BurmaNet News, March 16, 2005

[Editor]

March 16, 2005 Issue # 2676


INSIDE BURMA
AFP: Myanmar rips into ILO and West for pressuring its junta
AP: Myanmar ethnic Shan leader urges open trial for compatriot
AP: Myanmar welcomes China's anti-secessionist law
Xinhua: Myanmar confirms peace talks with KNU underway
Irrawaddy: Plug pulled on punters

BUSINESS / MONEY
Kaladan: Bangladesh Sets pre-Conditions for allowing Pipeline

REGIONAL
Malaysiakini.com: Zaid to move motion in Parliament on Burma
Reuters: Tsunami quake raises risk of another tremor – study

INTERNATIONAL
Japan Economic Newswire: Rally held to protest plight of thousands of
foreign detainees

______________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

March 16, Agence France Presse
Myanmar rips into ILO and West for pressuring its junta

Yangon: Myanmar, faced with a possible revival of International Labour
Organisation sanctions, slammed the UN agency and Western nations for
applying excessive pressure on its ruling junta, state media said
Wednesday.

A senior labour ministry official accused the ILO of "siding with
expatriate destructionists" and Western powers bent on regime change in
Myanmar, and of ignoring the junta's moves to address complaints.

"Some big nations with the aim of manipulating our country ... are
fabricating exaggerations and putting one-sided pressure on Myanmar," Soe
Nyunt, director-general of the labour department, said in the official New
Light of Myanmar.

"The big nations of the West bloc also used the ILO as a political forum
to put pressure on Myanmar," he said.

The denunciation came three weeks after a high-level ILO team visited
Yangon. It cut short its mission when it failed to meet top generals to
assess the junta's commitment to fighting forced labour.

The visit was seen as a test of Yangon's willingness to cooperate in
fighting the practice -- a key assessment ahead of ILO discussions in
Geneva scheduled for March 24, when the governing body could decide to
renew its call for sanctions against Myanmar.

Yangon said the ILO's premature departure showed it was being manipulated
by the West, particularly the United States and Britain.

In 1998 an ILO inquiry found that forced labour was pervasive and
systematic throughout the country, particularly with the military.

The ILO and the junta agreed on a plan of action in May 2003, but shelved
it two days later when the junta detained pro-democracy leader Aung San
Suu Kyi.

Last November the ILO warned it was ready to revive sanctions after
concluding that the junta had shown little political will to stop rampant
forced labour.

The United States tightened its own sanctions against the regime,
including a ban on all imports from Myanmar.

"Consequently, over 160 garment factories had to be closed and about 40
factories laid off workers. Thus over 80,000 workers lost jobs," Soe Nyunt
said in the daily.

Myanmar says it is committed to ending forced labour and has been
cooperating with the ILO on eradicating the practice.

A Myanmar court made an unprecedented ruling in January, convicting four
officials of forcing villagers to work on a road project and jailing them
for up to 16 months.

______________________________________

March 16, Associated Press
Myanmar ethnic Shan leader urges open trial for compatriot

Bangkok: The sedition trial of the leader of one of Myanmar's biggest
ethnic political parties is unfair and unjustified, the leader of a rebel
political group representing the same minority - the Shan people - said
Wednesday.

Hkun Htun Oo, chairman of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy, is
being tried in a special court inside Yangon's Insein Prison, Myanmar
Information Minister Brig. Gen. Kyaw Hsan revealed Tuesday.

The Shan Nationalities League for Democracy, or SNLD, won the second
largest number of seats in the 1990 general election, behind Aung San Suu
Kyi's National League for Democracy party. The military refused to honor
the results, and instead stepped up harassment of the country's
pro-democracy movement.

"The military government has invented the charges against him (Hkun Htun
Oo), and it is unfair and unacceptable to try him in the military's
special court," said Saeng Suek, chairman of the Shan Democratic Union.

"If he must be tried, it should be by a civilian court where the
proceedings are carried out according to acceptable international
practice," he said in a phone interview conducted from Bangkok.

Police took Hkun Htun Oo and Sai Nyunt Lwin, the SNLD's general secretary,
from their Yangon homes on Feb. 9.

Myanmar police chief Brig. Gen. Khin Yi said Hkun Htun Oo is being tried
on charges of sedition, having links to illegal organizations and
distributing documents without the required registration.

Sai Nyunt Lwin and five activists from other Shan organizations are being
prosecuted on the same charges, he said.

Sedition carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Kyaw Hsan indicated that the act which triggered the arrests was a Feb. 7
meeting of Shan groups with the ultimate aim of establishing an autonomous
state.

______________________________________

March 16, Associated Press
Myanmar welcomes China's anti-secessionist law

Yangon: Myanmar has welcomed China's new law authorizing an attack on
Taiwan if the island pursues formal independence, state media reported
Wednesday.

Myanmar's ruling junta supports the law "based on friendly good neighborly
relations with China," said a Foreign Ministry statement published in
official newspapers.

"Myanmar always adopts the one-China policy and respects the People's
Republic of China's sovereignty and the right to protect and stabilize its
territory," it said.

Taiwan and China split amid civil war in 1949, but Beijing considers the
democratic, self-ruled island to be Chinese territory. China's leaders
insist that the anti-secession law passed Monday is meant to promote
peaceful unification.

China is Myanmar's most important ally, providing economic, military and
other assistance while Western nations shun the military-ruled country
because of its poor human rights record and failure to restore democracy.

______________________________________

March 16, Xinhua General News Service
Myanmar confirms peace talks with KNU underway

Yangon: The Myanmar government has confirmed that the long-suspended peace
talks between the government and the largest anti-government ethnic armed
group -- the Kayin National Union (KNU) -- is underway.

"Progress is being made over the talks," revealed Information Minister
Brigadier-General Kyaw Hsan at the last minute of a press briefing here
Tuesday evening.

According to informed sources, a 13-member KNU delegation, led by David
Htaw, set out from their base on the Myanmar-Thai border Sunday and is
currently in Mawlamyine, capital of southeastern Mon state, for the
informal talks to prepare for a formal ones with the government to work
out a ceasefire.

The talks, originally scheduled for last October, were suspended as it
coincided with a surprise reshuffle of the government's cabinet on Oct.
19, in which change of prime minister took place.

In the first round of the talks held in mid-January last year, KNU
Vice-Chairman Bo Mya personally headed a 21-member delegation to Yangon
for the first time from Bangkok, reaching mutual understanding with the
government to end their long years' conflicts.

Although the two parties met again for the second time in late February
the same year, they produced no formal peace pact yet. Amid the talks,
forces of the two sides reportedly clashed in the border areas. As a
result, the talks were not as progressed as expected.

The KNU had fought with the government for more than five decades since
Myanmar's independence in 1948. In 1995 and 1997, the government launched
massive military operations against the KNU, overrunning its headquarters
on the Myanmar-Thai border in southeastern Kayin state.

The Kayin state has a population of about 7 million, accounting for about
13 percent of the country's total. The government estimated that the KNU
holds a military strength of as many as 7, 000.

Since the government adopted a policy of national reconciliation in 1989,
17 anti-government armed groups have made peace with the government,
returning to the legal fold under respective cease-fire agreements.

_____________________________________

March 16, Irrawaddy
Plug pulled on punters - Khun Sam

Residents in four northern Burmese towns woke up to find their electricity
had been cut by authorities across the border in China’s Yunnan province.
A Chinese government clampdown on gambling targeted the towns due to their
casinos’ popularity with visiting Chinese businessmen.

China has been cracking down on gambling since December 2004, explained
Gen Nuk Gan of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), when it was
discovered that not only were many Chinese officials and others
squandering their life savings in casinos, but billions of Yuan were
mysteriously appearing in foreign banks.

On March 11 China, whose power plant in Yin Gyang township supplies
electricity to the four Burmese towns, pulled the plug claiming that the
KIO had refused to close down casinos in the area, as requested. The
affected towns are Maija Yang, Ja Reng Yang, Loi Ying Hkai, and Sut Ra
Yang.

A resident of Maija Yang said “it’s only civilians who are suffering.
There is no harm to the casino industry.” She added that that while the
towns’ other industries are dying a slow death the casinos, which all have
back-up generators, are carrying on as normal.

The casino in Maija Yang, a small town in northern Kachin State controlled
by the KIO, opened in 2001 and now attracts thousands of gamblers every
day, many of whom hop across the border to escape China’s strict gambling
laws. According to KIO officials, the owners, two ethnic Chinese
businessmen from Lashio in Burma’s Shan State, run a worldwide chain of
casinos and were allowed to set up the enterprise as part of a development
plan to replace poppy cultivation in the area. The KIO reportedly
benefited to the tune of 8.5 million Yuan (more than US $1,000,000) from
the arrangement.

KIO general Nuk Gan confirmed that a delegation have arranged a meeting
with the Yunnan authorities to request the power be switched back on.

______________________________________
BUSINESS / MONEY

March 15, Kaladan News
Bangladesh Sets pre-Conditions for allowing Pipeline

Chittagong: Bangladesh has set strict pre-conditions, for allowing the
one-billion dollar Burma-India gas pipeline to pass through its territory,
according to PTI.

Bangladesh wants to resolve the three issues relating to using corridor
through India for importing electricity, trade with Nepal and Bhutan and
reducing trade imbalance with India before signing any  (MoU) on the
proposed tri-nation gas pipeline from Burma to India through Bangladesh,
reports UNB.

Bangladesh has been demanding the corridor facility from India for
importing electricity from Nepal and Bhutan, exporting goods to the two
landlocked countries through India and for reducing trade imbalance with
India as preconditions to signing such an MoU.

 “Although these three issues are not conditional to be included in the
MoU, but these must be resolved when the pipeline issue will be
finalized”, State Minister for Energy AKM Mosharraf Hossain of Bangladesh
on 13th February said.

However, Ministry of External Affairs has taken a strong exception to
inclusion of bilateral issues in the tripartite treaty. Foreign Secretary
Shyam Saran on March 8 shot off a letter to Petroleum Secretary SC
Tripathi stating that bilateral issues should at no cost form part of the
Tripartite MoU that is to be signed by the three countries in Dhaka by
this month end, according to PTI.

“The Indian Energy Minister had already agreed to resolve the three issues
simultaneously with the pipeline issue”, State Minister for Energy AKM
Mosharraf Hossain added. He noted that the issues were also mentioned in
the declaration of the meeting in Burma.

Mosharraf pointe d out that there are two deals with India where the
issues on export of goods through Indian corridor and reducing trade
imbalance are included. “But there are some problems that made the deals
inoperative. We want to make sure that those problems are addressed before
going to sign the MoU on pipeline.”

In the same manner, the issue of import of electricity through Indian
Territory could be solved, he added.

The official said Burma has indicated a price of 4.27 dollars per million
British thermal units (mBtu) for its offshore gas which India wants to
import through a pipeline passing through Bangladesh.

_____________________________________
REGIONAL

March 15, Malaysiakini.com
Zaid to move motion in Parliament on Burma - Roshan Jason

An unprecedented motion calling on Burma to adopt certain democratic
reforms will be tabled for debate in the Malaysian Parliament when it
reconvenes on March 21.

MP Zaid Ibrahim (BN-Kota Baru) said he has submitted a motion on the
Burmese issue in Parliament and hoped that it would be debated.

“The support for issues relating to Myanmar (Burma) has grown, not only in
Malaysia, but among other Asean parliamentarians,” Zaid who also chairs
the Asean Inter-Parliamentarian Caucus on Democracy in Burma (AIPMC) told
malaysiakini today.

The motion on Burma is the second to be brought up in the Malaysian
Parliament, the first was during last December’s sitting.

The previous motion was shunned, but support from Barisan Nasional MPs for
the issue has grown since.

Added urgency

The motion received added urgency as Burma is geared to chair the regional
bloc in 2006, which would mean Asean and related meetings will be held in
the country under a military junta.

Burma - renamed Myanmar by the military regime - is next in line to assume
the chair, which is rotated every year based on alphabetical order. It
will take over from the current chair, Malaysia.

Many in Asean have shown discomfort with this prospect, especially the
likely impact on ties between the regional grouping and key trading
partners - the United States and European Union, both of which are
critical of the military regime.

It is expected that both the US and EU would boycott Asean meetings held
in Burma, thus putting an additional strain on Asean-US/EU ties.

The only way out for Burma is to either adopt some democratic reforms or
to decline the Asean chairmanship - something which the military junta
would hate to do given the prestige the post will bring.

Zaid has spelled out some of the changes which he wants to see from Burma.

“We want them (Burma) to fully implement all its principles in the
‘seven-point road map to democracy’. They must, as they have said they
will do, release Aung San Suu Kyi and include her party in its national
reconciliation programme,” said Zaid.

Tangible changes

Democracy icon Suu Kyi is currently serving her third stint in detention
after being arrested for continuously advocating democracy in Burma.

She is the secretary-general of the National League for Democracy (NLD), a
party which won a landslide victory in Burma’s 1990 general elections but
was not allowed to form the government

The party and eight others - which make up 91 percent of the elected
representatives - have also not been included in the national
reconciliation process to draft a constitution.

The national convention was first convened in 1993 and critics have
branded it as a ploy by the military, also known as the State Peace and
Development Council (SPDC), to avoid convening Parliament after the
elections.

“In the absence of these changes in Myanmar (Burma) and true democracy
practices, I believe it should not be allowed to chair Asean,” added Zaid,
who is a backbencher in Parliament.

PM 'supports' call

Malaysia is among six countries represented in the AIPMC including
Cambodia, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines. Burmese MPs
in-exile are also involved in the Asean caucus.

“It is not just us in Malaysia who are calling for this but other Asean
parliaments. The support is certainly growing,” he said, suggesting that
Burma has to take heed to its neighbours’ calls.

Similar parliamentary motions are expected to be tabled in a number of
Asean member nations.

Zaid however said there was no time frame for these changes to take effect
in Burma nor a deadline for Burma to comply with the caucus’ calls.

Asked if the prime minister and deputy prime minister supported their
calls, he said he believed so.

_____________________________________

March 16, Reuters
Tsunami quake raises risk of another tremor –study - Patricia Reaney

London: The devastating earthquake that triggered December's Indian Ocean
tsunami has raised the likelihood of another major eruption in the region,
scientists said on Wednesday.

It put more stress on other active faults in the area, making another
earthquake with a magnitude of up to 7.5 far more likely and increasing
the need for a warning system.

"The implications of our work show very clearly that earthquake hazard in
this area continues to be high," said John McCloskey of the University of
Ulster.

"There is a folk understanding that lighting doesn't strike twice in one
place -- but earthquakes do," he told Reuters.

Although it is difficult to predict when another might occur, previous
coupled earthquakes in Japan happened within a few years of each other.

BIG SLIP

Quakes happen when the Earth's tectonic plates collide.

About 300,000 people perished in the tsunami that followed the magnitude 9
undersea earthquake on December 26 last year. It was one of the largest
earthquakes since 1900.

An estimated 750 miles of faultline slipped up to about 65 feet along the
subduction zone where the India Plate dives under the Burma Plate,
according to the researchers.

"It is absolutely phenomenal from a seismological point of view," said
McCloskey, who reported the findings in the science journal Nature.

The two plates come together at an area called the Sunda trench. Previous
earthquakes on the Sunda trench set off fatal tsunamis in 1833 and 1861.

Stress builds up because of the movement of plates. The displacement
changes the stress values everywhere in the region for hundreds of miles.

McCloskey and his colleagues calculated there is an increase of up to 5
bars (a unit of stress or pressure) in the 30 miles of the Sunda trench
next to the rupture zone and up to 9 bars for about 190 miles on the
Sumatra fault near the city of Banda Aceh.

"It is one of the biggest increases in stress I've seen in the years I
have been working with this," said McCloskey.

The Izmit earthquake in Turkey that measured 7.4 was triggered by stress
increases of less than 2 bars, according to the researchers.

Professor Peter Styles, president of The Geological Society in Britain,
said the type of triggering described by McCloskey and his team has
occurred on other plate boundaries.

"While we cannot know ahead of time whether this would be tsunamigenic,
every effort should be made to ensure that appropriate monitoring
technologies and communication protocols are put in place to monitor the
Indian Ocean," he said.

McCloskey also emphasized the need for a warning system.

"The tsunami warning system is very important. We can't stop the
earthquake but we could mitigate many of its effects if we do this
quickly," he said.

_____________________________________
INTERNATIONAL

March 16, Japan Economic Newswire
Rally held to protest plight of thousands of foreign detainees

Tokyo: Several hundred people staged a candlelight rally Wednesday at a
park near the Tokyo immigration office to urge the Japanese government to
ease the plight of thousands of foreigners in detention centers across the
country.

More than 300 people, including Myanmar and Kurdish asylum seekers and
human rights activists, held candles to form the four 'hiragana'
characters of the Japanese word for friends -- 'tomodachi' -- in an appeal
to Japanese society to be more welcoming of foreigners.

'We want to be friends with the Japanese people,' said Erdal Dogan, a
Kurdish asylum seeker and father of one of the two families that staged a
sit-in protest in front of the United Nations University last year.

Dogan called on the authorities to heed their plight, saying, 'The life of
a human being is not cheap.'

It is the second time human rights activists and supporters of detainees
have staged such a rally, following one in October last year in which more
than 600 people gathered at the Justice Ministry.

Human rights lawyers and campaigners in Japan are calling on immigration
authorities to free foreigners from what they say is undue, lengthy
detention and create a more open multicultural society, especially in the
interest of asylum seekers.

They are also asking for improvements in immigration rules in which
detainees are restricted from receiving food from visitors.

Kanae Doi, a lawyer who led the campaign, said, 'We want to urge
immigration authorities to review and change this policy which we feel is
unfair.'

The same day, Doi and other supporters delivered about 800 food items,
including light snacks and chocolates, to foreign detainees, a move made
possible through the help of two lawmakers. There are about 800 detainees
at the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau in Minato Ward, Doi said.

'We do not want this case to be a one-shot deal but the start of the
immigration authorities allowing detainees to receive food,' she said.

Shogo Watanabe, a lawyer for Myanmar asylum seekers who met with
immigration officials the same day to deliver these requests for foreign
detainees, said, 'We asked them to give humanitarian consideration to the
detainees, who include asylum seekers and people married to Japanese
nationals.'

'We will not give up on our cause,' said Zeliha Kazankiran, the eldest
daughter of the other Kurdish family that staged the sit-in with the
Dogans.

A Philippine woman, whose Kurdish husband is seeking asylum in Japan, said
she came to the event to show her support for detainees as this is
something that concerns many foreigners.

According to ministry statistics, a total of 523,617 people were detained
in 2003 at immigration detention centers in Tokyo, in Ushiku, Ibaraki
Prefecture, in Omura, Nagasaki Prefecture, and in Ibaraki, Osaka
Prefecture.

Organizers said that translates into a huge average of 1,435 people
detained on a daily basis.