BurmaNet News: February 24 2003

[editor at burmanet.org]

February 24 2003 Issue #2182

INSIDE BURMA

ABC News Online: Burma junta denies Suu Kyi verdict ‘politically motivated’
Sunday Herald: Rule of fear and torture still blocks hope for democracy
Narinjara: Security forces nab woodcutters for bribes
Narinjara: Mobile rice ‘purchase’ drive unit?

MONEY

Xinhua: Myanmar’s bank crisis still continues
Xinhua: Myanmar to set up second ICT park

REGIONAL

Australian: Global bad boys gather for gabfest
Bangkok Post: NGOs hampering Burmese peace effort
Vietnamese News Agency: Vietnamese defence delegation concludes Burma
visit 21 February

EDITORIAL

Straits Times: Myanmar talks with US? It’ll be fruitless
ALTSEAN: Earth to Burmese junta: Dialogue begins at home

INSIDE BURMA

ABC News Online February 24 2003

Burma junta denies Suu Kyi verdict 'politically motivated'

Burma's military government has denied opposition charges the guilty
verdict delivered to democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi last week in a
wrongful restraint case was politically motivated.

"The government of Burma categorically rejects the charge by the National
League for Democracy (NLD) that a recent court verdict against Aung San
Suu Kyi was 'politically motivated'," it said in a statement.

The Nobel peace laureate was found guilty by a Yangon court on Friday
local time, of unlawfully restraining her cousin Ko Soe Aung from entering
the lakeside compound where they were residing separately last year.

She was fined 500 kyat, 50 US cents at blackmarket rates or $US83
according to the official rate - in lieu of seven days in jail.

The dispute began last May when Aung San Suu Kyi filed a complaint against
Ko Soe Aung at the same court for physically assaulting her.

Two months later Ko Soe Aung filed a counter-complaint against her for
wrongfully preventing him from entering the compound.

The court had been hearing both cases since then.

Ko Soe Aung was also found guilty and paid a 1,000 kyat fine.

However, Aung San Suu Kyi's was suspended after she staged a half-day
courtroom sit-in, calling the judgement "unfair".

The NLD released a statement saying the verdict "smacked of politics".

"Any court case involving the NLD will be resolved according to the
instructions of the military authorities," it said.

The government's statement said the charge was "completely untrue".

"Aung San Suu Kyi's own use of the Burma courts is proof of her faith in
the judicial system," the statement said, adding it was "unfortunate to
see the NLD leadership 'playing politics' with the judicial system".

NLD chairman Aung Shwe had also condemned the verdict, labelling it a
"politically motivated move".

Aung San Suu Kyi has had a tense relationship with the junta, which
released her from 19 months of house arrest last May.

Her NLD party won elections held in 1990, but the military refused to
recognise the result.

UN-brokered talks between Aung San Suu Kyi and the junta which commenced
in October 2000 aimed at national reconciliation are yet to move beyond a
confidence-building stage.
______________

Sunday Herald February 2003

Rule of fear and torture still blocks hope for democracy

Burma's desperate bid for reform is left struggling after new arrests and
threats to 'annihilate destructive elements'. James Pringle reports from
Rangoon

With fresh arrests of pro- democracy followers of the Burmese opposition
leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and violent threats to 'annihilate destructive
elements', Burma's hard-line military regime has served notice that a new
UN-brokered dialogue on the country's political future seems in danger of
floundering, with few signs of real movement towards reform.
The dialogue started last May, amid cautious hopes of a new opening after
the release from 19 months of house arrest of Nobel peace prize laureate
Suu Kyi -- she had earlier spent six years detained in her run-down,
wooden, lakeside villa.
The detention of 12 pro-democracy supporters and the aggressive statement
by the information minister, prompted the US to signal that, together with
Britain, it may impose additional sanctions because of lack of progress
towards ending the long political stalemate.
'Destructive elements' are the regime's code-words for Suu Kyi and her
National League for Democracy (NLD), which won the 1990 elections by a
landslide, but were never permitted to take power. For its part, the
European Union called on Rangoon to release all political prisoners and
immediately hold a substantial dialogue with the NLD. Kofi Annan, the UN
Secretary-General, said national reconciliation should begin with
'constructive dialogue'.
The junta alleged those arrested tried to blow up a prison and a railway
station and promised a 'fair trial'.
Lorne Craner, US assistant secretary of state for human rights, said: 'We
remain highly sceptical about the regime's commitment to any political
transition.'
The regime, he added, 'suppresses political dissent by censorship,
persecution, beatings, disappearances and imprisonment'.
This is apparent to any visitor here. Few doubt that Burma's military
chiefs rule through fear, repression and torture. Most people are afraid
to discuss politics; those few who dare, talk only in whispers. Seemingly
concerned because its economy is in a tailspin, the junta told Washington
on Friday it would welcome 'pragmatic, useful advice on making the
transition to a stable democracy'.
Rangoon was just stalling for time, observers said. Long lines of nervous
Burmese lined up outside banks making panicky withdrawals of their savings
after the central bank limited pay- outs. New statistics showed foreign
investment dropped 14.7% last year.
For her part, Suu Kyi said tough economic sanctions and tourist boycotts
against Burma must continue until the military government begins
meaningful dialogue. But through all this, Burma's ruling military caste,
whose troops gunned down 3000 students at pro-democracy demonstrations in
1988, continued to act in its uniquely bizarre way.
State-controlled media reported that General Khin Nyunt, the feared
intelligence chief who oversees 1200 political prisoners in the Burmese
gulag -- a political joke here can mean seven years breaking rocks -- used
holy water and fragrances to 'baptise' a white [albino] elephant, which
traditionally represents power and prosperity.
Once prosperous, Burma, with a population of 42 million, now ranks as one
of the world's 10 poorest countries after more than four decades of inept
mismanagement since General Ne Win seized power in 1962. Per capita
income, at £194, is in free fall, and the price of rice has trebled.
Ne Win recently died in disgrace aged 92, arrested by his own protÞgÞs,
while his son-in-law and three adult grandsons are to be hanged for
treason if appeals fail. They were caught with three small voodoo dolls,
made to resemble Burma's top three generals, who were enraged that pins
had apparently been applied as in the late Francois 'Papa Doc' Duvalier's
Haiti.
Attacks against Suu Kyi, daughter of national hero General Aung San who
won independence from Britain in 1948, had largely ceased after she began
closed-door discussions with the generals. But they had been pushed into
dialogue by international pressure and talked through gritted teeth,
leading to the present impasse.
Suu Kyi did visit NLD offices outside Rangoon, but in January supporters
greeting her in one centre were beaten with batons and sprayed with fire
hoses.
Burma certainly has pariah status. Washington maintains an investment ban,
travel restrictions for Burmese officials and an arms embargo -- only US
sanctions on Iraq are tougher.
Last late year, a US State Department investigation reported Burma used
rape as a weapon against ethnic minorities and human rights groups allege
the army includes more child soldiers than any other fighting force
worldwide.
To be fair, during recent travels to Kiplingesque Mandalay, the ancient
temples of Pagan beside the muddy Irrawaddy, and Lashio, way-station on
the second world war's infamous Burma Road to China, I saw fewer signs of
forced labour than on earlier visits. Nor did I notice underage soldiers,
though they could be deployed in the Shan state against ethnic minorities.
At Maymyo, an old British hill station, there are plush new private hotels
and golf courses for the privileged -- and corrupt -- military elite.
Nobody ever said dialogue and a political opening was going to be easy in
what is probably the world's most isolated state after North Korea. When I
interviewed Suu Kyi in her dusty, wooden-built NLD party headquarters on
her release last May, she told me: 'I think this is a far more delicate
situation than any we have seen in the past.'
Still charismatic and beautiful at the age of 57, with her porcelain skin
and jasmine in her hair, Suu Kyi spoke of the new political process, which
was to ultimately involve power-sharing, as a 'difficult balancing act'.
But her dialogue partners are nothing if not eccentric. Ne Win, the late
dictator, had an obsession with numerology, especially the number nine, so
he issued banknotes of 45 and 90 kyats, the Burmese currency . Today's
power- holders have their own obsessions. Although number one and two in
the ruling triumvirate, Senior General Than Shwe and General Maung Aye,
keep a lower profile, they all like to be photographed making offerings in
the Buddhist temples that dot the Burmese landscape.
General Khin Nyunt, the number three, revels in a personality cult,
preening for the cameras -- his multiple pictures dominate the grotesque
parody of a press, which used to dub Suu Kyi a 'genocidal prostitute' and
'a foreigner's floozie'.
Suu Kyi's late husband, Oxford professor Michael Aris, died of cancer in
1999, shortly after Rangoon denied him a visa to see his wife one last
time.
Near where he keeps his three living white elephants, Khin Nyunt has built
his temple over a large natural rock he believes resembles an elephant,
though to other Burmese it is just a rock.
Detached from reality, the military elite, brutalised after years in
power, lives sumptuously in huge villas, while most Burmese exist just
above the hunger line. Seen from a rattling night train, village homes are
lit by candle-power only. The military chieftains fear democracy because
they think it could mean tribunals -- they have seen Slobodan Milosevic on
trial at The Hague and, worse, Nicolae Ceausescu shot in Romania. Yet they
remain a law unto themselves. Last week, four traffic policemen were
arrested for daring to stop a car carrying a general's daughter.
But their obsessions with endlessly making merit in Buddhist temples and
baptising white elephants suggests that Burma's ruling generals are
wrestling with their own demons.
Under the Eastern cosmic law of cause and effect, they know their crimes
are an anathema in Buddhism. They appear, because of the killings, the
tortures, the press-ganging for slave labour and the pointless cruelty to
Suu Kyi and the late Michael Aris, to fear for their own future
reincarnations. With good reason, it would seem.
____________

Narinjara News February 24 2003

Security Forces nab Woodcutters for bribes

On 30th January a group of eighteen woodcutters were arrested in
Buthidaung Town in the western part of Burma bordering with Bangladesh.

Our correspondent quoting an inside source said that, the eighteen
woodcutters were arrested while they were carrying 10,000 bamboos and 130
firewood logs for use in brick kilns.  Sub Inspector Zaw Linn of
Taung-bazar Area Nasaka Security Station demanded kyat 10,000 as bribe
from the woodcutters on the plea of the absence of official permission to
cut and carry the logs and bamboos.

As they expressed their inability to pay the bribe money the woodcutters
were thrown behind bars and preparations have been made to charge them
with existing Forestry Laws.  Most of the detainees are from Dahbaing Sara
Village under Buthidaung Township.  The names of the detainees are: 
Muhammad Ruhul (35), Abu Taiyab (35), Faruq Ullah (16), Syed Alam (23),
Abu Faiyaz (19), Rabi (20), Abu Syed (14), Abu Tayiab (20), Muhammad Salim
(25),  Syed Amin (18),  Muhammad Anu (17), Zafar Ullah (16), Nazrul Modi
(16), Nur Ahmed (25), Muhammad Rafique (14) from Ahng-chaung Padana
Village, Muhammad Aru (30), Faiyaz Islam (20), and Syed Ahmed (40) from
Mukittha Village.

On inquiry our correspondent came to know that, the bamboos and firewood
from forests could be cut and sold on payment of revenue at Military
tollgates in rivers, creeks and roads.
___________

Narinjara News February 24 2003

Mobile rice ‘purchase’ Drive Unit ?

Ramree Island, 24 February:  Since the target for the rice collection for
the fiscal 2002  03 has not been fulfilled in Ramree Island in Rakhine
State, in the western part of Burma, a “Mobile Rice Purchase Drive Unit”
has been formed by the Burmese junta’s Ramree (Rambree) Township Council
to step up this year’s rice collection, according to our correspondent.

Unlike in previous years the newly formed Mobile Units have been going
round the village tracts including the rice collection depots at Doratha
and Kung-zatt villages in the island.  Each of these mobile units has
recruited six ‘rice collectors’ from the village tracts.  The units have
been composed of members of the police department, village Peace and
Development Council junta, and township administrative officials.

The teams have recently conducted rice collection drives from door to door
in the villages of Ramree Township including Ramm-theik-kri,
Ramm-theik-shey, Ma-rwaik-chein, and Abo-brung village tracts.  Those who
failed to meet the collection target set by the rice purchase drive units
have been left with no other choice than buy the same rice at kyat 2,000 a
tinn from the open market and sell to the Mobile Rice Units at kyat 350 a
tinn, which price is set by the Burmese junta, according to a rice farmer
in the area.

He also added that though the price of essentials has sharply gone up in
recent days, the junta has turned a deaf ear to the appeal of the rice
growers for higher price.  Instead many of the rice farmers who could not
reap a normal harvest of rice due to crop failure because of the heavy
rains and flooding last year had either been forced to fulfil the quota of
rice or to face legal action including prison terms and confiscation of
land and property.

When asked an official in the Agricultural Department said that this
year’s rice collection quota has been set at 300,000 tinns instead of
200,000 tinns last year for the island township, one hundred tinns of rice
is equal to about 250 bushels.  The total collection of rice till 15th
January has been recorded at 40% of the junta’s target.  On 18th January
the State Police Commissioner, a Burmese Army official, visited Kyaukpru
District including Ramree Island and directed the officials engaged in
rice collection to collect the full quota target of rice.  He emphasized
that rice is the main source of foreign currency of the regime, without
which Burma would face a lot of foreign currency constraints essential for
the development of the country.

Till January 15th only Thandoway Township out of seventeen townships of
Rakhine State has been able to fulfil about 94% of the quota.  In Mrauk-u
Township a total of 70% of the rice quota has been realized; last year a
total of one million tinns of rice was realized from the township  the
largest amount from any of the townships in the state, said an official in
the agricultural department.

MONEY

Xinhua News Agency February 24 2003

Myanmar's bank crisis still continues

The bank crisis of Myanmar, which has prolonged for two weeks, is still
continuing with no sign of ease.

Due to continued panic withdrawal of deposits by people from private
banks, the amount for such withdrawal has been further limited to 100,000
Kyats per week now from 500,000 Kyats initially designated by the State
Central Bank two week ago.

One US dollar is equivalent to 6 Kyats at official exchange rate, while it
is one to over 1,000 at market exchange rate. The amount of withdrawal
from some banks has even been limited to 50,000 Kyats per week as the
number of people, who runs for the panic withdrawal, increased.

Meanwhile, the bank authorities are also limiting the number of savers who
do so.

To ease the crisis and prevent it from turning into a political turmoil,
the state central bank is extending assistance to the private banks by
providing over 20 billion Kyats of loan to them for pressing need.

The country's bank crisis originated from a recent successive collapse of
more than a dozen non-bank deposit-taking companies that had offered
investors with exorbitantly high monthly interest rate of 4 to 5 percent
against 10 percent annual interest rate on deposits and 15 percent on
loans offered by private banks.

These companies were involved in real estate, construction, trading and
manufacturing, accepting deposits from the public to finance their
operation.

The collapse of these companies was coupled with rumors that private banks
could also head for bankruptcy, resulting in the rush for withdrawal at
private banks.

The panic move also came after the state central bank issued an order two
weeks ago which banned money transfer and limited such money withdrawal
from private banks.

Under these effects, some leading private banks such as the Yoma, Asia
Wealth Bank and Kanbawza Bank have successively suspended their credit
card and ATM services since last Monday in the midst.

As a result, people's business deal has come to a stage of semi-paralysis
or standstill as many big companies were not able to draw sufficient
amount of money from banks for business operation and even for issuing
wages for their employees.

There has been 20 private banks with a total of 350 branches operating
across Myanmar since the country allowed the private sector to run banks
in 1992, nearly three decades after the nationalization of the private
banks in the early 1960s.

Over the period when the previous government was in office, Myanmar
demonetized three times its currency notes in 1964, 1985, and 1987
respectively.

The past events have brought about absence of confidence in the country's
currency notes.

Frequent rumors about further demonetization of the present currency notes
of 500 Kyats and 1,000 Kyats and introduction of 5, 000 Kyats have also
increased the worry of the people.

All these factors intensified the crisis.

According to official statistics, people's savings in state-owned and
private banks totaled 485,420 million Kyats in the first half of 2002, of
which 323,380 million were in private banks or 66. 6 percent of the
people's total savings.

In face of the crisis, Chairman of the Myanmar State Peace and Development
Council Senior-General Than Shwe had to cancel his planned attendance at
the Non-Aligned Summit being held in Malaysia.
_____________-

Xinhua News Agency February 24 2003

Myanmar to set up second ICT park

Myanmar planned to set up its second Information and Communication
Technology (ICT) Park in the country's second largest city of Mandalay in
the next few months following the first one established in the capital of
Yangon last year.

The Mandalay ICT Development Corporation said that the development of the
Mandalay ICT park will cost 4 billion Kyats ( about 3.6 million US
dollars). With 44 office rooms, the 8,546.8-square-meter ICT park will
feature a cyber cafe and gymnasium, according to a report from the weekly
Myanmar Times on Monday.

The emergence of the Mandalay ICT park will create higher standard
education opportunities for the younger generation in the northern city
along with better job opportunities in the future, said the report.

It is expected that the ICT park will give rise to computer training
centers and help establish e(electronic)-government systems in northern
Myanmar.

Myanmar set up its first ICT park in Yangon in January 2002 with an
estimated cost of some 10 million dollars. The park, which provides modern
communication facilities to local and foreign IT companies for software
production, is occupied by about two dozen IT companies and two
Japan-Myanmar e-learning centers with an additional teleport and internet
data center near the park, providing it with high speed data communication
broadband internet access and telephony voice services.

Meanwhile, the government is giving encouragement and incentives to
investment in the field, especially in education and human resources
development for the IT.

REGIONAL

The Australian February 24 2003

Global bad boys gather for gabfest
By Kimina Lyall

The Non-Aligned Movement has lost its way, writes southeast Asia
correspondent Kimina Lyall

CALL it a gathering of the bad and the worst.

Attendees at tomorrow's Non-Aligned Movement Summit in Kuala Lumpur
include a rollcall of the world's great pariahs. Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe
and Burma's Than Shwe will be there -- Malaysia being one of the few
countries to offer warm welcomes to men who have undeniably plunged
prosperous countries into economic ruin -- joining key representatives of
the US's "axis of evil".

Iran's supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Hoseini Khameini, is the most
senior of the ill-fated three to arrive, and Iraq is represented by
Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan -- along with a truckload of documents
he says will convince the 114 members of his country's innocence in the
hunt for weapons of mass destruction.

North Korea's Kim Yong-nam, the president of the People's Assembly, rounds
out the troika. Already, he has thrown the summit into its expected
controversies, by demanding -- apparently unsuccessfully -- that the
summit's declaration call on the US to cease its aggression towards North
Korea.

Meanwhile, the leaders of the world's two fragile nuclear adversaries,
Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf and India's Atal Bihari Vajpayee, will
probably keep their distance from each other after India called for the
resolution to stand against "state-sponsored terrorism", in a clear
reference to Pakistan and disputed Kashmir.

Of course, of the movement's 114 members -- set to increase to 116 by
tomorrow -- there are many more mild-mannered leaders also present. East
Timor's Xanana Gusmao and Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai will represent
potential alternatives to unpopular regimes.

The gathering is presided over by a slightly less iron-fisted despot,
Malaysia's Mahathir Mohammad but, even with such a roll of heavy-hitters,
there isn't much chance it will actually achieve anything.

The problem is the non-aligned movement, which was launched in 1955 as a
"third way" grouping against the Cold War superpowers, in recent years
represents a group of people who are largely not aligned with each other
or even, in many cases, with their own citizens.

Now it seems that anti-American sentiment will form the only basis for
some unity in the grouping, which is almost entirely made up of developing
nations in Africa, the Middle-East, Asia and South America.

"NAM?" asks Malaysian political scientist Professor P. Ramasamy. "I call
it the NUMB ... it is a non-aligned non-movement. Mahathir is trying to
revive a movement that is irrelevant."

In a sign that he is right, the only surviving founder of the movement,
Cambodia's King Norodom Sihanouk -- who was present during the NAM's
planning in 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia and at its first meeting, in
Belgrade in 1961 hosted by Yugoslav President Tito -- is one of many heads
of state who has decided to stay home.
________

Bangkok Post February 24 2003

NGOS HAMPERING' BURMESE PEACE EFFORT
by Wassana Nanuam

Support from NGOs for Burmese ethnic groups is complicating the
government's effort to mediate peace talks between Rangoon and the rebels.

A senior military source said the NGOs would be closely watched as
authorities tried to bring the parties to the negotiation table. Thailand
has offered to mediate a decade-long conflict between Rangoon and minority
groups. The offer was made during Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's
recent visit to Burma.

The source said continued outside support for minority groups made it hard
for Thailand to persuade them to join the talks. Gen Thammarak Isarangkura
na Ayudhaya, the defence minister, said Mr Thaksin had asked the Defence
Ministry and armed forces to promote national reconciliation between Burma
and the rebels. The task was difficult because both sides were sticking by
their positions, he said. If peace prevailed on the border, the government
would encourage firms to invest in factories or farms on the Burmese side
to create jobs for Burmese people. This would help stem the flow of
illegal workers and spread of drugs, he said.

The Thailand-Burma Economic and Cultural Association will lead a movie
team to make a feature film on drug suppression in Burma. The feature film
is intended to show Burma's sincerity about tackling drugs. Gen Sanan
Kachornklam, secretary-general of the association, said the film-makers
led by producer Joay Bangchak would start work in Rangoon on Feb 26. Burma
had also approved filming in a border area.
_____________

Vietnamese News Agency Feburary 21 2003

Vietnamese defence delegation concludes Burma visit 21 February

A Vietnamese senior military delegation headed by Defence Minister Sen
Lt-Gen Pham Van Tra concluded its five-day official friendship visit to
Myanmar on Friday 21 February .

They were guests of Lt-Gen Min Thein, minister in charge of the Office of
the Chairman of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) of Myanmar.
During the visit, Sen Lt-Gen Tra paid a courtesy visit to Sr Gen Than
Shwe, chairman of the SPDC, prime minister, commander-in-chief of Myanmar
armed forces and defence minister.

Sr Gen Than Shwe recalled the solidarity and friendship between the
Myanmar and Vietnamese people and spoke highly of the Vietnamese people's
heroic struggle against foreign aggression in the past and socio-economic
achievements at present.

For his part, Sen Lt-Gen Tra expressed his belief that the friendship and
mutual understanding between the two armies would continue to develop,
thus contributing to boosting the two countries' relations for peace,
stability and prosperity in the region.

While there, the Vietnamese delegation visited the National Defence and
Command Institutes, the Information Technology and Telecom Park, and Drug
Control Museum.

Myanmar was the last destination of the Vietnamese military delegation's
tour after Laos and Thailand.

EDITORIAL

Straits Times February 24 2003

Myanmar talks with US? It'll be fruitless
By Lee Kim Chew

IN AN unprecedented move, Myanmar's military regime is seeking talks with
the United States about the country's political future.
It wants 'pragmatic, useful advice on making the transition to a stable
democracy', the Yangon government that once scoffed at an offer of a US$1
billion (S$1.75 billion) World Bank loan in return for democratic change
declared last Thursday.
But don't bet on the apparent turnaround signifying a change of heart
among Yangon's generals.
True, several hundred political prisoners have been freed recently and the
regime has opened the doors to Amnesty International, the Red Cross and
the International Labour Organisation.
United Nations Special Rapporteur Paulo Pinheiro notes that prison
conditions for political prisoners have improved, with fewer cases of
beatings and torture.
On the other hand, the junta is still arresting political dissidents and
National League for Democracy (NLD) activists, and refusing to start a
dialogue to engage pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her party.
Which makes it clear why the generals are making peace overtures to
Washington: because they hope to ward off new sanctions which the Bush
administration plans to impose on the regime.
The US declared last week that its patience was running out. 'We, along
with the United Kingdom and others, are considering all options, including
further sanctions,' warned Mr Lorne Craner, the US Assistant Secretary for
the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour.
Myanmar, in dire economic straits with inflation spiralling upwards at 50
per cent a year, in tandem with a currency falling in value, cannot afford
new sanctions.
Symptomatic of the crisis was the massive run on its banks last week,
which forced the central bank to restrict money transfers and limit
withdrawals from private banks to a paltry 200,000 kyat (S$317) a week,
bringing business to a standstill.
On top of that, Myanmar's border problems with Thailand remain unresolved,
thus hampering bilateral trade and adding to Yangon's economic woes.
According to aid agencies, the refugee flow into Thailand worsened last
year, and about a million people have been displaced within Myanmar
because of the war with ethnic minorities.
The ostracised regime gets little foreign aid, and it is starved of soft
loans from international lending agencies.
Although the European Union (EU) lifted its visa embargo and allowed
Myanmar to join the Asean-EU ministerial talks in Brussels last month, it
wants Asean countries to put more pressure on the junta to undertake
political reforms.
In contrast to the junta, Ms Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace laureate, has the
support of the West.
Last week, the US-based Freedom Forum awarded her the Al Neuharth Free
Spirit of the Year Award and US$1 million for her advocacy of democracy.
The Bush administration is insisting on genuine democratic change in
Myanmar as a precondition for dropping its sanctions.
The signs point however, to a renewed standoff between her and the
generals, as mutual restraints give way to mutual recriminations.
According to foreign diplomats, the regime's grassroots organisation is
distributing pamphlets that vilify her and her cause.
She, in turn, has called for international sanctions to stay as long as
the regime procrastinates in starting a political dialogue with her party.
Given the intransigence on both sides, Yangon's latest call for talks with
Washington will be a fruitless exercise.
________________

ALTSEAN February 24 2003

EARTH TO BURMESE JUNTA: DIALOGUE BEGINS AT HOME

The State Peace and Development Council's recent statement calling for
"constructive dialogue" with the United States of America is outrageous in
the light of the junta's refusal to enter into "constructive dialogue"
with the people of Burma.

It has been more than 9 months since the SPDC declared the 'turning of a
new page' for the people of Burma but substantive dialogue still has not
begun between the SPDC, the democracy movement led by Daw Aung San Suu
Kyi, and ethnic nationality groups.

The SPDC implied that the US-backed sanctions were to blame for poor
growth of the economy, education and healthcare systems. The reality is
that the regime's gross economic mismanagement is hurting the people of
Burma more than any sanctions could. A redistribution of the SPDC's
enormous military budget to social services could provide basic healthcare
and education to the people of Burma.

The SPDC is deluding itself by imagining that permission for certain
international agencies to visit Burma is a sign of reform. It is merely a
gesture of hospitality commonly extended without comment by most countries
of the world.

The only way forward is for the SPDC to cease committing the massive human
rights violations that plague not just the people of Burma, but also the
world. Substantive dialogue needs to begin now. This is a 'systematic' and
efficient method to bring about a 'new page' of political, economic and
humanitarian developments to Burma as well as better relations within the
international community.

We echo the voice of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the democracy movement in
support of sanctions as a viable non-military option to support
irreversible, positive change in Burma. Until the military regime is
serious about democratic reforms in Burma, sanctions will at least deprive
them of foreign exchange to buy arms used to oppress the peoples of Burma.
As UN Special Envoy Tan Sri Razali Ismail said, "It is not a question of
asking for sanctions to be lifted, it is having things happen in the
country that would make it unnecessary for the sanctions to be there."

Ultimately, reform lies in the political will of the SPDC, led by Senior
General Than Shwe. Therefore, just in case Sen. Gen. Than Shwe has somehow
forgotten what needs to be done, we reiterate the key steps that should be
prioritized on his "to-do" list:

1.	Immediately and unconditionally release all political prisoners and
halt all new politically motivated arrests
2.	Enter into constructive and substantive political dialogue with the
democracy movement led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and ethnic nationality
leaders
3.	Implement a nation-wide cease-fire based upon dialogue and negotiation
within a specific timeframe

The world is getting fed-up of the SPDC's empty promises, systematic human
rights abuses, man-made economic crisis and increasing harassment of Daw
Aung San Suu Kyi and democracy supporters. The SPDC must take
responsibility for its own actions and put their money where their mouth
is by take concrete, irreversible steps towards democracy and national
reconciliation in Burma.