BurmaNet News, September 29, 2005

[Editor]

September 29, 2005 Issue # 2813


INSIDE BURMA
MIzzima: Burmese junta to take action against NDA-K coup leaders
DVB: Burmese authorities interrogate NLD leaders in Pegu
Irrawaddy: Burma’s killing fields

ON THE BORDER
Narinjara: 22 Burmese citizens arrested by authorities in Bangladesh

BUSINESS / TRADE
Mizzima: Gold and dollar prices rise in Burma

ASEAN
Irrawaddy: Malaysia disappointed with Asean’s Burma path
AFP: Expelling Myanmar from ASEAN will not solve problem: Singapore's Lee

INTERNATIONAL
Irrawaddy: UN rights envoy calls for reform in Burma
AFP: UN envoy urges immediate release of all Myanmar's political detainees

OPINION / OTHER
The New York Sun: Bailing out Burma

____________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

September 29, Mizzima News
Burmese Junta to take action against NDA-K coup leaders - Myo Gyi

After the two-week long coup in National Democratic Army-Kachin was dealt
with by supporters of Chairman Sahkung Tingying, officials from the
Northern Command Headquarter are asking the four coup leaders to
surrender, a Kachin official from NDA-K said.

Those who are being asked to surrender to the State Peace and Development
Council are Lowar Zaw Khaung, Mangki Khong Lume, Lakuk Zung Ying and Zaw
Naung. They are currently in custody at the "Nay Chi" (Sun Ray) hotel in
Panwa, the NDA-K HQ, the Kachin official Khong Zee added.

Other senior coup leaders Layawk Zelum and Chang Lang were arrested by
SPDC forces in Myitkyina on September 26. Chang Lang is the NDA-K delegate
to the government sponsored "National Convention" (NC).

Whether they will comply with the SPDC demand to surrender will be decided
at a public rally to be held soon. The SPDC Northern Command forces who
marched towards Panwa in the last two weeks have withdrawn to their bases.
NDA-K entered into a ceasefire agreement with the SPDC in 1989.

Surprise Coup

The coup leaders led by Secretary Layawk Zelum staged the coup against the
troops loyal to Chairman Sahkung Tingying and took control of Panwa on
September 14 while Tingying was in Rangoon talking to SPDC leaders about
the gold mine in Che Bwe region allegedly destroyed by the SPDC forces.
The coup leaders arrested the bodyguards of Tingying and disarmed them.
Some of them were put under house arrest. A son of Tingying had to flee to
Myitkyina.

The coup leaders charged Tingying of drug trafficking, and raising an
illegal bodyguard force with Chinese nationals. But Tingying denied all
the charges made against him.

Analysts speculate that the main reason behind the coup may have been
related to economics rather than political and military matters.

The NDA-K has four battalions mainly comprised of Lachik, Lauwar and
Rawang tribes from Kachin State. "Network Media Group" (NMG) reported that
the majority Lachik tribe soldiers did not support the Lauwar tribe coup
leaders.

On September 15, Chairman Sahkung Tingying issued a statement saying that
those who took part in the coup would be dealt with.

There was confusion and palpable tension among the two factions which led
to an exchange of fire later. At least four died in action. Some say there
were more casualties.

Let's have a talk

The five Christian religious leaders acting as peace brokers between the
two factions had agreed to meet at the Northern Command Headquarter which
was to be sponsored by the SPDC military command. Both factions went to
the proposed venue in Myitkyina on September 25 morning.

Tingying in power again

But on the same day at 10 p.m. the renegade group of KIA led by Lt. Col.
Khun Doila taking refuge in Panwa assisted the Tingying faction to regain
power and take control of Panwa without bloodshed. The remaining coup
leaders in Panwa were arrested later.

Peace groups have had a similar experience in Moneko, Northern Shan State
a few years ago. In that case, the coup leader Monsala was arrested by
SPDC forces and tried and imprisoned. Similarly analysts on the Sino-Burma
border speculated that coup leaders of the NDA-K would have to surrender
to SPDC forces.

____________________________________

September 29, Democratic Voice of Burma
Burmese authorities interrogate NLD leaders in Pegu

Local Burmese military authorities at Pegu in central Burma, have been
intensely interrogating National League for Democracy (NLD) leaders since
the celebration of the 17th anniversary of the formation of the party.

The ruling junta, State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) agents have
been visiting the homes of NLD leaders and asking them many kinds of
unsavoury and upsetting questions.

NLD offices throughout Burma have been closed down since the party’s
supporters and leaders including Aung San Suu Kyi and her deputy Tin Oo
were attacked by thugs hired by the junta at Dipeyin in upper Burma on 30
May 2003. Party members have also been forced not to carry out party
activities and they are said to be particularly depressed by the latest
harassments of the authorities.

A party member from nearby Minhla told DVB that police agents from Special
Branch (SB) came to ask her unnecessary questions and cut off her phone
line, causing her many problems.

____________________________________

September 15, Irrawaddy
Burma’s killing fields - Yeni

Landmines take a heavy toll in lives and livelihoods

A dozen or so years ago, Mee Reh was helping to secure a rebel-held area
of Burma’s eastern Karenni State with landmines. Today he is helping to
secure a new life for landmine victims.

Mee Reh, 38, is one of 11 workers making artificial limbs at a small
workshop in a Karenni refugee camp in Thailand’s northern Mae Hong Son
province. The enterprise is run by Handicap International, an
international organization working to ban the use of landmines and to help
landmine victims.

Mee Reh is himself the victim of a landmine explosion, losing a leg while
he was in action with Karenni National Progressive Party forces against
Burma Army troops in the early 1990s. He found medical care in neighboring
Thailand, where he was fitted with an artificial leg. After his recovery
he found work in the Handicap International Workshop, which has so far
manufactured around 100 prostheses.

Although there are no official statistics on landmine casualties in Burma,
the International Campaign to Ban Landmines estimates that around 1,500
people die or suffer serious injury every year. A reliable indication of
the scale of the landmine threat is disclosed by figures showing the
International Committee of the Red Cross alone has provided Burmese
victims with more than 4,600 prostheses and 3,000 crutches since 1999.
Only Afghanistan receives more assistance of this kind from the ICRC.

Statistics are also lacking about the number of landmines sown in rebel
areas of Burma, although accounts received from military sources indicate
that the total runs into perhaps hundreds of thousands. Many of them were
sown during Burma Army action against communist rebels in the 1980s—one
former Burma Army regular who fled to Thailand said his unit had laid
about 30,000 in just one area of Shan State while fighting Communist Party
of Burma forces. The minefields were never cleared, and death and serious
injury still threaten unwary villagers, particularly children.

The International Campaign to Ban Landmines reports that landmines are
found in nine of Burma’s 14 states and divisions. Most are to be found in
Karenni and Shan states, eastern Karen State and the southern Mon and
Tenasserim divisions, but there are also minefields on Burma’s borders
with India and Bangladesh.

The problem is compounded for international agencies by Burma’s refusal to
sign the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. Seeking to deflect criticism of its
increasingly isolated stand on the issue, a Rangoon representative at a
regional landmine seminar in Bangkok two years ago said that his
government’s confrontation with rebel groups prevented it from signing the
treaty.

The rebel groups make no secret of their use of landmines. “We know how
landmines affect our communities, but what should we do?” said a Karenni
commander. “This is war. We have to fight with the same weapons as the
enemy.”

Mine production takes a large slice of Burma’s defense budget. The Myanmar
Defense Products Industries No 4 plant at Prome in central Burma produces
two varieties of landmine, the MM1 and the MM2, both modeled on Chinese
fragmentation and blast mines. The rebel groups also have production
facilities.

Neither side pays much attention to marking minefields and the cost to
rural life is correspondingly high. The location of old minefields is
often forgotten, only to enter local records when villagers or their
livestock detonate a mine. “The first evidence of a minefield can be a
death or injury,” says a report by the Nonviolence International movement.

Even if a villager survives a mine blast injury, he finds himself on the
“fast track to poverty,” according to Bangkok-based landmine researcher
Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan. A breadwinner is maimed, and even if his injuries
can be treated the costs involved saddle his family with an unbearable
burden of debt, he says.

Government troops have allegedly come to recognize villagers as a cheap
and effective mine-clearing force, and even the International Labour
Organization has documented cases where civilians and convicts are
compelled to walk ahead of military units to detonate mines that might be
in their path. “This practice occurs,” confirms Moser-Puangsuwan. A survey
taken by one humanitarian aid group in refugee camps along the Thai-Burma
border found around seven percent of the interviewed refugees suffering
trauma because of being used as “human mine-detectors.”

Mines are laid not only in areas of militarily strategic importance but
are increasingly used to protect industrial installations. In Karenni
State alone, a regime-laid minefield surrounds Burma’s main hydroelectric
power plant, Lawpita, and regime forces and rebels alike have sown mines
around gem workings on Yadana mountain.

Burma’s mine-laying policy has implications beyond Rangoon’s national
frontiers, as Thailand’s government discovered when it sent a team to the
Thai-Burma border region in late 2003 to inspect proposed development
sites. The region was full of mines, the team reported. Thai contractors
hired to assist in the construction of a controversial dam on the Salween
River opposite Thailand’s Mae Hong Son province have reportedly been
unable to move their heavy equipment across the border because of the
minefields in the area.

For Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan, the only practical solution to the problem is
an immediate halt to mine-laying, as part of a “balanced and nationwide
ceasefire.” He says: “A halt in the use of anti-personnel landmines should
be encouraged in the interim as a confidence-building measure. Even if
they [regime forces and rebels] cannot stop the war today, they can stop
using landmines.”

Meanwhile, landmines remain a pressing humanitarian issue. Handicap
International is just one of several organizations working to assist
landmine victims. Some independent groups work within rebel-controlled
areas, even carrying out emergency surgery and amputations. Others—such as
Medecins Sans Frontieres, the International Rescue Committee, the American
Refugee Committee, Aide Medicale International and the German Malteser
Hilfsdienst—are active in refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border. Dr
Cynthia Maung’s Mae Tao clinic in Mae Sot, on the Thai-Burma border, also
sees its troubling share of landmine victims.

The number of victims treated by these voluntary services runs into the
thousands. The ICRC statistics alone—around 8,000 prostheses and crutches
provided since 1999—give a chilling picture. Raw statistics that tell
their own story of human suffering and misery.

____________________________________
ON THE BORDER

September 29, Narinjara News
22 Burmese citizens arrested by authorities in Bangladesh

22 Burmese citizens were arrested by the Bangladeshi Police at the border
town of Teknaf in southern Bangladesh around 2 pm on 27 September.

These Burmese citizens were arrested at the Niri Bali Guest House in Teknaf.

They have been charged with entering the country without any legal
documentation.

Of the 22 arrestees, 18 are Arakanese while the remaining four were
Muslims from Burma; they are believed to be in Bangladesh for business and
trading purposes.

Such a mass arrest of Burmese citizens has not happened in Teknaf, since
although these traders do not have legal documents, they have normally
been allowed to move about in the southern border region.

The arrest occurred not too long after the visit of a Burmese high level
delegation, and hence it could be related to the visit, says Ayu Khan, a
well-know businessman from Maungdaw.

This arrest could be part of the wider drive to curb illegal and
undocumented border trade, in order to promote an increase in legal trade
between Burma and Bangladesh, says U Apru from Cox's Bazaar.

_____________________________________
BUSINESS / TRADE

Gold and dollar prices rise in Burma
September 29, Mizzima News

The price of gold and the US dollar has risen further in Burma after the
government opened a shop selling gold coins.

A gold shop owner from downtown Rangoon said the value of a tical (16.329
gm) of 24-carat gold in rose to $264 from $237 within a week.

On September 21, Ministry of Mining opened a special gold shop to the
public. The shop has already sold out of coins weighing one tical, which
sold at US $240. Many people rushed to the gold shop to buy the coins and
began selling the coins back at a higher price to gold store owners.

"I can make Ks. 10,000 just queuing," said a woman who sold coins to
another eager buyer.
The government shop quickly sold out of coins and many potential customers
left empty handed.

Rumors that the Burmese currency would further decline pushed consumers
into a gold buying frenzy, which in turn affected market prices. This adds
to the currency's decline. The value of the US dollar also increased
reaching Ks. 1350 a dollar from Ks. 1250 in the black market.

The devaluation of the Burmese currency is also evident against regional
currencies with one Chinese Yuan buying Ks. 163.9 up from Ks. 153.85, Thai
Baht buying Ks. 29.8 from Ks. 25 and the India Rupee buying 26 from 21.

____________________________________
ASEAN

September 29, Irrawaddy
Malaysia disappointed with Asean’s Burma path - En-Lai Yeoh

Malaysia’s deputy prime minister acknowledged Thursday that Asean’s chosen
path of engaging Burma’s repressive military junta has yet to produce the
desired results, but added there would be no change of course.

“The policy of constructive engagement has shown some dividends but not as
much as we had hoped,” said Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak, adding that
the West’s hardline approach had fared even worse.

“I think we have to continue to pursue this and hopefully things get
better...We’re still trying,” he said. Najib was speaking to a gathering
of around 200 politicians, government officials, academics and businessmen
at a forum on Asean’s future in Singapore.

Hundreds of dissidents remain incarcerated in Burma and Nobel laureate
Aung San Suu Kyi is under house arrest.

Earlier, Singapore’s prime minister said the regional trade bloc was
“decades” away from becoming fully integrated like the European Union.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said late Wednesday that the trade bloc
“must make greater efforts at integration” or risk falling behind,
especially with booming growth in India and China.

“If we delay or do nothing, we will fall off the radar screen of
international companies and investors,” said Lee while opening the
three-day conference. “Should Asean fail to rise to the challenge, we
would become marginalized and irrelevant. This would be a grave injustice
to our people.”

Asean is aiming for a free trade pact by 2010, and a unified economic
community 10 years later. Critics have said self-interest and protective
barriers could derail such goals.

____________________________________

September 28, Agence France Presse
Expelling Myanmar from ASEAN will not solve problem: Singapore's Lee

Expelling Myanmar from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
will not help solve the military-ruled country's problems, Singapore Prime
Minister Lee Hsien Loong said.

Speaking to a forum of business leaders and diplomats late Wednesday, Lee
said taking a confrontational stand with threats of expulsion was not the
10-nation regional bloc's way of dealing with its own members.

Lee was answering a question from a diplomat about calls by some Southeast
Asian legislators to expel Myanmar from ASEAN to pressure Yangon's ruling
junta to release democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and carry out political
reforms.

"Maybe in the Commonwealth context this is the way you have to work. But
in the ASEAN context we have found a different way more suited to our
circumstances," Lee told a private-sector ASEAN forum.

The Commonwealth, which groups former British colonies, expelled Zimbabwe
in March 2002 following allegations of rigged elections that returned
President Robert Mugabe to power. Pakistan's suspension following a coup
in 1999 was lifted last year.

Myanmar has been an embarrassment to ASEAN and a thorn in the group's ties
with its dialogue partners, particularly the United States and Europe
which have accused the junta of human rights abuses and political
repression.

International pressure, including from some key ASEAN members, forced
Yangon in July to relinquish its turn to hold the chairmanship of ASEAN in
2006. This is rotated alphabetically among members, so the Philippines
will lead the organisation next year after Malaysia.

Lee said ASEAN leaders and officials have discussed the issue of Myanmar
among themselves and agreed to continue engaging their neighbour.

"Myanmar is a member of ASEAN. It's got certain internal problems ... and
we've discussed this with them. It's caused difficulties with our
relations with our dialogue partners -- the Europeans and the Americans,"
he said.

"But within ASEAN, we have to manage these issues in a way which will be
helpful, effective and constructive in the long term."

The 38-year-old ASEAN prefers to focus on issues of common interest rather
than differences, Lee stressed.

"Where we can cooperate, we move forward first. I think that is the way we
have handled problems in ASEAN and it worked for us.

"In the case of Myanmar, we have made our views known to Myanmar from the
point of view of people who wish Myanmar well -- that we hope they will be
able to overcome their problems," he said.

Apart from Myanmar and Singapore, ASEAN's other members are Brunei,
Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and
Vietnam.

_____________________________________
INTERNATIONAL

September 29, Irrawaddy
UN rights envoy calls for reform in Burma - Aung Lwin Oo

A UN human rights envoy has called on Burma’s military government for
immediate reform by creating a freer political environment in the country
and establishing democratic dialogue with opposition parties.

 “The transition to a full, participatory and democratic system in Myanmar
[Burma] can no longer be postponed,” the UN Commission on Human Rights
special rapporteur on Burma, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, said in a report
submitted to the General Assembly Wednesday. “Political and
constitutional dialogue must begin without delay,” he added.

Pinheiro said that the exclusion of opposition parties from any
reconciliation process and continued detention of opposition figures,
including Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and ethnic minority
leaders, raise concerns for reform in the country. He also said that the
release of 249 political prisoners from Burma’s prisons in July has been
overshadowed by fresh arrests, detention and harsh sentences for democracy
activists and civilians.

The special envoy also highlighted widespread reports of forced labor,
rape and other sexual violence, extortion and expropriation committed by
government forces.

“By instituting values of democracy and human rights,” Pinheiro said, “the
government will send a clear signal to the people of Myanmar and the
international community that it is actively committed to facilitating the
creation of a stable and democratic future for the country.”

Last week, Burma’s Foreign Minister Nyan Win claimed the country is
“poised at the threshold of a new era,” in a speech during the UN General
Assembly in New York.

Pinheiro has been denied access to the country since November 2003, while
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s special envoy to Burma, Razali Ismail’s
last visit took place in March 2004. Effectively barred from carrying out
his responsibilities in Burma, Pinheiro said that he prepared the report
based on information collected from a variety of independent and reliable
sources.

A group of activists has been staging a 17-day hunger-protest outside the
UN headquarters since September 18, calling on the world body to pursue
the immediate release of opposition leader Suu Kyi and ensure political
reform.

____________________________________

September 29, Agence France Presse
UN envoy urges immediate release of all Myanmar's political detainees

A UN special envoy is pressing Myanmar's military rulers to immediately
release all political prisoners and to end serious human rights violations
against the country's ethnic minorities.

"The immediate release of all 1,100 political prisoners would send a
powerful signal to the people of Myanmar and the international community
that the government is seriously committed to a genuine process of
reconciliation and to constituting a participatory democracy," said UN
human rights special rapporteur Paulo Sergio Pinheiro.

In a report to the UN General Assembly obtained Thursday, he welcomed the
release of a large number of common-law prisoners and some political
prisoners.

But he also noted that "the constant arrests, detention and maltreatment
of civilians and democracy advocates continues."

He renewed his call for the release of National League for Democracy (NLD)
general secretary Aung San Suu Kyi, her deputy U Tin Oo and ethnic leaders
such as Khun Htun Oo and poet/journalist U Win Tin.

Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and her deputy Tin Oo remain under house
arrest and the party's regional offices have all been shuttered.

The NLD won 1990 elections but was never allowed to govern. Many of its
officers have been detained over the years.

Pinheiro, who has not been allowed to conduct a fact-finding mission to
Myanmar since November 2003, said his report was based on information
gleaned from a variety of independent and reliable sources.

He also noted that Myanmar's ethnic minorities were still being subjected
to serious human rights violations.

"Widespread reports of forced labor, rape and other sexual violence,
extortion and expropriation by government forces continue to be received,"
he noted. "Victims of violations rarely have recourse to redress."

Tuesday the NLD marked its anniversary with a call to the military junta
to heed the recommendations of the United Nations.

The appeal came one week after former Czech president Vaclav Havel and
retired South African archbishop Desmond Tutu submitted a report to the
world body calling for new UN efforts to bring reforms to Myanmar.

Havel and Tutu recommended that the UN Security Council adopt a resolution
compelling Myanmar to work with Secretary General Kofi Annan in
implementing a national reconciliation plan that would bring a
democratically elected government.

In his report, Pinheiro, made it clear that the transition to a "full,
participatory and democratic system in Myanmar can no longer be
postponed."

He appealed to Yangon to initiate fundamental reforms with help from the
international community and multilateral organizations, including reforms
in the civil service, education and the judiciary, environmental
protection and establishment of social safety nets for the most vulnerable
groups.

"These reforms are imperative if Myanmar is to be successfully integrated
into international financial and economic structures," he warned.

____________________________________
OPINION / OTHER

September 29, The New York Sun
Bailing out Burma - Eli Lake

This was a heck of a week for the World Bank to hold out the carrot that
Burma one day could be eligible to have its $5.1 billion in debt erased.

Not only did September 27 mark the 17th anniversary of the founding of
Burma's National League for Democracy, the party led by Nobel peace prize
winner Aung San Suu Kyi that won its country's elections in 1990 only to
be harassed, imprisoned and kept out of power. But a report endorsed by
both Vaclav Havel and Bishop Desmond Tutu is recommending that the United
Nations Security Council take up the matter of Burma immediately as a
threat to world peace.

The report is damning. "Rape is a weapon the Burmese army wields to
demoralize and weaken ethnic minorities," it declares in a chapter on
sexual violence. "Under direct threat of jail or bodily injury, hundreds
of thousands of Burmese civilians are forced to work on infrastructure
projects that involve the construction of roads, dams, railroads, and
military barracks with little or no pay. Similarly, civilians, often young
children, are forced to serve in the military as soldiers and porters," it
says in a chapter on forced labor. The report cites other studies
estimating that there are 500,000 heroin addicts in a country that has
become the leading heroin exporter in its region. And this says nothing of
the fact that Aung San Suu Kyi is still under house arrest.

In short, the two democratic heroes are pointing out that in every
possible definition, Burma is a failed state and a threat to both its
people and its neighbors. The Washington director of Human Rights Watch,
Tom Malinowski, agrees. "Burma should not meet the criteria for debt
relief because it would be ludicrous based on its past record to suggest
it would spend the proceeds of that relief in ways that would help its
people," he said. "It's a textbook example of why we need to tie aid and
debt relief to reforms."

This is why it's folly to pretend that Burma is like any other of the
destitute nations the World Bank dubs, "heavily indebted poor countries,"
and that presumably Burma could be eligible at some point for the kind of
debt relief afforded to, say, Zambia. To be fair, the World Bank included
Burma in a list of some of the world's most failed states in what its
bureaucrats have called a "pre-decision point," over the weekend.

When I asked a spokesman for the Bank, Damian Milverton, about the
decision, he put it this way: "We published a list of countries that could
qualify for debt relief in the future. Burma would still have to take
several steps to be eligible for debt relief, including asking the Paris
Club of creditors for a rescheduling of their debts."

But what about the rape, the child soldiers and Aung San Su Kyi? Shouldn't
those factors play a role in whether or not the military junta in charge
at Rangoon gets to divert its debt payments to build more military
barracks? When asked about Burmese repression, Mr. Milverton was clear
that these matters still did not factor into the bank's decision making.
"The bottom line is the bank does not use political judgments for any
kinds of assistance that it provides, whether that's grants, no interest
loans or debt relief," he said. "On the debt relief issue, it's very clear
what a country has to do to qualify for debt relief, that is they have to
show they can manage their finances and use the proceeds of debt relief to
help the poorest people in their country, because ultimately they are the
people we are trying to help."

One might expect this kind of answer from the regime at the bank prior to
the arrival of Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy secretary of defense who
is said to have written some of the president's most stirring speeches on
the necessity of the democratic world to come to the aid of those
struggling against authoritarians. And it's not clear that Mr. Wolfowitz,
who has been the first president of the World Bank to meet with opposition
parties on his trips abroad, would have phrased his answer to the Burma
question quite this way. But this also speaks volumes about the
disposition of the institution Mr. Wolfowitz now heads.

Under the current rules of the World Bank, it's entirely possible that the
war criminals in Burma's ruling "State Peace and Development Council" -
the new name for the gang that used to be ominously called "SLORC" - could
get all the benefits of international development if they hired competent
accountants. No one is arguing that the world should not endeavor to
eliminate malnutrition, illiteracy, and all of the other maladies of
poverty. But it's also high time that the world's industrialized nations
recognize that a chief cause of the poverty they wish to eradicate are the
regimes that receive their assistance.