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BURMA RELATED NEWS - MARCH 04, 2011
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AP - Myanmar pro-democracy group slams govt's budget
AP - Myanmar to enforce ban on illegal ivory business
AFP - Myanmar, Bolivia, Venezuela fail in drugs fight: US
Japan Today - DPJ's Okada speaks by phone to Suu Kyi
Asian Correspondent - Burma junta buys MiG-29s, spends $2 per person on health
Calcutta News.Net - Ten Myanmarese nationals held in Tripura
SMU Daily Campus - Former DMN editor Rena Pederson speaks on Burma Chronicles
People's Daily Online - Myanmar geared up for major gems fair
Digital Trends - Burma joins the Facebook Revolutions
BBC News - East Timor applies to join Asean
ABS-CBNNEWS.com - East Timor not a burden to ASEAN: minister
Manila Bulletin - Nonviolence
Global Times - Myanmar airline launches Yangon-Guangzhou direct flight service
Xinhua - Cambodia takes military attaches of 12 countries to see damages of Preah Vihear temple
Himalayan Times - Six grader Sherpa bags UN award
The Vibe - Why we need to keep talking about Burma
CathNews - Jesuits' quiet progress in Myanmar
Asian Tribune - Fait accompli of the Tatmadaw Values
The Irrawaddy - Naypyidaw Orders New “Four Cuts” Campaign
The Irrawaddy - Than Shwe Grants Himself Power to Access 'Special Funds'
The Irrawaddy - COMMENTARY: ICC for Libya ... Why Not Burma?
The Irrawaddy - Forcible Recruitment Still Common: Former Child Soldier
Mizzima News - Burma’s new budget: more of the same
DVB News - Kachin army blocks Tatmadaw rations
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Myanmar pro-democracy group slams govt's budget
Myanmar pro-democracy group criticizes junta for allocating too much to defense
On Friday March 4, 2011, 10:02 am EST
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- Myanmar's pro-democracy group has criticized the government's recently released budget for allocating too much money to the military and not enough to social services.
A statement Friday from Aung San Suu Kyi's officially disbanded National League for Democracy also said the budget should have been passed by the newly elected parliament, rather than enacted by the outgoing ruling junta.
The government enacted the budget on Jan. 27, just a few days before parliament met for the first time in more than two decades. Details published in the Government Gazette revealed that almost one-quarter of the 7.6 trillion kyat ($8.45 billion) national budget will be allocated to defense. Education will get a 4.3 percent share, and health 1.3 percent.
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Myanmar to enforce ban on illegal ivory business
Tourists to Myanmar warned not to buy ivory souvenirs amid crackdown on illegal trade
On Friday March 4, 2011, 5:56 am EST
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- Tourists who buy ivory souvenirs in Myanmar risk having them confiscated as part of a crackdown on the often brazen illegal trade, media reported Friday.
While the wildlife trade monitoring group, TRAFFIC, has cited Myanmar as a hotspot for elephant and ivory smuggling, foreigners are rarely arrested for possession of antiques or banned wildlife.
Forestry officials quoted in the 7-Day News Journal said that authorities are aware that handicraft shops in the two biggest cities, Yangon and Mandalay, openly sell ivory goods, despite laws aimed at protecting elephants and banning the sale of elephant parts. Ivory is often carved up into sculptures of Chinese deities, combs, chopsticks and other souvenirs.
"Forestry department officials will open investigations and take action against the illegal ivory trade," an official was quoted as saying. The weekly is privately run but, like all media in Myanmar, is subject to heavy censorship. Officials speak anonymously for fear of retribution.
The report cited a 1994 law that lists elephants as endangered species and bans the killing or hunting of the animals and the sale of elephant parts. Violators can face up to seven years imprisonment and a 50,000 kyat fine ($50).
"If a foreign tourist is found in possession of ivory handicrafts on departure at Yangon International Airport, the items will be confiscated," the official was quoted as saying.
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Myanmar, Bolivia, Venezuela fail in drugs fight: US
Thu Mar 3, 1:21 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – 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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Japan Today - DPJ's Okada speaks by phone to Suu Kyi
Saturday 05th March, 02:41 AM JST
BANGKOK — Katsuya Okada, secretary general of Japan’s ruling Democratic Party of Japan, on Thursday spoke with Myanmar pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi by phone, it was learned Friday.
It is the first time for Suu Kyi to speak with a senior member of the DPJ since she was released from house arrest in November last year. According to a senior official of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party, Suu Kyi and Okada discussed Myanmar’s process of democratization and sanctions during their 40-minute conversation.
Suu Kyi, who was released from seven and a half years of continuous house arrest on Nov 13, said she wants the international community to maintain economic sanctions that have been imposed against Myanmar’s junta.
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Asian Correspondent - Burma junta buys MiG-29s, spends $2 per person on health
By Zin Linn Mar 03, 2011 11:08PM UTC
This month Burma is to receive the first of 20 RSK MiG-29s costing about €400 million ($553 million), more than doubling the country’s MiG-29 fleet, reports Flight International.
The MiG-29s were ordered in November 2009. The aircraft will be delivered in three designs, comprising 10 MiG-29B and six MiG-29SE single-seat fighters and four MiG-29UB twin-seat operational trainers.
Burma earlier bought used MiG-29s from Belarus, but approached manufacturer and Russian arms export company Rosoboronexport for help after experiencing a high corrosion rate. Moscow responded with help on weapons, spare parts and training, including the installation of a simulator at one of its air bases, Flight International said.
As reported by the Defense Industry Daily , Burma’s air force ordered 12 MiG-29Bs from Russia in 2001, to supplement a fleet that mostly relies on Chinese F-7 (MiG-21 copy) and J-6/ Q-5 (MiG-19 copy and heavily modified MiG-19 derivative) fighters. Present-day levels of readiness among the regime’s existing aircraft types are doubtful, and in late January 2010, one of those F-7s crashed, killing the pilot. This is not exceptional with MiG-21s and their derivatives, which can be challenging to fly safely.
Meanwhile, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Burma, Tomás Ojea Quintana, criticized the Burmese junta over its human rights violations. Human rights violations in Burma are burdening other countries in the region, with an influx of refugees fleeing a host of abuses from forced labour and land confiscation to arbitrary detention and sexual violence.
At the same time, several human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, claim hat there is no independent judiciary in Myanmar. The military government restricts Internet access through software-based censorship that limits the material citizens can access on-line. Forced labour, human trafficking, and child labour are common.
According to the UN estimation, one child in three under the age of five is already suffering from malnutrition. Burma’s authoritarian military regime is getting in the way of health community’s efforts to control infectious disease threats in Burma, according to an investigation published in Public Library of Science Medicine.
Dr Chris Beyrer (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) and colleagues carried out field investigations in Burma in 2005 and 2006, and also searched the medical and policy literature on HIV, TB, malaria, and avian flu in Burma. The researchers found that the SPDC’s investment in healthcare is one of the lowest worldwide and that the health sector has been weakened by widespread corruption.
So, political opposition and independent observers condemn the junta for the amount spend on the defense budget, while key areas such as education and health are neglected. The recent Government Gazette released by the incumbent military junta says that the health sector will get 99.5 billion kyat ($110 million), or 1.3 percent of this budget year 2011-12. That means regime will spend less than $2 per head on public healthcare.
For that reason, people are asking International Community for tighter sanctions (not humanitarian aid) on the military regime until the ruling generals commit themselves to democratic reforms.
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Ten Myanmarese nationals held in Tripura
Calcutta News.Net
Friday 4th March, 2011 (IANS)
Ten Myanmarese nationals, including two women, were arrested after they illegally sneaked into Tripura from Bangladesh, police said here Friday. A court has sent them to 14 days of judicial custody.
Deputy Superintendent of Police Harimohan Das said: 'Acting on a tip-off, the security forces nabbed the Myanmarese citizens from a railway station at Jogendranagar Thursday night.
'The foreign nationals illegally crossed over to western Tripura from Bangladesh and attempted to leave for central India via Guwahati (in Assam) by train,' Das told IANS.
The accused told the police that the authorities in Myanmar have unleashed atrocities on a section of nationals especially Rohingya Muslim communities.
'We have recently escaped from these violent tortures and came to northeastern Bangladesh from where we came to India,' Hasan Ali, one of the accused, told the police.
'The minority Rohingya Muslims have been fleeing Myanmar to evade atrocities by the members of the rival community. We are being denied even the most basic rights and needs,' Ali said.
'We are not allowed to travel from one village to another within our country without permission from the army and we are not even allowed to marry without the permission of the authorities.'
The foreign nationals were brought before a local court which sent them to 14 days jail custody. 'After the jail custody, we will send them back to Bangladesh,' the police official said.
Another police official told reporters: 'The Myanmarese nationals recently fled from the refugee camps at Teknaf region in Cox's Bazar district in southeast Bangladesh. They entered India through Sonamura border in western Tripura.
Earlier last year, seven Myanmarese nationals, including four women, were arrested in Agartala for trying to illegally enter the country.
They too had fled from the refugee camps at Teknaf region of Cox's Bazar.
Meanwhile, the number of Myanmarese living in different parts of Mizoram has now been estimated at around 50,000.
The Mizoram government has given entry passes and temporary stay permits to Myanmarese, who works in jewellery shops, vehicular service centres, shops, restaurants and cloth factories and at construction works.
Since mid-1990s, over 225,000 Myanmar nationals have been sheltering in Cox's Bazar district of Bangladesh.
India's four northeastern states of Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh together share a 1,643-km unfenced border with Myanmar.
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SMU Daily Campus - Former DMN editor Rena Pederson speaks on Burma Chronicles
By Bethany Suba
Email: bsuba@smu.edu
Published: Friday, March 4, 2011
Updated: Friday, March 4, 2011 08:03
Rena Pederson, a former vice president and editorial page editor of The Dallas Morning News, came to Southern Methodist University Thursday night to speak to students, faculty and members of the Dallas community about the corruption in Burma, specifically the story of Aung San Suu Kyi.
When Pederson first heard about Aung San Suu Kyi she knew she had to meet her. For a woman who was under house arrest for forming a Burmese opposition politician group, Pederson considered Suu Kyi to be a very interesting political prisoner.
"To me [Burma] is like the garden of good and evil," Pederson said. The people aspire to a spiritual life but face evil every day.
Suu Kyi is a Burmese woman who has had to face the evils in Burma. Forming the National League of Democracy, Suu Kyi has promoted the need for change in Burma. After numerous speeches calling for freedom and democracy Burma's dictator, Than Shwe, had Suu Kyi placed under house arrest.
When Pederson arrived in Burma she discovered Suu Kyi's extreme measures of security and had to convince a diplomat to smuggle her in. After listening to the struggles Suu Kyi was going through Pederson decided to write a book, "The Burma Chronicles: The Story of Aung San Suu Kyi and the War for the Soul of Burma," in hopes of informing people of Suu Kyi's story and the tragedy people face in Burma.
"[People] do see some signs of hope," Pederson said, but the Burmese people live in fear of the government.
"People cling to superstitions because they are covering their basis," she said. "They are going to try everything they can to protect themselves."
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People's Daily Online - Myanmar geared up for major gems fair
16:58, March 04, 2011
Myanmar is geared up for a 13-day second major gem trade fair which will start next Thursday in the new capital of Nay Pyi Taw.
This year's Myanmar gems emporium, which is the 48th annual one, will be held on a grander scale than the last, which was the first launched in Nay Pyi Taw.
According to the emporium sources, on display at the event will be raw and cut jade lots, raw and cut gems, pearl, jewelry items made of jade, gems and pearl, sculptures of precious stone, gems crystal, mosaic paintings an silverware.
Exhibitors include state-run Myanmar Gems Enterprise, Myanmar Pearl Enterprise and local Myanmar private companies.
At the annual gems emporium, 206 gem lots, 16,500 jade lots and 255 pearl lots will be sold through both tender and competitive bidding systems.
Of them, the jade lots on display will be two times more than last year's.
About 4,000 foreign merchants of 500 companies from 20 countries and regions as well as 3,000 local merchants are expected to attend the event.
To provide smooth transportation for foreign merchants, 150 taxis are standby, while 16 chartered flights of the Myanmar Airways International (MAI) are ready to transport the gems merchants to Nay Pyi Taw directly from China's southern city of Guangzhou.
The maiden flight of the MAI between Yangon and Guangzhou was launched on March 3. The biweekly-scheduled flight on every Thursday and Sunday is expected to reinforce the transportation of gem merchants traveling from China.
For accommodation of the visitors, about 1,600 rooms of 24 hotels in Nay Pyi Taw have been booked.
To ensure smooth communications, interpreters are specially appointed for the emporium with an information counter opened for event enquiry.
The last emporium in November 2010, which was the mid-year one, was claimed to have been held successfully in the new capital for the first time.
The 13-day record-breaking mid-year gems emporium-2010 earned 1. 4 billion U.S. dollars through sale of 9,157 lots of jade, 27 lots of gems and 237 lots of pearl as well as other jewelry.
The event was attended by 6,700 gem traders including 4,000 from abroad who mostly came from China's Hong Kong and Chinese Taipei.
Myanmar started to hold gem shows annually in 1964, introducing the mid-year one in 1992 and the special one in 2004.
The latest figures show that in the first eight months (April-November) of 2010-11, Myanmar yielded 27,251 tons of jade and 9, 573 million carats of gems which include ruby, sapphire, spinel and peridot, as well as 80,123 mommis (300 kilograms) of pearl.
Myanmar has been earning huge foreign exchange through holding of gems emporiums for several occasions in a year, adding to the state income.
In the 47th annual Myanmar gems emporium-2010, attended by 6, 000 gem merchants from 300 companies, 500 million U.S. dollars was obtained mainly through sale of 7,000 jade lots, up from 191 million dollars gained in the 46th annual event held in March 2009.
At the 2010 annual event, a jade stone weighing 155 tons and claimed to be the world's second largest raw jade stone, was on display.
The jade stone, excavated and unearthed by the private Max Myanmar company in Phakant mining area in northernmost Kachin state in late last year, was then moved to Yangon for the exhibition.
The June-July special sale in Yangon fetched 880 U.S. dollars through sale of over 7,000 items out of 11,500 lots of jade, gems and jewelry displayed and the major buyers also came from China, while the others were from Europe and America.
The event was also joined by over 300 state-owned and private- run companies as well as gold and jewelry shops with their quality products put on sale.
Meanwhile, proceeds from the sale of gems at the emporiums are designated as legal export earning as part of the government's encouragement for the private sector in the development of gem industry.
Myanmar started to hold gem shows annually in 1964, introducing the mid-year one in 1992 and the special one in 2004.
Myanmar, a well-known producer of gems in the world, boasts ruby, diamond, cat's eye, emerald, topaz, pearl, sapphire, coral and a variety of garnet tinged with yellow.
Source: Xinhua
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Digital Trends - Burma joins the Facebook Revolutions
By: Molly McHugh
March 3, 2011
The success of Internet-enabled revolutions are now reaching as far as Burma, where activists face an extremely brutal government.
Social media continues to alter the face of revolution after the successful uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. The revolutions both counties staged against their dictatorships and corrupt governments have taken hold of similar political regimes. Libya used Twitter (before losing access to the site) to bring attention to its own struggle, which has escalated in the last few weeks over the call for Moammar Gadhafi’s resignation. Even China, whose government has incredibly tight reigns over its citizens, has witnessed restrained and Internet-bred attempts to organize demonstrations against the ruling body.
Now, neighboring Burma will join the list of oppressed countries looking to challenge its leaders with the help of social media. Burmese activists have created their own active Facebook page, named “Just Do It Against Military Dictatorship.” It now has nearly 1,300 followers and boasts a bevy of videos, photos, and discussions. Unfortunately, Burma is subject to extremely limited Internet access, which could be cut altogether if the movement gains any more popularity. It’s listed as being located in the capital, Rangoon, where the Asia Sentinel reports security has already been increased.
At the same time as Burmese dissidents establish a Facebook presence, notorious opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been in talks with the US State Department regarding the state of her government. A democratic leader in Burma, Kyi spent years behind bars and under house arrest for her political ideals and aspirations. She also claims that the current regime is closely watching the Libyan revolution as well as the revolutions sweeping the Middle Easter and Northern Africa as well as attempting to censor citizens from any news of the events.
But those that have glimpsed the revolutions are inspired. “Everybody is waiting around to see with great interest what transpires because people were impressed with what happened, particular in Egypt,” she told Voice of America News recently. She also said she intends to create Facebook and Twitter accounts as soon as possible. However, she noted there is a large difference between the treatment of people in Egypt and in Burma, which is known for its exceptionally brutal authorities. “Well the people have stood in Burma before as you know and in those instances they were fired upon by the army,” she says.
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4 March 2011 Last updated at 05:37 ET
BBC News - East Timor applies to join Asean
By Kate McGeown BBC News, Jakarta
East Timor has formally applied to join the South East Asian regional grouping, Asean.
Foreign Minister Zacarias da Costa signed the application on a trip to Indonesia, the country which is currently chairing the 10-nation bloc.
East Timor wants to become an Asean member as soon as possible.
But critics say that, right now, Asean has enough problems without another poor country adding to its economic burden.
There is little doubt that East Timor will, one day, become a member of Asean - the question is, when.
Some nations back its membership as soon as possible - like Indonesia, East Timor's former occupier until it gained independence 12 years ago.
Formally receiving the application for membership, Indonesia's Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said East Timor was geographically, politically and economically linked to South East Asia's future - and should therefore be welcomed without reservations.
But other Asean members believe the group should focus on helping poorer nations which are already members of Asean - like Burma, Cambodia and Laos - as they prepare for the opening of the group's free trade zone in 2015.
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ABS-CBNNEWS.com - East Timor not a burden to ASEAN: minister
Agence France-Presse
Posted at 03/04/2011 10:03 PM | Updated as of 03/04/2011 10:03 PM
JAKARTA, Indonesia - East Timor's foreign minister said Friday his young country would not be a burden to ASEAN as he formally presented his country's application to join the Southeast Asian grouping.
"We're developing very fast," Zacarias da Costa told reporters during a joint press conference with his Indonesian counterpart.
"I understand there are still problems and gaps with some of the ASEAN countries but those who came to visit Timor Leste had witnessed what is the phase of the development in Timor Leste," he said, using the country's formal name.
"I believe that we will not be a burden to ASEAN," he said.
Indonesia, the current chair of the 10-nation bloc, has offered strong support for East Timor's bid to join the grouping, despite worries over the yawning economic gap with existing member states.
"I know that some believe that it (Timor's entry) may impact on ASEAN community building efforts. Indonesia is part of those who believe the case on the contrary," Indonesian foreign minister Marty Natalegawa said.
The 10-nation bloc has set 2015 as the target for creating a single regional economic market known as the ASEAN Economic Community.
"It is not unique and not unusual to have a situation of development gaps between ASEAN members," Natalegawa said.
Natalegawa said ASEAN had a record of working to address economic differences, notably between the original member states and Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.
East Timor, a former Portuguese colony, was occupied by Indonesia for 24 years from 1975, a period marked by widespread human rights abuses.
The impoverished nation gained formal independence in 2002 after winning its freedom in a 1999 UN-backed referendum marred by violence.
Indonesia this year assumed the revolving chairmanship of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) from Vietnam, and will host the group's annual summit and related meetings, steering the agenda for the year.
Besides Indonesia, the other ASEAN members are Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
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Manila Bulletin - Nonviolence
By DR. FLORANGEL ROSARIO BRAID
March 4, 2011, 11:05pm
MANILA, Philippines – The world did not anticipate the advent of such sweeping revolutionary changes in the Middle East, and earlier, in Ukraine and Serbia. But earlier, there were already portents of things to come. Such as the emergence of movements primarily led by idealistic youth groups in Egypt, Iran, Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen, among others, reinforced by the new information and communication technology.
What is clear is that authoritarian regimes can no longer survive, that nonviolence rather than the use of force is the appropriate strategy in achieving democracy.
With the exception of Libya, the uprisings in these countries were propelled by People Power. Dr. Gene Sharp, an 83-year-old academic and “guru” of nonviolence, is credited with the toppling of the Egyptian government. He is founder of the Albert Einstein Institution, a non-profit organization which advances the use of nonviolent actions in addressing conflicts around the world. In the documentary featuring the April 6 Movement in Egypt, a group of young and patriotic professionals, the leader admitted he had been using Sharp’s strategies, the same ones used by the Otpor movement in Serbia which successfully ousted Milosevic. Sharp’s message is simple – “the power of dictatorship comes from the willing obedience of the people they govern – that if the people can develop techniques of withholding their consent, a regime will crumble.” This was echoed in his book “From Dictatorship to Democracy” written for the Burmese democratic movement in 1993, shortly after Aung San Suu Kyi’s imprisonment. The message was reported to have spread through Thailand and Indonesia where it was used against the military dictatorship.
His book lists 198 “nonviolent weapons” ranging from the use of colors and symbols to mock funerals and boycotts. Here are key steps that he advocates: Develop a strategy for winning freedom and a vision of society.
Overcome fear by small acts of resistance.
Use colors and symbols to demonstrate unity of resistance.
Learn from historical examples of the successes of nonviolent movements.
Use non-violent weapons.
Identify the dictatorship’s pillar of support and develop a strategy for undermining each.
Use oppressive or brutal acts of the regime as a recruiting tool for your movement.
Isolate or remove from the movement people who use or advocate violence.
A strategy that was successfully used in Egypt was that of identifying a regime’s pillars of support like the army which was Mubarak’s biggest support. Another was to demonstrate that there are options. Fear and apathy can be defeated as long as the people believe in their own power to topple the dictator. But what Sharp wasn’t able to do was to suggest what to do when dictators are gone. This is now left to groups like “Waging Nonviolence” which asked a number of eminent thinkers to share their thoughts on the next steps after a revolution.
These are some of the things they said: The biggest challenge is how to maintain momentum and not allow the military to get comfortable in power. For movements that are yet to consolidate democracy, these are some steps: (1) remain organized and mobilized by using nonviolent tactics; (2) learn how to negotiate strategically with residual regime figures to set fair and effective procedures for constitutional revision; (3) study cases like that of the Polish and South African transitions; (4) learn to maintain momentum, especially bottom-up momentum in transformation and deconstruction; (5) provide anti-coup defense by exercising vigilance; (6) make transition complete – e.g., from Mubarak to military and to the people, a challenge to civil society; (7) maintain gains of the revolution by sustaining energy and solidarity; and (8) the biggest challenge – overcoming the cynicism of those who do not understand nonviolent action.
Reflecting on EDSA 1, we would have wished we were not the first, so that we would have had the benefit of learning from other country experiences.
Others profited from our experience, but we neither had time, opportunity, or motivation to translate the learnings into actionable programs, and to be able to sustain the gains. My e-mail is florbraid@yahoo.com
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Global Times - Myanmar airline launches Yangon-Guangzhou direct flight service
Source: Xinhua
[08:27 March 04 2011]
Myanmar Airways International (MAI) launched its maiden flight between Yangon, Myanmar and Guangzhou, China on Thursday to boost exchange between the two cities, sources with the airline said.
Using Air Bus A-320, the flight will operate biweekly and special package tour will be planned later, it said.
The MAI represents another airline that link Yangon with the Chinese southern city after China Southern Airlines.
Another newly-bought A-320 aircraft of MAI, expected to arrive later this month, will be used to fly the routes of Yangon-New Delhi and Singapore-Jakarta-Singapore, while the A-330 aircraft, anticipated to reach by October, will be used to fly South Korea, Japan, United Arab Emirate and Qatar.
At present, MAI operates with three airbus of A-320 and one airbus of A-321 to Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Gaya and Siem Reap (Angkor Wat).
On Feb. 23, the MAI launched its inaugural flight between Yangon and Siem Reap (Angkor Wat), an ancient city of Cambodia, offering biweekly flights on Wednesday and Saturday.
The private-run MAI was once a joint venture set up by the state-run Myanmar Airways and a Singapore-based company in 1993.
In 2007, the Region Air of China's Hong Kong took over the stake from the Singapore's with 49 percent held by it, while the remainder 51 percent possessed by the state-run Myanmar Airways.
In May 2010, a giant Myanmar private company group, Kanbawza, took over the MAI for continuous operation under the government's privatization plan, buying up 80 percent stake of the airline with the remainder continued to be held by the government.
Besides the MAI flying internationally as Myanmar's national flag carrier, there are also 13 foreign airlines flying Yangon which comprise Air China, China Southern Airline, Thai Airways International, Indian Airlines, Qatar Airways, Silk Air, Malaysian Airlines, Bangkok Airways, Mandarin, Jetstar Asia, Phuket Airline, Thai Air Asia and Vietnam Airlines.
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Cambodia takes military attaches of 12 countries to see damages of Preah Vihear temple
English.news.cn 2011-03-03 17:41:44
PREAH VIHEAR, Cambodia, March 3 (Xinhua) -- A group of military attaches of 12 countries on Thursday paid a two-hour visit to Preah Vihear temple and surrounding areas to see the damages caused by mortar and artillery shelling during the deadly clashes early last month between the Cambodian and Thai troops.
The team of military attaches from 12 embassies in Phnom Penh included the United States, France, Russia, China, Japan, Canada, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, New Zealand, Malaysia and Australia.
Cambodian four-star general Neang Phat, secretary of state of the Ministry of Defense, led the group during the visit.
The group was welcomed at the temple by four-star general Chea Dara, deputy commander-in-chief of Royal Cambodian Armed Forces for Preah Vihear Direction, and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen' s eldest son Hun Manet, deputy commander of the Headquarters of Infantry.
"Cambodia wanted the military attaches to see with their own eyes the damages caused by Thai shelling in the recent war," Chea Dara said during the delegation visit.
He has ushered the delegation to see craters, cracks, broken pieces of Preah Vihear temple caused by Thai artillery shelling.
"At the behest of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, Cambodian troops vow to defend our territory from any invasion of Thailand," he said.
"Cambodia has never invaded into other countries, we want a border of peace and cooperation, but if they invade into ours, we have to exercise self-defense rights."
The visit followed a similar visit by military attachs to the Thai side of the border on Feb. 21, organized by Thai Defense Ministry.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said Thursday that 414 shells of mortar and artillery fired by Thai troops which had fallen on the temple in the war on Feb. 4-7.
Cambodia and Thailand have had border conflict just a week after Cambodia's Preah Vihear temple was enlisted as the World Heritage Site on July 7, 2008.
The conflict is due to Thai claim of the ownership of 4.6 sq km of scrub next to the temple, which resulted in a military build-up along the border, and periodic clashes between Cambodian and Thai soldiers have resulted in the deaths of troops on both sides.
The latest clashes on Feb. 4-7, with a barrage of artillery shells unleashed on both sides of the border, had claimed the lives of soldiers and civilians on both sides and also caused tens of thousands of the two countries' villagers near the disputed areas fleeing for safe shelters.
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Himalayan Times - Six grader Sherpa bags UN award
Added At: 2011-03-04 9:20 PM
Last Updated At: 2011-03-04 9:35 PM
LALITPUR: Cheten Doka Sherpa, a sixth grader at Daffodil Public School, has bagged the UN Habitat 10th International Children's Future Award.
Sherpa had won the award during the children's drawing contest " Better City , Better Life" organised by the UN Habitat Regional Office in Fukuoka, Japan to mark the 10th UN World Habitat Day.
Along with Sherpa, Mai Eguchi (Japan, 5th Grader) and Kriss (Myanmar, 5th Grader) also won the Children's Future Award.
Gillian Mellsop, the UNICEF representative in Nepal, gave away the award to Sherpa amidst a programme organised here on Friday.
A total of 885 children from 10 countries including Nepal, India, China, Japan, Philippines and Myanmar took part in the drawing contest.
The works of children adjudged the best in the contest have been included in the calendar published by the UN Habitat for 2011, too.
The first Monday of the month of October is marked as the UN World Habitat Day.
The Fukuoka based UN Habitat regional office has been organising the children's drawing competition biannually on the occasion of the Day.
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The Vibe - Why we need to keep talking about Burma
In May, Aung San Suu Kyi’s appeal to “use your liberty to promote ours” will be at the heart of the Brighton Festival as she becomes Guest Director. But how else can we use our freedom to support those denied it in Burma?
Submitted by Francis Grove-White on Thursday, 3 March 2011
Nearly four months since the fraudulent elections staged by Burma’s military junta in November, the lack of any genuine progress towards democratisation or an improvement in the human rights situation is deeply worrying.
The elections were neither free nor fair and categorically failed to meet internationally recognised standards. Vote rigging was widespread on behalf of the military junta’s political party, the USDP, whose overwhelming majority in both houses, coupled with the 25% of seats constitutionally reserved for the military itself, allows this effective dictatorship to unilaterally amend the already deeply flawed 2008 Constitution as it sees fit.
The release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in the days following the election was well received by all who campaign for justice and human rights in Burma, but her release was, of course, a smokescreen deployed by the military junta to detract attention from the widespread domestic and international condemnation of the electoral process. The number of political dissidents and campaigners incarcerated in Burma’s appalling prisons system has doubled since 2007 and now stands at 2189.
Attacks on ethnic groups, many of whom were denied a say at the polls, have continued since November, and a recent report by the European Burma Network confirmed that ongoing human rights abuses under the ‘new’ government include extrajudicial executions, rape, mass use of forced labour, use of human minesweepers, recruitment of child soldiers, land confiscation, forced displacement and military attacks against civilians.
According to the UN Special Rapporteur on Burma, such abuses constitute possible war crimes and crimes against humanity. Yet no concrete action has been taken by the international community. What can be done? The global campaign for democracy and human rights in Burma, of which Burma Campaign UK is integral, continues to push for a UN investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity in Burma. Belgium recently became the 14th country to officially support this position.
But what can we do? The answer from Burma, elegantly articulated in 1997 by Aung San Suu Kyi, is simple: members of the international community should “use [their] liberty to support ours.” Interpretation of this is purely subjective, and this has led to a glorious multitude of different responses (I know a guy in Scotland who spent 2 years walking ‘barefoot for Burma’ following the suppression of the monk-led uprising in 2007), but one in particular caught my eye a few weeks ago.
In October Ben Hammond, a 32 year old from south London, will attempt to break the World Record for the longest uninterrupted dance (125 hours), in the process raising money to get his educational charity, LearnBurma, up and running. As a citizenship teacher and former community organiser Hammond clearly recognises the importance of switching kids on to issues from an early age, before apathy kicks in, and equipping them with the tools to investigate, challenge and question what’s going on in the world around them. In this way, LearnBurma could be a powerful and dynamic force for raising the profile of Burma and encouraging action to affect change.
The year-long preparation for the world record attempt is called Free to Dance, an initiative that has seen Hammond dancing all over the UK, learning to dance dozens of different dances and organising flashmob-style silent discos. He’s now training to dance the London Marathon, before dancing non-stop through Glastonbury Festival, and in August from John O’Groats to Land’s End. The idea is to get Free to Dance to as wide an audience as possible and to get people talking about the situation in Burma. It’s about using our freedom to support those who, four months after elections, are still not free.
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CathNews - Jesuits' quiet progress in Myanmar
Published: March 05, 2011
As major developments sweep through Myanmar - the staging of the first elections in 20 years, the release of Aung San Suu Kyi from seven years of house arrest - Jesuits continue their quiet work in the country, making their own contribution to improving the lives of the local people, reports Province Express.
The former Australian Provincial, Fr Mark Raper SJ, was recently appointed Regional Superior of Myanmar. He will oversee the work being undertaken there by Jesuits such as Fr Paul Horan SJ, who has spent recent months teaching English in Yangon.
The Director of Jesuit Mission, Fr Phil Crotty SJ, recently visited the country to see first-hand the work that Jesuit Mission supports. "The Jesuits are working in Myanmar as a kind of NGO. They have several English language centres where they provide this opportunity for young people to learn English," he says.
"Learning English is an approved occupation, and it’s a point of contact. Myanmar is a very restless place, especially in the border regions with Thailand, with China, with India, and these young people who come in from troubled areas are given a sense of hope.
"Back in their villages many would be press-ganged into either joining the military or the rebels."
Young scholastics from Myanmar represent the future of the Society of Jesus in the troubled country.
*Arun, who is undertaking his training abroad, looks forward to the day when he is able to return to his homeland and find new ways in which to implement the faith that does justice.
He recalls the difficulties of training as a Jesuit novice in his homeland, where he was forced to undertake his formation in secret.
"Myanmar is a very cold place and sometimes we try to get (outside to warm ourselves in) the sun. But we can't gather in a big group otherwise [the officials] will become suspicious."
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Myanmar
Asian Tribune - Fait accompli of the Tatmadaw Values
Fri, 2011-03-04 13:14 — editor
By Kanbawza Win
All revolutions start with enthusiasm but usually end with tears. Will the Burmese revolution which started with a mighty force in 1988, fizzle out in 2011? The tears still could have been avoided, if the people firmly stand by the values which they have inherited from their ancestors especially from the founding fathers of modern Burma led by Bogyoke Aung San.
If the Arab people can rise against their tyrants why can’t we? The people of Burma should ask themselves, not what Daw Aung Suu Kyi can do for them but what they can do for the Genuine Federal Union of Burma.
If history were to repeat itself the replica of the 1974 is now being reacted when the Socialist Constitution led by the defunct Burmese Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) was initiated and bulldozed its way through the people and the country but soon shows its worth when just a few months later, the workers demonstrated and was put down with great severely. Now it is also predictable that it is a matter of time that the people will rise again as the gap between the elites and the ordinary people are so immense and the unfairness is so widespread in the country. Besides the class of 2011are the new generation of Burmese who have know little political freedom in their young lives and are no longer willing to wait for it.
It can be recollected that the Tatmadaw under the patronage of, Gen Ne Win, had successfully turned Burma, one of the most promising countries and the rice bowl of Asia into one of the poorest and the rice hole of Asia, so much so that in 1987it has to declared a Least Developed Nation (LDC) by the UN. General Than Shwe, the successor of Ne Win tried to remedy it by introducing the market economy similar to what Deng Xiaoping has done in China. But unlike the Chinese leadership, the Tatmadaw leaders did not harbour a single ounce of love to the country and its people but is solely bent on retaining power, enriching their families and business associates.
Up to this day an out-dated and complex exchange rate fiddle means that the country's oil and gas income is downplayed in official figures, with the real revenue siphoned off into military spending or personal bank accounts. Even in Vietnam the government is capable of convincing Western investors to put their money into the country and has been commended for economic reforms and legal amendments. In contrast, economic policy has been dismissed as opaque and incompetent even at the best of times marking Burma out as an economic twilight zone, attractive only to those who want to take oil, gas, gems, timber and other resources., out of the country. Even if Western sanctions were reduced or dropped, it remains to be seen whether Burma’s rulers would break with a half century of disastrous economic policies in response.
Sanctions
The NLD’s document concluded that sanctions have not affected economic conditions in Burma “to any notable degree. but rather The regime’s poor economic policies and mismanagement are the main causes of Burma’s economic crisis. Land confiscation and lack of freedom in production and marketing - not sanctions - have negatively affected Burma’s agricultural sector, which employs the majority of Burma’s population. Lack of accountability, and corruption has impeded productive investments. National reconciliation based on “an all inclusive political process” should be “central” to any consideration of changes in sanctions policies and the release of all political prisoners is a “critical requirement” for the removal of sanctions.
A chorus of vociferous calls for the end to sanctions has been reverberating very recently in the international arena. Any Burmese nationalist can sense the seductive nature of the anti-sanctions narrative, designed to convey a mixture of moral and strategic concerns in the same breath. These include the troubling feudal personality traits of the ruling senior and junior generals, the deeply structural nature of political and ethnic conflicts, the lack of any real—as opposed to anticipated—potential for change through the emerging move towards “civilianized” military rule post-election, the complete absence of any viable efforts on the part of the regime to seek lasting peace in the country, the non-existence of policy space for both existing and emerging political processes and institutions, and last but not least, the utter lack of technocratic competence and genuine concerns for public welfare among decision makers.
Opportunists and apologists have argued that the post-election Burma carries seeds of evolutionary change with it. These same advocates have also held up the military’s unmistakably regressive Constitution as “something better than outright dictatorship” without any written formal guidelines, even when there is absolutely no change in the balance of institutional power in the post-election set up. Burma’s “Constitutional Tatmadaw Rule” betrays both the latter and spirit of constitutionalism. For it legalizes, legitimizes, enshrines, ring-fences and delimits the de facto military rule—providing a sharp contrast to the essence of constitutionalism, which is to curb the arbitrary power of any ruling institution or class.
The Tatmadaw’s ideological and institutional orientation is inconceivable for any reform potential arising from this very institution of power. It also structurally prevents trade or investment reaching beyond the hands of the soldier's uniforms and their cronies. Much has been made of the fact that the Tatmadaw is creating the trappings of a functioning democracy, namely political parties, a parliamentary system with different houses and nominal division of power. Realistically speaking, however, it is impossible to imagine a scenario where any serious reform initiatives or policies can be tabled, much less debated within the military’s parliament, which is bound to be the Tatmadaw’s rubber-stamp. These are obstacles to the democratization of political and economic spheres.
It is lamentable that the self style foreign and Burmese experts have chosen to overlook the type of anti-intellectual, anti-democratic professional practices and political culture in which the regime’s members of parliament both the men in uniform and “civilianized” soldiers are in. These men have spent decades learning the art of climbing the military and bureaucratic ladders solely through their unquestioning loyalty and utter obedience to their superior officers, executing orders, right or wrong examples being killing the monks, raping the ethnic women, using child soldiers and preventing the international aid reaching the storm victims.
Therefore, the chances of the rubber-stamp parliament and its legislative processes influencing regime’s MP-elects to think and act in a democratic manner that befit parliamentarians are absolutely non-existent.
The issue of leadership transition in the hopes that the junior generals, in their late 50s and 60s, will be more open-minded, reform-oriented and forward-thinking is non existence.
Individual generals do have their differences in ideas, approaches, and interests but when it comes to liberalizing politics and redistributing wealth, Burmese military officers by and large have acted as a corporate entity, that is, a soldiering class with class views and interests. It is ironical that the anti-sanctions advocates commonly place responsibility on Western sanctions—specifically, the denial of development aid and low level of humanitarian assistance—for the sorry state of human conditions in the military-ruled Burma. How can the generals purchased from Russia a second squadron of state-of-the-art MiG-29 fighter-jets at a cost of nearly US $600 million is just one example.
The advocates of ending sanctions point out contemporary “developmental states” such as China and Vietnam as development models for Burma to emulate, de-linking freedoms from economic development. But it must be noted that the autocracies in Beijing and Hanoi do make serious efforts to improve the material lot of the peoples under their respective rules, even when they deprive the latter of any meaningful voice in the country’s political and policy matters. But no such sentiment has been detected among the Tatmadaw’s leadership. It is not a policy priority for the Tatmadaw when authenticated proof of it is that less than 2 percent of the country’s national budget is allocated to the combined fields of public health and education speaks volume.
“In terms of fiscal policy, the government is likely to continue to focus on spending heavily on the military, and it will do little in the way of implementing policies to support households and businesses.” The Tatmadaw remain the insurmountable obstacle to the trickle-down economic logic. Anti-sanctions advocates which includes China, India and ASEAN whose Asian values pales miserably if compared to the West, have not concerted any pressure on the regime to put the public welfare policy and instead prevented them from playing the kind of strategically impactful role which was carried out apartheid in South Africa. The efforts at democratization across Eastern Europe succeeded partly because the external geopolitical and ideological environment was conducive to internal struggles for democratization across the region. But in Burma is that no such external environment exists.
To the contrary, Burma’s economically predatory neighbours treat the country as a prostitute, where they can gratify their satisfaction for cheap human and natural resources and as a strategic asset. Such is the core of Asian values. They find it against their interests for the military regime to be replaced with a democratic government responsive to citizens’ livelihood needs. It was, only a dictatorship with absolute disregard for public well-being would have signed a multi-billion dollar deal such as the Dawei Development Project, which allows a Thai-Italian conglomerate to set up, among other things, socially and ecologically harmful refineries which will emit massive pollutants into the sky above Burma’s southern coast line e.g. Thailand’s Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, said that that dirty industries are moving to Burma: “Some industries are not suitable to be located in Thailand. This is why they decided to set up in Dawei [in Tavoy].” Singapore discourage smoking and in the duty free shop no one can buy a package of cigarettes into the country but only when he is going out, has set up a big cigarette factory in Burma. Hence, the people of Burma are not simply up against their country's Tatmadaw but also at the mercy of unscrupulous foreign interests. The ugly face of anti sanctions.
Ending the sanctions now will not prove to be an effective move towards political and economic development for the people; much debate has taken place in Washington, Brussels, Canberra and elsewhere on the issue of economic sanctions on Burma which tends to polarize opinion and groundswell of opposition to sanctions. The opposition to sanctions coalesces around a number of issues, one of which is the implicit idea that somehow sanctions are responsible for Burma's poverty. But a careful research reveals that this disastrous turnaround has nothing to do with the sanctions imposed by the West. It does, however, have everything to do with the chronic economic mismanagement by the Tatmadaw regimes that have ruled Burma since 1962. For six decades Burma's military apparatus has controlled and plundered the country's economy and natural resources, while it has simultaneously dismantled, blocked and undermined basic market institutions. Most of Burma's leading corporations are owned by the military, and the country is the second-most corrupt in the world. In other words Tatmadaw has created an environment in which genuine transformative economic growth - of the sort that has transformed its neighbors and peers - is not possible.
Burmese Tatmadaw Government is a simple-minded looter, destroying what it can neither create nor understand. Burma attracts little in the way of foreign investment, and what does enter is strongly concentrated in the gas and oil sectors, and other extractive industries. Burma has recently emerged as a significant regional exporter of natural gas, but so far this windfall has done little good for the country. Indeed, it has fuelled something of a ''resources curse'' of the sadly familiar pattern - financially entrenching Burma's regime (which keeps the gas revenues offshore for its own use) and generating an array of ''national prestige'' projects. These include Naypyidaw- ''abode of kings'' the purchase of a nuclear reactor from Russia and, perhaps most worryingly of all, the recent purchases of arms and unknown capacities from North Korea.
The arguments against sanctions on Burma are routinely based on the idea that the encouragement of business will support an alternative centre of power beyond the regime, and the emergence thus of a ''business class'' as a force demanding change. But an alternative base of power via business clearly depends upon who controls this business - and in Burma this is none other than the state itself. Significant export earners such as gas, petroleum, precious stones and metals, teak and seafood products are all controlled by the state. Simply, the military state's careful control over the investment of private capital in these sectors precludes their emergence as challengers to the political status quo.
The financial sanctions level against Burma by the US, EU, Canada, Australia (which limits access to our financial systems by Burma's military regime, and named individuals connected to it) are extraordinarily well-targeted. The average person in Burma has no access to a bank account, much less a need or desire to engage the international financial system. This is not true for the senior members of the military or the rent-seeking elite connected to them. As such, the denial of access to Western financial systems to this group sends precisely the right signal, to precisely the right people. However one might agree or disagree over their original imposition, the economic sanctions now in place constitute potent ''money in the bank'' that can be spent in response to genuine reform in Burma in the period ahead.
Lifting economic sanctions now would not only embolden Burma's present reform-shy regime, but also greatly deleverage the ability of the West to influence future events. Changing Burma's circumstances will primarily be a function of events internal to the country, and at the hands of domestic constituencies that recognize the incentives for change. In the meantime, the rest of the world can best promote these incentives, and best allow their realization, by promising to reward the eventual emergence of the policies and institutions that underlie our own liberty and prosperity.
It is very crystal clear that Sanctions means something is very wrong without which no one will take sanctions on the country, whether it is effective or not. Sanctions are symbolic and political, aimed at the junta and its cronies. It is important to remind the regime and kick the ball back to the generals' court. The point is the regime must improve its human rights records and release all political prisoners and create a conducive political environment where everyone feels that Burma is heading in the right direction.
Human Rights Violations
Long before Western sanctions were imposed on Burma, if the Tatmadaw led by Ne Win had decided to reform the economy and integrate it into the global economy, he would not have had to face a nationwide uprising in 1988 and could have remained in power as a benevolent dictator like Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore.
Now, one can ask why did the West imposed sanctions in the first place. The answer, obviously, is its record of human rights violations —rampant human rights abuses under military rule—has been largely ignored, and must be addressed if sanctions are to be lifted. The impact of sanctions on the Burmese economy has been greatly overstated. Clearly, these sanctions are political tools aimed at censuring the regime’s poor human rights record, and not at hobbling Burma's economy. In the past decade we have seen is the generals and their cronies getting richer, thanks to the eagerness of Burma’s neighbours to extract its natural resources and invest in infrastructure with little or no benefit for Burmese people.
Burma remains one of the poorest nations in the world. The regime spends the lion's share of its budget on the military, while setting aside only tiny amounts for education and health care. Lifting sanction should be considered only when the human rights situation in Burma improves. The US, the EU, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have all imposed sanctions on Burma to pressure the ruling regime to end human rights violations and move toward a genuine democratic transition. However, despite general elections held late last year and the election of a civilian president by the country's newly formed Parliament last week, few believe that the changes represent a real departure from the military-ruled past.
Critics of sanctions should be asking what the regime itself h as done to give Western countries a reason to shift their policy. Suu Kyi has been freed, but that still leaves more than 2,000 other political prisoners languishing in Burma's gulag. If the regime had any interest in getting the West to drop its sanctions, it would, at the very least, unconditionally release all of these detainees. Sanctions-bashers occasionally pay lip service to the plight of Burma's prisoners of conscience, but their real concern is clearly that they are losing investment opportunities to China and the junta's other greedy regional “partners”.
While sanctions critics often insist that an influx of foreign capital would raise Burma's standard of living, the evidence suggests otherwise. The massive flow of cash coming into the country from around Asia has done nothing to alleviate the desperate poverty of ordinary Burmese, and there's no reason to believe that Western cash would have a more beneficial impact. China, Thailand, India, Singapore and South Korea have all heavily invested in Burma's primary industries, and new opportunities are opening up in other sectors, including manufacturing.
How such investment will improve lives in a country that was once one of the most developed in the region was never mentioned, Tatmadaw don't seem too concerned about most citizens' lack of access to basic health care and education. As long as this remains the case, there is no reason to believe that lifting sanctions will serve any purpose other than to enrich Western corporations and, of course, the Tatmadaw. In contradistinction to war, sanctions are widely portrayed as necessary, almost a healthy medicine to bring about change in the opponent’s policies.
“Targeted sanctions serve as a warning that acts contrary to basic norms of justice and human rights cannot be committed with impunity even by authoritarian governments”. It points out that financial sanctions have denied junta members and their associate’s access to the US financial system, and helped prevent the laundering of black money and the siphoning off of revenues from the sale of gas and other resources.
American Involvement
Although American power and influence in the world have declined, the world still looks to U.S. for direction. President Obama personally and the United States as a country have much to gain by moving out in front and siding with the public demand for dignity and democracy as it had done in the Arab world. This would help rebuild America's leadership and remove a lingering structural weakness in its alliances that comes from being associated with unpopular and repressive regimes. Most important, doing so would open the way to peaceful progress in the region.
Given the recent developments in Burma, it is time that the Obama administration appointed a Special Representative and Policy Coordinator to the military-ruled country to ensure that US sanctions are targeted against the junta and meet their objectives. The US is at risk of losing legitimacy for failing to establish a formal inquiry into alleged crimes against humanity in Burma. The regime continues to regard elections as an institution to be cynically manipulated rather than embraced, it continues to perpetrate violations of international law with impunity, and that if the UN is to be relevant to the world today, and it cannot remain idle in the face of such behaviour. The ongoing crisis in Burma puts the credibility of the UN and international humanitarian law at stake as it had has persistently ignored the General Assembly, and has continued to perpetrate violations of international humanitarian law with impunity. In addition to the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry, the introduction of a universal arms embargo on the regime in Burma is long overdue. Let the anti sanctions crow with their might but justice, truth and democracy should prevailed.
Footnotes:
1Time Magazine 28-02-2011 p 16
2. See the UN Records
3. Rougheen; Simon Irrawaddy 21-12-2010 “ A Vietnam Syndrome for Burma?”
4.ALTSEAN Burma Bulletin Feb 2011
5.See Dr Zarni’s writings
6.The Economic Intelligence Unit’s January 2011
7.Read the writings of Timothy Garton Ash, professor of European Studies at Oxford University,
8.The International Herald Tribune “An Industrial Project That Could Change Myanmar,” 26-11- 2010
9. Please refer to Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index
10. Vicary; Alison & Turnell; Sean in Macquarie University journal Burma Economic Watch
11. Ibid
12. Alison Vicary; Alison & Turnell;Sean in National Times 6-10-2009 Sanctions Have a Role to Play
See the NLD statement
13. George Soros Chairman of the Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Foundations,
14. Suzanne Dimaggio , Asia Society’s Vice President for Global Policy Programs. -
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The Irrawaddy - Naypyidaw Orders New “Four Cuts” Campaign
By WAI MOE Friday, March 4, 2011
The War Office in Naypyidaw has ordered Burmese government forces based in ethnic areas to relaunch their infamous “Four Cuts” strategy against the ethnic cease-fire groups that continue to resist the junta's Border Guard Force (BGF) plan.
The Burmese army's “Four Cuts” policy was developed in the 1970s during the former regime of the Burmese Socialist Programme Party with the intention of undermining ethnic militias by cutting off access to food, funds, information and recruitment, often with devastating consequences.
According to military sources, the War Office recently ordered regional commanders to reimpose the strategy in areas including Kachin State, Shan State, Karenni State , Karen State , Mon State and Tenasserim Division.
Military sources said the renewed campaign would include an additional “cut”—a policy of severing communication routes between allied ethnic groups.
Commenting on the information about the new “Four Cuts” campaign, Aung Kyaw Zaw, a Burmese military observer at the Sino-Burmese border who has close contacts to several ethnic armed groups, said the junta’s plan could be irrelevant because many ethnic armies are based in border areas.
“The Four Cuts strategy was designed for inland counterinsurgency operations,” he said. “In particular, there were government offensives against the Communist Party of Burma and the Karen National Union in the Pegu Mountains. But now the groups that are being targeted are based at the Sino-Burmese border and the Thai-Burmese border.”
Some observers expressed concern about an escalation of human rights violations such as forced relocations, the burning of villages and summary executions in ethnic areas, atrocities that invariably accompany such a strategy, they said.
“The Four Cuts strategy has been modified by the current military junta,” said Htet Min, a former army officer who is now living in exile. “When I was in the military, it was also called 'sweeping' an area, meaning removing any suspected villagers and burning their villages.”
Aung Lynn Htut, a former counter intelligence officer now living in the US, said the massive internal displacement in eastern Burma is directly related to the “Four Cuts” strategy, which was known in the far south of Burma as “No Man's Land” policy during operations in the 1990s, directly commanded by the office of the commander-in-chief.
The “No Man's Land” policy was ordered by the War Office to execute anyone, including children, who were found in areas of military operations,” he said.
Since 1989, the military regime has signed cease-fire agreements with as many as 17 ethnic armed groups. However, the major cease-fire groups have rejected the BGF plan that was first raised in April 2009.
Those groups include: the United Wa State Army; the Kachin Independent Organization; the National Democratic Alliance Army, also known as the Mongla group, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army or the Kokang group, the New Mon State Party, and a faction of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army.
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The Irrawaddy - Than Shwe Grants Himself Power to Access 'Special Funds'
By WAI MOE Friday, March 4, 2011
Prior to the first session of Burma's new Parliament, junta chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe signed a law that gives the commander-in-chief of the military—who is currently Than Shwe himself—the absolute authority to use unlimited “Special Funds” in performing his duties of protecting the Constitution and preserving national sovereignty.
According to the two-page Special Fund Law leaked to The Irrawaddy, “The Tatmadaw [armed forces] commander-in-chief has the authority to use Special Funding in the local currency or foreign currency while providing for the non-disintegration of the Union; the non- disintegration of national solidarity; and the perpetuation of national sovereignty.”
“Special Fund means the budget for special needs to safeguard the Constitution and protect the country from external and internal threats,” the law says. “The Law must be called the Special Fund Law related to the use of budgets which are necessary for the perpetuation of national sovereignty.”
The law, dated Jan. 17, was confidentially distributed among government officials on Feb. 11. It gives the military chief absolute power and discretion in the use of unlimited “special funds” that are not included in the country's defense budget.
“For the spending of the Special Funding, no person or organization can question, propose and audit,” the law says.
The only requirement is that the military chief report about “the Special Funding to the President of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar [Burma] at the end of the fiscal year,” which is March 31.
Quoting official information distributed to members of the Burmese government, The Associated Press reported Tuesday that 1.8 trillion kyat (US $2 billion), or 23.6 percent of Burma's budget this year, will go to defense. The health sector, meanwhile, will get 99.5 billion kyat ($110 million), or 1.3 percent.
The funds used by the commander-in-chief under the Special Funds Law will be over and above those allocated to the military in the defense budget.
In addition, the 2011-12 budget allocated 20 billion kyat ($22 million) to the office of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), the name of the junta's ruling council, which led observers to question whether the SPDC would be abolished when the new government was formed as the new Constitution seems to require.
Meanwhile, the first sessions of Burma's Hluttaw (Parliament), which is dominated by appointed military officers and representatives of the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), have been ongoing in Naypyidaw.
This week, Pyithu Hluttaw (Lower House) and Amyotha Hluttaw (Upper House) meetings were held separately. They each lasted about one hour, which was longer than the previous meetings of the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (the Union Parliament of both houses), which in some cases lasted only a few minutes.
The bill committees and the public account committees were formed for both houses of Parliament, but many MPs complained that they were just sitting and listening during meetings.
“Under the tightened security, even USDP members felt like people under house arrest,” said a USDP MP from Mandalay, who was asked to contest for the party because he is a respected person in his township.
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The Irrawaddy - COMMENTARY: ICC for Libya ... Why Not Burma?
By HTET AUNG Thursday, March 3, 2011
2011 has begun with a series of pro-democracy uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East quickly nicknamed by the world's media the “Jasmine Revolution.” But the sweet scent of freedom drifting across the Maghreb got lost along the way in Libya.
In mid-February, inspired by successful demonstrations that ousted leaders in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt, disgruntled Libyans took to the streets to protest the stagnant corrupt rule of Muammar al-Qadhafi, who has ruled his so-called “Jamahiriya,” his very own people's republic, with an iron fist since staging a coup in 1969.
Unlike the pro-democracy demonstrations in other parts of the Arab world, Libya's unarmed protesters were met with the wrath of al-Qadhafi who cracked down harshly on the opposition, deploying his loyal armed forces, mercenaries, and even fighter jets.
On Feb. 25, the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) convened a special session in Geneva. It quickly passed a resolution by consensus calling for the Council “to dispatch an independent, international Commission of Inquiry [CoI] to Libya to investigate all alleged violations of international human rights law in the country.”
The day after the HRC resolution, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) unanimously adopted a historic resolution to impose sanctions against the al-Qadhafi regime, including a referral of the case to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate whether the Libyan regime had committed “a crime against humanity” in attacking its own citizens.
In a rare move in recent UN history, the five nations that wield veto power—the United States, China, the United Kingdom, France and Russia—were united in voting for action against the al-Qadhafi regime.
The ICC initiated on Feb. 28 a process to decide whether to open an investigation on crimes against humanity in Libya. ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said that there would be no impunity for guilty leaders, and that he would make a decision “without delay,” according to the UN News Center.
Within days, the world body proved that it can be strong and effective in dealing with a rogue regime, and it must be commended for that. But why then is the UN so impotent in dealing with the military junta of Burma?
The answer is plain and simple: in condemning the Libyan government, the UNSC spoke with one voice, an approach that has been totally absent in the case of Burma.
The Burmese people suffered under a barrage of brutal crackdowns each and every time they have stood to call for a transition from military dictatorship to democracy. All the Burmese protesters can expect is: to be shot in the street; to be arrested and tortured; to be forced to flee into exile; or to receive an inhumane prison sentence.
In 2007, Burma's military rulers showed their utter contempt by ordering their troops to fire on not just unarmed protesters but Buddhist monks and nuns.
In 2003, the junta committed an act of thuggery by staging a premeditated attack on pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her motorcade in Depayin, a town in central Burma, with loyalist thugs killing an estimated 70 activists using little more than sticks and stones and their bare fists.
In the past 20 years, the Burmese army has burnt down more than 3,000 villages in Burma's frontier ethnic states, causing a half million displaced persons, mostly ethnic minority groups, in jungles or fleeing across the border into Thailand.
All these human right abuses have been well documented in resolutions, and have been heard at the UN General Assembly and the HRC every year since the early 1990s.
However, the Burmese military junta continues to enjoy impunity for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The lack of the independent CoI has exacerbated the situation, and has convinced the generals that they are untouchable in any of the international legal arenas.
In early 2010, Tomás Quintana, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights to Burma, took an unprecedented move in a report to the HRC, calling for a CoI into possible crimes against humanity and war crimes in Burma. Neither the HRC nor the UNSC have acted on this recommendation to date.
The Asian Legal Resource Center (ALRC) issued a press release on March 3 regarding its separate submission to the 16th regular session of the HRC [Feb. 28 to March 25] in Geneva.
In its press release, the ALRC referred to the Japanese government delegation's questions to the Burmese delegation during the session, and said:
“The problem of systemic rights abuse in Myanmar [Burma] 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.”
The statement also pointed out the weakness of the HRC, stating: “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.”
Unfortunately, the people of Burma never hear one voice from the UNSC, and the consequence is a lack of any international legal framework to address the junta's continuing code of human rights violations.
Is it because Burmese strongman Snr-Gen Than Shwe has not bombed peaceful demonstrators in the streets like al-Qadhafi? Is it because the junta has successfully covered up its bloody tracks? Is it because there has never been a division within Burma's military ranks?
Although the current state violence in Libya is quite different from the incidents in Burma in terms of intensity and scope, the people of Burma have long deserved that the UN proclaims the injustice in the country with one clear voice.
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The Irrawaddy - Forcible Recruitment Still Common: Former Child Soldier
Thursday, March 3, 2011
A former child soldier who spent a year in the Burmese army before getting out with the help of the International Labor Organization (ILO) says abusive treatment of low-ranking troops and recruitment of underage soldiers are still common practices in the army, despite calls for reform.
The former soldier, Min Swe Oo, said that he was forcibly recruited at the end of 2009 by an unidentified sergeant in Taungoo, Pegu Division. At the time, he was just 14 years old.
He said he received basic military training at Training Battalion No. 4 in Pinlaung, in southern Shan State, and was later sent to Air Defense Workshop No. 7, located in Kyaukse, Mandalay Division.
Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Thursday, Min Swe Oo said: “When I was in the army, I received just 2,000 kyat (US $2.25) per week. I don’t know how much my actual salary was, because my superior officers took it to pay for various 'fees'. But when I left the army, my commanding officer, Maj Moe Lwin, said that none of my possessions belonged to me anymore.”
Min Swe Oo's mother, Khin Swe Oo, said that her son served in the army for about a year and was later discharged with the help of the ILO office in Rangoon.
“Warrant Officer San Win came to my house and informed me that my son had been given a letter of discharge. However, the commanding officer didn’t give us the letter right away, so we stayed at the barracks for 14 days until he handed it over,” said Khin Swe Oo.
Despite continuing calls for the Burmese army to end the practice of forcibly recruiting child soldiers, the ILO's office in Rangoon has accepted 22 child soldier cases so far this year.
Steve Marshall, the ILO liaison officer in Rangoon, said he didn’t really know why the recruitment of child soldiers is still going on in Burma.
“Children continue to be recruited, notwithstanding instructions that have come out from senior-level [officers]. And frankly, I can't explain that,” said Marshall.
According to the ILO's data, there were 210 child soldier cases in 2010, more than double the number of cases reported in the previous year.
Relatively few governments in the world currently recruit and use children in their armed forces. The London-based Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers lists Burma, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and Sudan among the “five real offenders.”
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Burma’s new budget: more of the same
Friday, 04 March 2011 14:17 Mizzima News
(Editorial) – For the first time in more than a decade, there’s been a little more comment and criticism, inside and outside Burma, about the proposed 2011 budget–but not in the new Parliament.
Actually, the budget has been enacted by the military regime in the usual manner, handed down without any critical input, debate or questions–ostensibly because the Parliament is engaged in forming a new government.
The details of 2011 budget, such as they are, are available only to those few people who have access to the government’s official Gazette.
Sadly, the budget proportions have not changed much over the last decade. A summary:
--The military gets around 30 percent
--Industry gets around 30 percent
--Trade gets around 23 percent
--Social services gets around 6 percent
--Education gets around 4 percent
--Health gets around 1 percent
The budget’s priorities clearly reflect the military’s priorities: money for ‘hard’ services and infrastructure, but very little for ‘soft’ services which support and aid the everyday citizen, who are left to struggle on their own and are being denied even the rudimentary elements of health care and educational services
Clearly, a big task for the pro-democratic opposition is to begin a political movement to direct more of Burma’s budgetary resources to the people: in education, health services and other ‘soft’ areas, particularly in light of the fact that Burma has no enemies threatening its borders.
More money must be also be directed toward making Burma’s economy competitive, and to do this more openness is required in business laws, allowing more access by international businesses which would lead to more jobs for the average Burmese citizen, not less. Look at the economies of China, India, Thailand and Vietnam.
To really understand the budget, lawmakers and average citizens must also be given more information, more transparency, in the allocation of funds within the broad, general budget areas. This will be reflected, we hope, in the future through vigorous debates that take place in Parliament on the issues of fiscal transparency, accountability and common sense.
At the same time, unless this information and debate is allowed to be reflected in the media, Burma will remain in the grip of rumors and a poorly informed electorate.
In a country with such a low per capita income, ordinary citizens are forced to rely on public
services for their basic health needs, and for their children’s right to an education that can make them competitive in the regional economy.
Another huge gap in the budget is the lack of detailed information on the revenue side. In reality, we do not know if the budget is based on an income surplus or a deficit.
Regional and international organizations have long called for better fiscal management, and for a broadening of the tax base which would ease the tax burden on ordinary citizens and the business community and increase tax revenue overall.
During the past year, a positive step has been the transfer of state enterprises into private hands, even though the process was tainted by cronyism and special favors. Businesses that are in the hands of private citizens will be more competitive in the long run, and benefit society more.
Fortunately, Burma is enjoying a low inflation rate, but for how long no one knows. Last year, the governor of Burma’s Central Bank told a World Bank and IMF joint meeting that Burma is working to improve its infrastructure and taking measures to keep inflation low.
Until now, no evidence of accelerating inflation can be seen, in spite of a recent jump in commodity prices on a rumored 300 percent increase in government worker salaries.
Once again, more rumors. What the country needs from the new government is more reliable information and transparency.
Then at least we can begin to talk about facts, rather than rumors.
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DVB News - Kachin army blocks Tatmadaw rations
By NAW NOREEN
Published: 4 March 2011
Food rations being delivered to Burmese troops stationed in Bhamo were reportedly blocked by the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) as rising tensions in the northern state show no sign of abating.
The battalion due to receive the rations had allegedly been deployed in territory belonging to the KIA, one of Burma’s biggest ethnic armies. The Burmese army has beefed up its presence in the unstable region with additional deployments of troops and tanks close to the group’s headquarters in Laiza.
The recent incident is the latest in ongoing encounters between the two forces: reports from the region claim that troops led by Major Myint Naing Oo carrying supplies to a military base were stopped by the KIA. Burmese soldiers were then ordered to block the road between Mong Hkawng and Mansi in Bhamo district for three days between 23 and 25 February.
Sporadic bursts of fighting have broken out in Kachin state since late last year, following the KIA’s rebuttal of junta demands to become a Border Guard Force (BGF). On 6 February gunfire was exchanged after a Burmese battalion entered KIA territory under the pretext of seeking and destroying illicit narcotics.
The KIA has been undertaken a drug eradication programme in areas belonging to another Kachin army, the New Democratic Army-Kachin (NDA-K), which is loyal to the junta. Burmese officials reportedly warned the group against destroying poppy fields.
And in January a new military command zone was designated for Tanaing, a region controlled by the KIA, adding to Burmese army presence there.
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BURMA RELATED NEWS - MARCH 04, 2011
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AP - Myanmar pro-democracy group slams govt's budget
AP - Myanmar to enforce ban on illegal ivory business
AFP - Myanmar, Bolivia, Venezuela fail in drugs fight: US
Japan Today - DPJ's Okada speaks by phone to Suu Kyi
Asian Correspondent - Burma junta buys MiG-29s, spends $2 per person on health
Calcutta News.Net - Ten Myanmarese nationals held in Tripura
SMU Daily Campus - Former DMN editor Rena Pederson speaks on Burma Chronicles
People's Daily Online - Myanmar geared up for major gems fair
Digital Trends - Burma joins the Facebook Revolutions
BBC News - East Timor applies to join Asean
ABS-CBNNEWS.com - East Timor not a burden to ASEAN: minister
Manila Bulletin - Nonviolence
Global Times - Myanmar airline launches Yangon-Guangzhou direct flight service
Xinhua - Cambodia takes military attaches of 12 countries to see damages of Preah Vihear temple
Himalayan Times - Six grader Sherpa bags UN award
The Vibe - Why we need to keep talking about Burma
CathNews - Jesuits' quiet progress in Myanmar
Asian Tribune - Fait accompli of the Tatmadaw Values
The Irrawaddy - Naypyidaw Orders New “Four Cuts” Campaign
The Irrawaddy - Than Shwe Grants Himself Power to Access 'Special Funds'
The Irrawaddy - COMMENTARY: ICC for Libya ... Why Not Burma?
The Irrawaddy - Forcible Recruitment Still Common: Former Child Soldier
Mizzima News - Burma’s new budget: more of the same
DVB News - Kachin army blocks Tatmadaw rations
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Myanmar pro-democracy group slams govt's budget
Myanmar pro-democracy group criticizes junta for allocating too much to defense
On Friday March 4, 2011, 10:02 am EST
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- Myanmar's pro-democracy group has criticized the government's recently released budget for allocating too much money to the military and not enough to social services.
A statement Friday from Aung San Suu Kyi's officially disbanded National League for Democracy also said the budget should have been passed by the newly elected parliament, rather than enacted by the outgoing ruling junta.
The government enacted the budget on Jan. 27, just a few days before parliament met for the first time in more than two decades. Details published in the Government Gazette revealed that almost one-quarter of the 7.6 trillion kyat ($8.45 billion) national budget will be allocated to defense. Education will get a 4.3 percent share, and health 1.3 percent.
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Myanmar to enforce ban on illegal ivory business
Tourists to Myanmar warned not to buy ivory souvenirs amid crackdown on illegal trade
On Friday March 4, 2011, 5:56 am EST
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- Tourists who buy ivory souvenirs in Myanmar risk having them confiscated as part of a crackdown on the often brazen illegal trade, media reported Friday.
While the wildlife trade monitoring group, TRAFFIC, has cited Myanmar as a hotspot for elephant and ivory smuggling, foreigners are rarely arrested for possession of antiques or banned wildlife.
Forestry officials quoted in the 7-Day News Journal said that authorities are aware that handicraft shops in the two biggest cities, Yangon and Mandalay, openly sell ivory goods, despite laws aimed at protecting elephants and banning the sale of elephant parts. Ivory is often carved up into sculptures of Chinese deities, combs, chopsticks and other souvenirs.
"Forestry department officials will open investigations and take action against the illegal ivory trade," an official was quoted as saying. The weekly is privately run but, like all media in Myanmar, is subject to heavy censorship. Officials speak anonymously for fear of retribution.
The report cited a 1994 law that lists elephants as endangered species and bans the killing or hunting of the animals and the sale of elephant parts. Violators can face up to seven years imprisonment and a 50,000 kyat fine ($50).
"If a foreign tourist is found in possession of ivory handicrafts on departure at Yangon International Airport, the items will be confiscated," the official was quoted as saying.
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Myanmar, Bolivia, Venezuela fail in drugs fight: US
Thu Mar 3, 1:21 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – 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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Japan Today - DPJ's Okada speaks by phone to Suu Kyi
Saturday 05th March, 02:41 AM JST
BANGKOK — Katsuya Okada, secretary general of Japan’s ruling Democratic Party of Japan, on Thursday spoke with Myanmar pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi by phone, it was learned Friday.
It is the first time for Suu Kyi to speak with a senior member of the DPJ since she was released from house arrest in November last year. According to a senior official of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party, Suu Kyi and Okada discussed Myanmar’s process of democratization and sanctions during their 40-minute conversation.
Suu Kyi, who was released from seven and a half years of continuous house arrest on Nov 13, said she wants the international community to maintain economic sanctions that have been imposed against Myanmar’s junta.
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Asian Correspondent - Burma junta buys MiG-29s, spends $2 per person on health
By Zin Linn Mar 03, 2011 11:08PM UTC
This month Burma is to receive the first of 20 RSK MiG-29s costing about €400 million ($553 million), more than doubling the country’s MiG-29 fleet, reports Flight International.
The MiG-29s were ordered in November 2009. The aircraft will be delivered in three designs, comprising 10 MiG-29B and six MiG-29SE single-seat fighters and four MiG-29UB twin-seat operational trainers.
Burma earlier bought used MiG-29s from Belarus, but approached manufacturer and Russian arms export company Rosoboronexport for help after experiencing a high corrosion rate. Moscow responded with help on weapons, spare parts and training, including the installation of a simulator at one of its air bases, Flight International said.
As reported by the Defense Industry Daily , Burma’s air force ordered 12 MiG-29Bs from Russia in 2001, to supplement a fleet that mostly relies on Chinese F-7 (MiG-21 copy) and J-6/ Q-5 (MiG-19 copy and heavily modified MiG-19 derivative) fighters. Present-day levels of readiness among the regime’s existing aircraft types are doubtful, and in late January 2010, one of those F-7s crashed, killing the pilot. This is not exceptional with MiG-21s and their derivatives, which can be challenging to fly safely.
Meanwhile, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Burma, Tomás Ojea Quintana, criticized the Burmese junta over its human rights violations. Human rights violations in Burma are burdening other countries in the region, with an influx of refugees fleeing a host of abuses from forced labour and land confiscation to arbitrary detention and sexual violence.
At the same time, several human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, claim hat there is no independent judiciary in Myanmar. The military government restricts Internet access through software-based censorship that limits the material citizens can access on-line. Forced labour, human trafficking, and child labour are common.
According to the UN estimation, one child in three under the age of five is already suffering from malnutrition. Burma’s authoritarian military regime is getting in the way of health community’s efforts to control infectious disease threats in Burma, according to an investigation published in Public Library of Science Medicine.
Dr Chris Beyrer (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) and colleagues carried out field investigations in Burma in 2005 and 2006, and also searched the medical and policy literature on HIV, TB, malaria, and avian flu in Burma. The researchers found that the SPDC’s investment in healthcare is one of the lowest worldwide and that the health sector has been weakened by widespread corruption.
So, political opposition and independent observers condemn the junta for the amount spend on the defense budget, while key areas such as education and health are neglected. The recent Government Gazette released by the incumbent military junta says that the health sector will get 99.5 billion kyat ($110 million), or 1.3 percent of this budget year 2011-12. That means regime will spend less than $2 per head on public healthcare.
For that reason, people are asking International Community for tighter sanctions (not humanitarian aid) on the military regime until the ruling generals commit themselves to democratic reforms.
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Ten Myanmarese nationals held in Tripura
Calcutta News.Net
Friday 4th March, 2011 (IANS)
Ten Myanmarese nationals, including two women, were arrested after they illegally sneaked into Tripura from Bangladesh, police said here Friday. A court has sent them to 14 days of judicial custody.
Deputy Superintendent of Police Harimohan Das said: 'Acting on a tip-off, the security forces nabbed the Myanmarese citizens from a railway station at Jogendranagar Thursday night.
'The foreign nationals illegally crossed over to western Tripura from Bangladesh and attempted to leave for central India via Guwahati (in Assam) by train,' Das told IANS.
The accused told the police that the authorities in Myanmar have unleashed atrocities on a section of nationals especially Rohingya Muslim communities.
'We have recently escaped from these violent tortures and came to northeastern Bangladesh from where we came to India,' Hasan Ali, one of the accused, told the police.
'The minority Rohingya Muslims have been fleeing Myanmar to evade atrocities by the members of the rival community. We are being denied even the most basic rights and needs,' Ali said.
'We are not allowed to travel from one village to another within our country without permission from the army and we are not even allowed to marry without the permission of the authorities.'
The foreign nationals were brought before a local court which sent them to 14 days jail custody. 'After the jail custody, we will send them back to Bangladesh,' the police official said.
Another police official told reporters: 'The Myanmarese nationals recently fled from the refugee camps at Teknaf region in Cox's Bazar district in southeast Bangladesh. They entered India through Sonamura border in western Tripura.
Earlier last year, seven Myanmarese nationals, including four women, were arrested in Agartala for trying to illegally enter the country.
They too had fled from the refugee camps at Teknaf region of Cox's Bazar.
Meanwhile, the number of Myanmarese living in different parts of Mizoram has now been estimated at around 50,000.
The Mizoram government has given entry passes and temporary stay permits to Myanmarese, who works in jewellery shops, vehicular service centres, shops, restaurants and cloth factories and at construction works.
Since mid-1990s, over 225,000 Myanmar nationals have been sheltering in Cox's Bazar district of Bangladesh.
India's four northeastern states of Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh together share a 1,643-km unfenced border with Myanmar.
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SMU Daily Campus - Former DMN editor Rena Pederson speaks on Burma Chronicles
By Bethany Suba
Email: bsuba@smu.edu
Published: Friday, March 4, 2011
Updated: Friday, March 4, 2011 08:03
Rena Pederson, a former vice president and editorial page editor of The Dallas Morning News, came to Southern Methodist University Thursday night to speak to students, faculty and members of the Dallas community about the corruption in Burma, specifically the story of Aung San Suu Kyi.
When Pederson first heard about Aung San Suu Kyi she knew she had to meet her. For a woman who was under house arrest for forming a Burmese opposition politician group, Pederson considered Suu Kyi to be a very interesting political prisoner.
"To me [Burma] is like the garden of good and evil," Pederson said. The people aspire to a spiritual life but face evil every day.
Suu Kyi is a Burmese woman who has had to face the evils in Burma. Forming the National League of Democracy, Suu Kyi has promoted the need for change in Burma. After numerous speeches calling for freedom and democracy Burma's dictator, Than Shwe, had Suu Kyi placed under house arrest.
When Pederson arrived in Burma she discovered Suu Kyi's extreme measures of security and had to convince a diplomat to smuggle her in. After listening to the struggles Suu Kyi was going through Pederson decided to write a book, "The Burma Chronicles: The Story of Aung San Suu Kyi and the War for the Soul of Burma," in hopes of informing people of Suu Kyi's story and the tragedy people face in Burma.
"[People] do see some signs of hope," Pederson said, but the Burmese people live in fear of the government.
"People cling to superstitions because they are covering their basis," she said. "They are going to try everything they can to protect themselves."
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People's Daily Online - Myanmar geared up for major gems fair
16:58, March 04, 2011
Myanmar is geared up for a 13-day second major gem trade fair which will start next Thursday in the new capital of Nay Pyi Taw.
This year's Myanmar gems emporium, which is the 48th annual one, will be held on a grander scale than the last, which was the first launched in Nay Pyi Taw.
According to the emporium sources, on display at the event will be raw and cut jade lots, raw and cut gems, pearl, jewelry items made of jade, gems and pearl, sculptures of precious stone, gems crystal, mosaic paintings an silverware.
Exhibitors include state-run Myanmar Gems Enterprise, Myanmar Pearl Enterprise and local Myanmar private companies.
At the annual gems emporium, 206 gem lots, 16,500 jade lots and 255 pearl lots will be sold through both tender and competitive bidding systems.
Of them, the jade lots on display will be two times more than last year's.
About 4,000 foreign merchants of 500 companies from 20 countries and regions as well as 3,000 local merchants are expected to attend the event.
To provide smooth transportation for foreign merchants, 150 taxis are standby, while 16 chartered flights of the Myanmar Airways International (MAI) are ready to transport the gems merchants to Nay Pyi Taw directly from China's southern city of Guangzhou.
The maiden flight of the MAI between Yangon and Guangzhou was launched on March 3. The biweekly-scheduled flight on every Thursday and Sunday is expected to reinforce the transportation of gem merchants traveling from China.
For accommodation of the visitors, about 1,600 rooms of 24 hotels in Nay Pyi Taw have been booked.
To ensure smooth communications, interpreters are specially appointed for the emporium with an information counter opened for event enquiry.
The last emporium in November 2010, which was the mid-year one, was claimed to have been held successfully in the new capital for the first time.
The 13-day record-breaking mid-year gems emporium-2010 earned 1. 4 billion U.S. dollars through sale of 9,157 lots of jade, 27 lots of gems and 237 lots of pearl as well as other jewelry.
The event was attended by 6,700 gem traders including 4,000 from abroad who mostly came from China's Hong Kong and Chinese Taipei.
Myanmar started to hold gem shows annually in 1964, introducing the mid-year one in 1992 and the special one in 2004.
The latest figures show that in the first eight months (April-November) of 2010-11, Myanmar yielded 27,251 tons of jade and 9, 573 million carats of gems which include ruby, sapphire, spinel and peridot, as well as 80,123 mommis (300 kilograms) of pearl.
Myanmar has been earning huge foreign exchange through holding of gems emporiums for several occasions in a year, adding to the state income.
In the 47th annual Myanmar gems emporium-2010, attended by 6, 000 gem merchants from 300 companies, 500 million U.S. dollars was obtained mainly through sale of 7,000 jade lots, up from 191 million dollars gained in the 46th annual event held in March 2009.
At the 2010 annual event, a jade stone weighing 155 tons and claimed to be the world's second largest raw jade stone, was on display.
The jade stone, excavated and unearthed by the private Max Myanmar company in Phakant mining area in northernmost Kachin state in late last year, was then moved to Yangon for the exhibition.
The June-July special sale in Yangon fetched 880 U.S. dollars through sale of over 7,000 items out of 11,500 lots of jade, gems and jewelry displayed and the major buyers also came from China, while the others were from Europe and America.
The event was also joined by over 300 state-owned and private- run companies as well as gold and jewelry shops with their quality products put on sale.
Meanwhile, proceeds from the sale of gems at the emporiums are designated as legal export earning as part of the government's encouragement for the private sector in the development of gem industry.
Myanmar started to hold gem shows annually in 1964, introducing the mid-year one in 1992 and the special one in 2004.
Myanmar, a well-known producer of gems in the world, boasts ruby, diamond, cat's eye, emerald, topaz, pearl, sapphire, coral and a variety of garnet tinged with yellow.
Source: Xinhua
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Digital Trends - Burma joins the Facebook Revolutions
By: Molly McHugh
March 3, 2011
The success of Internet-enabled revolutions are now reaching as far as Burma, where activists face an extremely brutal government.
Social media continues to alter the face of revolution after the successful uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. The revolutions both counties staged against their dictatorships and corrupt governments have taken hold of similar political regimes. Libya used Twitter (before losing access to the site) to bring attention to its own struggle, which has escalated in the last few weeks over the call for Moammar Gadhafi’s resignation. Even China, whose government has incredibly tight reigns over its citizens, has witnessed restrained and Internet-bred attempts to organize demonstrations against the ruling body.
Now, neighboring Burma will join the list of oppressed countries looking to challenge its leaders with the help of social media. Burmese activists have created their own active Facebook page, named “Just Do It Against Military Dictatorship.” It now has nearly 1,300 followers and boasts a bevy of videos, photos, and discussions. Unfortunately, Burma is subject to extremely limited Internet access, which could be cut altogether if the movement gains any more popularity. It’s listed as being located in the capital, Rangoon, where the Asia Sentinel reports security has already been increased.
At the same time as Burmese dissidents establish a Facebook presence, notorious opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been in talks with the US State Department regarding the state of her government. A democratic leader in Burma, Kyi spent years behind bars and under house arrest for her political ideals and aspirations. She also claims that the current regime is closely watching the Libyan revolution as well as the revolutions sweeping the Middle Easter and Northern Africa as well as attempting to censor citizens from any news of the events.
But those that have glimpsed the revolutions are inspired. “Everybody is waiting around to see with great interest what transpires because people were impressed with what happened, particular in Egypt,” she told Voice of America News recently. She also said she intends to create Facebook and Twitter accounts as soon as possible. However, she noted there is a large difference between the treatment of people in Egypt and in Burma, which is known for its exceptionally brutal authorities. “Well the people have stood in Burma before as you know and in those instances they were fired upon by the army,” she says.
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4 March 2011 Last updated at 05:37 ET
BBC News - East Timor applies to join Asean
By Kate McGeown BBC News, Jakarta
East Timor has formally applied to join the South East Asian regional grouping, Asean.
Foreign Minister Zacarias da Costa signed the application on a trip to Indonesia, the country which is currently chairing the 10-nation bloc.
East Timor wants to become an Asean member as soon as possible.
But critics say that, right now, Asean has enough problems without another poor country adding to its economic burden.
There is little doubt that East Timor will, one day, become a member of Asean - the question is, when.
Some nations back its membership as soon as possible - like Indonesia, East Timor's former occupier until it gained independence 12 years ago.
Formally receiving the application for membership, Indonesia's Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said East Timor was geographically, politically and economically linked to South East Asia's future - and should therefore be welcomed without reservations.
But other Asean members believe the group should focus on helping poorer nations which are already members of Asean - like Burma, Cambodia and Laos - as they prepare for the opening of the group's free trade zone in 2015.
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ABS-CBNNEWS.com - East Timor not a burden to ASEAN: minister
Agence France-Presse
Posted at 03/04/2011 10:03 PM | Updated as of 03/04/2011 10:03 PM
JAKARTA, Indonesia - East Timor's foreign minister said Friday his young country would not be a burden to ASEAN as he formally presented his country's application to join the Southeast Asian grouping.
"We're developing very fast," Zacarias da Costa told reporters during a joint press conference with his Indonesian counterpart.
"I understand there are still problems and gaps with some of the ASEAN countries but those who came to visit Timor Leste had witnessed what is the phase of the development in Timor Leste," he said, using the country's formal name.
"I believe that we will not be a burden to ASEAN," he said.
Indonesia, the current chair of the 10-nation bloc, has offered strong support for East Timor's bid to join the grouping, despite worries over the yawning economic gap with existing member states.
"I know that some believe that it (Timor's entry) may impact on ASEAN community building efforts. Indonesia is part of those who believe the case on the contrary," Indonesian foreign minister Marty Natalegawa said.
The 10-nation bloc has set 2015 as the target for creating a single regional economic market known as the ASEAN Economic Community.
"It is not unique and not unusual to have a situation of development gaps between ASEAN members," Natalegawa said.
Natalegawa said ASEAN had a record of working to address economic differences, notably between the original member states and Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.
East Timor, a former Portuguese colony, was occupied by Indonesia for 24 years from 1975, a period marked by widespread human rights abuses.
The impoverished nation gained formal independence in 2002 after winning its freedom in a 1999 UN-backed referendum marred by violence.
Indonesia this year assumed the revolving chairmanship of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) from Vietnam, and will host the group's annual summit and related meetings, steering the agenda for the year.
Besides Indonesia, the other ASEAN members are Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
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Manila Bulletin - Nonviolence
By DR. FLORANGEL ROSARIO BRAID
March 4, 2011, 11:05pm
MANILA, Philippines – The world did not anticipate the advent of such sweeping revolutionary changes in the Middle East, and earlier, in Ukraine and Serbia. But earlier, there were already portents of things to come. Such as the emergence of movements primarily led by idealistic youth groups in Egypt, Iran, Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen, among others, reinforced by the new information and communication technology.
What is clear is that authoritarian regimes can no longer survive, that nonviolence rather than the use of force is the appropriate strategy in achieving democracy.
With the exception of Libya, the uprisings in these countries were propelled by People Power. Dr. Gene Sharp, an 83-year-old academic and “guru” of nonviolence, is credited with the toppling of the Egyptian government. He is founder of the Albert Einstein Institution, a non-profit organization which advances the use of nonviolent actions in addressing conflicts around the world. In the documentary featuring the April 6 Movement in Egypt, a group of young and patriotic professionals, the leader admitted he had been using Sharp’s strategies, the same ones used by the Otpor movement in Serbia which successfully ousted Milosevic. Sharp’s message is simple – “the power of dictatorship comes from the willing obedience of the people they govern – that if the people can develop techniques of withholding their consent, a regime will crumble.” This was echoed in his book “From Dictatorship to Democracy” written for the Burmese democratic movement in 1993, shortly after Aung San Suu Kyi’s imprisonment. The message was reported to have spread through Thailand and Indonesia where it was used against the military dictatorship.
His book lists 198 “nonviolent weapons” ranging from the use of colors and symbols to mock funerals and boycotts. Here are key steps that he advocates: Develop a strategy for winning freedom and a vision of society.
Overcome fear by small acts of resistance.
Use colors and symbols to demonstrate unity of resistance.
Learn from historical examples of the successes of nonviolent movements.
Use non-violent weapons.
Identify the dictatorship’s pillar of support and develop a strategy for undermining each.
Use oppressive or brutal acts of the regime as a recruiting tool for your movement.
Isolate or remove from the movement people who use or advocate violence.
A strategy that was successfully used in Egypt was that of identifying a regime’s pillars of support like the army which was Mubarak’s biggest support. Another was to demonstrate that there are options. Fear and apathy can be defeated as long as the people believe in their own power to topple the dictator. But what Sharp wasn’t able to do was to suggest what to do when dictators are gone. This is now left to groups like “Waging Nonviolence” which asked a number of eminent thinkers to share their thoughts on the next steps after a revolution.
These are some of the things they said: The biggest challenge is how to maintain momentum and not allow the military to get comfortable in power. For movements that are yet to consolidate democracy, these are some steps: (1) remain organized and mobilized by using nonviolent tactics; (2) learn how to negotiate strategically with residual regime figures to set fair and effective procedures for constitutional revision; (3) study cases like that of the Polish and South African transitions; (4) learn to maintain momentum, especially bottom-up momentum in transformation and deconstruction; (5) provide anti-coup defense by exercising vigilance; (6) make transition complete – e.g., from Mubarak to military and to the people, a challenge to civil society; (7) maintain gains of the revolution by sustaining energy and solidarity; and (8) the biggest challenge – overcoming the cynicism of those who do not understand nonviolent action.
Reflecting on EDSA 1, we would have wished we were not the first, so that we would have had the benefit of learning from other country experiences.
Others profited from our experience, but we neither had time, opportunity, or motivation to translate the learnings into actionable programs, and to be able to sustain the gains. My e-mail is florbraid@yahoo.com
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Global Times - Myanmar airline launches Yangon-Guangzhou direct flight service
Source: Xinhua
[08:27 March 04 2011]
Myanmar Airways International (MAI) launched its maiden flight between Yangon, Myanmar and Guangzhou, China on Thursday to boost exchange between the two cities, sources with the airline said.
Using Air Bus A-320, the flight will operate biweekly and special package tour will be planned later, it said.
The MAI represents another airline that link Yangon with the Chinese southern city after China Southern Airlines.
Another newly-bought A-320 aircraft of MAI, expected to arrive later this month, will be used to fly the routes of Yangon-New Delhi and Singapore-Jakarta-Singapore, while the A-330 aircraft, anticipated to reach by October, will be used to fly South Korea, Japan, United Arab Emirate and Qatar.
At present, MAI operates with three airbus of A-320 and one airbus of A-321 to Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Gaya and Siem Reap (Angkor Wat).
On Feb. 23, the MAI launched its inaugural flight between Yangon and Siem Reap (Angkor Wat), an ancient city of Cambodia, offering biweekly flights on Wednesday and Saturday.
The private-run MAI was once a joint venture set up by the state-run Myanmar Airways and a Singapore-based company in 1993.
In 2007, the Region Air of China's Hong Kong took over the stake from the Singapore's with 49 percent held by it, while the remainder 51 percent possessed by the state-run Myanmar Airways.
In May 2010, a giant Myanmar private company group, Kanbawza, took over the MAI for continuous operation under the government's privatization plan, buying up 80 percent stake of the airline with the remainder continued to be held by the government.
Besides the MAI flying internationally as Myanmar's national flag carrier, there are also 13 foreign airlines flying Yangon which comprise Air China, China Southern Airline, Thai Airways International, Indian Airlines, Qatar Airways, Silk Air, Malaysian Airlines, Bangkok Airways, Mandarin, Jetstar Asia, Phuket Airline, Thai Air Asia and Vietnam Airlines.
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Cambodia takes military attaches of 12 countries to see damages of Preah Vihear temple
English.news.cn 2011-03-03 17:41:44
PREAH VIHEAR, Cambodia, March 3 (Xinhua) -- A group of military attaches of 12 countries on Thursday paid a two-hour visit to Preah Vihear temple and surrounding areas to see the damages caused by mortar and artillery shelling during the deadly clashes early last month between the Cambodian and Thai troops.
The team of military attaches from 12 embassies in Phnom Penh included the United States, France, Russia, China, Japan, Canada, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, New Zealand, Malaysia and Australia.
Cambodian four-star general Neang Phat, secretary of state of the Ministry of Defense, led the group during the visit.
The group was welcomed at the temple by four-star general Chea Dara, deputy commander-in-chief of Royal Cambodian Armed Forces for Preah Vihear Direction, and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen' s eldest son Hun Manet, deputy commander of the Headquarters of Infantry.
"Cambodia wanted the military attaches to see with their own eyes the damages caused by Thai shelling in the recent war," Chea Dara said during the delegation visit.
He has ushered the delegation to see craters, cracks, broken pieces of Preah Vihear temple caused by Thai artillery shelling.
"At the behest of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, Cambodian troops vow to defend our territory from any invasion of Thailand," he said.
"Cambodia has never invaded into other countries, we want a border of peace and cooperation, but if they invade into ours, we have to exercise self-defense rights."
The visit followed a similar visit by military attachs to the Thai side of the border on Feb. 21, organized by Thai Defense Ministry.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said Thursday that 414 shells of mortar and artillery fired by Thai troops which had fallen on the temple in the war on Feb. 4-7.
Cambodia and Thailand have had border conflict just a week after Cambodia's Preah Vihear temple was enlisted as the World Heritage Site on July 7, 2008.
The conflict is due to Thai claim of the ownership of 4.6 sq km of scrub next to the temple, which resulted in a military build-up along the border, and periodic clashes between Cambodian and Thai soldiers have resulted in the deaths of troops on both sides.
The latest clashes on Feb. 4-7, with a barrage of artillery shells unleashed on both sides of the border, had claimed the lives of soldiers and civilians on both sides and also caused tens of thousands of the two countries' villagers near the disputed areas fleeing for safe shelters.
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Himalayan Times - Six grader Sherpa bags UN award
Added At: 2011-03-04 9:20 PM
Last Updated At: 2011-03-04 9:35 PM
LALITPUR: Cheten Doka Sherpa, a sixth grader at Daffodil Public School, has bagged the UN Habitat 10th International Children's Future Award.
Sherpa had won the award during the children's drawing contest " Better City , Better Life" organised by the UN Habitat Regional Office in Fukuoka, Japan to mark the 10th UN World Habitat Day.
Along with Sherpa, Mai Eguchi (Japan, 5th Grader) and Kriss (Myanmar, 5th Grader) also won the Children's Future Award.
Gillian Mellsop, the UNICEF representative in Nepal, gave away the award to Sherpa amidst a programme organised here on Friday.
A total of 885 children from 10 countries including Nepal, India, China, Japan, Philippines and Myanmar took part in the drawing contest.
The works of children adjudged the best in the contest have been included in the calendar published by the UN Habitat for 2011, too.
The first Monday of the month of October is marked as the UN World Habitat Day.
The Fukuoka based UN Habitat regional office has been organising the children's drawing competition biannually on the occasion of the Day.
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The Vibe - Why we need to keep talking about Burma
In May, Aung San Suu Kyi’s appeal to “use your liberty to promote ours” will be at the heart of the Brighton Festival as she becomes Guest Director. But how else can we use our freedom to support those denied it in Burma?
Submitted by Francis Grove-White on Thursday, 3 March 2011
Nearly four months since the fraudulent elections staged by Burma’s military junta in November, the lack of any genuine progress towards democratisation or an improvement in the human rights situation is deeply worrying.
The elections were neither free nor fair and categorically failed to meet internationally recognised standards. Vote rigging was widespread on behalf of the military junta’s political party, the USDP, whose overwhelming majority in both houses, coupled with the 25% of seats constitutionally reserved for the military itself, allows this effective dictatorship to unilaterally amend the already deeply flawed 2008 Constitution as it sees fit.
The release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in the days following the election was well received by all who campaign for justice and human rights in Burma, but her release was, of course, a smokescreen deployed by the military junta to detract attention from the widespread domestic and international condemnation of the electoral process. The number of political dissidents and campaigners incarcerated in Burma’s appalling prisons system has doubled since 2007 and now stands at 2189.
Attacks on ethnic groups, many of whom were denied a say at the polls, have continued since November, and a recent report by the European Burma Network confirmed that ongoing human rights abuses under the ‘new’ government include extrajudicial executions, rape, mass use of forced labour, use of human minesweepers, recruitment of child soldiers, land confiscation, forced displacement and military attacks against civilians.
According to the UN Special Rapporteur on Burma, such abuses constitute possible war crimes and crimes against humanity. Yet no concrete action has been taken by the international community. What can be done? The global campaign for democracy and human rights in Burma, of which Burma Campaign UK is integral, continues to push for a UN investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity in Burma. Belgium recently became the 14th country to officially support this position.
But what can we do? The answer from Burma, elegantly articulated in 1997 by Aung San Suu Kyi, is simple: members of the international community should “use [their] liberty to support ours.” Interpretation of this is purely subjective, and this has led to a glorious multitude of different responses (I know a guy in Scotland who spent 2 years walking ‘barefoot for Burma’ following the suppression of the monk-led uprising in 2007), but one in particular caught my eye a few weeks ago.
In October Ben Hammond, a 32 year old from south London, will attempt to break the World Record for the longest uninterrupted dance (125 hours), in the process raising money to get his educational charity, LearnBurma, up and running. As a citizenship teacher and former community organiser Hammond clearly recognises the importance of switching kids on to issues from an early age, before apathy kicks in, and equipping them with the tools to investigate, challenge and question what’s going on in the world around them. In this way, LearnBurma could be a powerful and dynamic force for raising the profile of Burma and encouraging action to affect change.
The year-long preparation for the world record attempt is called Free to Dance, an initiative that has seen Hammond dancing all over the UK, learning to dance dozens of different dances and organising flashmob-style silent discos. He’s now training to dance the London Marathon, before dancing non-stop through Glastonbury Festival, and in August from John O’Groats to Land’s End. The idea is to get Free to Dance to as wide an audience as possible and to get people talking about the situation in Burma. It’s about using our freedom to support those who, four months after elections, are still not free.
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CathNews - Jesuits' quiet progress in Myanmar
Published: March 05, 2011
As major developments sweep through Myanmar - the staging of the first elections in 20 years, the release of Aung San Suu Kyi from seven years of house arrest - Jesuits continue their quiet work in the country, making their own contribution to improving the lives of the local people, reports Province Express.
The former Australian Provincial, Fr Mark Raper SJ, was recently appointed Regional Superior of Myanmar. He will oversee the work being undertaken there by Jesuits such as Fr Paul Horan SJ, who has spent recent months teaching English in Yangon.
The Director of Jesuit Mission, Fr Phil Crotty SJ, recently visited the country to see first-hand the work that Jesuit Mission supports. "The Jesuits are working in Myanmar as a kind of NGO. They have several English language centres where they provide this opportunity for young people to learn English," he says.
"Learning English is an approved occupation, and it’s a point of contact. Myanmar is a very restless place, especially in the border regions with Thailand, with China, with India, and these young people who come in from troubled areas are given a sense of hope.
"Back in their villages many would be press-ganged into either joining the military or the rebels."
Young scholastics from Myanmar represent the future of the Society of Jesus in the troubled country.
*Arun, who is undertaking his training abroad, looks forward to the day when he is able to return to his homeland and find new ways in which to implement the faith that does justice.
He recalls the difficulties of training as a Jesuit novice in his homeland, where he was forced to undertake his formation in secret.
"Myanmar is a very cold place and sometimes we try to get (outside to warm ourselves in) the sun. But we can't gather in a big group otherwise [the officials] will become suspicious."
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Myanmar
Asian Tribune - Fait accompli of the Tatmadaw Values
Fri, 2011-03-04 13:14 — editor
By Kanbawza Win
All revolutions start with enthusiasm but usually end with tears. Will the Burmese revolution which started with a mighty force in 1988, fizzle out in 2011? The tears still could have been avoided, if the people firmly stand by the values which they have inherited from their ancestors especially from the founding fathers of modern Burma led by Bogyoke Aung San.
If the Arab people can rise against their tyrants why can’t we? The people of Burma should ask themselves, not what Daw Aung Suu Kyi can do for them but what they can do for the Genuine Federal Union of Burma.
If history were to repeat itself the replica of the 1974 is now being reacted when the Socialist Constitution led by the defunct Burmese Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) was initiated and bulldozed its way through the people and the country but soon shows its worth when just a few months later, the workers demonstrated and was put down with great severely. Now it is also predictable that it is a matter of time that the people will rise again as the gap between the elites and the ordinary people are so immense and the unfairness is so widespread in the country. Besides the class of 2011are the new generation of Burmese who have know little political freedom in their young lives and are no longer willing to wait for it.
It can be recollected that the Tatmadaw under the patronage of, Gen Ne Win, had successfully turned Burma, one of the most promising countries and the rice bowl of Asia into one of the poorest and the rice hole of Asia, so much so that in 1987it has to declared a Least Developed Nation (LDC) by the UN. General Than Shwe, the successor of Ne Win tried to remedy it by introducing the market economy similar to what Deng Xiaoping has done in China. But unlike the Chinese leadership, the Tatmadaw leaders did not harbour a single ounce of love to the country and its people but is solely bent on retaining power, enriching their families and business associates.
Up to this day an out-dated and complex exchange rate fiddle means that the country's oil and gas income is downplayed in official figures, with the real revenue siphoned off into military spending or personal bank accounts. Even in Vietnam the government is capable of convincing Western investors to put their money into the country and has been commended for economic reforms and legal amendments. In contrast, economic policy has been dismissed as opaque and incompetent even at the best of times marking Burma out as an economic twilight zone, attractive only to those who want to take oil, gas, gems, timber and other resources., out of the country. Even if Western sanctions were reduced or dropped, it remains to be seen whether Burma’s rulers would break with a half century of disastrous economic policies in response.
Sanctions
The NLD’s document concluded that sanctions have not affected economic conditions in Burma “to any notable degree. but rather The regime’s poor economic policies and mismanagement are the main causes of Burma’s economic crisis. Land confiscation and lack of freedom in production and marketing - not sanctions - have negatively affected Burma’s agricultural sector, which employs the majority of Burma’s population. Lack of accountability, and corruption has impeded productive investments. National reconciliation based on “an all inclusive political process” should be “central” to any consideration of changes in sanctions policies and the release of all political prisoners is a “critical requirement” for the removal of sanctions.
A chorus of vociferous calls for the end to sanctions has been reverberating very recently in the international arena. Any Burmese nationalist can sense the seductive nature of the anti-sanctions narrative, designed to convey a mixture of moral and strategic concerns in the same breath. These include the troubling feudal personality traits of the ruling senior and junior generals, the deeply structural nature of political and ethnic conflicts, the lack of any real—as opposed to anticipated—potential for change through the emerging move towards “civilianized” military rule post-election, the complete absence of any viable efforts on the part of the regime to seek lasting peace in the country, the non-existence of policy space for both existing and emerging political processes and institutions, and last but not least, the utter lack of technocratic competence and genuine concerns for public welfare among decision makers.
Opportunists and apologists have argued that the post-election Burma carries seeds of evolutionary change with it. These same advocates have also held up the military’s unmistakably regressive Constitution as “something better than outright dictatorship” without any written formal guidelines, even when there is absolutely no change in the balance of institutional power in the post-election set up. Burma’s “Constitutional Tatmadaw Rule” betrays both the latter and spirit of constitutionalism. For it legalizes, legitimizes, enshrines, ring-fences and delimits the de facto military rule—providing a sharp contrast to the essence of constitutionalism, which is to curb the arbitrary power of any ruling institution or class.
The Tatmadaw’s ideological and institutional orientation is inconceivable for any reform potential arising from this very institution of power. It also structurally prevents trade or investment reaching beyond the hands of the soldier's uniforms and their cronies. Much has been made of the fact that the Tatmadaw is creating the trappings of a functioning democracy, namely political parties, a parliamentary system with different houses and nominal division of power. Realistically speaking, however, it is impossible to imagine a scenario where any serious reform initiatives or policies can be tabled, much less debated within the military’s parliament, which is bound to be the Tatmadaw’s rubber-stamp. These are obstacles to the democratization of political and economic spheres.
It is lamentable that the self style foreign and Burmese experts have chosen to overlook the type of anti-intellectual, anti-democratic professional practices and political culture in which the regime’s members of parliament both the men in uniform and “civilianized” soldiers are in. These men have spent decades learning the art of climbing the military and bureaucratic ladders solely through their unquestioning loyalty and utter obedience to their superior officers, executing orders, right or wrong examples being killing the monks, raping the ethnic women, using child soldiers and preventing the international aid reaching the storm victims.
Therefore, the chances of the rubber-stamp parliament and its legislative processes influencing regime’s MP-elects to think and act in a democratic manner that befit parliamentarians are absolutely non-existent.
The issue of leadership transition in the hopes that the junior generals, in their late 50s and 60s, will be more open-minded, reform-oriented and forward-thinking is non existence.
Individual generals do have their differences in ideas, approaches, and interests but when it comes to liberalizing politics and redistributing wealth, Burmese military officers by and large have acted as a corporate entity, that is, a soldiering class with class views and interests. It is ironical that the anti-sanctions advocates commonly place responsibility on Western sanctions—specifically, the denial of development aid and low level of humanitarian assistance—for the sorry state of human conditions in the military-ruled Burma. How can the generals purchased from Russia a second squadron of state-of-the-art MiG-29 fighter-jets at a cost of nearly US $600 million is just one example.
The advocates of ending sanctions point out contemporary “developmental states” such as China and Vietnam as development models for Burma to emulate, de-linking freedoms from economic development. But it must be noted that the autocracies in Beijing and Hanoi do make serious efforts to improve the material lot of the peoples under their respective rules, even when they deprive the latter of any meaningful voice in the country’s political and policy matters. But no such sentiment has been detected among the Tatmadaw’s leadership. It is not a policy priority for the Tatmadaw when authenticated proof of it is that less than 2 percent of the country’s national budget is allocated to the combined fields of public health and education speaks volume.
“In terms of fiscal policy, the government is likely to continue to focus on spending heavily on the military, and it will do little in the way of implementing policies to support households and businesses.” The Tatmadaw remain the insurmountable obstacle to the trickle-down economic logic. Anti-sanctions advocates which includes China, India and ASEAN whose Asian values pales miserably if compared to the West, have not concerted any pressure on the regime to put the public welfare policy and instead prevented them from playing the kind of strategically impactful role which was carried out apartheid in South Africa. The efforts at democratization across Eastern Europe succeeded partly because the external geopolitical and ideological environment was conducive to internal struggles for democratization across the region. But in Burma is that no such external environment exists.
To the contrary, Burma’s economically predatory neighbours treat the country as a prostitute, where they can gratify their satisfaction for cheap human and natural resources and as a strategic asset. Such is the core of Asian values. They find it against their interests for the military regime to be replaced with a democratic government responsive to citizens’ livelihood needs. It was, only a dictatorship with absolute disregard for public well-being would have signed a multi-billion dollar deal such as the Dawei Development Project, which allows a Thai-Italian conglomerate to set up, among other things, socially and ecologically harmful refineries which will emit massive pollutants into the sky above Burma’s southern coast line e.g. Thailand’s Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, said that that dirty industries are moving to Burma: “Some industries are not suitable to be located in Thailand. This is why they decided to set up in Dawei [in Tavoy].” Singapore discourage smoking and in the duty free shop no one can buy a package of cigarettes into the country but only when he is going out, has set up a big cigarette factory in Burma. Hence, the people of Burma are not simply up against their country's Tatmadaw but also at the mercy of unscrupulous foreign interests. The ugly face of anti sanctions.
Ending the sanctions now will not prove to be an effective move towards political and economic development for the people; much debate has taken place in Washington, Brussels, Canberra and elsewhere on the issue of economic sanctions on Burma which tends to polarize opinion and groundswell of opposition to sanctions. The opposition to sanctions coalesces around a number of issues, one of which is the implicit idea that somehow sanctions are responsible for Burma's poverty. But a careful research reveals that this disastrous turnaround has nothing to do with the sanctions imposed by the West. It does, however, have everything to do with the chronic economic mismanagement by the Tatmadaw regimes that have ruled Burma since 1962. For six decades Burma's military apparatus has controlled and plundered the country's economy and natural resources, while it has simultaneously dismantled, blocked and undermined basic market institutions. Most of Burma's leading corporations are owned by the military, and the country is the second-most corrupt in the world. In other words Tatmadaw has created an environment in which genuine transformative economic growth - of the sort that has transformed its neighbors and peers - is not possible.
Burmese Tatmadaw Government is a simple-minded looter, destroying what it can neither create nor understand. Burma attracts little in the way of foreign investment, and what does enter is strongly concentrated in the gas and oil sectors, and other extractive industries. Burma has recently emerged as a significant regional exporter of natural gas, but so far this windfall has done little good for the country. Indeed, it has fuelled something of a ''resources curse'' of the sadly familiar pattern - financially entrenching Burma's regime (which keeps the gas revenues offshore for its own use) and generating an array of ''national prestige'' projects. These include Naypyidaw- ''abode of kings'' the purchase of a nuclear reactor from Russia and, perhaps most worryingly of all, the recent purchases of arms and unknown capacities from North Korea.
The arguments against sanctions on Burma are routinely based on the idea that the encouragement of business will support an alternative centre of power beyond the regime, and the emergence thus of a ''business class'' as a force demanding change. But an alternative base of power via business clearly depends upon who controls this business - and in Burma this is none other than the state itself. Significant export earners such as gas, petroleum, precious stones and metals, teak and seafood products are all controlled by the state. Simply, the military state's careful control over the investment of private capital in these sectors precludes their emergence as challengers to the political status quo.
The financial sanctions level against Burma by the US, EU, Canada, Australia (which limits access to our financial systems by Burma's military regime, and named individuals connected to it) are extraordinarily well-targeted. The average person in Burma has no access to a bank account, much less a need or desire to engage the international financial system. This is not true for the senior members of the military or the rent-seeking elite connected to them. As such, the denial of access to Western financial systems to this group sends precisely the right signal, to precisely the right people. However one might agree or disagree over their original imposition, the economic sanctions now in place constitute potent ''money in the bank'' that can be spent in response to genuine reform in Burma in the period ahead.
Lifting economic sanctions now would not only embolden Burma's present reform-shy regime, but also greatly deleverage the ability of the West to influence future events. Changing Burma's circumstances will primarily be a function of events internal to the country, and at the hands of domestic constituencies that recognize the incentives for change. In the meantime, the rest of the world can best promote these incentives, and best allow their realization, by promising to reward the eventual emergence of the policies and institutions that underlie our own liberty and prosperity.
It is very crystal clear that Sanctions means something is very wrong without which no one will take sanctions on the country, whether it is effective or not. Sanctions are symbolic and political, aimed at the junta and its cronies. It is important to remind the regime and kick the ball back to the generals' court. The point is the regime must improve its human rights records and release all political prisoners and create a conducive political environment where everyone feels that Burma is heading in the right direction.
Human Rights Violations
Long before Western sanctions were imposed on Burma, if the Tatmadaw led by Ne Win had decided to reform the economy and integrate it into the global economy, he would not have had to face a nationwide uprising in 1988 and could have remained in power as a benevolent dictator like Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore.
Now, one can ask why did the West imposed sanctions in the first place. The answer, obviously, is its record of human rights violations —rampant human rights abuses under military rule—has been largely ignored, and must be addressed if sanctions are to be lifted. The impact of sanctions on the Burmese economy has been greatly overstated. Clearly, these sanctions are political tools aimed at censuring the regime’s poor human rights record, and not at hobbling Burma's economy. In the past decade we have seen is the generals and their cronies getting richer, thanks to the eagerness of Burma’s neighbours to extract its natural resources and invest in infrastructure with little or no benefit for Burmese people.
Burma remains one of the poorest nations in the world. The regime spends the lion's share of its budget on the military, while setting aside only tiny amounts for education and health care. Lifting sanction should be considered only when the human rights situation in Burma improves. The US, the EU, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have all imposed sanctions on Burma to pressure the ruling regime to end human rights violations and move toward a genuine democratic transition. However, despite general elections held late last year and the election of a civilian president by the country's newly formed Parliament last week, few believe that the changes represent a real departure from the military-ruled past.
Critics of sanctions should be asking what the regime itself h as done to give Western countries a reason to shift their policy. Suu Kyi has been freed, but that still leaves more than 2,000 other political prisoners languishing in Burma's gulag. If the regime had any interest in getting the West to drop its sanctions, it would, at the very least, unconditionally release all of these detainees. Sanctions-bashers occasionally pay lip service to the plight of Burma's prisoners of conscience, but their real concern is clearly that they are losing investment opportunities to China and the junta's other greedy regional “partners”.
While sanctions critics often insist that an influx of foreign capital would raise Burma's standard of living, the evidence suggests otherwise. The massive flow of cash coming into the country from around Asia has done nothing to alleviate the desperate poverty of ordinary Burmese, and there's no reason to believe that Western cash would have a more beneficial impact. China, Thailand, India, Singapore and South Korea have all heavily invested in Burma's primary industries, and new opportunities are opening up in other sectors, including manufacturing.
How such investment will improve lives in a country that was once one of the most developed in the region was never mentioned, Tatmadaw don't seem too concerned about most citizens' lack of access to basic health care and education. As long as this remains the case, there is no reason to believe that lifting sanctions will serve any purpose other than to enrich Western corporations and, of course, the Tatmadaw. In contradistinction to war, sanctions are widely portrayed as necessary, almost a healthy medicine to bring about change in the opponent’s policies.
“Targeted sanctions serve as a warning that acts contrary to basic norms of justice and human rights cannot be committed with impunity even by authoritarian governments”. It points out that financial sanctions have denied junta members and their associate’s access to the US financial system, and helped prevent the laundering of black money and the siphoning off of revenues from the sale of gas and other resources.
American Involvement
Although American power and influence in the world have declined, the world still looks to U.S. for direction. President Obama personally and the United States as a country have much to gain by moving out in front and siding with the public demand for dignity and democracy as it had done in the Arab world. This would help rebuild America's leadership and remove a lingering structural weakness in its alliances that comes from being associated with unpopular and repressive regimes. Most important, doing so would open the way to peaceful progress in the region.
Given the recent developments in Burma, it is time that the Obama administration appointed a Special Representative and Policy Coordinator to the military-ruled country to ensure that US sanctions are targeted against the junta and meet their objectives. The US is at risk of losing legitimacy for failing to establish a formal inquiry into alleged crimes against humanity in Burma. The regime continues to regard elections as an institution to be cynically manipulated rather than embraced, it continues to perpetrate violations of international law with impunity, and that if the UN is to be relevant to the world today, and it cannot remain idle in the face of such behaviour. The ongoing crisis in Burma puts the credibility of the UN and international humanitarian law at stake as it had has persistently ignored the General Assembly, and has continued to perpetrate violations of international humanitarian law with impunity. In addition to the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry, the introduction of a universal arms embargo on the regime in Burma is long overdue. Let the anti sanctions crow with their might but justice, truth and democracy should prevailed.
Footnotes:
1Time Magazine 28-02-2011 p 16
2. See the UN Records
3. Rougheen; Simon Irrawaddy 21-12-2010 “ A Vietnam Syndrome for Burma?”
4.ALTSEAN Burma Bulletin Feb 2011
5.See Dr Zarni’s writings
6.The Economic Intelligence Unit’s January 2011
7.Read the writings of Timothy Garton Ash, professor of European Studies at Oxford University,
8.The International Herald Tribune “An Industrial Project That Could Change Myanmar,” 26-11- 2010
9. Please refer to Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index
10. Vicary; Alison & Turnell; Sean in Macquarie University journal Burma Economic Watch
11. Ibid
12. Alison Vicary; Alison & Turnell;Sean in National Times 6-10-2009 Sanctions Have a Role to Play
See the NLD statement
13. George Soros Chairman of the Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Foundations,
14. Suzanne Dimaggio , Asia Society’s Vice President for Global Policy Programs. -
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The Irrawaddy - Naypyidaw Orders New “Four Cuts” Campaign
By WAI MOE Friday, March 4, 2011
The War Office in Naypyidaw has ordered Burmese government forces based in ethnic areas to relaunch their infamous “Four Cuts” strategy against the ethnic cease-fire groups that continue to resist the junta's Border Guard Force (BGF) plan.
The Burmese army's “Four Cuts” policy was developed in the 1970s during the former regime of the Burmese Socialist Programme Party with the intention of undermining ethnic militias by cutting off access to food, funds, information and recruitment, often with devastating consequences.
According to military sources, the War Office recently ordered regional commanders to reimpose the strategy in areas including Kachin State, Shan State, Karenni State , Karen State , Mon State and Tenasserim Division.
Military sources said the renewed campaign would include an additional “cut”—a policy of severing communication routes between allied ethnic groups.
Commenting on the information about the new “Four Cuts” campaign, Aung Kyaw Zaw, a Burmese military observer at the Sino-Burmese border who has close contacts to several ethnic armed groups, said the junta’s plan could be irrelevant because many ethnic armies are based in border areas.
“The Four Cuts strategy was designed for inland counterinsurgency operations,” he said. “In particular, there were government offensives against the Communist Party of Burma and the Karen National Union in the Pegu Mountains. But now the groups that are being targeted are based at the Sino-Burmese border and the Thai-Burmese border.”
Some observers expressed concern about an escalation of human rights violations such as forced relocations, the burning of villages and summary executions in ethnic areas, atrocities that invariably accompany such a strategy, they said.
“The Four Cuts strategy has been modified by the current military junta,” said Htet Min, a former army officer who is now living in exile. “When I was in the military, it was also called 'sweeping' an area, meaning removing any suspected villagers and burning their villages.”
Aung Lynn Htut, a former counter intelligence officer now living in the US, said the massive internal displacement in eastern Burma is directly related to the “Four Cuts” strategy, which was known in the far south of Burma as “No Man's Land” policy during operations in the 1990s, directly commanded by the office of the commander-in-chief.
The “No Man's Land” policy was ordered by the War Office to execute anyone, including children, who were found in areas of military operations,” he said.
Since 1989, the military regime has signed cease-fire agreements with as many as 17 ethnic armed groups. However, the major cease-fire groups have rejected the BGF plan that was first raised in April 2009.
Those groups include: the United Wa State Army; the Kachin Independent Organization; the National Democratic Alliance Army, also known as the Mongla group, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army or the Kokang group, the New Mon State Party, and a faction of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army.
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The Irrawaddy - Than Shwe Grants Himself Power to Access 'Special Funds'
By WAI MOE Friday, March 4, 2011
Prior to the first session of Burma's new Parliament, junta chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe signed a law that gives the commander-in-chief of the military—who is currently Than Shwe himself—the absolute authority to use unlimited “Special Funds” in performing his duties of protecting the Constitution and preserving national sovereignty.
According to the two-page Special Fund Law leaked to The Irrawaddy, “The Tatmadaw [armed forces] commander-in-chief has the authority to use Special Funding in the local currency or foreign currency while providing for the non-disintegration of the Union; the non- disintegration of national solidarity; and the perpetuation of national sovereignty.”
“Special Fund means the budget for special needs to safeguard the Constitution and protect the country from external and internal threats,” the law says. “The Law must be called the Special Fund Law related to the use of budgets which are necessary for the perpetuation of national sovereignty.”
The law, dated Jan. 17, was confidentially distributed among government officials on Feb. 11. It gives the military chief absolute power and discretion in the use of unlimited “special funds” that are not included in the country's defense budget.
“For the spending of the Special Funding, no person or organization can question, propose and audit,” the law says.
The only requirement is that the military chief report about “the Special Funding to the President of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar [Burma] at the end of the fiscal year,” which is March 31.
Quoting official information distributed to members of the Burmese government, The Associated Press reported Tuesday that 1.8 trillion kyat (US $2 billion), or 23.6 percent of Burma's budget this year, will go to defense. The health sector, meanwhile, will get 99.5 billion kyat ($110 million), or 1.3 percent.
The funds used by the commander-in-chief under the Special Funds Law will be over and above those allocated to the military in the defense budget.
In addition, the 2011-12 budget allocated 20 billion kyat ($22 million) to the office of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), the name of the junta's ruling council, which led observers to question whether the SPDC would be abolished when the new government was formed as the new Constitution seems to require.
Meanwhile, the first sessions of Burma's Hluttaw (Parliament), which is dominated by appointed military officers and representatives of the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), have been ongoing in Naypyidaw.
This week, Pyithu Hluttaw (Lower House) and Amyotha Hluttaw (Upper House) meetings were held separately. They each lasted about one hour, which was longer than the previous meetings of the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (the Union Parliament of both houses), which in some cases lasted only a few minutes.
The bill committees and the public account committees were formed for both houses of Parliament, but many MPs complained that they were just sitting and listening during meetings.
“Under the tightened security, even USDP members felt like people under house arrest,” said a USDP MP from Mandalay, who was asked to contest for the party because he is a respected person in his township.
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The Irrawaddy - COMMENTARY: ICC for Libya ... Why Not Burma?
By HTET AUNG Thursday, March 3, 2011
2011 has begun with a series of pro-democracy uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East quickly nicknamed by the world's media the “Jasmine Revolution.” But the sweet scent of freedom drifting across the Maghreb got lost along the way in Libya.
In mid-February, inspired by successful demonstrations that ousted leaders in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt, disgruntled Libyans took to the streets to protest the stagnant corrupt rule of Muammar al-Qadhafi, who has ruled his so-called “Jamahiriya,” his very own people's republic, with an iron fist since staging a coup in 1969.
Unlike the pro-democracy demonstrations in other parts of the Arab world, Libya's unarmed protesters were met with the wrath of al-Qadhafi who cracked down harshly on the opposition, deploying his loyal armed forces, mercenaries, and even fighter jets.
On Feb. 25, the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) convened a special session in Geneva. It quickly passed a resolution by consensus calling for the Council “to dispatch an independent, international Commission of Inquiry [CoI] to Libya to investigate all alleged violations of international human rights law in the country.”
The day after the HRC resolution, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) unanimously adopted a historic resolution to impose sanctions against the al-Qadhafi regime, including a referral of the case to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate whether the Libyan regime had committed “a crime against humanity” in attacking its own citizens.
In a rare move in recent UN history, the five nations that wield veto power—the United States, China, the United Kingdom, France and Russia—were united in voting for action against the al-Qadhafi regime.
The ICC initiated on Feb. 28 a process to decide whether to open an investigation on crimes against humanity in Libya. ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said that there would be no impunity for guilty leaders, and that he would make a decision “without delay,” according to the UN News Center.
Within days, the world body proved that it can be strong and effective in dealing with a rogue regime, and it must be commended for that. But why then is the UN so impotent in dealing with the military junta of Burma?
The answer is plain and simple: in condemning the Libyan government, the UNSC spoke with one voice, an approach that has been totally absent in the case of Burma.
The Burmese people suffered under a barrage of brutal crackdowns each and every time they have stood to call for a transition from military dictatorship to democracy. All the Burmese protesters can expect is: to be shot in the street; to be arrested and tortured; to be forced to flee into exile; or to receive an inhumane prison sentence.
In 2007, Burma's military rulers showed their utter contempt by ordering their troops to fire on not just unarmed protesters but Buddhist monks and nuns.
In 2003, the junta committed an act of thuggery by staging a premeditated attack on pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her motorcade in Depayin, a town in central Burma, with loyalist thugs killing an estimated 70 activists using little more than sticks and stones and their bare fists.
In the past 20 years, the Burmese army has burnt down more than 3,000 villages in Burma's frontier ethnic states, causing a half million displaced persons, mostly ethnic minority groups, in jungles or fleeing across the border into Thailand.
All these human right abuses have been well documented in resolutions, and have been heard at the UN General Assembly and the HRC every year since the early 1990s.
However, the Burmese military junta continues to enjoy impunity for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The lack of the independent CoI has exacerbated the situation, and has convinced the generals that they are untouchable in any of the international legal arenas.
In early 2010, Tomás Quintana, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights to Burma, took an unprecedented move in a report to the HRC, calling for a CoI into possible crimes against humanity and war crimes in Burma. Neither the HRC nor the UNSC have acted on this recommendation to date.
The Asian Legal Resource Center (ALRC) issued a press release on March 3 regarding its separate submission to the 16th regular session of the HRC [Feb. 28 to March 25] in Geneva.
In its press release, the ALRC referred to the Japanese government delegation's questions to the Burmese delegation during the session, and said:
“The problem of systemic rights abuse in Myanmar [Burma] 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.”
The statement also pointed out the weakness of the HRC, stating: “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.”
Unfortunately, the people of Burma never hear one voice from the UNSC, and the consequence is a lack of any international legal framework to address the junta's continuing code of human rights violations.
Is it because Burmese strongman Snr-Gen Than Shwe has not bombed peaceful demonstrators in the streets like al-Qadhafi? Is it because the junta has successfully covered up its bloody tracks? Is it because there has never been a division within Burma's military ranks?
Although the current state violence in Libya is quite different from the incidents in Burma in terms of intensity and scope, the people of Burma have long deserved that the UN proclaims the injustice in the country with one clear voice.
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The Irrawaddy - Forcible Recruitment Still Common: Former Child Soldier
Thursday, March 3, 2011
A former child soldier who spent a year in the Burmese army before getting out with the help of the International Labor Organization (ILO) says abusive treatment of low-ranking troops and recruitment of underage soldiers are still common practices in the army, despite calls for reform.
The former soldier, Min Swe Oo, said that he was forcibly recruited at the end of 2009 by an unidentified sergeant in Taungoo, Pegu Division. At the time, he was just 14 years old.
He said he received basic military training at Training Battalion No. 4 in Pinlaung, in southern Shan State, and was later sent to Air Defense Workshop No. 7, located in Kyaukse, Mandalay Division.
Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Thursday, Min Swe Oo said: “When I was in the army, I received just 2,000 kyat (US $2.25) per week. I don’t know how much my actual salary was, because my superior officers took it to pay for various 'fees'. But when I left the army, my commanding officer, Maj Moe Lwin, said that none of my possessions belonged to me anymore.”
Min Swe Oo's mother, Khin Swe Oo, said that her son served in the army for about a year and was later discharged with the help of the ILO office in Rangoon.
“Warrant Officer San Win came to my house and informed me that my son had been given a letter of discharge. However, the commanding officer didn’t give us the letter right away, so we stayed at the barracks for 14 days until he handed it over,” said Khin Swe Oo.
Despite continuing calls for the Burmese army to end the practice of forcibly recruiting child soldiers, the ILO's office in Rangoon has accepted 22 child soldier cases so far this year.
Steve Marshall, the ILO liaison officer in Rangoon, said he didn’t really know why the recruitment of child soldiers is still going on in Burma.
“Children continue to be recruited, notwithstanding instructions that have come out from senior-level [officers]. And frankly, I can't explain that,” said Marshall.
According to the ILO's data, there were 210 child soldier cases in 2010, more than double the number of cases reported in the previous year.
Relatively few governments in the world currently recruit and use children in their armed forces. The London-based Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers lists Burma, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and Sudan among the “five real offenders.”
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Burma’s new budget: more of the same
Friday, 04 March 2011 14:17 Mizzima News
(Editorial) – For the first time in more than a decade, there’s been a little more comment and criticism, inside and outside Burma, about the proposed 2011 budget–but not in the new Parliament.
Actually, the budget has been enacted by the military regime in the usual manner, handed down without any critical input, debate or questions–ostensibly because the Parliament is engaged in forming a new government.
The details of 2011 budget, such as they are, are available only to those few people who have access to the government’s official Gazette.
Sadly, the budget proportions have not changed much over the last decade. A summary:
--The military gets around 30 percent
--Industry gets around 30 percent
--Trade gets around 23 percent
--Social services gets around 6 percent
--Education gets around 4 percent
--Health gets around 1 percent
The budget’s priorities clearly reflect the military’s priorities: money for ‘hard’ services and infrastructure, but very little for ‘soft’ services which support and aid the everyday citizen, who are left to struggle on their own and are being denied even the rudimentary elements of health care and educational services
Clearly, a big task for the pro-democratic opposition is to begin a political movement to direct more of Burma’s budgetary resources to the people: in education, health services and other ‘soft’ areas, particularly in light of the fact that Burma has no enemies threatening its borders.
More money must be also be directed toward making Burma’s economy competitive, and to do this more openness is required in business laws, allowing more access by international businesses which would lead to more jobs for the average Burmese citizen, not less. Look at the economies of China, India, Thailand and Vietnam.
To really understand the budget, lawmakers and average citizens must also be given more information, more transparency, in the allocation of funds within the broad, general budget areas. This will be reflected, we hope, in the future through vigorous debates that take place in Parliament on the issues of fiscal transparency, accountability and common sense.
At the same time, unless this information and debate is allowed to be reflected in the media, Burma will remain in the grip of rumors and a poorly informed electorate.
In a country with such a low per capita income, ordinary citizens are forced to rely on public
services for their basic health needs, and for their children’s right to an education that can make them competitive in the regional economy.
Another huge gap in the budget is the lack of detailed information on the revenue side. In reality, we do not know if the budget is based on an income surplus or a deficit.
Regional and international organizations have long called for better fiscal management, and for a broadening of the tax base which would ease the tax burden on ordinary citizens and the business community and increase tax revenue overall.
During the past year, a positive step has been the transfer of state enterprises into private hands, even though the process was tainted by cronyism and special favors. Businesses that are in the hands of private citizens will be more competitive in the long run, and benefit society more.
Fortunately, Burma is enjoying a low inflation rate, but for how long no one knows. Last year, the governor of Burma’s Central Bank told a World Bank and IMF joint meeting that Burma is working to improve its infrastructure and taking measures to keep inflation low.
Until now, no evidence of accelerating inflation can be seen, in spite of a recent jump in commodity prices on a rumored 300 percent increase in government worker salaries.
Once again, more rumors. What the country needs from the new government is more reliable information and transparency.
Then at least we can begin to talk about facts, rather than rumors.
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DVB News - Kachin army blocks Tatmadaw rations
By NAW NOREEN
Published: 4 March 2011
Food rations being delivered to Burmese troops stationed in Bhamo were reportedly blocked by the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) as rising tensions in the northern state show no sign of abating.
The battalion due to receive the rations had allegedly been deployed in territory belonging to the KIA, one of Burma’s biggest ethnic armies. The Burmese army has beefed up its presence in the unstable region with additional deployments of troops and tanks close to the group’s headquarters in Laiza.
The recent incident is the latest in ongoing encounters between the two forces: reports from the region claim that troops led by Major Myint Naing Oo carrying supplies to a military base were stopped by the KIA. Burmese soldiers were then ordered to block the road between Mong Hkawng and Mansi in Bhamo district for three days between 23 and 25 February.
Sporadic bursts of fighting have broken out in Kachin state since late last year, following the KIA’s rebuttal of junta demands to become a Border Guard Force (BGF). On 6 February gunfire was exchanged after a Burmese battalion entered KIA territory under the pretext of seeking and destroying illicit narcotics.
The KIA has been undertaken a drug eradication programme in areas belonging to another Kachin army, the New Democratic Army-Kachin (NDA-K), which is loyal to the junta. Burmese officials reportedly warned the group against destroying poppy fields.
And in January a new military command zone was designated for Tanaing, a region controlled by the KIA, adding to Burmese army presence there.
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