BurmaNet News, April 29, 2005

[Editor]

April 29, 2005 Issue # 2708

“There is a direct relationship between UNODC and the Burmese military
government. They work hand-in-hand together.”
- Jeffrey Stanton as quoted on Sveriges (Swedish) Television (SVT), April
27, 2005, about a connection between a recently absconded Burmese child
soldier and the UN drugs control agency.


INSIDE BURMA
DVB: Ex-prisoners rejoice at the release of fellow prisoners
DVB: We didn’t kill civilians in Mandalay says Burmese Students Warriors
Irrawaddy: Burma tycoon takes over mobile phone contract
Irrawaddy: Divide or rule

ON THE BORDER
Thai Press Reports: UN agency tells Thailand to improve conditions in
Myanmar refugee camps
Bangkok Post: Things are getting tense

ASEAN
AFP: Malaysian PM defends blocking of anti-Myanmar motion in parliament

REGIONAL
Nation: Domestic violent: Employer accused of beating his young maid
Xinhua: China to further relations with Myanmar: Chinese FM
Irrawaddy: India wants more from Burma

INTERNATIONAL
Irrawaddy: US group calls for boycott

OPINION / OTHER
Irrawaddy: The Brussels follies

______________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

Apr 28, Democratic Voice of Burma
Ex-prisoners rejoice at the release of fellow prisoners

Former Burmese student leaders and political activists, U Tin Aung and Ko
Tin Aye were released from Rangoon Insein Jail on 28 April after spending
more than a decade and a half in prison. The followings are comments of
fellow ex-political prisoners who were released recently:

Dr. Ne Win: “I am very happy. U Tin Aung was in the same case with us. Tin
Aung was a returnee from Coco Islands in 1968. Ko Tin Aye was from
Ba-ka-Tha (All Burma Federation of Student Unions – ABSFU in English). His
real name is Ko Khin Maung Yi. His father dies while he was in prison.
Now, his mother is suffering from breast cancer. She went to have a blood
transfusion in Rangoon general Hospital. I went to the gate of the prison
but he was nto there. He will be at the hospital tonight. I am very happy
for them. Ko Thet Khaing, U Aung Khin, Ko Than Naing; we all went to
prison in 1989 together. It has been more than 15 years now into 16 years.
They all should be released. There are still people from Karen, Arakan
groups who were sentenced to 20 years, still remaining in prisons. They
should be released as soon as possible. All the remaining political
prisoners should be released.”

Min Ko Naing: “Not only Ko Tin Aye, all the students who are remaining in
prisons should be released. For example, people such as a high school
pupil Thet Win Aung who has been sentenced to 60 years, should be
released. We all want the release of students and political prisoners such
as Myo Win Htike and Htay Aung to be released. I warmly welcome the
release of Ko Tin Aye. We all welcome them with joy.”

Ko Ko Gyi: “As a person who was involved in 8888 uprising, I feel more
deeply about the students. The reason is, we had paid with their whole
life. While we were there, more young people were sent to prison often. I
was very saddened by looking at them. I am very worried for the youth who
lost their time among court courts losing all their energetic and youthful
potentials for the country. Therefore, I am hoping and urging for the
release of the remaining students and political prisoners.”

Ko Pyone Cho: I am very happy to hear that Ko Tin Aye and the like are
released. Not only him, I want all other students to b released. They have
been living inside prisons a long time like us. They all want to be
reunited with their loved ones whom they have been away from a long time.
And I want all other students to be released. They will have a lot of good
ideas for the country. I am hoping and I want all to be released.

____________________________________

Apr 28, Democratic Voice of Burma
We didn’t kill civilians in Mandalay says Burmese Students Warriors

The Vigorous Burmese Students Warriors (VBSW), a secretive underground
Burmese group said it was not responsible for recent bomb blast at
Mandalay Zegyo Market and denounced the action.

VBSW said it did not do anything to harm innocent Burmese civilians and
would never do such an action in the future, according to a statement
issued on 28 April.

It added its main purpose is to damage the interests of Burma’s military
junta, State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) and said the latest
tragedy is the responsibility of the junta.

At least two people were killed and 15 injured by the blast which occurred
just before the trading stopped in the late afternoon of 26 April. The
junta blamed “insurgent destructive elements” without giving any
specification.

"The subversive act was committed by a group of insurgent destructive
elements who wanted to disturb and destroy stability of State, community
peace and tranquillity and prevalence of law and order already in place in
the nation," the official New Light of Myanmar said on 27 April.

_____________________________________

April 29, Irrawaddy
Burma tycoon takes over mobile phone contract - Kyaw Zwa Moe

Burma’s wealthy tycoon and arms broker Te Za has expanded his involvement
in the telecommunications sector by taking over a profitable GSM mobile
phone contract reached between the Rangoon regime and China’s ZTE company,
according to business and diplomatic sources in Rangoon.

Te Za is very close to the family of the military government’s top leader
Snr-Gen Than Shwe.

The GSM phone contract between the government’s Myanmar Post and
Telecommunications and China’s ZTE, the country’s leading
telecommunications manufacturer, was signed during a visit to China last
July by former prime minister Gen Khin Nyunt. The contract provided for
the sale of 100,000 mobile phones in Rangoon and Mandalay.

The official price of a GSM phone is 1 million kyat (about US $1,100), but
on the black market it fetches more than $2,000.

One businessman in Rangoon suggested that Te Za had been awarded the
mobile phone contract in return for his involvement in building the
controversial Nanmyint Tower at the Pagan World Heritage Site. It is
believed that the recently-inaugurated tower was Than Shwe’s idea.

As President and Managing Director of the Htoo Trading Company, Te Za is a
major player in Burma’s tourism, logging, real estate, and hotel and
housing development sectors.

Since the early 1990s, he has also been involved in arms trading. He is
the junta’s sole representative of Russia’s Export Military Industrial
Group and the Russian helicopter company Rostvertol. In this capacity, he
helped the military buy MiG-29 fighter jets and helicopters from Russia.

One western diplomat in Rangoon disclosed that Te Za was now selling arms
not only to the military government but also to the United Wa State Army,
the Wa group associated with the drugs trade. The UWSA is the biggest
ceasefire group, with a 16,000-strong army, which recently launched serial
attacks on a Shan rebel group in Shan State. “Is there no stopping him (Te
Za)?” the diplomat asked.

Observers feel it will indeed be difficult to stop the forward progress of
Te Za, as he is favored by the junta’s No. 1 leader Than Shwe. In recent
years, when Than Shwe and his family holidayed at Ngwe Saung beach,
Irrawaddy Division, they stayed at the Myanmar Treasure Beach Resort owned
by Te Za, the Rangoon businessman said.

In Ngwe Saung alone, the businessman added, Te Za owns at least three big
hotels and has been building an airport there. “He is becoming the owner
of the country,” he commented wryly.
______________________________________

April 29, Irrawaddy
Divide or rule - Nandar Chann

As the recent arrest of key Shan figures casts a cloud over the National
Convention’s attempts at national integration, ethnic minority in-fighting
continues to play into Rangoon’s hands

Shan leaders gathered in Taunggyi on February 7 (Shan State Day) to
discuss the formation of a united Burma, a “genuine federal union” in
which all ethnic groups would enjoy equal rights. Also attending the
meeting were prominent Burmese and Shan politicians, together with members
of various quasi-political bodies including ceasefire groups.

Long suspicious of Shan breakaway movements and anxious not to distract
from the constitution-drafting National Convention’s reconvening on
February 17, the military government moved in and over the next few days
arrested several key figures. Among those taken into custody were
82-year-old leading Shan politician Shwe Ohn, Sao Hso Ten, president of
Shan State Peace Council, and Hkun Htun Oo and Sai Nyunt Lwin, chairman
and secretary respectively of the Shan National League for Democracy, the
second largest vote getter in the 1990 election.

“The activities of these groups are very dangerous to the stability of the
state and national solidarity and would lead to disintegration of the
union,” Brig-Gen Kyaw Hsan, the junta’s minister of information, claimed
at a news conference in Rangoon on March 15. “People might be misled by
the beautiful words genuine union,” he continued. “But in fact, they aimed
to form a nominal union and later secede from that union [forming an
independent Shan State].”

Harn Yawnghwe, director of the Brussels-based Euro Burma Office and son of
Burma’s first president, Sao Shwe Thaike (1948-1952), believes the
government’s primary objections centered on the sheer breadth of parties
involved. “The generals are not afraid of wars of independence,” he said.
“[they are, however,] very much afraid of politics. Hkun Htun Oo and Sao
Hso Ten’s greatest crime in the eyes of the generals was that they tried
not only to unite the Shan, but all the ethnic nationalities; not only the
ethnic political parties, but also the ceasefire armies; not only the
ethnic nationalities, but also the political opposition parties—including
Burman leaders.”

Many of the Shan’s troubles are rooted in the country’s struggle for
independence. Having secured a clause in the 1947 constitution allowing
them to secede from the rest of the country following independence from
the British, the Shan saw their dreams die when Gen Ne Win took power in
1962. There followed a ruthless military crackdown during which many
prominent Shan leaders, including Sao Shwe Thaike, are believed to have
been executed. Since that time, solidarity has been the buzzword of the
ruling generals and any perceived threat to the union, which of course
includes notions of federalism, has been met with brutal force.

Outraged at the events following Taunggyi, many Shan have called for a
revival of the drive for autonomy—a feeling not shared by Harn Yawnghwe,
who warns fellow Shan not to cloud their minds with emotion, saying “the
future of the Shan State is too important.”

Other ethnic groups also look at the episode with dismay, sensing betrayal
by the generals. “The question of national integration was supposed to be
addressed in a peaceful way,” says Nai Han Thar, secretary of the New Mon
State Party, in reference to the National Convention. “The arrests [of
Shan leaders] show that there’s no room for ethnic rights.”

While the Taunggyi meeting was intended as a beacon of unity, internal
conflicts still rage among ethnic groups: The Kachin Independence
Organization continues to feud with the Kachin Solidarity Council and the
New Democratic Army (Kachin); the Karenni National Progressive Party are
still fighting with the Karenni State Nationalities People’s Front; and
there have been recent skirmishes between Wa troops and the Shan State
Army (South).

The warring factions are seen by some as one of the chief reasons the
generals remain in power. Ethnic minority groups are so focused on
internal disputes that they are blind to the common enemy.

This all leads Harn Yawnghwe to ask: “Do we fight the generals in the
battlefield where they have superior military strength and ability or do
we fight them politically where we have the superiority? Do we Shan fight
the Burma Army alone or do we fight side by side with others?”

______________________________________
ON THE BORDER

April 29, Thai Press Reports
UN agency tells Thailand to improve conditions in Myanmar refugee camps

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees urged Thai authorities to grant more
freedom to Myanmar (Burmese) exiles and to improve their living conditions
in border refugee camps, The Nation reports.

Since the end of March, thousands of Burmese exiles, waiting for asylum in
third countries, have been transferred from urban areas into refugee camps
in Ratchaburi, Kanchanaburi and Tak provinces, where they say living
conditions are poor and their liberty is limited.

The UN high commissioner is seeking a meeting with relevant Thai
authorities to raise concerns and request improvements at the camps, UNHCR
spokesperson Kirsten Young said yesterday.

The UN has consistently asked Thai authorities to expand living space at
the refugee camps, notably at Ratchaburi's Tham Hin camp, which is now too
crowded, she said.

One Burmese exile told The Nation that people taken to the camps were
receiving insufficient food and clean water. They live in limited space
and contact with the outside world is prohibited.

Young said the United Nations would urge the authorities in Thai land to
rethink their attitude to the basic rights of refugees and exiles. They
could contribute to Thai society if they had a certain degree of freedom
of movement.

The UN agreed nearly two years ago with the government's plan to transfer
nearly 3,000 Burmese exiles from urban areas into refugee camps located
along the border with Burma.

However, human rights activists have criticised the government for forcing
the relocations as a favour to the Rangoon junta. They say the relocation
has controlled the political activities of the exiles, many of whom are
democracy advocates and journalists.

About 750 Burmese exiles failed to move to the camps by the deadline of
March 31 and the government has threatened to treat them as illegal
migrants and arrest, detain and deport them. It said they would not obtain
exit clearances to enable them to resettle in third countries.

Young said the UNHCR would work out with the government how these
instructions could be relaxed, and the exiles - even those who failed to
move to the camps before the deadline - could continue the process of
resettlement according to their rights.

She said the UN would protest if the Thai government insisted on refusing
to grant exit clearances for the exiles.

However, Young said the UNHCR recommended that all the exiles should first
comply with the government's instructions in order to avoid further
difficulties.

_____________________________________

April 28, Bangkok Post
Things are getting tense

Talks between Thailand and Burma have found they both have complaints
against the other, and both see the other's complaints as unfair:

Burma called on the Thai military last week to withdraw from Doi Lang, a
32sqkm area straddling the border and claimed by both countries. The
demand presented at the Thai-Burma Township Border Meeting in Chiang Rai's
Chiang Saen district came just one week after Burmese troops crossed the
border and killed a Border Patrol Police officer on patrol near Pang Saen
Kruea village, a few kilometres from Doi Lang. Villagers said the shooting
came as five or six Burmese troops crossed the border to seek food.

Ownership of Doi Lang, the former military stronghold of druglord Khun Sa,
has been disputed by Thailand and Burma since the mid-1990s, after Khun Sa
surrendered to Rangoon and withdrew his forces from the rugged terrain in
Chiang Mai's Mae Ai district.

Several hundred troops from both sides are based in the area at 20
outposts, some just a few metres apart.

The area is regarded as the most sensitive along the Burma border and the
forces from the two sides are required to adhere to the strictest
guidelines to prevent any hostilities.

Lt-Col Maung Ni, Burma's leading representative at last week's township
border meeting and commander of the 338th Battalion, handed a letter of
protest to Col Somsak Nilbanjerdkul, his Thai counterpart and commander of
the 3rd Cavalry Regiment.

"He [Lt-Col Maung Ni] wants us to withdraw our BPP and paramilitary forces
from Doi Lang and insists it is deep inside Burmese territory," said Col
Somsak.

The cavalry officer said the site was disputed and the two governments had
to find measures to settle the dispute.

Lt-Col Maung Ni also used the meeting to accuse Thai border troops of
allowing Shan State Army forces to use Thai territory in Chiang Rai's Mae
Fa Luang district to attack Burmese troops near the SSA military base at
Kor One. Col Somsak said the charge was unfounded.

Burma, in turn, denied a claim by Col Somsak that Burmese border troops
were responsible for the killing of the Thai border patrol officer at Pang
Saen Kruea.

Villagers of Pang Saen Kruea said the armed intruders were dressed in
Burmese government uniforms and were unlikely to have been insurgents in
disguise as there were no ethnic minority forces operating in the area.

The Rangoon government has launched a military drive against the SSA
stronghold at Doi Tai Laeng opposite Mae Hong Son's Pang Ma Pha district,
raising fears of further tensions along the border and the possibility of
Burmese forces using Thai soil to lay siege to the camp.

_____________________________________
ASEAN

April 29, Agence France Presse
Malaysian PM defends blocking of anti-Myanmar motion in parliament

Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi on Friday
defended the blocking of a parliamentary motion seeking to deny Myanmar
the ASEAN chairmanship next year unless it implements democratic reforms.

The motion, similar to those proposed in other parliaments of member
states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), was expected
to be heard Thursday but was shelved on government orders.

"I allow them to discuss, I do not think they need to have a resolution
for their discussion," Abdullah told reporters.

"I think it is important that they convey whatever they feel, think about
the situation in Myanmar. It is their freedom of expression," he said.
"I'm not going deeper into that."

Zaid Ibrahim, chairman of the cross-party Pro-Democracy Myanmar Caucus
which proposed the motion, said the government apparently did not want to
"offend the Myanmar regime".

The ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus has proposed similar motions
be debated in the legislatures of Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore and
Thailand.

Recently, the Philippine Senate unanimously approved a resolution calling
for ASEAN to strip Myanmar of the group's rotating chairmanship unless it
frees opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.

The United Nations, the European Union and the United States have all
objected to Myanmar taking over the chair of the 10-member grouping next
year because of its poor human rights record.

The issue has exposed divisions among ASEAN members Brunei, Cambodia,
Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand
and Vietnam.

Foreign ministers failed to reach a consensus on the issue during a
retreat in the central Philippine island of Cebu early this month and
deferred a decision on the chairmanship until July, when they will meet
again in Laos.

_____________________________________
REGIONAL

April 29, Nation
Domestic violent: Employer accused of beating his young maid

Burmese teenager says she was left with fractured skull, broken back

A Burmese teenager working as a maid at an apartment in Huai Khwang
district has filed a complaint with police, accusing her Thai employer of
giving her such a severe beating that she suffered a fractured skull, a
broken back and shattered ribs.

The 17-year-old Burmese-Karen woman told Wang Thonglang police yesterday
that on January 2 her employer Ubonrat Orawongsu, 32, started pummelling
her in the head and back with a heavy metal object because she was crying
over being homesick. She was cudgelled unconscious, she said.

The teenager said Ubonrat the gave a taxi driver Bt20,000 to drive the
severely battered Burmese maid to Siriraj Hospital. Out of that sum,
Bt19,000 was to cover her medical expenses, she explained.

She had to remain hospitalised for almost two months, undergoing repeated
operations for her shattered ribcage and severe head injuries. Her pate is
now largely bald because of the sizeable metal plate inserted in her skull
and a long thumb-thick scar left by an operation disfigures her left side
and back.

The maid’s case came to the attention of the organisation called the
Coalition to Fight Against Child Exploitation (FACE), which has taken her
under its wings.

FACE official Orawan Wimolrangkarat said the young maid had been so
severely traumatised by the constant battering and persistent abuse that
she continued shaking and crying much of the time. She added that FACE had
paid for the maid’s medical bills, which have by now amounted to some
Bt400,000.

The young woman explained that back in Burma she had paid Bt12,000 in fees
for the opportunity to come and work in Thailand. Prior to her beating,
she had been in employment for four months with Ubonrat, but had not
received any of her agreed monthly salary of Bt4,000, she insisted.

She said she had often been at the receiving end of her employer’s violent
fury because Ubonrat considered her too sluggish in carrying out her
household chores. “She would slap my face with a shoe or hit me with a hot
pan,” the maid said.

Metropolitan Police Division 4 Commander Maj Gen Wittaya Kosiyasathit said
police arrested Ubonrat Wednesday on charges of physical assault as well
as sheltering and employing an illegal immigrant. Ubonrat has denied all
the charges and posted a bail of Bt200,000.

_____________________________________

April 29, Xinhua General News Service
China to further relations with Myanmar: Chinese FM

Beijing: Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said here Friday that China
is ready to step up efforts to promote bilateral ties with Myanmar.

During talks with his Myanmar counterpart U Nyan Win, Li said current
China-Myanmar relations are maintaining good momentum and that bilateral
exchanges and cooperation have been expanding continuously.

The Chinese government will strengthen bilateral high-level exchanges and
expand cooperation in various sectors including economy, trade and
drug-control.

On the domestic situation of Myanmar, Li elaborated on the Chinese
government's principled stance and hoped that Myanmar could maintain
stability and development and continue to push forward the national
reconciliation process.

Nyan Win said the peoples of Myanmar and China have brotherly friendship,
adding that the Myanmar government and people appreciate the Chinese
government's assistance.

"Myanmar would like to make joint efforts with China to further the
existing friendship between the two nations," he said.

Nyan Win reiterated Myanmar's adherence to the one-China policy and firm
support for the Anti-Secession Law adopted on March 14, 2005 by the
National People's Congress of China.

The two sides also exchanged views on bilateral and other issues of common
concern.

It is Nyan Win's first visit to China, which he started Wednesday as Li's
guest, since he took the office foreign minister last September.
_____________________________________

April 29, Irrawaddy
India wants more from Burma

Curb the anti-India militants, Rangoon is told

New Delhi isn’t satisfied. It wants more out of Rangoon. The March visit
by India’s External Affairs Minister, Natwar Singh, to Burma was a clear
signal that not enough is being done by Rangoon to satisfy its concern
about anti-India militants operating from Burmese territory.

The official assessment in the corridors of power is that “something” is
being done by Rangoon, but it’s not enough to deal with the anti-India
militant groups, who are active in several provinces in India’s Northeast.

Placing New Delhi’s concern on record, the Indian embassy in Rangoon said
after Singh’s talks with the junta, including Snr-Gen Than Shwe: “It was
agreed that dialogue and concrete cooperation to counter terrorist
activities in the border region would be further strengthened.”

>From the context of these lines, it’s apparent that more dialogue and
concrete cooperation between India and Burma are essential as far as New
Delhi is concerned. For a long time now, officialdom has argued that the
“core reason” for India looking benignly at Burma’s military rulers is the
need to keep the 1,640-km-long border between the two countries tranquil.

India’s near-total, public silence on supporting the democratic cause in
Burma has long been justified by this overriding strategic objective—that
no sanctuary should be provided to the militants, who already enjoy cozy
treatment in neighboring Bangladesh.

A joint statement issued by the two sides after Than Shwe’s first-ever
visit to India on October 29, 2004, committed the two nations to
maintaining “peace, stability and tranquility” along the common border.

“The Myanmar side reiterated that it would not allow insurgent activities
against India from its soil,” the statement said. “The Indian side thanked
the Myanmar side for the assurance. Both sides agreed to take necessary
steps to prevent cross-border crimes, including drug trafficking and arms
smuggling, and to upgrade substantially bilateral cooperation in this
context.”

An assessment of how much is actually being done against the insurgent
groups is difficult to make in non-official channels, given the absolute
lack of information on the results of the operations said to have been
mounted by the Burmese side against the insurgents.

Is it just a one-off affair? Do the insurgents simply move their location
or have they been actually eliminated? New Delhi, which enjoys the best of
relations with Bhutan, had considerable trouble in dealing with groups
like the United Liberation Front of Asom, which had set up camps in that
tiny kingdom.

After years of consultation and prevarication, Bhutan finally acted
against the ULFA insurgents in December 2003, but not before testing New
Delhi’s patience to the limit.

Burma is a different cup of tea and New Delhi is beginning to understand
that good political relations do not necessarily mean that these will
translate into “concrete” and continued military operations against
insurgent groups.

India, in any case, has been placed in the “China category” as far as
support for the Burmese junta is concerned. Speaking of the new pressure
being mounted by some Southeast Asian nations worried by the fallout of
Burma taking over as Asean chair, the New York Times said in an editorial:
“These stirrings may not sway the Burmese generals and their cronies, who
have powerful allies in India and China.”

India, which never tires of proclaiming its record as a democratic nation,
has had to pay an international price for the uncritical, public support
it has given over the years to the generals.

The assumption of power by the Congress-led government in May 2004 brought
no change of Burma policy, which is just a continuation of the one pursued
by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led alliance since 1998.

The Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding given to
Burma’s opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in 1995 is today an
embarrassing reminder to the government of where New Delhi stood on the
question of supporting democracy a decade ago. For the record, the
Congress was in power when the award was announced.

India will increasingly find that its contradictions of approach will be
hard to defend as it takes an activist line in defense of democracy
following the “royal coup” in Nepal on February 1.

In the present era of globalization, principles are mostly absent from the
conduct of foreign policy. But countries like India, which have focused on
the double standards of the West and taken a proactive stance on the
rights of the Nepalese people, cannot close their eyes forever to what’s
happening in neighboring Burma.

_____________________________________
INTERNATIONAL

April 29, Irrawaddy
US group calls for boycott

A US Campaign for Burma statement released today urged people in Burma to
boycott the products of the Hong Pang Group, who are allegedly involved in
drug trafficking. The director of the pro-democracy activist group, Aung
Din, said “It’s a dirty and corrupt company operated by druglords who
support Than Shwe [the ruling junta’s top leader].”

The statement said that the effort is not only part of an international
campaign to increase pressure on Burma’s ruling junta, but also part of
honoring the 60th birthday of pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize
laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who remains under house-arrest.

The US government has already accused HPG companies, which are run by
ethnic military group the United Wa State Army, of trading drugs as part
of the world’s largest armed narcotics trafficking organization.

____________________________________
OPINION / OTHER

April 29, Irrawaddy
The Brussels follies - Bruce Kent

The European Commission raises eyebrows by commissioning two “Burma
experts,” known for their military regime sympathy, to write a report for
a Brussels meeting.

European officials had to do a lot of not-so-nifty diplomatic footwork to
explain a meeting in Brussels called “Burma Day 2005 (page 15).” It was an
exercise in damage control in the face of a chorus of complaints by
pro-democracy and human rights activists with other critics, who
effectively thought it was more a Day of Shame.

The meeting centered on a European Commission-commissioned report authored
by Robert Taylor and Morten Pedersen, dubbed by the critics as Burmese
regime apologists. The affair was supposed to dwell on humanitarian aid to
Burma which, said EU officials, was why Taylor and Pedersen had been
chosen to write the report, and why only “in-the-field” aid experts had
been invited. Nonsense, retorted the uninvited critics: Taylor and
Pedersen could in no way be described as aid experts, and nor could some
of the other guests.

True, the lengthy report addressed the issue of aid only in passing as it
called on the EU to resume high-level bilateral visits, call the country
by the regime’s name Myanmar, rather than Burma, and ease sanctions. The
EU’s sanctions mainly ban visas for Rangoon officials, freeze their
assets, block arms sales to Burma and limit investment. The dubious
rationale posed by the Taylor-Pedersen report for all this was basically
that military rule in Burma is a fact of life, and all roads lead to the
junta. As the report summed up, the military “would remain in power into
the indefinite future.”

European officials at the meeting rejected charges that the EU was
softening its stance towards Burma, and insisted sanctions would remain.
The report, they said, didn’t reflect EU policy—so why, one wonders, was
it commissioned (probably at substantial expense) in the first place, and
exactly by whom? That is a question apparently being asked in some
EU-member country capitals, where there is a move to find out just who.

“It was a poor report, and a mistake to write it,” huffed one senior
European diplomat to The Irrawaddy. He claimed most EU countries didn’t
agree with it, or the way the meeting was conducted, and would get to the
bottom of it. “We will find out who was responsible, and there will be
repercussions.”

A comforting thought, indeed. As outspoken British Member of the European
Parliament Glenys Kinnock was reported to have said at the time: “I am
dismayed that a small and unrepresentative band of anti-sanctions
lobbyists have been given reign” at the meeting. The two members of that
“band” who drew up the report even went so far as to conclude that the
main opposition National League for Democracy had been “marginalized” –
i.e. either locked up (like party leader Aung San Su Kyi), neutralized or
in exile.

When I wrote a similarly critical commentary in The Irrawaddy’s online
service, I was taken to task in a letter (page 6) by one of the
distinguished Burma “experts” invited to the meeting: former British
ambassador to Thailand, Vietnam and Laos Derek Tonkin. His last known
official connection with Burma was as a Burma desk officer at the Foreign
Office from 1963-66. He accused me and my ilk of using “myths” and
“invective” to buoy our case against the Rangoon regime, compared with his
use of “facts” and “balanced assessment.”

One such “fact,” also adopted by other anti-sanctions lobbyists at the
meeting, was used to put me right after I wrote that the military rulers
decided only after losing the 1990 general election that the poll was to
elect people to draft a new constitution, not form a government. Silly me.
As Tonkin helpfully pointed out, the regime had stated quite clearly
before the election that those elected would be responsible for writing a
new charter.

Of course they would. But only after forming a government. Burma’s leader
at the time, Gen Saw Maung, was quoted in January, 1990—just four months
before the election—as saying: “As soon as the election is held, form a
government. That is our responsibility. But the actual work of forming a
legal government after the election is not the duty of the Tatmadaw [armed
forces]. We are saying it very clearly and candidly right now.” After
winning 82 percent of the seats, the opposition NLD was decimated by the
military, which arrested 65 of the elected, newly labeled “constitution
drafters” by year’s end, with about a dozen others fleeing the country in
fear.

But maybe, as report co-author Taylor said in an April 2 letter, we should
not resort to “invective”—curiously, the same word used by Tonkin. In his
letter to the EC’s External Relations Commissioner, Benita
Ferrero-Waldner, Taylor responded to an earlier letter to her by big trade
union umbrella groups the ICFTU, the ETUC and the WFL complaining about
the report. He said he saw “no advantage in using invective in place of
reason.”

Taylor would probably have been happier with Ross Dunkley’s front-page
story in his newspaper, in which he described the report as “powerful and
compelling.”  Dunkley is editor-in-chief of that well-known regime
exponent, The Myanmar Times.