BurmaNet News, March 24, 2006

[Editor]

March 24, 2006, 2006 Issue # 2926


INSIDE BURMA
DVB: The new lies of Myanmar: murdered victim portrayed as drunken lout

ON THE BORDER
SHAN: All eyes on new Burma division on border

HEALTH / AIDS
Irrawaddy: Border migration major cause of dengue fever
AFP: AIDS meeting urges Asian nations to protect children

BUSINESS / TRADE
Irrawaddy: Asian forests suffer from demand for wood products, says report

ASEAN
AFP: ASEAN envoy cuts short Myanmar visit

INTERNATIONAL
Mizzima: Human Rights Council no place for Burma: rights group
Irrawaddy: Peter Gabriel to push for UNSC resolution on Burma

____________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

March 23, Democratic Voice of Burma
The new lies of Myanmar: murdered victim portrayed as drunken lout

The newspaper published by Rangoon municipal department described former
political prisoner Thet Naing Oo who was recently murdered brutally by the
police and fire brigade members as a drunk, causing anger and outrage
among ordinary people including the victim’s relatives.

The paper said that the police and fire brigade members who ‘knew their
duties’ tried to contain Thet Naing Oo who was an out of control, drunken
lout, but as he tried to resist arrest, Thet Naing Oo was arrested by
means of violent beating with the help of trishaw drivers also ‘who knew
their duties’. In fact, Thet Naing Oo was drinking tea before he was
killed.

When DVB contacted the newspaper, an official who doesn't want to be named
told DVB that the paper was forced to insert this piece of prevarication
by the order of the special branch (SB) of the police.

Residents in Rangoon told DVB that they are feeling outraged by not only
the murder of Thet Naing Oo but also the lies told about him by the
authorities.

“It is very unfair. It is an unjust torture and an insult,” said one
resident.

“I regard it as an act of unbearable intimidation and bullying,” said
another.

“I am very angry, uncomfortably angry,” said another.

“The government doesn’t tell this news as it is. Not the true news. We
heard about this from the BBC, VOA, DVB by listening to the radio. As long
as you have this kind of thing, how are we to live freely and peacefully?
As long as we have this kind of unjust tortures, arrests and murders, our
Burma will come to no good.”

____________________________________
ON THE BORDER

March 23, Shan Herald Agency for News
All eyes on new Burma division on border

The Shan and the Thai military have been keeping an eye open for the first
units of the Sagaing-based Burmese Light Infantry Division 33 that arrived
on March 16 on Thailand's northern border.

Six military vehicles and about 200 troops turned up in Monghsat town,
opposite Chiangmai's Mae Ai, last week. It had crossed the Salween at
Takaw and passed through Mongpiang before reaching Monghsat.

About four trucks were seen in Mongton, 45 miles to the southwest and 53
miles north of Chiangmai's Chiangdao border the following day. The
vehicles were stationed for some time at the Infantry Battalion command
post before returning to Monghsat.

"The 65th has been relocated in Nakawngmu (24 miles south on the road to
the Thai border)," said a Thai military source. "It may mean at least some
of the LID 33 units are taking over the command post."

There have been no further reports on the division's movements, although
sources confirm it is still in Monghsat.

One of the three tactical commands of the division (a Burmese division has
10 battalions) had taken part in the Battle of Pang Maisoong, opposite
Chiangmai's Wiang Haeng district, between May 21 and June 21, 2002, which
almost brought the two countries on the brink of war. The joint junta-Wa
alliance had finally dislodged the outgunned and outnumbered Shan State
Army fighters, but not before losing hundreds of their men, among them Col
Tint Lwin of LID 33.

The division's recent arrival on the border away from its home base has
placed all watchers on the alert.

Meanwhile, another division-size Military Operations Command No. 5 that
had been located in Southern Shan State since last August to deal with the
SSA units under the command of Col Moengzuen was ordered back in February
to its base in Taunggup, Arakan state. The job of tackling the rebels was
taken over by another Military Operations Command, the Mongnawng-based MOC
No.2.

According to sources from the north, the Burma Army troops in Shan State
are not only recipients of back-up forces from other regional commands.
One of its main units, the Hsenwi-based MOC No.16, had been ordered, since
the end of February, to take part in the campaign against the Karen
National Union in Toungoo area, 69 miles south of the new capital
Pyinmana.

____________________________________
HEALTH / AIDS

March 24, Irrawaddy
Border migration major cause of dengue fever - Sai Silp

Migration along the Thai-Burmese border is contributing to the high
incidence of dengue fever in the region, experts were told at a conference
of the World Health Organization and the Thai Ministry of Public Health in
Chiang Mai, northern Thailand.

The conference, which ended Friday, heard that 100,000 people in nine
countries of Southeast Asia fell ill with dengue in a typical year.

Chusak Trasittisuk, of WHO’s Southeast Asian Office, told The Irrawaddy on
Friday that migration of people in the region was the major cause of the
epidemic. Victims had difficulty getting timely medical attention, he
said.

Dengue fever was once an urban sickness but was now widespread in rural
areas, making an evaluation of the situation difficult, Chusak said.

Kevin Palmer, regional adviser to WHO’s Western Pacific office on
parasitic diseases, said some victims were reluctant to seek medical care
“because of the fear of discrimination.” WHO had to confine its work in
Burma mostly to Rangoon, he said.

Apart from migration, other causes of the dengue epidemic were rapid and
unplanned urbanization and climate changes, the conference was told.

____________________________________

March 24, Agence France Presse
AIDS meeting urges Asian nations to protect children - Frank Zeller

Hanoi: East Asia and Pacific nations must protect young people from
HIV/AIDS or face an epidemic that will kill nearly 20,000 children a year
in less than a decade, health experts warned Friday.

Countries need to reduce mother-to-child infections, improve care for
those infected and better educate children about the disease now growing
faster in Asia than any other region, they said at the end of a three-day
conference.

"Many countries in East Asia and the Pacific face a potentially explosive
increase in new HIV infections," said UNAIDS executive director Peter Piot
in a message to the more than 300 delegates from 20 nations meeting in
Hanoi.

"The only way to prevent this is to move quickly to population-wide access
to the full range of life-saving services."

The first regional meeting to focus on the impact the virus has on
children launched a 'Hanoi Call to Action' that UNAIDS estimates will cost
eight billion dollars a year by 2015, of which six billion dollars would
target children.

The plan called on governments to step up prevention, testing, care and
treatment, make anti-retroviral drugs more widely available, help AIDS
orphans and reduce the stigma and discrimination associated with the
disease.

"An entire generation has never known a world without AIDS," UNICEF
regional director Anupama Rao Singh earlier told the conference. "And yet
children have been missing from the HIV/AIDS picture far too long."

About 2.5 million people -- including more than 30,000 children -- now
live with HIV/AIDS in East Asia and the Pacific, a region that does not
include India or the rest of South Asia, according to UN figures.

Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar and Papua New Guinea are in the grip of
generalized epidemics, while the virus is spreading in China, Vietnam and
Indonesia from high-risk groups into the general population.

Some 450,000 children in the region have been orphaned by AIDS, and about
the same number live with at least one chronically ill parent.

On current regional trends, the HIV virus will newly infect over 25,000
children a year and AIDS will kill almost 20,000 children annually by
2015, said UNICEF epidemiologist Neff Walker.

But if governments do act, he said, they could keep annual new HIV child
infections in the region under 10,000 by that year and bring child AIDS
deaths back below last year's toll of about 8,000.

"The plan would cost about three to four dollars per capita per year,"
Walker said. "You save money in the long term by spending it on prevention
now rather than treatment later."

Education is crucial to halting the spread of the disease in a region
where cultural taboos are keeping many children ignorant of the risk of
transmission through unprotected sex and intravenous drug use, experts
said.

"Many children at risk are unaware of how to protect themselves from
HIV/AIDS and do not have access to needed information, services and
commodities," said the Hanoi Call to Action statement.

____________________________________
BUSINESS / TRADE

March 24, Irrawaddy
Asian forests suffer from demand for wood products, says report - Shah Paung

China has become the world’s largest consumer of many natural resources
and a dominant player in the global timber market, according to a research
report released Friday.

“China has also become the world’s largest wood workshop, responding to
the growing demand for furniture, plywood, wood moldings and flooring,
particularly in the developed world,” said the report, issued by the
organizations Forest Trends and the Center for International Forestry
Research.

China increased its exports of manufactured wood products to the US and
the EU by more than 700 percent in the years 1997-2005. The value of
Chinese forest imports rose in the same years from US $6.4 billion to
$16.4 billion. In 2005, Burma supplied 3.9 percent of China’s imported
logs, the report disclosed.

The boom in this sector is taking a heavy toll on Asian forests, however,
the report said. At present logging rates, Indonesia would be “logged out”
in 10 years—“The situation in Myanmar [Burma] is no better, and may be
even worse, and the Philippines and Thailand have already logged out most
of their natural forests.”

The report noted that efforts were being made in Burma’s Kachin State to
control logging. “A late 2005 crackdown in Kachin State led to significant
decreases in log availability to Chinese industry at the Myanmar-Yunnan
border.”

Responding to the findings of the report, Chinese foreign ministry
spokesman Qin Gang conceded that “a handful of companies and individuals
[are] engaged in illegal logging,” and promised that illegal loggers would
be prosecuted and punished.

“We require all Chinese companies and individuals to abide by the laws and
regulations of Myanmar and not to disturb the normal order for trade and
economic cooperation between the two countries,” the spokesman said.

____________________________________
ASEAN

March 24, Agence France Presse
ASEAN envoy cuts short Myanmar visit

Yangon: A special ASEAN envoy abruptly cut short a trip to Myanmar aimed
at pressing the junta over democratic reforms without meeting detained
opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, security sources and diplomats said
Friday.

Malaysia's Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar left Myanmar Friday night,
ending his long-delayed visit to the military-run country one day early.

"He's going home tonight. As far as we know he met the foreign minister
and prime minister. He's not going to meet Suu Kyi," one Yangon-based
diplomat said.

Airport sources also told AFP Syed Hamid left Myanmar late Friday afternoon.

"(Syed Hamid) is another one who would have been disappointed," another
diplomat told AFP.

Earlier in the day Syed Hamid held talks with Prime Minister Soe Win
during his mission to check on the country's reform efforts amid global
criticism of the junta's rights abuses.

Myanmar, which joined the grouping in 1997, agreed at last year's ASEAN
summit to invite Syed Hamid in January.

But the visit apparently stalled over the envoy's insistence on meeting
the Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent most of the
last 16 years in jail or under house arrest.

"This mission is the beginning of a process to build a bridge between
ASEAN and Myanmar. If the envoy insisted on meeting her (Aung San Suu Kyi)
immediately, the mission would be doomed to failure," said a Western
diplomat in Yangon.

"The term of the mission is to evaluate the process of democratization,"
he said, adding he was skeptical whether the envoy would have been able to
see any members from Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition party National League
for Democracy (NLD).

Speaking before his abrupt departure, one analyst said that without
meeting the pro-democracy leader, Syed Hamid's visit could end up being
nothing more than "window-dressing".

"Myanmar did not invite him. ASEAN forced Myanmar to make the invitation
because Myanmar was giving a bad name to ASEAN," said Asda Juyanama,
Thailand's former ambassador to the United Nations.

"Myanmar does not realize that what's going on inside the country is
negatively affecting the image of ASEAN. If the envoy just talks to the
government, the visit may end up being sort of window-dressing. It may
look good in terms of the publicity for Myanmar," he said.

The military, which has ruled the former Burma since 1962, has spelled out
a "road map" for democracy, including talks on a new constitution, but
Aung San Suu Kyi's party has boycotted the process, which critics have
called a sham.

The junta again suspended constitutional talks in January after just two
months of deliberation, dashing any hopes of ending the process this year
and deepening international frustration over the lack of reforms.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has repeatedly said that the international
community would not regard the constitutional process as credible if Aung
San Suu Kyi's NLD does not take part.

The junta crushed pro-democracy demonstrations in 1988 and two years later
rejected the result of national elections won by the NLD.

While ASEAN has a policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of
member states, the bloc has become more vocal in line with censure from
the United States, European Union and United Nations.

The United States has a total ban on Myanmar's exports while the European
Union has more targeted measures such as a travel ban on the junta, an
arms embargo and a ban on investment in state companies.

In December, the junta again extended Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest by
six months, and US President George W. Bush, travelling in India earlier
this month, called on all nations to seek the release of the 60-year-old
pro-democracy leader.

Along with Aung San Suu Kyi, the United Nations estimates that more than
1,100 political prisoners are detained in Myanmar -- one of the poorest
and most isolated nations in the world.

Syed Hamid will report on his mission at the 10-member Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)'s meeting of foreign ministers on the
Indonesian island of Bali in April, Malaysia's foreign ministry said.

____________________________________
INTERNATIONAL

March 24, Mizzima News
Human Rights Council no place for Burma: rights group - Mungpi

It would be almost impossible for Burma to gain a seat on the
soon-to-be-established United Nations Human Rights Council the Asian Human
Rights Centre said today.

Members of the UN General Assembly, including Burma, voted in favour of
the creation of the new council on March 15. The council will replace the
widely-criticised Human Rights Commission and is due to be established on
June 19.

While the new council has the overwhelming support of UN members, the
United States has expressed concern over whether countries with appalling
rights records, such as Burma, would be able to gain seats.


But the director of AHRC, Suhash Chakma, told Mizzima it was highly
unlikely Burma would make it anywhere near a seat on the council.

“The fact that Burma does not have the policy for national reconciliation
makes many governments hesitant to support the candidature of Burma,”
Chakma said.

“Unless there is a democratic government it will be very difficult for a
dictatorial country like Burma to become the member of the Human Rights
Council.”

Members on the 47-seat Human Rights Council would be elected by an
absolute majority of votes from among the UN’s 191 members.

The council, which will be a subsidiary body of the UN General Assembly,
will sit all year round and will be held to a greater degree of
accountability than the previous rights commission.

But Chakma said he did not think the new council would have any real
impact on the human rights situations in countries such as Burma as it did
not have the necessary mechanisms to enforce its rulings.

The UN General Assembly has passed more than 17 resolutions condemning the
Burmese military for their failure to allow democracy and the
deteriorating human rights situation in the country.

____________________________________

March 24, Irrawaddy
Peter Gabriel to push for UNSC resolution on Burma

Acclaimed British singer Peter Gabriel will help to push for Burma’s
inclusion on the UN Security Council agenda next month by hosting a film
screening and discussion on the human rights abuses taking place in the
military-ruled country. The event—to be held at the US Senate in
Washington on April 4—will include a screening of the film Always on the
Run: Internally Displaced People in Karen State, produced by WITNESS, a
non-profit rights organization founded by Gabriel. US senators Dianne
Feinstein and Mitch McConnell—architects of the US Burma Freedom Act,
which includes economic sanctions against the junta—will also be present.
“It is long overdue for the UN Security Council to respond to the
deepening crisis in Burma,” said Gabriel. “We need people of conscience to
act now.” The UNSC held its first briefing on Burma in December last year,
following a US-led campaign to address abuses by the junta. No further
action has been taken since then, as those in favor of the US position are
believed to be waiting to see whether Asean’s recent efforts to push
Rangoon to reform produce tangible results.