BurmaNet News, August 3, 2006

[Editor]

August 3, 2006 Issue # 3017


INSIDE BURMA
Irrawaddy: Forced labor continues in Arakan
Irrawaddy: Former top spook refused passport

BUSINESS / TRADE
Xinhua: Myanmar PM meets Chinese bank president
Bangkok Post: PTT strikes petroleum in Burma
DVB: Rice price rises again in Burma

REGIONAL
AFP: Thai PM says he asked Myanmar for Suu Kyi's release

INTERNATIONAL
Washington Times: Suu Kyi supporters cast Net
Irrawaddy: Burma’s brain drain

OPINION / OTHER
Financial Times: Asia's former tigers are moving towards irrelevance -
Victor Mallet

____________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

August 3, Irrawaddy
Forced labor continues in Arakan - Clive Parker

A report about conditions on the ground in Burma’s Arakan State released
on Thursday suggests that forced labor in the area remains widespread.

Having recently returned from documenting the situation in Arakan, a Free
Burma Rangers relief team says that villagers in Buddhist communities
continue to be forced to work without payment at army camps and on
infrastructure projects under threat of arrest if they refuse. FBR
conducts cross-border humanitarian operations in Burma, particularly in
Karen State.

One 42-year-old farmer in Palawa Township described how one person from
each household was forced to help build the new Arpound Thar Road that
runs through the area. “Family members
that do not send someone to work
would be arrested. Every laborer was forced to bring rations and other
tools to be used during construction.”

Villagers received no compensation despite the authorities saying that 16
million kyat (US $11,900) would be provided to cover construction costs.
The farmer also noted that laborers had to work on International Labor Day
on May 1, a national holiday.

On the same day, junta leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe gave a May Day address in
the new capital Naypyidaw, during which he blamed “stooges of the
colonialists” for blocking efforts by the junta to improve working
conditions and economic development in Burma.

The residents of Palawa have also recently been instructed to send
laborers between the ages of 15 and 40 to a newly established army camp.
Light Infantry Battalion 289—lead by Commanding Officer Kyaw
Man—instructed 11 villages in the area to supply 20 people each to build
and maintain the camp. Villagers had to arrive at six in the morning and
work eight hours a day without payment.

Burma’s Ministry of Labor and the International Labour Organization’s
Rangoon office were both unavailable for comment on Thursday.

The latest reports from FBR appear to back up previous accounts of
conditions in Arakan State. Most rights organizations have focused on the
plight of Arakan’s Rohingyas, a Muslim group, but there is also evidence
that similar cases of forced labor and land confiscation occur in Buddhist
communities in the area.

Buddhist and Muslim refugees in Bangladesh cite such incidents as the
reason why they have fled their homeland—in neighboring Chittagong
Province alone there are more than 20,000 Muslim refugees. Some estimates
put the local Buddhist Arakanese population at about 100,000, although the
exact number is unknown.

Last week, Burma’s ambassador to Bangladesh, Thane Myint, visited a
Rohingya refugee camp near the Burma border and told them they should
return to Arakan because “the situation in Burma is improving,”
Chittagong-based Kaladan News reported.

Thane Myint in April dismissed reports of forced labor and other human
rights abuses in Arakan State during an interview with The Irrawaddy. “To
say this is a government policy, this is bullshit,” he said.

____________________________________

August issue, Irrawaddy
Former top spook refused passport

A senior intelligence officer who worked under former prime minister and
military intelligence chief Gen Khin Nyunt has been denied a passport, a
well-informed source told The Irrawaddy.

Former Maj-Gen Kyaw Win, number two man in the disbanded Office of the
Chief of Military Intelligence, told close friends that he and his family
applied for passports at the Home Affairs Ministry but were told that
permission to leave the country could not be granted.

Kyaw Win, formerly deputy chief of the OCMI, worked closely with Khin
Nyunt, who was toppled in 2004 and is now under house arrest. The
bespectacled officer joined military intelligence in the early 1990s and
was actively involved in ceasefire negotiations with ethnic insurgents. He
was also known to be one of the chief negotiators between opposition
leader Aung San Suu Kyi and government leaders.

Analysts believe that junta leader Than Shwe and senior government
officers might suspect that Kyaw Win will seek political asylum if he
leaves the country. Since the removal of Khin Nyunt and the dismantling of
his OCMI, some military intelligence officers and low ranking officials
have quietly left Burma and sought asylum in third countries. The risk of
such a valuable and high-profile figure as Kyaw Win also defecting to the
west is thought to be behind the passport ban.

The soft-spoken and intellectual Kyaw Win has written several essays and
articles under different pseudonyms and has published a book of his
photographic work. He enjoyed close and cordial relations with Than Shwe
and escaped the 2004 purge. Immediately after the 2004 shakeup he is
believed to have arranged safe passage out of the country for close
associates and a former girlfriend, all of whom were able to apply for
asylum in the west.

____________________________________
BUSINESS / TRADE

August 3, Xinhua General News Service
Myanmar PM meets Chinese bank president

Yangon: Myanmar Prime Minister General Soe Win said on Thursday that
Myanmar wishes to establish ties with banks of China and launch
cooperation to promote economic development of the two countries.

Soe Win made the remarks when meeting with visiting President of the China
Development Bank Chen Yuan in the new capital of Nay Pyi Taw.

Noting that Chinese banks started reform earlier than Myanmar for more
than a decade and possess many successful experiences, Soe Win said the
country would like to learn from China in these aspects.

Chen Yuan also called on Myanmar Minister of National Planning and
Economic Development U Soe Tha and Minister of Finance and Revenue
Major-General Hla Tun earlier on the same day.

It is the first time for a China Development Bank delegation to have
visited Myanmar.

____________________________________

August 3, Bangkok Post
PTT strikes petroleum in Burma

Thailand's petroleum giant, PTT Pcl has discovered a new petroleum source
in an offshore concessionary area in neighbouring Burma.

Maroot Mrigadat, President of PTT Exploration and Production Public
Company Limited (PTTEP), an affiliate of PTT, announced the company had
discovered the potential petroleum source in the sea, about 250-300
kilometres south of Rangoon, the former Burmese capital.

The new petroleum source was located at the "Zatila-1" well, in the M9
area where PTTEP has been granted a concessionary right by the Myanmar
military junta to conduct petroleum explortion and production for a
certain period of time.

"PTTEP's affiliate, PTTEP International Co discovered the new petroleum
source on June 28 and we're testing the commercial prospect of the
newly-discovered well and will soon report to the public," Mr. Maroot told
journalists.

As a country heavily relying on imported oil, Thailand is seeking new
petroleum sources and promoting local consumption of alternative energy
through both public and private sectors' campaigns to reduce the country's
reliance on the imported fuel amid continuing global oil price hikes
currently.

____________________________________

August 2, Democratic Voice of Burma
Rice price rises again in Burma

Due to the late atrocious weather during the harvests of last cold season,
paddy yields in Burma had deceased causing the price of rice, the staple
diet, to rise to unusual level this rainy season, rice merchants and
consumers told DVB.

To make the matter worse, due to restrictions on the transportation of
rice from one region to another, the sale of rice is very slow in rice
producing regions such the Irrawaddy and Pegu Divisions while consumers in
Mandalay and Sagaing Divisions in central Burma are facing shortage of
rice and unjust high prices.


>From last month, the authorities banned rice produced in Irrawaddy

Division from being transported to nearby Rangoon Division and rice from
Rangoon is barred from being transported to Pegu Division.

Merchants and consumers in other regions of Burma where restrictions on
the sale and transportation of rice have not been imposed, the price of
rice is reported to be quite moderate and stable.

____________________________________
REGIONAL

August 3, Agence France Presse
Thai PM says he asked Myanmar for Suu Kyi's release - Anusak Konglang

Bangkok: Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said Thursday that he
asked Myanmar's junta leader to free detained democracy icon Aung San Suu
Kyi during his surprise trip to the military-ruled country.

"I will not disclose any details because it's not proper to do so,"
Thaksin said of his conversation with Senior General Than Shwe.

"All you need to know is that we conveyed our points of concern as their
neighbour and said it (a release) would benefit regional politics," he
said.

Foreign Minister Kantathi Suphamongkhon told AFP he had also expressed his
disappointment over the Nobel peace laureate's continued house arrest when
he met his counterpart Nyan Win.

"Myanmar said it's considering releasing Aung San Suu Kyi but could not
say when," he said.

A spokesman for Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party
said he was hopeful that Thaksin's visit, coupled with recent pressure
from Washington and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, would lead
to the release of the democracy leader.

"They have to make a settlement. This is their only way out. They cannot
extend her house arrest many more times," Lwin told AFP in Yangon.

State media in Myanmar have made no mention of the visit and officials
have declined to discuss the talks.

Thaksin unexpectedly flew to Myanmar on Wednesday to meet Than Shwe at his
new administrative capital in a jungle compound outside the central town
of Pyinmana, which no other foreign leader has yet seen.

The rare meeting with the reclusive junta leader caught many by surprise,
but Thaksin said he had requested the talks when he met Myanmar
intelligence officials in Thailand last month.

Than Shwe only agreed to meet at the last minute, Thai officials said.

Thaksin said he called Philippine President Gloria Arroyo, whose country
holds ASEAN's rotating chair, before making the trip.

Arroyo gave him messages to convey on behalf of ASEAN, which held heated
debates over Myanmar during a meeting last week, the prime minister said.

At the end of the meeting, the group issued a statement expressing concern
over the regime's failure to move toward democracy, although it did not
mention Aung San Suu Kyi specifically.

"I brought many concerns from ASEAN as well as from the international
community. Thailand is a close neighbor and so we feel that we can talk
and inform them about those concerns," Thaksin told reporters.

The suddenness of the trip sparked a swirl of speculation in Thailand that
Thaksin might have tried to push either personal or national business
interests in its resource-rich neighbor.

But the billionaire prime minister said he no longer had any business
interests in Myanmar since his family sold off his telecom empire this
year.

One of his companies, now owned by Singapore's state-linked Temasek
Holdings, provides Myanmar with satellite coverage for telephone and
Internet services.

Thailand is one of Myanmar's biggest trading partners, and has been
especially eager to tap the country's energy resources for its own growing
economy.

Thailand's largest energy firm PTT said Monday it had joined the race
against China and India in a bid for exclusive rights to offshore natural
gas reserves in western Myanmar.

Energy minister Viset Choopiban Thursday confirmed that Thaksin had raised
the issue of energy cooperation during the meeting.

"Thailand asked about the progress of Myanmar's consideration of the
proposal of PTT Exploration and Production for additional petroleum
concessions in Myanmar," said Viset.

Thailand already pipes about one billion cubic feet of gas per day from
Myanmar's offshore reserves in the southeast in the Andaman Sea.

____________________________________
INTERNATIONAL

August 3, The Washington Times
Suu Kyi supporters cast Net - Richard Ehrlich

Bangok: Aung San Suu Kyi, the word's most famous political prisoner, now
has a MySpace.com Web page, created by a Washington organization that
hopes Internet activists will help free her from house arrest in Rangoon
and donate money.

"Female, 61 years old. Status: Single," says Mrs. Suu Kyi's introduction
on MySpace, next to her color photo.

The Burmese widow's British husband died several years ago, leaving their
two sons to grow up overseas while she has languished for 11 of the past
16 years under house arrest in Burma, a country also known as Myanmar.

"Religion: Buddhist. Zodiac Sign: Gemini. Smoke/Drink: No/No. Children:
Proud parent. Education: College graduate," her page adds, along with
other personal data.

Freedom Campaign established the MySpace page so a relatively young, hip,
cyber-active audience could learn more about the Nobel Peace laureate and
pressure the military regime to allow democracy in the impoverished,
isolated, Buddhist-majority Southeast Asian country.

The site was designed by San Francisco Bay Area company Bass Web Design,
which has worked for the satirical animated television series, South Park,
among other clients.

In her "About me" section, Mrs. Suu Kyi was described as a heroine, but
the adjective was apparently misspelled, making her sound a bit druggy:
"In an increasingly jaded world of political apathy and power-hungry
institutions, Aung San Suu Kyi is truly that rare heroin of legend -- a
symbol of hope -- championing the rights of individuals in the face of
human rights violations and dictatorial oppression."

Mrs. Suu Kyi's MySpace page is already a success among more than 160
people who were asked, or inspired, to become her "friends" and link her
to their own MySpace pages.

For example, Suu Kyi now has an online "friend" coyly named, "no
commercial potential," who commented: "Thank you for adding me and thank
you for making this page. She is in my heroes list.

"Burma no oil there, hence the West didn't go in. Typical and sad. Pleased
to meet you."

One click on "no commercial potential" connects to a MySpace site
revealing that person is British, concerned about UFOs and does not like
President Bush or Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Wendy, 28, in Brooklyn, N.Y., commented that Mrs. Suu Kyi was "an amazing
woman and more people need to know her name."

Launched several weeks ago, www.myspace.com/thefreedomcampaign displays
Mrs. Suu Kyi's page and links to Freedom Campaign's Web site which asks
viewers for tax-deductible donations, "to raise awareness for Aung San Suu
Kyi."

Freedom Campaign said it was a non-profit organization incorporated in
1993 and a joint effort between the Human Rights Action Center and U.S.
Campaign for Burma.

In 1990, during Burma's last election, Mrs. Suu Kyi's National League for
Democracy won more than 80 percent of parliament's seats. The ruling
military ignored the poll results.

____________________________________

August issue, Irrawaddy
Burma’s brain drain - Kyaw Zwa Moe

Most students who go abroad travel on a one-way ticket

Western-educated Ye Aung is just the kind of man Burma’s air force needs.
He’s a graduate in electrical engineering and computer science and a
dedicated airman. But Ye Aung won’t be helping his home country boost its
air power—he joined the US Air Force after completing his studies last
year at the University of California, Berkeley.

Electrical engineers are in big demand by the US Air Force, and Ye Aung,
stationed at McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey, can expect swift
promotion. Less than six years ago he was at high school in Burma,
contemplating his slim chances of building a secure and well-paid future.

Like thousands of young Burmese before him, he sought fulfillment abroad.
“I left my country to give my life stability, and that’s also the main
reason I joined the US Air Force,” he told me in a phone interview. For Ye
Aung, stability means the opportunity to earn a secure living in a country
free from the restrictions and uncertainties of life in Burma.

Few of the young Burmese lucky enough to study overseas return home to
live and work. Those who exchange the good life in the US, Canada,
Australia or Europe for the economic, educational and political strictures
of life under the generals are pitied by the ones who elect to stay
abroad.

“If someone says they’re going back [after completing their studies
abroad], they are regarded as a fool,” said Thin Thin, who is studying
education at William Penn University in Iowa. “It’s human nature to look
for green pastures,” she said. “We leave our country because there are no
green pastures there any more.”

Nevertheless, 24-year-old Thin Thin will be returning to Burma when she
completes her studies. She was a teacher before traveling to the US two
years ago, and her dream is to open a private school in her home country.
“I want to share with children what I have learned here,” she said. “I
will teach them critical, creative and analytical thinking, which are
unfamiliar to Burma’s education system.”

Thin Thin said that although she could earn more in the US she would miss
her family and friends. The lure of earning good money was the main reason
Burmese students remained abroad after completing their studies, she
said—“If they had the opportunity to make a good living in their own
country, I think they would return home.”

For Thin Thin personally it’s more important to contribute something to
her home country and local community than to lead a comfortable life
abroad. “It depends on what you value,” she said.

Ye Aung loses no sleep over his decision to turn his back on the country
of his birth. “I spent 17 years of my life in Burma, but the government
didn’t do anything for me,” he said. He feels no sense of gratitude
towards Burma—on the contrary: “I’d really like to serve my home country,
but I’m serving the US because I owe it gratitude.”

Although the skills Ye Aung has acquired in the US could be put to good
use in Burma’s air force, Thin Thin says the difficulty of applying in
Burma the knowledge learnt in western universities is an additional reason
why so many Burmese students elect to stay abroad after completing their
studies. “What is learnt here won’t fit in our home country,”

The opposite is true, too—qualifications obtained in Burma are rarely
recognized abroad, a sad state of affairs for a country that was once
among the region’s leaders in educational standards. Degrees and diplomas
obtained at Burmese universities and colleges are not recognized
internationally and are practically useless within Burma.

After graduating from Burma’s prestigious Yangon (Rangoon) Institute of
Technology in 2004, with a degree in electronic engineering, Khin Ye Lwin
had difficulty finding suitable employment. “In Burma, it’s difficult for
electronic engineers to get a job, and the salary for them is low,” she
said. So she left home seven months ago to study for a master’s degree at
Singapore’s Nanyang Institutional University. “It is good to be here
because I wouldn’t be able to do anything in Burma.” Many students who
graduated from her college were now studying and working in Singapore, she
said.

Singapore has been a popular destination for Burmese students since the
1990s. The city state suffers from a manpower shortage and lures foreign
students with offers of permanent resident status and 80 percent loans.
Recipients repay the loans by working for the Singapore government after
completing their studies.

China is also becoming a favorite destination for young Burmese wanting to
study abroad. The Rangoon journal Flower News recently reported that about
a dozen Chinese universities were offering places for Burmese students,
who were attracted by the comparatively low fees and living costs.

Thin Thin is learning Chinese at William Penn, apparently unaware of the
irony inherent in an American university teaching young Burmese a language
they can employ in strengthening ties between Burma and China. Thin Thin
draws a comparison with the relationship between the US and Mexico. While
she sees the necessity of Burma working more closely with China, she adds:
“I am afraid that in the next 20 or 25 years, when China is very rich, my
country will be a kind of Mexico.”

____________________________________
OPINION / OTHER

August 3, Financial Times
Asia's former tigers are moving towards irrelevance - Victor Mallet

Perhaps it is unlucky for those who run the former "tiger" economies of
south-east Asia that Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, delights
in the comedy of the absurd: in his skit at their annual dinner this year
in Kuala Lumpur, he portrayed an improbable future in which he was briefed
by a Kremlin official about the merciless demands of the world's only
superpower - the Association of South East Asian Nations.

The joke is on Asean, for in the real world the group remains a diplomatic
midget. Condoleezza Rice, the USsecretary of state, found this out the
hard way. Last year, she was castigated for ceding the field to China by
missing the meetings with Asean foreignministers and the subsequent Asean
Regional Forum, a security group known as ARF. This year, a chastened Ms
Rice decided not to repeat the snub and was mocked at home in the USfor
playing Brahms on the piano in Kuala Lumpur while the Middle East burned.

Asean, however, failed to deliveranything to Ms Rice in exchange for her
piano recital. An organisation of10 countries, with a population of500m
and the economic weight to match, is in danger of becoming adiplomatic
irrelevance as it approaches the 40th anniversary of its founding next
year.

The Kuala Lumpur meeting was not entirely valueless. Asean ministers
agreed to allow citizens two weeks of visa-free travel in other
memberstates. Some governments also pushed for the creation of a regional
economic community five years earlier thanthe previously envisaged date of
2020. The invited ministers of the rival nations of Japan and China
engagedin what the Japanese called "meaningful discussions" in a men's
room atthe convention centre, heralding the start of a negotiating style
labelled"toilet diplomacy".

Yet Asean remains less than the sum of its disparate parts - its members
include democratic, Muslim Indonesia; the fast-growing economy of Vietnam;
and the wealthy city-state of Singapore; as well as Burma, the Brunei
sultanate, Cambodia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand.

Among this year's failures, Asean made no headway in persuading Burma to
end the junta's egregious human rights abuses. Nor did theARF, known from
its acronym and its inactivity as "the dog that doesn't bark", seriously
rebuke North Korea for its recent missile launches orits nuclear weapons
programmes.

Even in seeking to liberalise regional trade and investment in goods and
services, Asean seems to have run out of steam. The once tigerish
economies of Malaysia and Thailand are growing at less than 6 per cent a
year - slower than those of Ghana and Botswana.

The case of Burma illustrates everything that is wrong with the
consensual, non-confrontational approach that south-east Asian diplomats
call "the Asean way". Asean has no minimum standards for members and so
far only the vaguest principles to which they must adhere. There are
therefore no firm grounds for singling out the junta for its cruel and
undemocratic behaviour. When faced with the need for action, south-east
Asian governments are apt to resort to feeble excuses about not wanting to
interfere in the affairs of others.

Syed Hamid Albar, the Malaysianforeign minister and unsuccessful Asean
envoy to Burma, has won favourable attention in the west for his recent
harsh criticism of the country's ruling generals and his support for Aung
San Suu Kyi, the detained pro-democracy campaigner.

Yet what irked Mr Syed Hamid and his Asean colleagues the most was not Ms
Suu Kyi's detention or the government's wider abuses - they have been
happening for years without any action from Malaysia or Asean - but the
fact that he was personally rebuffed by the junta and that Asean's
international reputation is starting to suffer.

It has been uncomfortable for nations that were the toast of bankers and
investors in the 1990s to find themselves so quickly eclipsed by China and
India. If they want to keep attracting performances from the Lavrovs and
Rices of this world and simultaneously engage in the serious business of
regional diplomacy, Asean leaders need to develop a clear idea of how they
see the world and how they want to improve it.

Mr Syed Hamid has conceded that China and India now have so much influence
in Burma that he needstheir help if his calls for reconciliation and
democratisation are to succeed. The danger is that neither China nor India
will be in the least inclined to heed him. Asean has discovered the
importance of democratic principles too late for Burma - and too late for
its own good.