BurmaNet News, November 2, 2005

[Editor]

November 2, 2005 Issue # 2836


INSIDE BURMA
Mizzima: Junta gears up for move to Pyinmana
Xinhua: Outside bird flu affects Myanmar livestock market
Xinhua: Myanmar top leader meets Indian chief of army staff

DRUGS
Deutsche Presse-Agentur: Deforestation in Myanmar facilitates opium
cultivation
Mizzima: Concerns remain despite drops in opium: UN survey

INTERNATIONAL
Nation: Bush told of Burmese abuses
Sydney Morning Herald: Forced labour claim infuriates Burma

OPINION / OTHER
Christian Science Monitor: Righting Rangoon

PRESS RELEASE
U.N. News Center: As Myanmar's opium production plunges, farmers need
alternative income sources

____________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

November 2, Mizzima News
Junta gears up for move to Pyinmana

The Burmese military's move to Pyinmana is back in full swing with
authorities reportedly giving the Ministry of Home Affairs and the
Ministry of Information two weeks to make the move to Mandalay division.

Original government plans aimed to have government offices moved to
Pyinmana by last month, but authorities recently said the move may be
stalled for up to two years.

Sweeping changes are being made to the town in preparation for the
government's move, including the relocation of Pyinmana's universities.

Several sources told Mizzima the Agriculture, Forestry and Veterinary
universities will be moved away from the town. The campuses are reportedly
being moved to Kyaukse, Pwin Oo Lwin and Mhaw Bi respectively.

According to sources, General Maung Aye was sent to inspect the site of
the new government offices two weeks ago and reports have emerged that the
next Armed Forces Day, on March 27, will also be held in Pyinmana.

_____________________________________

November 2, Xinhua General News Service
Outside bird flu affects Myanmar livestock market

Yangon: The recent renewed outbreak of bird flu outside Myanmar has
affected the livestock market in the country although it claimed absence
of the avian influenza so far, according to local press Wednesday.

Livestock traders are suffering loss due to the fall of chicken prices
with less customers than usual, impacted by the external disease which
carries H5N1 deadly virus, the Yangon Times said.

Consumers are generally worried about any possible assault of the
influenza as it starts to enter into the cold season (November to January)
when such disease is considered to be sensitive.

Despite remaining free from the cases, Myanmar is still keeping alert with
the Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries urging the public to remain
vigilant against the influenza following the persistent presence of such
virus and fresh outbreak in several countries including neighbors.

The authorities have also called for keeping awareness about the modes of
infection of the avian influenza and intensifying precautionary and
educational measures to prevent any occurrence in humans and birds.

Myanmar has developed a national pandemic plan since early this year for
controlling the disease under guidelines prescribed by the World Health
Organization, and isolation units have also been set up at hospitals in
the country's border towns.

According to earlier reports, the Japan International Cooperation Agency
has provided Myanmar early this year with equipment and test kids to
improve its capacity for diagnosing bird flu.

Myanmar has also benefited from a fund of 400,000 US dollars extended to
Southeast Asian nations by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization to
enhance efforts in this regard.

Since renewed outbreak of bird flu in some Southeast Asian countries was
reported in September last year, Myanmar has stepped up precautionary
measures against the disease which include alerting farmers to report any
unusual increase in mortality rate among poultry.

There are 63 million chickens in Myanmar, of which 50 million are bred
outdoor in rural areas.

_____________________________________

November 2, Xinhua General News Service
Myanmar top leader meets Indian chief of army staff

Yangon: Chairman of the Myanmar State Peace and Development Council (SPDC)
Senior-General Than Shwe met with visiting Indian Chief of Army Staff
General JJ Singh here Wednesday, state-run Radio Myanmar reported.

The meeting took place before Singh ended his five-day goodwill visit to
Myanmar at the invitation of SPDC Vice Chairman Vice Senior-General Maung
Aye, who is also Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Defense Services and
Commander-in-Chief of the Army.

During his visit, Singh toured the second largest city of Mandalay, Pyin
Oo Lwin, and the ancient city of Bagan.

Singh arrived here last Saturday on a goodwill visit to Yangon to enhance
military ties with Myanmar.

The visit came after Indian Union Home Secretary V.K. Duggal came to
Yangon last week, attending the 11th national-level meeting between the
two countries. The two sides agreed to step up action against arms
smugglers as well as drug traffickers with Myanmar reiterating that it
would not allow negative elements to use its territory for carrying out
hostile activities against India.

Relations between Myanmar and India began warming up rapidly since late
1990s. Maung Aye visited India in November 2000, starting to move the two
countries' ties closer after a long cool- down period since 1988.

As part of its "look east" policy, India has strengthened cooperation with
Myanmar in a number of sectors including the military sector with military
delegations of the two countries exchanging visits for many times.
Besides, a large amount of Myanmar military personnel were trained in
India.

In December 2002, an Indian naval fleet, comprising a submarine and two
destroyers, called at Yangon's Thilawa Port, while in September 2003,
Chairman of Chief of Staff Committee and Chief of Naval Staff of the
Indian Navy Admiral Madhvendra Singh visited Myanmar. After days, two more
Indian naval warships called at Yangon Port again, carrying out a four-day
joint naval maneuvers with the Myanmar navy.

In October 2004, Than Shwe, who is also Commander-in-Chief of the Myanmar
Defense Services, visited New Delhi, paving way for increased cooperation
in sectors with three memorandums of understanding signed on the occasion
on cooperation in sectors including non-traditional security.

The two sides agreed to jointly combat terrorist activities in the border
region.

In March this year, Indian External Affairs Minister K. Natwar Singh came
to Yangon, bringing the relations and cooperation between the two
countries closer.

_____________________________________
DRUGS

November 1, Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Deforestation in Myanmar facilitates opium cultivation

Bangkok: Rampant deforestation in Myanmar's (Burma's) northern states,
bordering China, has led to an increase in opium cultivation by a new crop
of more sophisticated farmers, a senior United Nations official
acknowledged on Tuesday.

While Myanmar's opium cultivation has dropped 80 per cent over the past
decade, from 163,000 hectares in 1996 to 32,800 hectares this year, the
success story has not been nationwide, according to the United Nations
Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) survey 'Myanmar Opium Survey 2005',
released on Tuesday.

The U.N.'s latest opium survey noted that production is on the rise in the
Kachin State, which neighbours China, and in the southern Shan State,
although it has fallen off drastically elsewhere in Myanmar.

UNODC regional director Akira Fujino attributed the increase in production
in the Kachin State in part to rampant deforestation and the influx of
more sophisticated opium farmers and techniques in the remote region.

'There is a worrying trend of use of irrigation systems and fertilizers,'
Fujino told a Bangkok press conference. 'In other words, its not
traditional farmers but more sophisticated ones working in the deforested
areas near China.'

He identified the new crop of opium farmers as 'trafficking groups',
although no details were forthcoming.

Last month the international environmentalist group Global Witness issued
a report, 'A Choice for China - Ending the Destruction of Burma's Northern
Frontier Forests', that estimates that in 2004, more than one million
cubic metres of timber were exported illegally from northern Myanmar,
especially from Kachin state, across the border to Yunnan.

Global Witness said that ethnic groups, such as the Kachin, were being
driven to selling off their timber for lack of any other alternative
livelihood in the area.

Myanmar's military regime has vowed to wipe out opium production by 2014,
but has done little to provide the current opium farmers with alternative
food crops or job opportunities.

The UNODC is one of the few U.N. agencies to be operating a large scale
project in Myanmar, a country that has been shunned by the international
aid community for the past 15 years because of the abuses committed by its
ruling military regime.

UNODC has been working with the regime to eradicate the opium crop in
northern and northeastern Myanmar, while attempting to provide the farmers
with alternative crops.

Myanmar's decreasing opium production testifies to the project eradication
success, but serious questions remain about the development aspect.

'For the United Nations, replacing one social evil (narcotics) with
another (hunger and poverty) is wrong,' noted the UNODC's Myanmar report.
'Therefore the UNODC calls on the international community to provide for
the basic needs of those affected.'

_____________________________________

November 2, Mizzima News
Concerns remain despite drops in opium: UN survey - Alison Hunter

Opium cultivation in Burma is down 26 percent from 2004 but 'worrying
factors' remain according to a survey released by the United Nation Office
on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Burma.

The 'Myanmar Opium Survey 2005' said cultivation in the country had
decreased 57 percent since 2002 with 32,800 hectares of the crop still
farmed in Shan State. Cultivation levels have dropped 80 percent since
1996 according to the survey.

But despite the decreases, UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa
said in the report that other findings from the survey were disturbing.

"Compared to the previous year, opium production has doubled in the
southern Shan State despite the acreage showing only a slight increase.
This is in part due to additional rains, however, and more disquieting,
also due to improved cultivation practices," Costa said.

While total cultivation levels were down, the survey showed the incomes of
poppy producers were up yearly by 36 percent on average in Shan State. The
potential value of poppy crops also rose to US $58 million, up three
percent from last year.

Burma is still the world's second largest producer of opium after
Afghanistan and grows 21 percent of global supplies. According to the
survey opium farming was up seven percent in Southern Shan state where one
third of the state's opium is produced.

The report warned of the economic and food crises facing opium producers
and former producers as more than 90 percent of people surveyed in opium
producing villages reported experiencing food insecurity.

Costa said wide social impacts could be expected as a result of
eradication efforts on ethnic Shans who face a ban on opium production
recently implemented by the Wa and regional authorities.

He said the bans would make former poppy growers vulnerable to
exploitation and called for increased international humanitarian aid and
support for poppy growers and their families.

". . . the international community must have the wisdom to fight drugs and
poverty simultaneously, to eliminate both the causes and the effects of
these twin afflictions," Costa said.

In a September report approved by President George W. Bush, the US
administration listed Burma as one of 20 countries to have "failed
demonstrably" to reduce drug production and trafficking across their
borders.

Burma is six year's into a program to wipe out opium production by 2014.

____________________________________
INTERNATIONAL

November 2, Nation
Bush told of Burmese abuses - Kavi Chongkittavorn

US President George W Bush expressed serious concern about the
deteriorating political situation in Burma after a one-hour discussion on
Monday with a female Shan activist, fighting for the rights of minorities
in the military-ruled state. Charm Tong, 23, who co-authored the report
“License to Rape”, said she met Bush and his four-member advisory team at
the White House, briefing them on conditions inside Burma.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said that Bush was pleased to
welcome such a courageous and compassionate woman. In a telephone
interview yesterday from Washington DC, Charm Tong said Bush also
expressed concern over the decade-long house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi,
and the detention of Hkun Htun Oo of the Shan Nationalities League for
Democracy, as well as all other political prisoners.

“I told him that Burma’s human rights record was getting worse, as is the
HIV/Aids issue,” she said, adding that systematic rape of minority women
continues and is widespread.

Charm Tong, who was voted one of 50 Asian heroes by Time magazine early
last month, stressed to the US president that the Burmese junta continued
to use forced labour and forcibly relocated Burmese villagers.

“The number of internally displaced persons has increased, including those
seeking refuge outside of Burma,” she said. Charm Tong is a founding
member of the widely respected Shan Women’s Action Network and has
documented in detail the rape of hundreds of women and girls by Burmese
soldiers. Her “License to Rape” report has been translated into English
and Thai.

She said the human rights situation inside Burma had worsened and the
number of people with HIV/Aids had also increased. There had been little
let-up in problems linked to forced labour and relocation.

Bush said he decided to meet Charm Tong because he wanted him and his
advisory team to hear first-hand reports from someone with knowledge of
the Burmese situation. “The president asked what the US could do to help
the Burmese people,” she said.

In response, Charm Tong urged the US president to raise the Burmese issue
in the UN Security Council so that the dire situation in her country could
be discussed and debated. She added that the US could also put pressure on
Burma’s neighbours to support democracy inside her country instead of
backing a regime that suppresses its own people, as well as ethnic groups.

“This is quite incredible for the president to spend such a long time with
an activist,” commented a political insider in Washington DC, adding that
it showed the US government’s commitment to bringing about changes in
Burma.

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra also spent around 55 minutes with
Bush during his recent visit to Washington DC.

In September, former Czech president Vaclav Havel and retired South
African Archbishop Desmond Tutu unveiled a report which said the situation
in Burma displayed the same factors that had triggered Security Council
intervention in seven countries including Rwanda, Haiti, Sierra Leone,
Afghanistan, Cambodia, Liberia, and Yemen.

____________________________________

November 3, The Sydney Morning Herald
 Forced labour claim infuriates Burma - Connie Levett

Bangkok: Burma's military government is in conflict with the International
Labour Organisation, threatening its staff, jailing alleged collaborators
and threatening to withdraw from the grouping over reports of forced
labour.

In May, the organisation's global report on forced labour singled out
Burma as the worst offender, referring to the "extreme case of forced
labour extracted by the military in Myanmar [Burma]".

Since June, the head of the organisation's Rangoon office, Richard Horsey,
and his staff have received numerous death threats. One letter called the
organisation a puppet of the CIA and warned Mr Horsey "if you interfere
our internal affairs [sic] your head will be cut off and our people will
crush you and poison you".

In June, July and August, speakers at mass rallies throughout the country
denounced the organisation and called on the Government to withdraw from
it.

On Monday, the junta jailed a Burmese lawyer, Aye Myint, for seven years
on charges he passed "incorrect/false" information to the body. He had
been helping farmers from Phaungdawthi village fight the seizure of their
land by the military.

Burma is understood to have withdrawn from the International Labour
Organisation already, although no formal announcement has been made. If it
does so, Burma will still have two years before it can completely leave
the organisation, during which time it will continue to be subject to the
obligations of a member state.

"They say they are angry at the ILO but the ILO have told them if they
leave, it will be interpreted as them not wanting to address the forced
labour problem," Mr Horsey said. "Myanmar is not the only country with a
forced labour problem but the reason it is treated so seriously is because
it is imposed by the state. In Myanmar it is the army and the civil
administration - the military is the worst offender."

The military uses villagers to carry its baggage and build army camps and
roads, and it even commandeers farmland and makes the villagers grow food
for the soldiers. Civil authorities will conscript labour for local
projects, the labour organisation says.

International criticism of the regime's tactics has grown louder in the
past week. There are moves, backed by the US, to refer Burma to the United
Nations Security Council.

The US State Department has spoken out in support of the organisation's
work in the country.

"We commend the ILO for its efforts in Burma to help eradicate forced
labour, and condemn the Burmese regime's continuing violation of human
rights and fundamental freedoms," a spokesman said.

Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, the UN's special rapporteur on human rights in
Burma, criticised the regime's record on forced labour and human rights in
the UN General Assembly's Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee in
New York last Thursday.

On Monday, the US President, George Bush, was pictured at the White House
with a young Burmese democracy activist.

The ILO has recommended member states review direct investment in Burma,
particularly in state- or military-owned firms.

_____________________________________
OPINION / OTHER

November 1, Christian Science Monitor
Righting Rangoon

More heat than of the tropical kind can be felt in Burma's capital these
days. Saffron-robed Buddhist monks still walk door-to-door with begging
bowls, asking for food. The unemployed still sit idly in tea shops. But
Burma's military rulers are probably sweating a bit more in their
uniforms.

Burma (Myanmar) has suddenly risen up the list of antidemocratic nations
needing acute outside attention. In separate but quickly converging
actions, the
United Nations secretary-general and the Bush administration are trying to
throw klieg lights on the suppression of human rights and democracy in a
nation too long seen as a strategic backwater.

The US, as part of President Bush's campaign since January to create more
democracies, wants the Security Council to cite Burma for its deplorable
human rights practices. UN chief
Kofi Annan, meanwhile, has elevated Burma to high-level UN review along
with Sudan. He also hopes to visit the Southeast Asian nation soon to talk
to both the military brass and the confined leader of the democracy
movement, Aung San Suu Kyi.

His concern was heightened by a recent report, commissioned by former
Czech President Vaclav Havel and retired South African Archbishop Desmond
Tutu (both men are Nobel peace laureates, as is Ms. Suu Kyi), which found
that Burma's human-rights violations meet the criteria for some sort of UN
intervention.

Twice since 1962, the military has upended democracy in Burma to keep
power for itself. The last time was 15 years ago, when Suu Kyi's party won
a fair election only to see the results ignored. She's been under house
arrest off and on for 10 years. Meanwhile, more than thousand
pro-democracy dissidents remain in jail and reports of systemic atrocities
against Burma's ethnic minorities keep mounting. The nation's xenophobic
generals prefer to largely isolate their country and deprive their 50
million people.

The UN staff's interest in Burma is driven by a desire not to repeat past
mistakes when the UN didn't act soon enough in major humanitarian crises.
The US, post-Sept. 11, realizes that unstable nations like Burma might
become terrorist breeding swamps, and thus must be drained of dictators.

Too bad, though, that China has befriended Burma. The two neighbors share
growing economic and military ties, not to mention similar authoritarian
rule. Just as China has blocked tough UN action on Darfur in Sudan, where
the Chinese have big oil interests, it now could shelter Burma, too.

The Bush administration has helped nudge successful moves toward democracy
elsewhere, such as Ukraine. And last week Director of National
Intelligence John Negroponte laid out a new mission for the country's 15
intelligence agencies: to "bolster the growth of democracy and sustain
peaceful democratic states."

In his meeting with China's leader on Nov. 19, Mr. Bush should clearly say
the US has a moral and strategic interest in democratizing Burma, and that
China should not block UN action. This sort of practical idealism by the
US is being waged on many fronts, not all successful. But Burma cries out
loudly for the UN to act.

_____________________________________
PRESS RELEASE

November 2, U.N. News Center
As Myanmar's opium production plunges, farmers need alternative income
sources

Myanmar's opium poppy cultivation has fallen 80 per cent since its peak
year in 1996, but poverty has escalated among farmers in one of the
world's largest opium producers, making them vulnerable to exploitation,
the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reports.

Myanmar's total potential opium production in 2005 was estimated at 312
tons, down from 370 in 2004 and compared with the 1996 peak of 1,760 tons,
while the area under opium poppy cultivation was 32,800 hectares in 2005,
down from 44,200 hectares in 2004, UNODC's Myanmar Opium Survey, based on
satellite images and ground verification, showed.

The number of families involved in growing opium poppies declined by 26
per cent to 193,000 in Myanmar, the second largest producer after
Afghanistan, according to the Survey.

While welcoming the decline in cultivation, UNODC Executive Director
Antonio Maria Costa said the rapid progress in eradication over the past
decade could be reversed if the growing problems of poverty and
under-nourishment among farm families were not addressed.

"The world will not condone counter-narcotic measures that result in
humanitarian disasters," Mr Costa said. "The international community must
have the wisdom to fight drugs and poverty simultaneously, to eliminate
both the causes and the effects of these twin afflictions. Food security
and income generation programmes must remain in place in Myanmar and be
strengthened to support both the farmers' decisions not to plant opium and
the enforcement measures to eradicate opium that is planted against the
law."

The loss of opium income means that poor farmers and their families lose
their coping mechanism to deal with endemic poverty, a chronic food
shortage and the lack of health services and schools, he said.

Farm families end up being very vulnerable to exploitation - "from human
rights abuses to enforce the opium bans to internal displacement or human
trafficking to survive the bans," Mr. Costa said.