BurmaNet News, June 2, 2006

[Editor]

June 2, 2006 Issue # 2975

INSIDE BURMA
AFP: Myanmar authorities want to check family photos for security
DVB: Confession of a jail warder: Thwarting the ICRC and fleecing the inmates
SHAN: Detained Shan leader's detained brother moved to Mandalay
Narinjara: Police sergeant faces trial after wife sells bullets

ON THE BORDER
AFP: Myanmar presses offensive against ethnic rebels
Khonumthung: Parents of CNA cadres threatened with dire consequences

BUSINESS / TRADE
AFP: Myanmar says trade surplus hit 1.6 billion dollars in 2005
Xinhua: Malaysian entrepreneurs seeking for industrial zone in Myanmar

REGIONAL
AFP: Indonesia criticises Myanmar over Aung San Suu Kyi

INTERNATIONAL
Irrawaddy: Security Council considers next move on Burma
Irrawaddy: Satellite to document rights abuses in Burma
AFP: UN Security Council resolution against Myanmar has "broad" support: US

OTHER
Security Council Report: Security Council report on Myanmar

____________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

June 2, Agence France Presse
Myanmar authorities want to check family photos for security

Myanmar's authorities have told residents in satellite towns around Yangon
to hang their family photos around their homes for security checks, a
semi-official weekly newspaper reported Friday.

Everyone in Myanmar is already required to maintain an official household
list of everyone who resides in their home, and to report any overnight
guests to authorities.

But now township authorities have told residents living near the capital
to post four by six inch (about 10cm by 15cm), black and white photos of
all family members where they can easily be seen during security checks,
the Myanmar Times reported.

"In the past, they have come to check the household list. But now they
have asked us to hang photos of all our family members at home for
checks," Aung Htwe, a resident of Insein Township, was quoted as saying in
the paper.

Myanmar authorities have steadily increased security around the country
since three simultaneous bomb blasts killed more than 20 people and
injured some 160 people in Yangon in May 2005.

The latest order comes as Myanmar's military rulers are cracking down on
an insurgency by ethnic Karen rebels along the border with Thailand.

____________________________________

June 1, Democratic Voice of Buram
Confession of a warder of Burma’s Tharawaddy jail: Thwarting the ICRC and
fleecing the inmates

Burma's military junta, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC)
suspended visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to
prisons and labour camps across the country at the end of 2005, and it had
not given any specific reasons for the termination of the visits, which
had been going on since 1999. Here, a former warder at Tharawaddy Jail in
lower central Burma who was transferred to a hard labour camp told DVB
what happened:

“It was around August 2005. As the ICRC was about to enter the prison
(check the condition of prisoners), around 10 divisional and township
Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) members came inside
the prison first. They met the ICRC (staff) at the gate. Then they held
discussion with the ICRC. The ICRC told them, you enter one day and we
enter another. Or you go as a team and we go as a team. But the USDA
didn’t accept it. Whether you are going to enter or not, (they told the
ICRC staff), as if they received order from the top or as if it was their
duty, they entered the prison and told the assumed leader of the USDA
prisoners; we need not depend on foreign forces, we can give you rights
within the country. We will arrange correspondence for those who could
not. We will look after those with poor health. You do not need to depend
on foreign organisations like this. You have our organisation, he (USDA
leader) told the prisoners on the first day.”

Asked if the prisoners believed what the USDA leader said, the warder
replied:

“They wanted to believe. It is a case of farting from the top of downward
wind making the dog under the moon happy. As they wanted to believe,
whether it was true or not, they wrote letters for prisoners who lost
contacts with their homes, but they still have no contact. They still
can’t contact anyone from home. On the following day, the ICRC came
according to their duties. But they could not enter. The ICRC had to leave
the prison from the gate at 8pm on the following day. The ICRC didn’t
enter the prison.”

When asked if the USDA members returned to the prison on the following
days, he said:

“As we are civil servants, I will tell you honestly. But don’t unearth
(mention) my name. For the remaining days, he/they drank and ate at the
main jail and gate and went home. Just for the expense of the drinking and
eating, they collected 2000 Kyat from each cell, 38 cells from House 1, 4,
6, 8 and 9 to pay for it. They have the gut to eat and drink from those
who are deprived, poor and in trouble.”

Asked if the eating and drinking means the consumption of alcohol, he said:

“Of course, it is. The USDA members were divided into (two groups) with
five in each. The big USDA animals on divisional and district level were
given a banquet on the upper floor of (the resident) of the main jail
governor. Township USDA members were (entertained) inside the prison. They
did that at the main jail with big table and fleeced the prisoners.”

____________________________________

June 2, Shan Herald Agency for News
Detained Shan leader's detained brother moved to Mandalay

Hkun Oo Kya, elder brother of Shan Nationalities League for Democracy
(SNLD) leader Hkun Tun Oo, both of whom were detained and sentenced to
long term imprisonments, was transferred from Kyaukme in northern Shan
State to Mandalay early in May, according to sources close to the family.

Hkun Oo Kya, 66, who is also a nephew of Sao Kya Seng, the prince of
Hsipaw who mysteriously disappeared during the 1962 coup and custodian of
the Hsipaw palace, a favourite tourist destination, was taken into custody
from his home on 3 August 2005, almost six months following his young
brother's arrest and subsequently went on trial on 2 charges

    * Defamation (Section 124-A): Two tourists were said to have written
in the guestbook expressing their thanks for telling them "the truth"
    * Violation of Library and Museum law: Asking for donations from
tourists visiting the palace

He received a 13 year jail term on 30 September: 10 for the first charge
and 3 for the second, according to Democratic Voice of Burma. His appeal
was turned down and another appeal has been in contemplation.

Applications by his younger brother Hkun Tun Oo, 63, and six other
colleagues have also been rejected by the Supreme Court in Rangoon
yesterday (1 June) without explanation, reported Irrawaddy.

Hkun Oo Kya has an ailing wife, Sao Zarm Phong aka Fern, and two children
Sao Oom Liang and Sao Mo Nim.

____________________________________

June 2, Narinjara News
Police sergeant faces trial after wife sells bullets

U Tun Aung a police sergeant attached to the Police Battalion 2, based in
Buthidaung, was detained by the authorities after his wife was caught
selling bullets to the public, said a source close to the family.

The authorities are now preparing to hear U Tun Aung’s case in a military
court but the trial will be condensed, the source said.

Moe Moe, wife of Sergeant U Tun Aung, has been selling rifle bullets to
local residents in Buthidaung town for some time now. Recently police
officials caught her red-handed with the bullets.

Sergeant Tun Aung has been suspended after his arrest and he may be lose
his job in the police department if found guilty.

One source said that a police deserter, Corporal Tun Khin, placed bullets
in large numbers in the sergeant's house, which is situated outside the
police compound, before he deserted the police department.

Moe Moe has been selling the bullets whenever she needed money for her
household expenses, the source said.

It was learnt that though the authorities detained Sergeant U Tun Aung,
his wife Moe Moe is yet to be arrested.

____________________________________
ON THE BORDER

June 2, Agence France Presse
Myanmar presses offensive against ethnic rebels

Lying on a bed of split bamboo on the earthen floor, a woman cradles her
sick baby who was born in the jungle as she fled her village in eastern
Myanmar to escape army attacks.

The baby is wracked with dysentery. Twenty other patients are crammed into
the makeshift clinic just 20-minutes walk from the Salween River
separating Myanmar and Thailand.

The small camp of bamboo huts is protected by steep, thicket-covered
slopes which the ethnic Karen villagers hope will keep out the advancing
army that has laid waste to their homes as it advances eastward.

"The army surprised our village but we ran as soon as we heard the
shooting," the 37-year-old mother said. "We arrived here three days ago
but we have been in the jungle for a year."

The rebel Karen National Union (KNU) has been battling for autonomy in
eastern Myanmar for more than 50 years, in one of the world's
longest-running insurgencies.

They once controlled broad stretches of Karen state, but a series of
setbacks in recent years have left them with little more than a string of
camps near the Thai border.

The fighting intensifies every year during the dry season when transport
is easier, but the battles this year have dragged into the rainy season,
leading rebel commanders to fear a sustained push by the military in the
coming months.

"We expect to keep fighting right through the rainy season," a rebel
commander said at a small base near a camp for displaced people.

"They are burning the villages and the crops, using people as forced
labor, using torture and shooting anyone on sight in villages that have
been cleared of population," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Rights groups have long accused Myanmar's military rulers of such brutal
tactics, estimating that 540,000 people are displaced in eastern Myanmar,
including not only the Karen but also other ethnic minorities targetted by
the junta.

Some 140,000 others live in refugee camps on the Thai side of the border,
while hundreds of thousands more enter Thailand illegally to seek work.

Since the latest fighting began in February, another 2,000 refugees have
arrived at the Thai border, according to the UN's refugee agency.

"This is common to the Karen people already," KNU spokesman Colonel Nerdah
Mya said of the people most recently forced to flee. "There's nothing they
can do about it, they're just depending on God."

But those fleeing are increasingly squeezed between the advancing army and
the Thai border.

"We moved the camp to this location on April 5 because the fighting is too
intense further inland. We cannot go any further east because that is
Thailand," said the leader of a camp for displaced people.

"We desperately want a ceasefire, peace."

The KNU is believed to have some 4,000 fighters, against a military of an
estimated 485,000 troops.

The two sides had reached a "gentleman's agreement" in 2004 to stop the
fighting while peace talks were underway, but later that year the junta
called off the talks after a shake-up in the government.

The junta has ceasefires with 17 of the ethnic armed groups that had been
fighting against the generals, but shows no sign of resuming talks with
the KNU.

"They say they are not ready for it. They are busy with moving their
capital to Pyinmana,... with internal problems like Aung San Suu Kyi. They
are always trying to clean up their internal house," Nerdah Mya said of
the possibility for new talks.

Analysts have said the junta's creation of a new administrative capital
outside the central town of Pyinmana is the reason for some of the
fighting, as the military tries to secure the region around its new power
center.

Despite some renewed efforts to open a dialogue with the United Nations,
the junta last weekend defied international pressure and extended the
house arrest of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi by another year.

For the mother trying to nurse her baby to health, peace talks and
diplomacy have done little to bring much-need drugs to camps like this
one, which have no electricity or running water.

But here they at least receive food and simple medical care, which is
better than fleeing in the jungle where even food was scarce, she said.

"Sometimes villagers nearby would give us food but mostly we had to eat
whatever we could gather in the jungle," she said.

____________________________________

June 2, Khonumthung News
Parents of CNA cadres threatened with dire consequences

Military authorities in Southern Chin state have threatened parents of
armed dissidents if they do not return.

Colonel San Aung, the commander of Tactical II of Matupi Township ordered
the repatriation of Mr. Van Ram Thang, a former cadre of the Chin National
Army (CNA). The order was issued to Mr. and Mrs. Zaw Tang, the parents of
Mr. Van Ram Thang with a threat that they would face dire consequences if
they did not succeed in making their son return.

A relative of Mr. Van Ram Thang came over to Mizoram, India in May to tell
him about the order of the Burmese military authorities. However, Mr. Van
Ram Thang has dared not return to Burma in spite of the pressure on his
family by the military.

His relative said, “We told him about the order but he did not dare to
return, so we have to suffer.”

Mr. and Mrs. Zaw Tang were detained by the military for three days in
Tactical II headquarters in the month of April. The parents of Miss (L)
Par Zing, a CNA cadre were also reportedly detained by the military along
with Mr. and Mrs. Zaw Tang.

A civilian in authority was quoted as saying, “Van Ram Thang had deserted
the CNA a long time back and he was only a private cadre. I can’t
understand why the military authorities targeted him and his family.”

Since Van Ram Thang did not go back the people believe that the parents of
Van Ram Thang would be imprisoned or fined.

Colonel San Aung is reportedly against the CNA cadres and family members
of the armed group since the Mautpi Football Match Tragedy of June 2004,
when unknown armed men injured his wife in a firing.

____________________________________
BUSINESS / TRADE

June 2, Agence France Presse -- English
Myanmar says trade surplus hit 1.6 billion dollars in 2005

Myanmar's commerce minister said that the impoverished nation's trade
surplus shot up 67 percent last year to 1.6 billion dollars, the highest
level since 1989, according to a semi-official weekly on Friday.

The value of Myanmar's exports jumped to 3.55 billion dollars in fiscal
2005 from 2.9 billion dollars the year before, according to statements by
the commerce minister, Brigadier General Tin Naing Thein in the Myanmar
Times weekly newspaper.

Imports stood at 1.9 billion dollars in the last fiscal year, which ended
March 31, roughly the same level as the year before, he said.

The figures marked a sharp increase in Myanmar's trade surplus, which
stood at 954 million dollars in fiscal 2004, he added.

Myanmar's official statistics are notoriously unreliable, with large
amounts of cross-border trade taking place in frontier regions outside the
military government's control.

Tin Naing Thein said the showing was the best since 1989.

Many of its exports are raw materials like natural gas, teak wood, or
gemstones that are exported to neighboring countries.

The current junta seized power after crushing a pro-democracy uprising in
1988, ending a socialist dictatorship and slowly opening up the economy.

But the country's economy has been reeling under decades of mismanagement
by the military. European Union and US sanctions that have been tightened
since the detention of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in May 2003 are
also biting hard.

The junta last week extended the Nobel laureate's detention by another year.

Myanmar is among the world's least developed countries, lagging far behind
wealthier neighbors like China, India and Thailand.

____________________________________

June 2, Xinhua General News Service
Malaysian entrepreneurs seeking for industrial zone in Myanmar

Malaysian entrepreneurs are seeking to establish a wood-based industrial
zone in Myanmar, timber industry circle said on Friday.

In cooperation with the state-run Myanmar Timber Enterprise, the proposed
industrial zone, to be invested by the Lumber Mart International Co. of
Malaysia, will be set up with about 100 wood- based factories, the sources
said.

Myanmar and Malaysia agreed in February 2004 to set up a joint commission
for bilateral cooperation to promote the two countries' bilateral
cooperation including economic and trade cooperation.

According to official statistics, Malaysia stands as Myanmar's fourth
largest foreign investor after Singapore, Britain and Thailand with 660.75
million U.S. dollars contracted investment having been injected into
Myanmar so far since late 1988, mostly in the sectors of oil and gas,
hotel and engineering services.

There are 19 industrial zones across Myanmar, mainly involved with private
investment including Myanmar-foreign joint ventures.

Meanwhile, to absorb inflow of foreign investments to promote Myanmar's
industrial development, Myanmar is introducing a special industrial zone,
which is the Thilawa featuring export concentration and to be run with
100-percent foreign investment.

There are about 8,000 private industries in the 19 industrial zones in the
country, according to statistics.

Figures also show that bilateral trade between Myanmar and Malaysia
amounted to 225.6 million dollars in the fiscal year 2004- 05 with
Myanmar's export to Malaysia standing at 108.8 million dollars.

____________________________________
REGIONAL

June 2, Agence France Presse
Indonesia criticises Myanmar over Aung San Suu Kyi

Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda on Friday hit out at Myanmar
over the continuing detention of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Wirayuda said the junta could not deflect criticism of the Nobel peace
laureate's detention, which was extended again on Saturday, by saying it
was an internal matter.

"The truth is no country can claim that human rights abuses are its own
internal affairs. Such an excuse is difficult to accept," Wirayuda told
reporters.

Myanmar's military government defied a global clamour for Aung San Suu
Kyi's release by extending her three-year detention by another year. She
has spent 10 of the past 17 years in detention.

The move caused an international uproar, but Myanmar's foreign minister,
traveling in Malaysia, rejected the criticism on Monday, describing the
case as a "domestic issue".

Wirayuda said the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) would
review developments in Myanmar during a meeting in Malaysia next month.

Indonesia and Myanmar are both members of ASEAN, along with Brunei,
Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and
Vietnam.

____________________________________
INTERNATIONAL

June 2, Irrawaddy
Security Council considers next move on Burma - Clive Parker

UN Security Council members are now considering options identified during
Under Secretary-General Ibrahim Gambari’s briefing on Wednesday to tackle
Burma, while the US works on a draft resolution.

According to an account of Gambari’s briefing by Security Council
Report—an independent non-profit body that documents UNSC activities—the
first such option was to “do nothing and wait for the next opportunity for
a briefing,” an approach which is likely to anger rights groups that have
repeatedly called for firm action on Burma.

Wednesday’ briefing—the second on the country at the UNSC—came five months
after the first session in December last year, a period in which rights
groups say the junta killed scores of Karen in the largest offensive
against the group in nearly a decade.

The other options tabled included negotiating terms for a US-led
resolution that would most likely call for the release of National League
for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and an all-inclusive democratization
process, the document added. Should the resolution fail to garner
sufficient support, the UNSC president—currently Denmark—could be called
upon to issue an unspecified statement on Burma.

The remaining option—in the event that Burma is not placed on the
council’s formal agenda—involves taking alternative action, which could
include the appointment of a special envoy to Burma. Sources in Washington
and Thailand have said that former Philippine President Fidel Ramos will
likely fill the vacant post in the near future, although there has still
not been any official statement on the issue.

While council members consider their next move, the US has taken the lead
by drafting a provisional resolution that will likely be introduced
“within weeks,” US State Department spokesperson Tom Casey said on
Thursday, as reported by the Federal News Service.

However, the official report on Wednesday’s briefing confirms that China,
Russia and Japan are currently opposed to a resolution on Burma, as they
do not consider the country to be an international security issue.

Former Russian Ambassador to the UN Andrei Denisov said last year that the
council should consult Asean on what to do on Burma. Significantly,
Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda on Friday told The Associated
Press he thought that the human rights situation in Burma was an
international issue, the first time a member of the bloc has made such a
statement.

Thursday’s report on the Gambari briefing said a resolution had the
support of the US and some European members, without specifically
identifying them.

It is not clear whether other countries comprising the 15-member
council—Argentina, Peru, Qatar, Ghana and the Republic of Congo—would
support a resolution, but as non-permanent members none have the right to
veto such a move, a privilege afforded only to the US, Britain, France,
Russia and China.

Casey said he did not know which members were currently backing the US
position, but Washington had secured “broad and general support for the
idea that the Burmese regime does need to address the serious political
problems and
that the situation in that country is increasingly disturbing
and is now posing a threat to the stability of the region itself,” he
said. A UNSC resolution requires the active support of at least nine
members.

Rights organizations and Burma groups including Amnesty International,
Human Rights Watch and the US Campaign for Burma have called for council
action on Burma for some time.

The same day Gambari gave his briefing, the Karen Women’s Organization
sent an open letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan urging “the
Security Council to uphold its responsibility to protect women, children
and innocent civilians in Karen State.”

The Burma Campaign UK made a similar plea on Thursday: “The United States
government deserves credit for consistently pushing the international
community to take stronger action against the regime in Burma,” director
Yvette Mahon said. “We call on all Security Council members to support a
resolution on Burma.”

____________________________________

June 2, Irrawaddy
Satellite to document rights abuses in Burma - Clive Parker

Satellite technology that has provided irrefutable evidence of the
destruction of civilian settlements in Zimbabwe will soon be used to
document similar abuses in Burma, says the US team conducting the
research.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science based in
Washington told The Irrawaddy that it has started working with the US
Campaign for Burma on how the technology can best be applied to Burma.

Originally the team had planned to focus on prisons in Burma, similar to a
project entitled The Hidden Gulag in which the same technology helped
identify a sprawling secret detention facility in North Korea. Lars
Bromley, a senior program associate at AAAS, says the team has instead
decided to focus their efforts on documenting the destruction of villages
in Karen State.

The cross-border relief organization the Free Burma Rangers says that up
to 18,000 people have been displaced during recent attacks by the Burmese
Army, which is accused of murder, torture, rape, the destruction of
villages and personal possessions, including food, and of forced
evictions.

The AAAS technology was used this week to confirm how the authorities in
Zimbabwe are destroying shanty towns there and driving people from their
homes. Bromley said the same high resolution imagery technology would be
used to “provide before and after shots of villages [in Karen State].” The
first results are expected within a month, he added.

AAAS—which first began talking substantively on the project with USCB last
week—has already started to study NASA images in an attempt to identify
fires in Karen State. Once evidence has been identified, the team will
then obtain archived and more recent high-resolution images from a
satellite called Quickbird—the most powerful commercial imaging satellite
available—owned by Colorado-based DigitalGlobe.

“Special attention will be paid to acquiring high resolution images of
villages while they are on fire and possibly under attack,” Bromley said.

While working on the situation in Karen State, the AAAS team is
concurrently planning a study targeting rights abuses in Darfur, Sudan—two
projects Bromley said “will have much in common.” The UN Security Council
passed a resolution on Sudan in July 2004 calling on the government to
disarm a militia under its control, the Janjaweed, which is held
responsible for the deaths of an estimated 70,000 people.

The UN special advisor on genocide, Juan Mendez, is a partner on AAAS’s
year-long human rights program which is funded by the Chicago-based
MacArthur Foundation. UN Under Secretary-General Ibrahim Gambari told the
UN Security Council during a briefing on Burma in December last year that
Mendez had been collecting “information from different sources within and
beyond the United Nations system concerning allegations of indiscriminate
killings of large numbers of civilians, forced relocations, displacement,
rape used as a weapon of war and forced labor affecting particular ethnic
and national groups” in Burma.

Announcing the launch of AAAS’s human rights program in January, director
Audrey Chapman said the technology available “may
provide compelling
documentation to encourage intervention and to determine responsibility”
in cases of human rights violations “in geographic areas where it is
difficult to send observers.”

____________________________________

June 2, Agence France Presse
UN Security Council resolution against Myanmar has "broad" support: US

The United States has "broad" support for a resolution it plans to
introduce in the UN Security Council compelling Myanmar's military junta
to change its repressive policies, the State Department said Thursday.

"And in terms of support for it, I do think that there is broad and
general support for the idea that the Burmese regime does need to address
the serious political problems in that country," department spokesman Tom
Casey told reporters.

He did not specify which members in the council supported the move, saying
the situation in Myanmar "is increasingly disturbing and is now posing a
threat to the stability of the region itself."

"I'm not trying to predict for you any particular standing by individual
members," Casey said, responding to a question. "I haven't done a survey
of Security Council members at this point."

While the United States, Britain, France and several other council members
have said the situation in Myanmar represented a threat to regional
security, Japan, China and Russia have reportedly expressed opposing views
at a council briefing on Wednesday.

The State Department had said after the rare briefing that Washington
intended to pursue the unprecedented resolution to "underscore the
international community's concerns about the situation" there.

The concerns include the "unjustifiable detention" of democracy icon Aung
San Suu Kyi and lack of "an inclusive and democratic political process" in
Myanmar.

Casey said that he did not have a specific date at which the United States
intended to introduce the resolution at the 15-state council.

"We're working on some other preliminary actions in New York at this
point. Certainly we expect to do it in the coming weeks," he said.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who has been detained since
May 2003 inside her lakeside home in central Yangon without a telephone,
has spent 10 of the past 17 years in detention.

Tuesday marked the third anniversary of an attack against a convoy in
which she was traveling with other members of her opposition National
League for Democracy party in northern Myanmar, which led to her latest
house arrest.

The NLD won a landslide election victory in 1990, but the military
government never recognized the result.

No one has pushed for a resolution on Myanmar at the Security Council so
far despite international uproar in the past nearly two decades over
alleged human rights abuses by the military rulers in the Southeast Asian
state.

The United States put the international spotlight on Myanmar in December,
when it successfully pushed the Security Council to hold a briefing on
human rights and other problems there for the first time.

In the second briefing, Wednesday, UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari told the
council about his trip to Yangon last week when he was allowed by the
junta to meet with the 60-year-old Aung San Suu Kyi, diplomats said.

Hope had swelled for her release after the rare meeting, but the junta
defied an international outcry demanding her freedom and extended her
house arrest.

Meanwhile, Refugees International, a Washington-based advocacy group,
warned Thursday that the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar was worsening and
called on the US government to provide more humanitarian aid to the
stricken country.

It said Washington's ongoing investment and trade sanctions on the
military regime were hindering the flow of significant aid to Myanmar.

At least half a million people are internally displaced in the eastern
part of the country alone and more than one million more have fled to
neighboring nations, the group said in a report entitled "Ending the
waiting game."

The people in Myanmar "suffer from disease, malnutrition and poverty at
alarming rates and those who have been forced from their homes are
particularly vulnerable," said report author Kavita Shukla.

She said the people "simply cannot wait for a civilian government to be
put into power before the outside world comes to their aid.

"It is unconscionable to sit back and watch their plight without taking
concrete measures to help them."

While humanitarian aid has been reduced over the last two decades, the
report said disease, poverty, malnutrition and human rights abuses have
risen in Myanmar.

____________________________________
OTHER

June 1, Security Council Report
Security Council report on Myanmar

Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Ibrahim Gambari briefed the
Council on 31 May 2006 on his visit to Myanmar as predicted in our 26 May
2006 Update. After the briefing, which took place under “Other Matters”
all the European countries, the US, Russia, China, Japan and Ghana made
statements. The Council did not take any immediate action. However, the US
proposed a draft resolution on which it has began bilateral consultation
and which it is expected to circulate shortly. The details of the
resolution are not known but it is expected to call for Aung San Suu Kyi’s
release and an inclusive and democratic political process. Other areas
that it may cover are release of all political prisoners and humanitarian
access.

Gambari’s briefing took place just four days after the Myanmar government
chose to extend Suu Kyi’s house arrest for another year in spite of
international pressure for her release. Gambari during his meeting with
Senior General Tan Shwe had asked for Suu Kyi’s release and the
Secretary-General had issued a personal appeal to Than Shwe on Friday.
ASEAN, in a rare move away from their policy of non-interference in each
other’s domestic affairs, had called for the release of Suu Kyi in
December 2005.

Gambari’s main message at the briefing was that while the UN Secretariat
is disappointed that his visit had not lead to Suu Kyi’s release, the UN
should press ahead and not give up. He also stressed that democratization
and national reconciliation is a process and not an event. He said that
the support of the Council was important in helping the Secretariat carry
out the good offices of the Secretary-General and that the UN should
continue to work with interested member states and partners like ASEAN to
continue to push for Suu Kyi’s release.

The Myanmar government’s actions have strengthened the resolve of the US
and some European countries to get the Council involved in Myanmar. The US
has stated that by extending Suu Kyi’s detention, Myanmar has shown that
it is unwilling to engage in a credible and inclusive political process.

At the same time it seems that members like China, Russia and Japan have
made it clear that their positions have not changed and that it would be
hard for them to accept a resolution. Having action taken on Myanmar under
the formal agenda of the Council is still not an option for them. China
views the situation in Myanmar as an internal issue that needs to be
solved nationally. Japan has also indicated that it would find it
difficult to accept a resolution on Myanmar as it sees the situation as a
humanitarian and human rights issue that should not be discussed by the
Council.

The European countries are likely to see some merit in the US resolution
but there is awareness that this is an issue that could polarize the
Council without effectively increasing pressure on the authorities in
Rangoon. There is also a sense that Gambari’s visit has opened up a window
of opportunity that should be used productively.

The Council’s options now are:
            • Do nothing and wait for the next opportunity for a briefing;
            • Negotiate agreed terms for the US draft resolution and table
it for adoption on an agenda;
            • As an alternative, issue a Presidential Statement if the
resolution is not accepted; or
            • Decide on action short of opening a formal Council agenda
e.g. encouraging by way of a letter the Secretary-General’s
good offices and the appointment of a Special Envoy who would
brief the Council in the future and issuing a statement to the
press.