has been entrusted with the construction of an airport near Nay Pyi Daw, the capital of Myanmar. The work started on this project in 2009 and is expected to be completed in early 2011. China Communications Construction (CCC), has invested over US $ 100 million in this project for which the total outlay is around US $ 250 million.
Rail Links
A proposal is under construction for a 1920 km rail link between Kunming, the capital of China’s Yunnan Province and Yangon, with plans to extend the line up to Tavoy where a major port development project of Thailand is coming up.
There are also plans to construct a railway line along the dual gas and oil pipeline (already under construction) linking Kyauk Phyu in the Arakan state and Kunming.
A rail link running through Shan state from Kunming to the Thai town of Chiang Rai is being planned. This link will be connected to the Thai rail network.
Media reports indicate that two more rail links between the Chinese town of Dali with Myitkyina and Lashio are being planned.
China has also agreed to upgrade Myanmar’s rail stock.
Drugs
One of the major concerns of China in its relations with Myanmar, is the drugs flowing into Yunnan (China) especially through the Ferry crossings on the Mao-Ruli river that serves as the boundary between China and Myanmar in this area. A report of the UN office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) indicates that much of the drugs move into China from the three self-administered regions in the Shan state of Myanmar.
Loans & Aids
Between 1962 and 1994 China gave Burma roughly $62.5 million aid (Genser Jared. Testimony to U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. August 3, 2006)
Consequent to Senior General Than Shwe’s visit in 2003, China offered Myanmar a preferential loan of US $200 million and a US $6.25 million grant.
In 2005, China has committed US $100 million in aid to Burma (Japan Focus, 2006).
In June 2006, China publicly agreed to provide Burma with a special low-interest loan of $ 200 million for five unspecified government ministries. (Genser, Jared. Testimony to U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, August 3, 2006).
In 2009 Myanmar had received a loan of US $ 1.2 billion for economic development and information technology development.
The Irrawaddy (September 21, 2010) reports that China has agreed to give Myanmar a 30 billion Yuan (US $ 4.2 billion) interest free loan during the visit of Senior general Than Shwe to China (September 7-11, 2010). “The 30 year loan is intended to help fund mass hydropower projects, road construction, rail development and information technology development”.
A Chinese media report indicates that on 28 January 2011, the Ministry of Finance and Revenue of Myanmar and the Export-Import Bank (Exim bank) of China had signed agreement on bank loans for mutually beneficial cooperation and for a project concerning new air port at Nay Pyi Taw.
Telecommunications
According to the country’s Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, most CMDA phones used in Burma are imported from a Chinese company called Huawei Co. Ltd.
Roads
China is involved in renovating the Stilwell road constructed during the Second World War. According to the The Telegraph, the road which stretches from Myitkyina to Pangsau near the Indian border will be rebuilt by the Yunnan Construction Engineering Company in a joint venture with Burma’s Yuzana group.
A China-Myanmar-Bangladesh tri-nation road network is under consideration.
The “Irrawaddy Corridor” which envisages establishment of road links between China’s Yunnan Province with Myanmar and a railway connection between Kunming (China) and Lashio (Northern Myanmar) will help the economic development of China’s SW provinces (Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan).
Chinese Population in Myanmar
According to a media report, Myanmar is home to more than two million Chinese nationals without taking into account the illegal Chinese population in the border areas especially in areas occupied by ethnic armed groups and those involved in illegal border trade in and around Ruili, the border town in the Yunnan state. In the city of Mandalay alone there are over 200,000 Chinese, who control the business in the city with the Chinese currency and with direct contacts with Kunming (Yunnan Province). This is an additional source for economic gains to China from Myanmar.
Impact of the Sino-Myanmar Relations on other Countries
ASEAN: In the early 90s, Thailand also a neighbouring country of Myanmar was becoming wary of China’s strategic inroads into Myanmar. ASEAN was also worried about the increasing influence of China over the other countries in the region. To balance this and to adopt a common strategy towards China, ASEAN (under Thailand’s insistence) decided to accept Myanmar and Laos as members of the grouping in 1997 and Cambodia in 1999.
Since then ASEAN has resorted to “constructive engagement” with Myanmar (despite pressure from US) and the member nations also increased their diplomatic and trade relations with Myanmar.
However China-ASEAN relations have greatly improved in the last decade or so.
European Union (EU): The European Union has adopted a similar position to that of the US in imposing sanctions. The EU has exerted pressure more on ASEAN to use its influence for effecting political reforms in Myanmar.
The Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), which strongly favoured sanctions, is now divided because countries like France and Germany have begun to have economic engagement with Burma.
Japan: The Japanese government’s policy is to put peer pressure on the intransigent regime by means of restrictive economic cooperation with support from the international community. It has been refraining from providing large-scale official development assistance in the form of yen denominated loans since 1988, while extending comparatively generous humanitarian assistance. Safely stated, Japan’s policy toward Myanmar is one of “constructive engagement”.
Cut aid to Burma in October 2007.
India: One of the reasons for the “volte face” in India’s policy on Myanmar, from the ideal to the pragmatic, was Myanmar’s increasing tilt towards China. India has figured that China was making friends with all neighbouring countries of India to contain the rise of India in the region with the strategy being called as “the string of pearls”. As part of its “Look-East” policy India raised the level of interaction with ASEAN in general and Myanmar in particular. It suited Myanmar to have India on its side to counter balance its total dependence on China for all its military and economic needs. There was frequent exchange of visits even at the level of the head of state. India had also played the “Buddhist” card for cementing the relations.
With a 1642 km land border with Myanmar on India’s eastern flank and China getting an access to Indian Ocean through Myanmar, it was strategically important to improve relations. The security of the North-East was also being endangered from the Indian insurgent Groups operating from Myanmar soil. Myanmar could also act as a land bridge for the economic development of the North-East. These factors along with the abundance of Gas available in Myanmar has egged India to maintain close relations.
However, India cannot offset China’s influence over Myanmar with all the economic and military assistance provided by China and the diplomatic protection it has given to Myanmar so far.
U.S.: US interest in Myanmar declined after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Cold War. The attitude towards Myanmar worsened after the 1988 democracy uprising. Since 1990 it has followed a policy of imposing economic sanctions which have hardened over the years.
Stanley A Weiss writes that Washington’s Burma policy has isolated Washington and not Burma. “It is time to engage Myanmar as the real issue in Myanmar lies in the business sector. This is where Yankee ingenuity can lead by example.”
In February 2009, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton announced a comprehensive review of US policy towards Myanmar primarily to contain the Chinese influence in Myanmar and the region. Since then the Obama administration has decided to engage the military junta diplomatically, while strictly enforcing the sanctions. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell visited Myanmar in November 2009 and met the military leaders and Aung San Suu Kyi. Campbell and his deputy Scot Marciel are the highest level American dignitaries to visit Myanmar since 1955
The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission held a lengthy hearing on China’s activities in South East Asia in February 2010 and again in January 2011.. Concern about China’s rising influence and implications for the US interests in this strategic region were analysed. China has surpassed the US as ASEAN’s third largest trading partner, behind the EU and Japan.
Post Suu kyi’s release the US has made no headway despite the conduct of the elections and formation of a “civil” government in Myanmar.
Conclusion
The basis on which the Sino-Myanmar relations have progressed in the last decade or so is the joint statement signed in June 2000 between the Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan and Foreign minister U Win Aung on “Future Cooperation in Bilateral relations between the People’s Republic of China and Federation of Myanmar.
If the Sino-Myanmar relations have prospered and gained strength over the years, the prime cause has been the US attitude towards Myanmar with its obsession, for democracy and human rights, for release of Aung San Suu Kyi and the imposition of economic sanctions that have become harsher over the years. The EU adopting a similar stance has further contributed to this cause.
China’s Myanmar policy has been in accordance with its overall policy towards a stable external environment for its own modernization and development.
“By the year 2050, China is expected to achieve world-class blue water naval status, and Myanmar would be crucial for China’s multi-directional access to both Pacific and Indian Ocean”—Lixin Geng of Yunnan University
Myanmar’s significance to China both from the strategic and economic point of view can be summed up as under:
Myanmar’s location at the tri junction of South Asia, South East Asia and China
Myanmar providing an access to the Indian ocean
Strong ties with Myanmar help China to contain the influence of India and other powers in South East Asia.
Myanmar acts as a “land bridge” for the economic development of its South Western States.
The abundance of natural gas and hydro electric power that is made available to China
China will not be dependant of on Malacca Straits for transportation of oil and gas from the Middle East once the pipelines through Myanmar are ready.
Myanmar is pivotal to the development of the Greater Mekong Subregion.
The political instability and the continuing civil war with the ethnic groups in Myanmar have also helped China to improve the relations to its advantage.
There have been a few instances when the relations between these two nations have been strained or had a set back. In 1949 the presence of the Kuomintang (KMT) troops in Shan State posed a threat to Myanmar’s security. There was an anti-Chinese riots in Yangon in 1967. The Chinese support to the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) till 1985 was a major irritant. Recently Myanmar’s military attack on the Kokang Group in August 2009 resulting in a large influx of refugees had ruffled the Chinese administration.
From Myanmar point of view, to avoid the impact of the sanctions, it had no recourse except to improve the relations with China especially when the help was forthcoming. China’s diplomatic protection with its veto power and condoning the anti-democratic policies has made Myanmar bounden to China. With some major ethnic armed groups on the border areas with China, Myanmar needs the support of China to settle with these groups. China has scant regard for human rights and regards national reconciliation in Myanmar as an internal issue.
Myanmar is highly sensitive about its sovereignty. Despite all the bonhomie exhibited it is wary and cautious in pursuing its relations with China. Myanmar would not like to be cowed down by China’s diplomatic and economic pressure or military might.
China’s image in the eyes of the common man in Myanmar, especially in ethnic controlled areas, has been tarnished over the years as the benefits that accrue to them from the
Chinese ventures are minimal, as China brings its own labour instead of employing the locals, as the locals have often been displaced and deprived of their livelihood without adequate compensation.
Myanmar by conducting the elections and installing a seemingly “civilian” government is hoping for the West to ease the sanctions. The recent change in US policy to engage with Myanmar without lifting the sanctions is a shot in the arm for Myanmar. To overcome its excessive dependence on China, it has started buying military hardware from other countries like Russia and Korea. With this aim Myanmar is also improving relations with India, Thailand and ASEAN countries.
Myanmar is a staunch ally of China due to circumstances, while China is Myanmar’s ally by design. If the relations between China and Myanmar are very sound it is for mutual benefit – for China to achieve its national goals and ambitions and for Myanmar (the military leadership) to consolidate its own power and rule the country.
As of now, it is inevitable even for the “civilian” government now in power to maintain the strong relations with China.
(This paper is based on the presentation made at an interaction session on 26.02.2011 at the Observer Research Foundation, Chennai)
About the author:
SAAG is the South Asia Analysis Group, a non-profit, non-commercial think tank. The objective of SAAG is to advance strategic analysis and contribute to the expansion of knowledge of Indian and International security and promote public understanding.
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Mar 4, 2011
Asia Times Online - Fog lifts on Myanmar-North Korea barter
By Bertil Lintner
BANGKOK - With the Middle East and North Africa in turmoil, North Korea risks losing some of its oldest and most trusted customers for military hardware. Pyongyang has over the years sold missiles and missile technology to Egypt, Libya, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, Syria and Iran, representing an important source of export earnings for the reclusive regime. The growing uncertainty among those trade partners could explain why North Korea is now cementing ties with a client much closer to home: military-run Myanmar.
In April 2007, North Korea and Myanmar resumed diplomatic relations. Those ties were after North Korean agents planted a bomb in the then capital of Yangon in October 1983, killing 18 high-ranking South Korean officials who were on a visit to the country. Only days after the restoration of diplomatic ties, a North Korean freighter, the MV Kang Nam I, docked at Thilawa port, 30 kilometers south of Yangon.
Officials claimed at the time that the ship docked to seek shelter from a storm. However, two local reporters working for a Japanese news agency were turned back and briefly detained when they went to the port to investigate, indicating that there could have been other, more secret reasons for the Kang Nam I's arrival.
The same ship was put on global radar in June 2009 when it was pursued by the USS John S McCain and then reversed course. It was believed that it was on its way back to Myanmar with more unspecified cargo. Military observers tied the Kang Nam 1 incidents to the arrival of another North Korean ship, MV Bong Hoafan, at a Myanmar port in November 2006 before the resumption of diplomatic relations. Curiously, it was also reported to have been "forced" to seek shelter at a Myanmar port because of "adverse weather conditions".
An Asia Times Online investigation has found that those were not isolated incidents. Shipping records from Myanmar show that North Korean ships have been docking regularly at Thilawa and Yangon ports for almost a decade. Even the ill-fated Kang Nam 1 had docked in Myanmar long before the 2007 and 2009 incidents. The ship made its first voyage to Myanmar in February 2002, carrying what was declared as "general cargo," according to the shipping records.
North Korean shipments are almost invariably specified as "general goods" and sometimes "concrete", but both in and outgoing cargo is usually handled by Myanmar's Ministry of Heavy Industry 2, which supervises the country's defense industries, the armed forces' Directorate of Procurement, and the military's own holding company, the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings (UMEH).
When the MV Bochon, another North Korean ship, arrived at Thilawa in October 2002, the Myanmar military's high command sent a document marked "top secret" to the port authorities, requesting them to clear the entire docking area for "security reasons". They were also advised, according to the shipping records, that some "important cargo" would be offloaded within 36 hours.
When the MV Chong Gen approached Thilawa on April 12, 2010, it asked for permission to fly a Myanmar flag instead of its North Korean one, according to the shipping records. The captain also requested a Myanmar SMC card (smart media card) for a mobile phone, along with coastal charts. These were odd requests for a ship that was officially carrying 2,900 tons of cement and 2,105 tons of "general goods" from the North Korean port of Nampo.
Bizzare barter
Indeed, the requests made by North Korean ships traveling to Myanmar have often been outright bizarre. MV Du Man Gang appears to be one of the most regular North Korean visitors at Thilawa. On one of its many trips to Myanmar, in July 2009 it asked for 150 crates of Myanmar brandy. In March 2010, when another North Korean ship, the MV Kan Baek San, arrived in Myanmar, the North Korean ambassador asked for an unspecified quantity of Myanmar vodka to be sent to the ship, according to the shipping records.
The involvement of North Korean diplomats in these shipments is otherwise more convoluted. In September 2009, the MV Sam Il Po docked at a smaller terminal in Yangon and both the North Korean ambassador Kim Sok Chol and defense attach้ Kim Kwang Chol were present to inspect the cargo along with Lt Col Thein Toe from the Myanmar military. The unspecified cargo was received by UMEH, which in return supplied 1,500 tons of rice which was taken back to North Korea.
That was not the only incident when North Korean freighters returned with Myanmar rice. The MV So Hung arrived in November 2008 with 295 tons of material for the Ministry of Defense and left with 500 tons of rice. When the MV Du Man Gang docked in July 2009 it left with not only brandy but also 8,000 tons of rice. In June 2010, the MV An San arrived with 7,022 tons of what was alleged to be "concrete" and left in July with 7,000 tons of rice.
All this seems to confirm what diplomatic observers have long suspected: that Myanmar and North Korea, two countries with limited access to bank and other international financial trade facilities, are engaged in barter trade. Myanmar's ruling generals want more weapons but often don't have the foreign funds handy to pay for them - or at least they don't want such transactions to show up in their bank records. North Korea, meanwhile, is starved for food and likewise lacks the finances to pay for imports.
When money is involved in North Korea-Myanmar trade, transactions are always done in cash and thus untraceable. Like all other ships, North Korean ones have to pay port fees in Myanmar. The MV Du Man Gang, for instance, asked to pay US$30,994 in cash rather than make a bank transfer. Other ships have made similar requests which has led to speculation about the kind of currency the North Koreans, notorious for counterfeiting US dollars, may be using.
Large quantities of counterfeit US notes have recently shown up in areas around Myanmar. In July and August 2009, a customer tried to change U$10,000 in fake notes at the State Bank of India's main office in Imphal, Manipur. The fake bills were all of the US$100 denomination and of excellent quality, according to sources. It was the first such incident in Manipur. Although it is not clear whether the bogus notes were printed in North Korea, Imphal is located just over 100 kilometers from Moreh, an Indian town opposite Myanmar's Tamu where a virtually unregulated border trade is booming.
Trade between North Korea and Myanmar is also apparently being done through front companies. In June 2010, the North Korean freighter MV Ryu Gong arrived with 12,838 tons of what was also described as "cement". While the shipment was handled by the Ministry of Heavy Industry 2, the stated recipient was a little-known company known as Shwe Me, or "black gold" in Myanmar.
Port documents show that the company has nearly a million US dollars in assets but what it actually intended to do with all that cement is unclear. Just as puzzling is the involvement of Singapore-based shipping companies, which handle most of the cargo's logistics and operate under innocuous sounding names including words like "maritime" and "services". One of the companies has a distinct Korean name but is actually based in Singapore.
Port records point to a brisk trade between North Korea and Myanmar, all of which is handled by Myanmar's military rather than civilian-owned private companies. In August last year, then prime minister and now president Thein Sein visited Pyongyang. According to the official Korea Central News Agency, he said that "the government of Myanmar will continue to strive for strengthening and development of the friendly and cooperative relations between the two countries."
With those intentions publicly well-stated, Myanmar may well be on its way in overtaking Egypt, Libya and other traditional military trading partners in the Middle East and North Africa as North Korea's main market for its military hardware.
Bertil Lintner is a former correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic Review and the author of several books on Myanmar. He is currently a writer with Asia Pacific Media Services.
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Business Recorder, Pakistan
Myanmar, Bolivia, Venezuela fail in drugs fight: US
Thursday, 03 March 2011 22:02
WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama has determined that Myanmar, Bolivia and Venezuela "failed demonstrably" last year to fight the drugs trade, a new US government report said Thursday.
They were among 20 countries, including Afghanistan, Colombia and Mexico, that are listed as "major illicit drug producing and/or drug-transit countries," according to the report sent to the US Congress.
The report contained a September 15 letter from Obama in which he said: "I hereby designate Bolivia, Burma, and Venezuela as countries that have failed demonstrably during the previous 12 months to adhere to their obligations under international counternarcotics agreements."
Like US government officials, the annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report refers to Myanmar by its previous name of Burma.
In Myanmar, described as second only to Afghanistan in opium production, "the low risk of enforcement and prosecution make it appealing to the criminal underground," the report said.
It also stressed that "political arrangements between traffickers and Burma's ruling military government allow organized crime groups to function with minimal risk of interdiction."
Turning to South America, the report said that "a porous western border with Colombia, a weak judicial system, inconsistent international counternarcotics cooperation, and a generally permissive and corrupt environment have made Venezuela" a major drug-transit country.
It said the country run by socialist President Hugo Chavez was "one of the preferred trafficking routes out of South America to the Eastern Caribbean, Central America, the United States, Europe and western Africa."
The report came down on Bolivia for money laundering activities which it linked "primarily to narcotics trafficking, corruption, tax evasion, and smuggling and trafficking of persons."
Despite the designations, the US government will still pursue cooperation with the two Latin American countries in fighting the drugs trade, the report said. As for Myanmar, there was no cooperation to begin with, officials said.
"I have also determined... that continued support for bilateral programs in Bolivia and limited programs in Venezuela are vital to the national interests of the United States," Obama said in his letter.
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Germany offers Burmese diplomats training and football tickets
Thursday, 03 March 2011 14:13 Thomas Maung Shwe
Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – Over the past three years, the German government has regularly invited Burmese diplomats to take part in an annual month-long training programme conducted by the German Foreign Office’s Foreign Service Academy in Berlin, according to documents available on the government’s website.
The training of a handful of Burmese diplomats was also attended by diplomatic colleagues from other Asean member countries.
The training included ‘special courses in diplomatic skills, e.g. international negotiation, diplomatic reporting, public speaking and media training’. Participants were also treated to tickets to Germany’s elite Bundeslig football game and a visit to the office of aircraft maker Airbus.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government says the programme was an effort to foster human rights and promote democracy in Burma.
While it is perhaps impossible to judge the effectiveness of the diplomatic training program and its long-term pros or cons, critics have raised important questions.
Some Burma democracy advocates claim the training, company visits and perks are not in accord with the EU’s publicly stated line on sanctions against the military regime accused of human rights abuses and failure to foster genuine democracy, a claim German officials dispute. Furthermore, the activists claim Burmese diplomats are instrumental in monitoring exiled dissidents and blocking journalists and human rights activists from entering Burma.
Germany and other European Union governments are said to be poised for weeks of difficult discussions over the future of economic and other sanctions against Burma ahead of the annual renewal set for April 30, according to the Friends of Europe, a European think tank.
A leaked US diplomatic cable disclosed by WikiLeaks suggest that Germany along with Italy and Spain have been advocating an EU ‘re-engagement’ with Burma. A related cable dated August 2008 quotes a British official telling American diplomats that in contrast to the UK and other EU members who support sanctions, ‘At the far end opposing sanctions are the Germans and Austrians’.
The EU sanctions were introduced in 1996 and include an arms embargo and a ban on sales of equipment for internal repression. Over the years, the EU’s sanctions were strengthened to add targeted financial sanctions and an EU-wide travel ban for the senior members of the military regime and their family members.
While the EU has been hotly debating sanctions and engagement with the Burmese military junta, the German government has actively trained and engaged with at least four Burmese diplomats, according to documents obtained by Mizzima.
The training of the Burmese representatives coincides with the German government’s decision to increase training of diplomats from nation’s with questionable human rights practices, including Syria, Sudan, Iran and Zimbabwe under similar training programs for diplomats from the Middle East and Africa.
Press reports surfaced last year that in the lead up to a UN general assembly vote, Germany was advancing its bid to be elected to the Security Council by wooing government officials from African and other places in the developing world with free trips to Germany for them and their spouses. In a response to questions from Inner City Press about these trips, a spokesperson for the German mission to the UN responded that their aim is to ‘make insights available and thereby improve the understanding of Germany. It goes without saying that Germany – as a keen multilateralist – has an interest to provide decision-makers with opportunities of firsthand information’. Ultimately, Germany was voted to the 2011-2012 Security Council with a healthy margin of support.
Apart from providing training in diplomatic skills and public speaking, the Burmese diplomats were given lectures on international law and visited the offices of Deutche Welle and Theo Sommer, the editor of the weekly Die ZEIT. On two separate occasions in 2010 and 2009, the diplomats were taken to meet the German Asia-Pacific business association, (Ostasiatischer Verein or OAV), a Hamburg-based industry trade group, whose membership includes more than 500 firms. One of OAV members, Trumpf, has been accused of supplying elements of Burma’s secretive weapons program.
At least four Burmese diplomats have been trained over the last three years. Last September, Burmese diplomat Htuann Naung was trained in Berlin under the four-week programme which in addition to a visit to the offices of Airbus, included meeting with a German-Asia business council, OAV, and a visit to the offices of Chancellor Merkel. The diplomat and the other trainees were also taken to the offices of German chemical manufacturer BASF for a meeting with the firm’s director for Asia-Pacific affairs.
Htuann Naung and his two Burmese colleagues who took part in the training programme in 2009 and 2008 were also taken to Brussels and the Hague to learn about the EU and the International Criminal Court.
It is unclear if Htuann Nuang has a military background as many Burmese diplomats are known to have had. A German government spokesperson declined to answer whether the German government would specifically exclude someone who had a military background from the training programme.
The German government reports show that in 2009 Burmese diplomat Sandar Tin took part in the training programme, which included attending a German Bundesliga football game. Sandar Tin and the other diplomats on her programme were also treated to a trip to Hamburg which included a visit to Airbus and a meeting with representatives of OAV.
UN documents show that Sandar Tin was previously accredited as the junta’s Second Secretary and Alternate Permanent Representative to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome.
In 2008, the Burmese diplomat trained was identified as Lei Lei Sein, who is presently registered as the First Secretary at the Burmese embassy in Singapore. According to the report, Lei Lei Sein also had a meeting at the headquarters of Deutche Bank. Lei Lei Sein and her fellow diplomats also had a photo session with Germany’s then Minister of Foreign Affairs Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Reached for comment, Germany’s foreign office spokesperson Sebastian Fischer told Mizzima that the training programmes ‘are part of the wider effort of the German Foreign office to foster respect for human rights, promote democracy and contribute to international conflict prevention’.
Fischer told Mizzima, ‘the German Foreign Office acts in full compliance with the restrictive measures of the European Union against Myanmar [Burma]. This of course also applies to our training programmes for junior foreign diplomats’.
The training programmes were held yearly in August and September.
Zin Lin, a vice-chairman of the Thailand-based Burma Media Association (BMA) told Mizzima that the German government’s claim that the training of Burmese diplomats would promote democracy was further complicated because the division of the training programme has been for the last three years headed by Dr. Peter Christian Hauswedell, a German official whose remarks following the monk-led protests in 2007 caused great controversy in the activist community.
Hauswedell, the programme director for Asia-Pacific International Diplomat Training at the Foreign Service Academy, led a delegation of European scholars to visit Burma that coincided with the protests that were violently suppressed by the military authorities. In an interview with Der Spiegel magazine published in October 2007, Hauswedell downplayed the violence used to repress the monks and their supporters. According to Hauswedell, ‘The generals only used violence with extreme restraint’.
Prior to working at the Foreign Service academy, Hauswedell was director-general for Asia and the Pacific at the German Foreign Office from 2002-2006. During that time, he had considerable involvement in Burma-related affairs and attended several high level international ministerial meetings devoted to Burma’s future.
In December 2007, Hauswedell wrote the introduction to a German language report published by the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation on the economic situation in Burma. In the preface, Hauswedell said that the EU sanctions policy towards Burma was a failure and should be abandoned, a position sure to raise the ire of the Burma activist community.
In a report summarizing the month-long 2009 diplomatic training seminar in which a Burmese diplomat took part, Hauswedell wrote, ‘Our training programme is especially valuable for states which subsequently decide to send the participants to work at their embassies in Berlin. By applying the knowledge they have gained from the course, alumni can thus contribute to the day-to-day work of the embassies’.
Many members of Burma’s exiled opposition have long held the belief that Burmese embassy staff are engaged in monitoring the activities of exiled dissidents and draw up blacklists of journalists and human rights activists who should be denied visa entry to their country.
Aung Lin Htut, a former deputy chief of mission at Burma’s embassy in Washington who sought asylum in the United States, told the Irrawaddy magazine recently that he and his colleagues spent a considerable amount of effort attempting to lift sanctions and sideline pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Khun Myint Tun, an NLD MP elected in 1990 who now lives in Thailand, told Mizzima that he doesn’t see 'how taking junta representatives to Airbus factories and expensive soccer games help human rights’.
The ethnic Pa-O politician who spent more than seven years in prison for boycotting the junta’s National Convention added, ‘If the German government really cares about human rights, they would support the creation of a UN commission of inquiry to investigate human rights abuses in Burma’.
Last November, a German government spokesperson told Mizzima that with regards to the call for a commission of inquiry ‘to ensure that this new initiative [the inquiry] is successful and has positive consequences, it is important to continue to monitor the situation and crucial to find some co-operation mechanism with the [Burmese] national authorities’.
In a preface to his organization’s most recent state of the world report, Human Rights Watch’s executive director Kenneth Roth criticized the German government spokesperson’s claim that a commission of inquiry needed the assistance of the Burmese regime to move forward. According to Roth, ‘obtaining such cooperation from the Burmese military in the absence of further pressure is a pipe dream’.
With evidence that some Burmese diplomats actively work to counter the democracy movement and dissent, questions hang over the German training programme for diplomats, small though the numbers may be.
Khun Myunt Tun told Mizzima that he and his NLD colleagues would write to the German government urging them to take a stronger stance with the Burmese regime and reconsider their diplomat training program.
According to Khun Myunt Tun, ‘If Germany wants to spend money on Burma they can help refugees or train doctors and nurses. This would be much better than helping [General] Than Shwe’s diplomats’.
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Shan committee member replaced
Thursday, 03 March 2011 22:06 Ko Wild
Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – A Shan Nationalities Democratic Party (SNDP) party MP who was selected as a member of the Public Account Committee (PAC) in the Lower House on Thursday was replaced by a MP from the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).
SNDP MP Sai Zaw Tun (Momauk) was replaced by USDP MP Moe Zaw Hein (Katha), said MPs who attended the session.
Speaker Thura Shwe Mahn announced 15 nominees for the PAC committee on the third day of the Lower House regular sessions, which have been devoted to organizing committees and apponting chairmen.
In the first announcement, two MPs from the SNDP, Sai Thiha Kyaw (Mai Ye) and Sai Zaw Tun (Momauk), were appointed to the committee.
A short while later, the speaker changed his mind and apponted an MP from the USDP, citing his desire to give equal numbers to other minority parties.
‘First we were surprised to see two MPs from the SNDP in the nominations. I think they thought Sai Zaw Tun was a USDP MP. Then they replaced him with an MP from the USDP to give equal numbers to other parties’, said an MP.
Sai Zaw Tun, 26, from Momauk, is the sole elected SNDP MP in Kachin State.
USDP MP Thurein Zaw was appointed chairman of the PAC. He served as a deputy minister in the National Planning and Economic Development Ministry and is a retired colonel, and a USDP MP from Min Hla constituency, Pegu Division Maung Toe, a USDP MP from Min Hla constituency in Pegu Division, was named PAC secretary.
Pac members are are Sai Thiha Kyaw aka Sai Hap (Mai Ye) from SNDP; Mahn Maung Maung Nyan (Pantanaw) National Unity Party (NUP) party and a former central committee member of Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP); Tin Nwe Oo (North Dagon Township), National Democratic Front (NDF); Khun Maung Thaung (Pinlaung), Pa-O National Organisation (PNO); Khun Lein (Falam), Chin Progressive Party (CPP); Soe Myint (Nyaunglaybin), (USDP); Kyi Tha (Gwa), USDP; Aung Mya Than (Nyaungdon), USDP; Hao Kham Man (Tunzan), USDP; Aung Lin Hlaing (Boakpyin). USDP; Dr. Win Myint (Hlaing), USDP; Mi Yin Chan (Kyaikmayaw), USDP; and Moe Zaw Hein (Katha), USDP.
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DVB News - Brothers in corruption: Maldives and Burma
By JOSEPH ALLCHIN
Published: 3 March 2011
Burma’s relationship with North Korea has proved a sensational story of how autocrats share their ill-gotten gains and maniacal plans. But as the Maldives comes to grips with its own autocratic past, the scale of the former dictator’s malpractice has astonished observers: what a UK-based accounting firm found when probing the rule of Maumoon Abdul Gayoom and his family was a corrupt nexus that went well beyond the white beaches of the Indian Ocean nation, and which implicates the Burmese junta in a massive international scam.
The accountants, Grant Thornton, discovered that the former president of the tiny island nation was receiving a large allocation of cut-price oil from the Muslim-dominated Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cartel, channelled through a Singaporean branch of the Maldivian State Trading Organisation (STO). The scale of the $US800 million fraud was noted by a Maldivian government official to be not significantly different to the GDP of that country, $US1.4 billion.
Ships carrying the oil from Singapore had records demonstrating that they embarked but never arrived in the Indian Ocean archipelago. Instead the vessels were selling on the bounty to international buyers on the black market, including Burma’s military junta.
Among the companies who did business with the Maldivians was Kanbawza Bank, owned by Aung Ko Win, who is close to Burmese vice-general Maung Aye. Perhaps the business was being done on behalf of Maung Aye.
Kambawza is no stranger to controversy, and was recently at the centre of a row over Burma’s flag carrier, MAI. The bank was started in Shan state by the then-unknown and apparently ‘asset-less’ teacher, Aung Ko Win, who happened to meet and befriend Maung Aye. From mysterious profits made in the Shan hills – once the world’s largest source of opium – the bank has grown to become one of the biggest and most important financial institutions in Burma.
The Maldives is given a special, cheap allocation of oil by OPEC because of the cartel’s preferential treatment for 100 percent Sunni Muslim nations, so the tiny island state under Gayoom would assume a far larger allocation of oil than the residents of the country needed.
Gayoom and his half brother, Abdullah Yameen, set up a joint venture called Mocom Trading Pvt. Ltd., incorporated in 2004, to sell this allocation from Singapore. It was a joint venture between Mocom Corporation Sdn Bhd, a Malaysian company, and the Maldivian State Trading Organisation (Singapore), of whom Yameen is also the chairman.
“STO Singapore appear to have purchased fuel from Shell Eastern, the Singapore Petroleum Company and Petronas, and then sold it to STO, its parent company, or to third parties,” the Grant Thornton audit says, indicating also that Mocom was set up specifically to sell diesel to Burma.
“STO Singapore wished to sell oil to Myanmar, however as Mocom had the contract, it was agreed that STO Singapore and Mocom would form a joint venture, known as Mocom Trading Pte Ltd, incorporated in Singapore.”
Indeed Mocom would have been enlisted specifically, being one of only four foreign companies, along with Korea’s Daewoo and Hyundai, and Malaysia’s Petronas, to supply Burma with petroleum products.
The allegations also allege that books were “fudged” so that proceeds from the sales could be illegally siphoned off.
“STO Singapore and Mocom Singapore each generated sales invoices addressed to Myanmar for each delivery showing the quantity of barrels delivered and the unit price. The content of the invoices are alike, except for the price per barrel,” the Grant Thornton report states.
It adds however that from April 2004, the oil shipments to Burma “appear to have been discharged in the Maldives instead of Yangon, as per the sales invoices” and that “shipments invoiced to Myanmar may have been delivered to a third party”.
Thus not only were the Burmese buying diesel that had been earmarked specifically for the Maldives by OPEC, but they appear to have been facilitating, through fraudulent paper work, its sale to other countries, thus allowing the Maldivians to cover their tracks.
The Gayoom family is said to be well connected in Burma and allegedly holds strong links with Lo Hsing Han and his family, who own the Asia World Group. The powerful conglomerate takes on many lucrative construction contracts, including the running of public infrastructure. Moreover the company was allegedly built on the back of drug profits, with the US government’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) terming Han “the godfather of heroin” and regional expert Bertil Lintner claiming “there is simply no other way” Asia World could have risen to its heights.
Indeed the Grant Thornton report indicates that several sanctions listed companies owned by Lo Hsing Han’s son and his Singaporean daughter in law, Cecilia Ng, were also doing business with the Maldivian STO. These companies include Golden Aaron and S H NG Trading Pte Ltd which, invoices show, were only actively trading with the STO in 2002. The audit says that from 2001 to 2002, “revenue increased dramatically” to $US78.8 million, and then began to fall after 2006.
Singaporean press in 2004 had indeed marvelled at how Golden Aaron, a mysteriously diverse and small company with a so-called specialisation in the import-export industry, could win large oil contracts in Burma.
The main vehicle for the scam, the Maldives STO, is 92.29 percent owned by the Maldives state. Its Singapore branch was formed in 1997 and is primarily used for the purchase of petroleum products in the City State from companies such as Petronas and Shell Eastern, but with the OPEC discount.
Its managing director from 1993 to 2008 was a man named Mohamed Maniku, of whom the audit reports: “We have reviewed various purchase invoices regarding [his] visits to Malaysia and Myanmar from the STO Singapore office, which clearly indicates that Mr Maniku was acutely involved in the STO Singapore oil strategy involving Myanmar and other third parties.” Indeed a trip to Burma was recorded in 1998, before which, on 30 April of that year, the Business Times reported him “seeking profitable international ventures”. This referred to an alleged lubricant deal with the Malaysia-based Stephen Hansford company.
This preceded a trip to the country he made roughly two weeks later with Yameen. According to the New Light of Myanmar, they stayed for three days between 10 and 13 May, meeting with the Myanmar Import Export services and agreeing to purchase “parboiled rice”.
The Gayoom regime, which had ruled the Maldives since 1978, was ousted in a 2008 election won by former political prisoner, Mohamed Nasheed. His tenure however left stains on the picturesque Indian Ocean archipelago that are only now being slowly tackled. Indeed as the Maldivian President’s Member on the Judicial Services Commission (JSC), Aishath Velezinee, told the Minivan News recently, “Leaders of the former administration are continuing with criminal activities they have allegedly been carrying out for a long, long time”.
He said that the raft of corruption allegations remained just allegations “because they have never come up before a court of law in all this time. There is widespread public perception that certain members of parliament are behind all the serious organised crime going on in this country. This includes serious drug issues, gang violence, stabbings. It is a much discussed issue, but it has never come up in the courts. I can see now that perhaps it may be true – otherwise why prevent the formation of an independent judiciary? I don’t think they would have confidence that they would get away free”.
Indian investigative journalist Sumon Chakrabarti, who is writing a book about the Gayoom years, believes that drugs are a “huge issue” in the Maldives and that “a generation was lost to heroin.”
The “eruption” of heroin there, as Gary Lewis of the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) puts it, seemingly occurred in two stages: Maldivian government sources estimate that the drug first became available in the Maldives in the 1990s, largely seen to be of Afghan or Pakistani origin. But Lewis states that ‘China White heroin’, the vast majority of which is produced in Burma and which a senior Maldivian journalist says is now “common” on the streets of the capital, Male, first appeared around 2003.
The date follows on the heels of the marriage between companies associated with Lo Hsing Han, SH Trading and Golden Aaron, and the Maldivian STO, as well as involvement from Kanbawza Bank, which is seen by economic commentators as an expert in the laundering business. Perhaps more pertinently, however, it’s also when “revenue increased dramatically”, as the audit notes.
The chairman of the STO, Yameen, has also been explicitly accused by the Maldivian parliament of involvement in the heroin trade.
Maldivian police refused to talk when contacted by DVB. Government officials, who requested anonymity, suggested they police be too scared to talk to the press, but noted that a large proportion of the country’s youths were heroin addicts.
In 2002 all the Burmese companies involved, from the military-run UMECH to Kanbawza Bank and the two Asia World-linked businesses, paid commission to a man of Burmese origin named Myint Lwin Oo – in Malaysia, however, he is known as Kamal Bin Rashid, as is one of the directors of Mocom. The money was paid to a United Overseas Bank account in his name in Singapore.
“It remains very unclear to us what STO Singapore’s role in the process had been, given that Mocom already had the contract to sell oil to Myanmar,” said the Grant Thornton audit. “It would have been more profitable for Mocom to set up a trading arm in Singapore and purchase the fuel itself, benefiting from all related profits.”
It continues that the post-2005 decrease in the STO’s revenue may have been down to a change in the organisation’s structure after it became a joint venture, but added that “It is unclear why STO Singapore paid commission to Mr Rashid [Myint Lwin Oo] and on what basis.”
So why did the Burmese companies, those associated with the narcotics industry, stop paying? Did payments go the other way as part of a “profitable international venture” of the STO’s then-director Maniku, and former chairman, Yameen?
The details of the Gayoom family’s legacy on the tiny island nation are unravelling, and more reports are expected. At present they ask more questions than they answer, but the unrivalled power of one autocrat is, it seems, here served by a close relationship with others, namely the Burmese, whose shared corruptions were worth hundreds of millions and which will take generations to fully recover.
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DVB News - Burma implicated in major oil fraud
By JOSEPH ALLCHIN
Published: 3 March 2011
An investigation in the Maldives has implicated the Burmese military and a number of private companies in an $US800 million money-laundering scam involving the sale of Maldivian cut-price oil.
The allegations were made after the Maldivian government in March last year hired a UK-based auditing firm called Grant Thornton to investigate the corruptive practices of former president and autocrat Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who left office in 2008.
The audit unearthed fudged accounts that showed that the unit prices of barrels of oil differed in invoices for different accounts, with one irregularity amounting to over $US5 million. A Maldivian government official who asked to remain anonymous told DVB that the total scale of the fraud was more than half the country’s GDP.
The scam, which can be read in full here, used a joint venture between the Singaporean subsidiary of the Maldivian State Trading Organisation (STO), set up by Gayoom’s half brother, Abdul Yameen, and a Malaysian company called Mocom, also based in Singapore. Amongst the management and directors of the joint venture were several people of Burmese origin, namely Gemyl Aung and Kamal Bin Rashid, also known as Myint Lwin Oo.
Ships carrying the oil from Singapore, which had been channeled through the two companies, had records demonstrating that they embarked but never arrived in the Indian Ocean archipelago. Instead the vessels were selling on the bounty to international buyers on the black market, including Burma’s military junta. The Burmese then helped hide the fraudulent transactions to create a “super profit”, as the Grant Thornton audit puts it.
The companies which show up on invoices seen by the auditors were the powerful Kanbawza Bank, which is owned by junta crony Aung Ko Win, the Golden Aaron Pte Ltd. and SH Trading, both owned by members of the same family which owns Asia World, namely Steven Law and his Singaporean wife, Cecilia NG. The junta parastatal company, the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings (UMEH), also appeared to have played a role.
The Singaporean police are reportedly investigating the situation, but failed to respond to DVB’s request for confirmation.
Both Gayoom and Yameen both strenuously deny the charges. Gayoom claims that the investigation is an attempt to “tarnish [his] reputation” following his party’s recent success in local elections in the Maldives. Yameen meanwhile described the charges as “absolute rubbish”, according to the Minivan News.
The Gayoom regime was unseated in a 2008 election and replaced by the government of Mohamed Nasheed, who had been a political prisoner under Gayoom. The former president had been Asia’s longest serving head of state after coming to power in 1978.
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DVB News - Bid for media freedom reignited
By AHUNT PHONE MYAT
Published: 3 March 2011
Ongoing imprisonment of journalists and a ban on media inside Burma’s new parliament has prompted opposition politicians to resubmit a bill demanding a relaxing of press laws.
Such is the extent of limitations on media in Burma that domestic publications are banned from covering debates by politicians and parliamentary representatives. The only footage that emerges from the chamber is taken by CCTV camera
Thein Nyunt, deputy chairman and a Nationalities Parliament representative for the opposition National Democratic Force (NDF), described media as the “fourth pillar of the country” but lamented the tightening noose around reporters’ necks.
“We have witnessed how much effort the [reporters] are putting in to cover the parliamentary sessions,” he said. “As a lawmaker, I am required to do what is worthwhile in the next parliament session.”
He said that he would meet with media workers prior to writing the proposal, which follows a similar submission on 3 February which lawmakers had yet to discuss.
The Burmese regime maintains one of the world’s strictest press environments, and last year ranked 171 out of 175 on the Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index. More than 20 media workers are in jail, some serving sentences of up to 27 years.
The former editor of the Myanmar Times, Ross Dunkley, is due to make his second appearance in court today. While the charges he faces relate to visa violations and the alleged assault of a female sex worker, observers say a power struggle at Burma’s only English-language daily may have been a significant factor in his arrest.
Dunkley has said in the past that some 20 percent of Myanmar Times articles submitted to the government’s censor board, a requirement under Burmese law, are rejected, throwing into sharp relief the problems that publications disobedient to strict instructions face.
Officials have said that the Australian national’s case may take up to three months. He is being held in a cell in Rangoon’s Insein prison.
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