BurmaNet Appropriate
Information Technologies, Practical Strategies
The BurmaNet News: November 24-25, 1998
Issue #1145
HEADLINES:
THE NATION: BURMA ALLOWS IN DAILY
25 November, 1998
A CHINESE -language newspaper published in Thailand has received
official Burmese permission for nationwide circulation, being the
first foreign newspaper to be sold in Burma in three decades.
Shijie Ribao, or Universal Daily, which was established here on
July 26, 1955, by the late Chin Sophonpanich, the Bangkok Bank
founder, began- its circulation in Burma on Nov 16. It received
official pension from the Ministry of Trade on Nov 6. The
daily, the largest of the six existing Chinese-language
newspapers in Thailand with a daily circulation of 50,000, is
flown to its subscribers and the Burmese market everyday from
Bangkok.
The newspaper ran a full-page advertisement of its circulation in
Burma in yesterday's edition. The paper has so far got 80
subscriptions from mainly Chinese businessmen from Taiwan.
Monthly subscription fee is 690 kyat (US$115 at the official rate
or US$2.3 at the black market rate). A senior staff member of
Shijie Ribao said the paper plans to open a Burma page if the
number of subscriptions and market sales increase.
Shijie Ribao was taken over in 1986 by Taiwan's Lian He Bao or
United Daily, which is the world's largest private Chinese
newspaper. Lian He Bao has a global circulation and network and
is also published in North America- and Europe. Burma used to
have a number of Chinese publications, but all were closed
down by the previous government led by Gen Ne Win on
Jan 1, 1966. Early this month, the Burmese junta allowed the
publication of the first local Chinese-language newspaper, Mian
Dien Huo Bao or The Burmese Morning Post, which targets readers
both in Burma and other countries in the region. The weekly
paper, with an initial circulation of 5,000, concentrates on
trade and investment, tourism, culture, social and health issues,
and activities of the Chinese community in Burma and overseas.
THE NATION: 21 MORE NLD MEMBERS 'QUIT'
25 November, 1998
AFP
A FURTHER 21 members of the Burmese opposition National League
for Democracy (NLD), led by Aung San Suu Kyi, have quit the
party, state newspaper reports said yesterday. The resignations,
announced in the state's New Light of Myanmar daily, took place
on Nov 15 and are the latest in dozens as the junta steps up
pressure on the opposition. The NLD members in Pantanaw township
in Ayeyawady division west of the capital Rangoon reportedly gave
up politics of their own will.
"[They] no longer wished to take part in the political
activities of NLD," the newspaper said. The NLD won a
sweeping victory in the country's 1990 electionsbut the
ruling military council ignored the result and has since refused
to hand over power. Hundreds of NLD party members have been
detained in recent months and although many have been released,
the opposition has said they were given their freedom on
condition they quit the party. The Burmese military government f
on Sunday denied forcing members of the party to resign after its
countrywide sweep against the movement.
"No pre-conditions have been set on the release,"
said leading junta spokesman Lt Col Hla Min in a briefing to
journalists and
diplomats.
"After the discussions they came to the understanding that
national security is more important than politics."
THE NATION: AUNG SAN SUU KYI MUST FIGHT ON
25 November, 1998
EDITORIAL
It was good to hear straight from the horse's mouth. Daw Aung San
Suu Kyi has not given up. In fact, she has given an upbeat
assessment of her party, the National League for Democracy,
despite the military junta's efforts to subjugate her party and
coerce its members to resign en masse. The junta's tactics in the
end will not work. In due course, former NLD members will return
to NLD - no matter how hard the junta tries. In a direct
challenge to the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), the
junta's official name, the Nobel peace laureate set up a
committee recently to act in the absence of parliament. Her party
won by a landslide the 1990 elections but the junta did not
respect the election results,
In the past 10 years, Rangoon's military rulers have used a
variety of measures to discredit NLD. Continued harassment of 851
NLD members through detention and intimidation has not weakened
the party. The junta leaders have propagated that NLD is near its
end because of mass resignations and closing down of local
offices. The international community, including Asean, has urged
both sides to hold a dialogue of national reconciliation. So far,
it has not happened. Meanwhile, Asean is in disarray because of
the ongoing economic crisis. Differences in perceptions
have surfaced and could further mar their cooperation.
The junta has refused to hold talks directly with Suu Kyi. It
chose instead to talk to her subordinates, but her party insisted
that there would be no talks without her participation. The junta
leaders are now playing for time. They hope that NLD and its
followers would die if they continue to tighten the screw. They
hope that the resumption of the meeting between Asean and the
European Union, over the joint commission would further end their
isolation. (Burma would be allowed to attend the
meeting passively.)
Burma's bad reputation continues to be widespread. Both the
reports by the United Nations and the Geneva-based International
Labour Organisation were harsh. ILO, as in the previous year, has
strongly criticised Burma for the use of forced labour, which is
considered by the international community to be human rights
violation. ILO has urged the junta to comply with the
international labour and human right standards. But as usual, the
pariah refuses to listen. ILO's 500page investigative report, one
of the most authoritative reports on atrocities in Burma, stated
that there was systematic and massive abuse of workers. The
forced labourers were not given food and sometimes were prevented
from drinking water.
During the past few weeks, there have been efforts to broker a
dialogue be-tween Suu Kyi and the junta through the so-called
"treasure hunting" road map. Some EU countries want to
encourage the leaders in Rangoon to take initiatives that
would break the impasse. But that would not work, if it means
more measures to weaken Suu Kyi.
The international community must not lose faith and give up on
Suu Kyi and NLD. What she stands for will triumph as it responds
to the people's aspirations. The junta leaders will continue to
use their power to destroy her. The West must resist the
temptation of investment opportunities in Burma.
REUTERS: UN SAYS RIGHTS ENVOY BLOCKED FROM VISITING
MYANMAR
24 November, 1998 Eastern
GENEVA, Nov 24 (Reuters) - The United Nations human rights
investigator for Myanmar has again been denied permission to
visit by the military government, but will meet displaced Myanmar
minorities in Thailand this week, a U.N. spokesman said on
Tuesday. Rajsoomer Lallah, a former chief justice of Mauritius,
has been blocked from visiting Myanmar, the former Burma, since
being appointed by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights to the
independent post in 1996.
During his November 25-December 5 trip to Thailand, he will visit
camps at Mae Sot, Chiang Mai, Mae Hong, which hold displaced
ethnic Karen, Shan and Kareni, respectively, U.N. rights
spokesman Jose Diaz told a news briefing in Geneva. Asked about
the Rangoon government's response to Lallah, which was relayed
through Myanmar's diplomatic mission in Geneva, Diaz said:
"The justification was that there was no need to investigate
the situation." Lallah's latest report to the U.N. General
Assembly earlier this month cited allegations of extrajudicial
and arbitrary executions, rape, torture, inhuman treatment, mass
arrests, forced labour and other rights violations. He said that
opposition parties continued to be subject to constant monitoring
by the government.
The National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Nobel Peace Prize
laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, won Myanmar's last election in 1990
but was never allowed to take office. U.N. High Commissioner for
Human Rights Mary Robinson last month called on the Myanmar
leadership to begin a dialogue with the opposition on national
reconciliation and to allow Lallah to make a fact-finding visit.
In a statement, the former Irish president said she had raised
issues including forced labour and the forced displacement of
ethnic minorities with Foreign Minister Ohn Gyaw in New York
during the General Assembly on September 23.
She had received "no satisfactory response," she said.
REUTERS: MYANMAR ARRESTS THREE WESTERNERS IN SHAN
STATE
25 November, 1998
MAE HONG SON, Thailand, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Myanmar troops have
arrested an American, a Canadian and a German for entering the
country illegally via a jungle route from northwestern Thailand,
Thai intelligence sources said on Thursday. The trio were
indentified as Michael John, 40, from the United States, Joseph
Frank, 34, from Canada and now residing in Hong Kong and a German
whose name was given as Hdirk Rommes Wikel. The sources located
at the border with Myanmar said no further details on the trio
were available and that they had been held since last Friday.
"Informants in Ho Mong (in Shan state) said Myanmar soldiers
will send the trio to Yangon today,"one Thai intelligence
source told Reuters.
The three westerners rode on motorcyles from Mae Hong Son in
northwestern Thailand and had entered Myanmar's northern Shan
state on Thursday, the source said. Thai paratroopers based at
the border check point with Myanmar at Baan Maikhai in the Phang
Mapha district of Mae Hong Son province had reported that they
had spotted the westerners on motorcycles entering Myanmar
territory via the jungle route. Ho Mong in Shan state, about 25
km (16 miles) from the border with Thailand, was the former
headquarters of drug warlord Khun Sa who surrendered to Myanmar
troops about two years ago.
Samreung Boonyoprakorn, the governor of Mae Hong Son province,
confirmed the reported arrests to Reuters.
"Reliable sources have confirmed that those westerners
intruded into Myanmar. Informants said they were loaded into a
lorry and taken to an undisclosed location,"he said when
contacted by telephone.
REUTERS: B'DESH REPATRIATES FIRST MYANMAR REFUGEES IN
YEAR
25 November, 1998
TEKNAF, Bangladesh, Nov 25 (Reuters) - Forty-six Moslem refugees
were sent back to Myanmar from Bangladesh on Wednesday in the
first wave of repatriations since they were halted last year,
government officials said. The Myanmar Moslem refugees fled to
Bangladesh six years ago to escape military persecution. A group
of 46 Rohingya Moslems were seen off by officials of the
Bangladesh government and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) at Teknaf, a Bangladeshi official told reporters.
"The refugees are going back willingly,"said Mohammad
Borhanuddin, Bangladesh's relief and repatriation commissioner.
Fifty more Rohingya were expected to return on December 2 and
another 50 in the middle of December, he added. The repatriation
process stalled in July last year when Yangon refused to accept
more than 21,000 refugees. Myanmar authorities said they were
mostly "economic refugees"hoping for a better life in
Bangladesh camps. They were among the 250,000 Rohingya who fled
to Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar district in early 1992 from west
Myanmar's Moslem-majority Arakan province, saying they had been
persistently persecuted by the military junta.
Myanmar agreed to resume the repatriation after a recent visit to
Yangon by Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abdus Samad Azad, officials
said. Bangladesh said it would not force anyone to return but
that it wanted refugees repatriated as soon as possible.
"Unless it had hit an unexpected snag, the repatriation
would have been completed before end of 1997. Now we hope it will
end soon,"one official in Cox's Bazar said.
After the return of refugees on Wednesday, 21,365 were still in
two camps in Bangladesh, he said.
REUTERS: ASIAN WORKERS' FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION
ELUSIVE--ILO
24 November, 1998
GENEVA, Nov 24 (Reuters) - The International Labour Organisation
(ILO) said on Tuesday that despite recent progress in Indonesia,
the right of workers or employers to associate freely was elusive
in much of East and Southeast Asia. The regional analysis follows
the ILO governing body's stern criticism last Friday of Myanmar
for what it termed widespread use of forced labour and other
"grave human rights violations."
Only four of 12 countries in East and Southeast Asia have
ratified ILO convention 87 on freedom of association which
protects the right to organise, the United Nations agency said.
"Freedom to associate with those of one's own choosing is a
fundamental human right, nowhere more valued than where it is
denied," ILO director-general Michel Hansenne said.
In June, Indonesia ratified the 1948 text after "years of
systematic repression," joining Japan, Myanmar and the
Philippines as a party to the pact. But China, Singapore, South
Korea and Thailand are among regional countries to have stayed
away, the ILO said in its analysis issued in Geneva and in
Bangkok.
"The severe economic and social crisis still unfolding in
Asia has focused attention on the need for a genuine social
dialogue and led the authorities in several countries to
reconsider past positions,"ILO said.
"Ratification alone means little however where democracy and
the rule of law are denied, as in Myanmar today," it added.
Last week, ILO's governing body heard from an ILO commission of
inquiry on forced labour in Myanmar and called on the government
to bring its legislation into line with the ILO convention on
forced labour by May 1, 1999.
"It noted the impunity with which government officials, in
particular the military, treat the civilian population of the
country as an unlimited pool of labourers and servants to build
and maintain a whole variety of projects, ranging from roads and
railways to construction of military camps, logging camps, hotels
and other infrastructure," the ILO said.
Some delegates called into question the wisdom of the ILO's
governing body continuing to deal with the military government in
Myanmar, a statement said.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE: SHAME, SECRECY FUEL EPIDEMIC IN
THAILAND
25 November, 1998
BY ULI SCHMETZER, TRIBUNE FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT. TRIBUNE NEWS
SERVICES CONTRIBUTED TO THIS REPORT.
DONMUANG, Thailand Aumporn Thongbeang, 24, and her baby girl,
Nondern, sit on a mat outside their room and wait for death to
catch up with them. Both are part of a growing group that neither
chose to join. They are young, they live in a developing country
and they are dying of AIDS. A new report by UNAIDS, the United
Nations agency set up to combat the spread of the deadly virus,
says that more than 95 percent of all HIV-infected people live in
the developing world, in countries like Thailand.
"The epidemic has not been overcome anywhere. Virtually
every country in the world has seen new infections in 1998, and
the epidemic is frankly out of control in many places,"
UNAIDS said in its annual update of the epidemic.
Carol Bellamy, the executive director of the United Nations
Children's Fund, likened the epidemic to a plague that is
systematically devastating entire societies.
"Those numbers are framed by one terrible, inescapable
fact--that it is young people up to the age of 24 who are bearing
the brunt of the casualties," she said Tuesday.
Nearly 6 million new AIDS cases were reported this year, with the
developing world the epicenter of the epidemic. More than 22
million people in sub-Saharan Africa are estimated to have the
virus, 6.7 million people in South and Southeast Asia and 1.4
million people in Latin America.
Dr. Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, said the 6 million
new cases and 2.5 million deaths this year represent a collective
failure because more is known about prevention and protection
than ever before. War, famine, political turmoil, lack of medical
facilities, shame and secrecy have fueled the epidemic in many
poor countries, where the disease is invisible and many people do
not even realize they are infected.
That was the case with Aumporn, who says she did not know she was
infected until a routine pregnancy test.
"Once the baby was born, people in our area found out I was
sick and everyone asked me to leave," she said. "They
said they were afraid their own children would catch it."
The young mother looks down at her gurgling baby. "I was
lucky," she said. "I was taken in by this place where
people understand and are not afraid."
She was seated on her mat at a wing of the shelter for battered
women near this airport town. The shelter is run by Buddhist nun
Kanittha Vichieancharoen, 74, one of Thailand's best-known social
workers. She attributes the AIDS epidemic in Thailand to the
country's thriving sex industry, a growing problem with drug
abuse and the Thai government's unwillingness to confront the
problem, for fear of damaging the tourism industry.
Her shelter cares for 19 HIV-positive patients at any time. It is
nearly always full. Kanittha, who had three sons and eight
grandchildren before she became a nun a few years ago, said she
believes the AIDS scare has lost its deterrent effect over the
years in a country where, health officials estimate, 8 million
Thai men visit a prostitute every week.
"We've become used to AIDS because someone is dying here
every day. Every hospital now accepts AIDS patients. They didn't
before," Kanittha said. "In the first five years
everybody was afraid. Today no one is afraid, and Thai men keep
going to prostitutes as before.
"In the beginning the government counted the dead, then it
stopped counting. I have stopped counting too. All I know is that
about 10 of our people have passed away in the last two
years."
Fledgling government prevention programs and facilities such as
Kanittha's care for victims and try to educate those not yet
infected. But it is an uphill struggle, because even admitting
that one is infected runs counter to cultural norms. Victims are
shunned, sometimes driven out of their homes and generally
treated as outcasts. Even after their deaths, Aumporn and Nondern
will, in all probability, not be counted as AIDS statistics. A
bicycle hearse will take their bodies to Wat Paiktheo temple,
where, for just 50 cents, both will be cremated in the Buddhist
monastery's furnace. No autopsies are performed. The relatives or
friends who pay for the cremations do not want to be stigmatized
or shunned. The monks may know the cause of death but are sworn
to silence by their vows.
After Aumporn's family asked her and her daughter to leave, they,
like thousands of other abandoned women and children, wandered
the streets to find a refuge, a hospice or a monastery willing to
take them. Aumporn is a sturdy young woman with dark, sad eyes
who shows no sign of her affliction. The baby is strong and
lively. No one knows how many more like her are moving through
Thai society. AIDS records are kept in a haphazard manner, and
health statistics are unreliable. A study financed by the
European Union found that 222,000 people have died of AIDS in
Thailand since 1985--nine times more than the Thai government had
recorded.
The same study estimated that 270,000 people carry the AIDS
virus, three times the figure provided by Thai health
authorities. Some speculate that officials may be doctoring the
statistics, afraid that more AIDS cases will mean fewer tourists.
In northern Chiang Rai province, which provides the bulk of
Thailand's sex workers, AIDS was responsible for 80 percent of
fatalities in the 25-29 age group, the study found. Nearly half
the deaths nationwide in the same age group can be attributed to
AIDS. One in four young people between 20 and 24 has died of
AIDS.
Alessio Panza, co-author of the study at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn
University, says the increased use of intravenous drugs, as much
as the sex trade, accounts for the spread of AIDS. The drug
problem is rampant in the Chiang Rai-Chiang Mai area, part of the
infamous Golden Triangle at the intersection of Thailand, Laos
and Myanmar, where hill tribes and feudal lords with private
armies grow the poppies from which heroin is refined.
"Very often the drug barons hook the young people on heroin
so they can use them as drug traders, middlemen and couriers. In
return, the youngsters get their drugs free. Entire villages are
involved in this dirty business," Panza said.
In Thai villages, Kanittha said, people are looking after the
sick young ones, many of them grandchildren sent to urban centers
to make money. They came back infected with the virus. "But
they still keep pushing their daughters into the sex industry in
the city," Kanittha said. "They want the money."