BurmaNet News, September 23-25, 2006

[Editor]

September 23-25, 2006 Issue # 3052


INSIDE BURMA
AFP: Myanmar's military supremo Than Shwe paves way for successor
Irrawaddy: Local admin changes hint of top-level shuffle
DVB: Counter-media campaign: Burma junta denies report of resignations
Irrawaddy: Ceasefire groups told to oppose UNSC
Bangkok Post: Burma regime party rejects democracy

ON THE BORDER
South China Morning Post: The dispossessed
Irrawaddy: Thailand-Burma border crossings reopen

BUSINESS / TRADE
Narinjara News: Burma's natural gas contributes to $1.3 billion trade surplus
Nation: Competition intense for Burmese gas

REGIONAL
AFP: Thai coup darkens hopes for democracy in Myanmar: analysts

INTERNATIONAL
Asian Tribune: Burma’s crisis will not be overlooked says US first lady
Laura Bush

____________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

September 24, Agence France Presse
Myanmar's military supremo Than Shwe paves way for successor

Myanmar's secretive junta leader Than Shwe remains firmly entrenched as
head of state of one of Asia's poorest nation's despite control of the
armed forces shifting to his trusted protege.

Senior General Than Shwe has ensured his own future personal security by
agreeing to his deputy taking over as commander-in-chief in the first
major shift for more than a decade, according to sources.

Shwe Mann was the military's joint chief of staff and its third-most
powerful man who had been person-ally groomed by Than Shwe for the job.

The move appeared designed to ensure that the junta's iron-fisted rule
will continue as the 73-year-old supremo, who keeps his nation under a
blanket of fear, begins to worry about his age and his health, analysts
said.

"Shwe Man taking over as commander in chief has been long in the
pipeline," said Aung Naing Oo, a Myanmar analyst based in Thailand.

"This guy has been instructed by the leadership" to prepare him for the
post, he added.
As the senior general leading the junta, Than Shwe has styled himself as a
reincarnated king, creating a new capital outside the central town of
Pyinmana.

While Than Shwe is generally seen both inside and outside of the country
as a malevolent leader catering to his personal whims and fancies, as well
as that of his wife and four children, he appears to see himself as a
visionary.

"Despite everything, he obviously wants to go down in history as a
benevolent king," one analyst in Yangon said.

He has embarked on a vast campaign of public works in the fashion of the
ancient monarchs even as the economy crumbled, building pagodas, bridges,
roads, dams and irrigation canals.
But he began life more humbly. Than Shwe's first job was as a postal clerk
in Meikhtilar, a thriving business town near Mandalay where the main air
force base is located. At age 20, he enlisted as an officer-cadet in the
army of his newly independent nation.

He rose through the ranks, working for a time in a roving
psychological-warfare unit, until becoming deputy defence minister in
1985.

When pro-democracy unrest broke out in 1988, former dictator Ne Win fell
from power and a military junta took control, with Than Shwe among its 21
members.

The junta organized elections in 1990, which were won -- to the military's
great surprise -- by the upstart National League for Democracy, headed by
Aung San Suu Kyi.

The military never allowed the NLD to take power, and after Than Shwe
became the junta's leader in 1992, he officially voided the election
results and detained Aung San Suu Kyi -- even as she received the Nobel
Peace Prize.

Instead he launched the process of writing a new constitution, which he
claimed was needed before the military could hand over power. That process
is still ongoing, with a new round of talks due to start next month.

Than Shwe has kept Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for more than 10
years in three major periods of detention, and left her NLD marginalized.

He has been equally harsh with his rivals within the military.

In October 2004, he sacked General Khin Nyunt, the then-prime minister and
powerful chief of the pervasive military intelligence organization, which
had been an important and feared instrument of the junta.

Than Shwe dismantled the entire military intelligence network, detained
Khin Nyunt and his family, as well as hundreds of his allies.

Khin Nyunt had been perceived as something of a moderate, who was at least
willing to speak with the international community.

He had sold Than Shwe the idea of a seven-step "road map" to democracy,
hoping to convince the world that reforms were coming.

But Than Shwe has opted to use the process as a stepping stone to
guarantee his personal security in the future, pushing his constitutional
project as a means to enshrine his power.
"What he is aiming for is his future security, personal supremacy,
military supremacy and legitimacy -- all in that order," said one analyst
in Myanmar, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

____________________________________

September 25, Irrawaddy
Local admin changes hint of top-level shuffle

Burma’s military leaders are planning to change the make up of
administrative bodies at state, division, district and township levels,
says an official document obtained by The Irrawaddy—adding fuel to rumors
of major changes in the junta leadership.

The two page statement, signed by Lt-Gen Thein Sein, secretary 1 of the
State Peace and Development Council, announced the changes on September
18, one day after a military leaders’ quarterly meeting in Naypyidaw
ended. It said the new structure of the administrative bodies for local
level will be fixed with representatives from the General Administration
Department and Ministry of Home Affairs and Planning Department and
Ministry of National Planning and Economic Development.

According to the document, army chiefs will continue to chair most
administrative groups.

But it said Thein Sein urged new civilian representatives to learn to
prepare to take those positions in future.

Last Friday, reports emerged saying Burma’s top leader, Snr-Gen Than Shwe,
who currently serves as Commander-in-Chief of the Burmese armed forces,
and his deputy, army chief Vice Snr-Gen Maung Aye, had handed over their
positions to Gen Thura Shwe Mann, currently army chief-of-staff, and
former military commander Maj-Gen Thura Myint Aung.

But both Than Shwe and Maung Aye appeared in reports in The New Light of
Myanmar on Saturday as normal.

However, Burmese observers believe that the reshuffling among local
administrative bodies is a hint of coming changes at the top.

Aung Kyaw Zaw, a Burmese military analyst based in China, said top-level
changes might become known soon. “Though leadership of the armed forces
might shift to his trusted protégé, Than Shwe will remain firmly in the
position of head of state and may become chairman of a military commission
like in the Chinese model.”

____________________________________

September 24, Democratic Voice of Burma
Counter-media campaign: Burma junta denies report of resignations

Burma military junta, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) media
yesterday said recent reports by AFP and Channel News Asia news saying
that the post of the commander-in-chief had been handed over to Gen Shwe
Mann, was not true.

According to Thailand-based Burma army observer Htay Aung, despite the
denial of the junta, the way it was aired on the junta-controlled TV
channels suggested that the denial packet was hastily assembled.

“When it comes to (reports about) the leaders of the nation, they used to
show them in terms of their seniority. First, if there is news about
Senior General Than Shwe, they show his news. Then, if there is news about
Vice-Senior General Maung Aye, they show Maung Aye’s news. But, what was
extraordinary about last night was, after showing regional military
commanders inspecting fields of physic nuts, they showed the meeting on
major projects held at Naypyidaw (the new administrative capital in
central Burma) by means of insertion,” said Htay Aung. “What I mean is, it
was not a normal procedure but an emergency show/programme.

Then they often repeated 'Than Shwe is the commander-in-chief', 'Senior
General Maung Aye is the second-in-command' etc...By looking at that, it
shows that although there are/were changes in the SPDC army, currently,
there are no changes for the highest positions, the commander-in-chief and
the second-in-command.”

When asked why the generals made such efforts, Htay Aung said that they
could be connected to the junta’s ongoing counter-media campaign to
discredit foreign news agencies by means of misinformation. He also
pointed out how informers inside Burma deliberately gave false information
about the health of Aung San Suu Kyi to the US foreign department and news
of Than Shwe’s health to the BBC. On the other hand, Htay Aung added that
it could simply be a matter of news reports being published without
properly checking the details beforehand.

____________________________________

September 25, Irrawaddy
Ceasefire groups told to oppose UNSC - Yeni

Burmese ethnic ceasefire groups are under pressure from the military
regime to oppose the recent decision of the UN Security Council to place
Burma on its formal agenda.

According to sources close to the ceasefire groups based along the
China-Burma border, officials from the regime’s Military Affairs Security
have approached the leaders of ethnic groups and asked them to denounce
the UNSC move as intervention in the country’s internal affairs.

The Thai-Burma border-based New Mon State Party said it had heard of this,
but had not been contacted by the regime, and therefore refused to
comment.

But the Kachin Independent Organization’s James Lum Dau, vice-secretary
for foreign affairs of the KIO, told The Irrawaddy that his group would
comply with the junta’s wishes, even though this does not reflect its
views. “It’s just playing the game,” he said. “All Burmese, whether they
want to or not, have to deal with the military regime—politically, it is
daily survival.”

The pro-regime National Unity Party told a Rangoon press conference
yesterday that Burma was against copying foreign cultures, norms and
politics such as those on democracy. The NUP, which contested the futile
1990 election, celebrated its 18th anniversary last Sunday at its Rangoon
headquarters.

Meanwhile, The New Light of Myanmar said the US was resorting to a wide
range of tactics against countries that don’t comply with its wishes. The
US was the main force behind the move to get Burma on the UNSC agenda. 
“It is known not only to Myanmar [Burma] but also to the world that the US
is attempting to get rid of patriotic forces serving national interests,”
it said. “It wants to install a puppet government to manipulate the
affairs of the nation.”

Burma’s main opposition party, the National League for Democracy, and
other opposition groups have welcomed the UNSC move as a major step
forward.

____________________________________

September 25, Bangkok Post
Burma regime party rejects democracy

Rangoon: The pro-military National Unity Party (NUP) on Sunday warned
Burma against copying alien cultures, norms and politics such as
democracy, a senior party official said.

The NUP, set up to contest the 1990 general election as the successor of
the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) that monopolised the country's
politics between 1962 to 1988, celebrated its 18th anniversary on Sunday
at its party headquarters in Rangoon.

NUP chairman Tun Ye told a gathering of 400 senior party members that the
party must strengthen its identity as "a concrete stabilizing national
force."

NUP was set up by the military to replace the BSPP, which was the
country's sole party during the 26 years under former military strongman U
Ne Win and his disastrous "Burmese Way to Socialism."

Ne Win resigned and the country dropped socialism as the state ideology in
1988 in the face of nationwide anti-govenrment demonstrations that erupted
that year.

At a press conference, NUP general secretary Khin Maung Gyi made clear
that the party was still representing the military junta that has ruled
Burma since 1988, in the aftermath of a bloody crackdown on the
pro-democracy movement that left thousands dead.
"We have to learn from history, but not to copy alien culture, norms and
politics such as democracy," said Khin Maung. He added, "Rule of law,
transparency, accountability are sweetened words that can easily exploit
credulous minds."

Khin Muang said the NUP would like to "expedite" the transition process
towards democracy, noting that it would take time to warned that it would
take time to draft a new constituion, have it approved by referendum, and
to define constituencies and prepare voters for an eventual election.

In an barb intended for the National League for Democracy (NLD), that
trounced the NUP at Burma's last election held 16 years ago, Khin Maung
said "there will be parties that would copy other cultures and other
political values."

He added, "I pity the NLD for depending on individualism," a reference to
NLD's leader, Nobel peace prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who has come to
personify Burma's struggle for democracy.

Suu Kyi has been under house arrest since May, 2003.

____________________________________
ON THE BORDER

September 22, South China Morning Post
The dispossessed - Daniel Pepper

For the thousands of villagers fleeing the repressive Myanmar regime,
jungle life is fraught with hunger, disease and fear of the army finding
them. Meanwhile, foreign intervention is elusive, writes Daniel Pepper.

Leaning on a worn wooden crutch, Saw Pa Pwe, 48, a short, muscular man,
hobbles on one leg from his brother's exposed platform to the raised hut
he now calls home. The makeshift bamboo and plastic shelter sits a metre
from the ground on the low point of a wet, sloping hill where 1,300
displaced villagers are starting from scratch in the Ei Tu Hta refugee
camp.

His wife sits silently in the stifling mid-morning heat in the rolling
hills of eastern Myanmar - she hasn't spoken since the trauma of a
landmine maimed her farmer husband as he walked to his fields in 2002.

Saw Pa Pwe is now one of the tens of thousands of displaced villagers who
spend their life on the run, choosing to live a nomadic life in the jungle
rather than under the repressive Myanmar military regime, which is intent
on subjugating opposition groups such as those from the Karen ethnic
minority of eastern Myanmar.

"Living under their control means forced labour," said Saw Pa Pwe's
sister-in-law, Naw Pi Htoo, 44, who has lost three of her seven children
to disease in the malaria-infested hills. "They use the people to clear
landmines and women and children to carry military supplies."

Their plight and that of millions of other Myanmese is set to gain greater
international attention after the  UN Security Council last Friday moved
to put Myanmar on its permanent agenda - despite sharp objections from
Russia and China, the latter being the largest trading partner of 
Myanmese authorities, constituting a US$1 billion bilateral trade
relationship.

 The 10-4 Security Council vote was welcomed by US authorities lobbying
for international pressure against the military dictatorship. US
Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, highlighted drug smuggling, a refugee
crisis and human rights abuses in Myanmar as ongoing threats to the
region.

Myanmar was once one of the richest countries in Southeast Asia, endowed
with fertile land, precious teak wood and gems, and blessed with natural
gas. Since 1996, the US and European Union have had   economic sanctions
on the regime, citing the house arrest of democracy advocate and Nobel
Peace laureate  Aung San Suu Kyi for  10 of the past 17 years.

Even foreign ministers from the normally deferential regional economic
body, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, have issued harsh
rebukes against the regime's foot-dragging on promised reforms. In July,
the foreign ministers of Malaysia and Indonesia criticised the regime for
being slow on reforms.

But this is a regime notoriously unresponsive to outside pressure and,
public rhetoric notwithstanding, signs point to it becoming more
reclusive, not less. Earlier this year, it suddenly moved its capital
upcountry, to a construction site in a jungle town of Pyinmana, 320km
north of Yangon, the largest city and former capital. Government employees
were given no warning and were expected to relocate with their families
immediately.

"It's bizarre," said a senior western diplomat in Yangon. "It wasn't
designed to be a workable city. It was designed to isolate. This is a
country that's trying to close itself in.

"The regime is impervious to outside influence - whether positive or
negative - they don't care what the world thinks of them," said the
diplomat.

The government monitors telephone calls, censors websites such as Hotmail
and any sites related to Myanmar democracy activism, and asks internet
cafe providers to take periodic "snapshots" of their customers' monitors. 
Mobile phones are reserved for those in the military or with close ties,
or those who can afford the US$3,000 it takes to purchase a new line.

The UN vote last week comes as human rights advocates based along the
border in Thailand say the current military offensive under way in eastern
Myanmar, against the Karen ethnic minority, is the worst they've seen in
10 years, displacing about 18,000 people since the end of last year,
according to the Thai Burma Border Consortium, an advocacy group based in
Bangkok.

"This vote is a major step towards getting the UN to accept its
responsibility to act on Burma," said Yvette Mahon, director of the
London-based charity Burma Campaign UK. "This is a case of the US and UK
acting on principle, while China and Russia are putting trade and profit
before the interests of ordinary Burmese people."

"The military's strategy for the last 10 years has been to bring the
entire civilian population under direct control for forced labour and
monitoring," said Kevin Heppner with the Karen Human Rights Group, another
advocacy group based in Thailand. "And everyone who lives beyond that
immediate control has to be relocated or killed. For years they've been
trying to do this, but the villagers don't want to live under military
control. So they evade the troops, leaving the villages before they
arrive. They live with very little or no relief or aid."

In the past 10 years, the military has often withdrawn or greatly scaled
back its offensives during the rainy season, enabling a respite for the
refugees to tend to their crops and rebuild whatever was destroyed during
the previous season.  This year, the army has been ordered to continue
fighting in what many suspect is a final bid to gain complete control over
the Karen region.

Fighting can be difficult in the mountains of eastern Myanmar, bordering
Thailand. In many cases the military has set up camp in the temporary
villages, preventing the residents from returning.

The vast majority of the Ei Tu Hta refugee camp's inhabitants are from the
Karen ethnic minority, long accustomed to living free of foreign rule. Zaw
Thein Win, 43, and his family come from the country's dominant Myanmese
tribe. He was imprisoned for three years in 2002 when the authorities
accused him of collaborating with the Karen National Union (KNU), a
resistance group.
It's a claim he denies. He was beaten mercilessly by a group of soldiers
when caught in his village in the east and lost his left eye; once
imprisoned the guards tattooed statements of Myanmese military conquest on
his arms and chest.

"The Burmese soldiers should be attacking their enemy - the KNU soldiers,"
he said. "But instead they attack the villagers."

Fourteen new families arrived in Ei Tu Hta on August 24 after a 12-day
trek, surviving on an occasional handout of boiled rice and by foraging
for bamboo shoots and vegetables.

Saw Pa Pwe says that since Thailand closed its border camps in March to
refugees, there is a "gentleman's agreement" between the Thai and Myanmar
authorities allowing them to congregate in camps near the border, with
Thai-based aid groups allowed to deliver limited amounts of food and
medicine to the camps.

Bringing a rare statistical basis to the health crisis in eastern Myanmar,
a report released this month by the Back Pack Health Worker Team, a mostly
Myanmese cross-border medical relief group based in Thailand,  painted a
picture of a humanitarian crisis as bad as any in  an African war zone.

Based on several surveys since 2000, it found that, at any given time, 12
per cent of the population is infected with drug-resistant malaria, the
most common cause of death, and that more than 15 per cent of children are
malnourished.  HIV is also a problem. Importantly, the report links high
rates of death and disease to life under military rule, where forced
labour and displacements are common.

"Sometimes, people don't want to talk about politics, but we're
health-care providers, so must look at the big picture," said last year's
Nobel Peace Prize nominee Cynthia Maung, who chairs the Back Pack Health
Worker Team. She also runs the Mae Tao clinic along the border, which gave
medical aid to 45,000 individuals last year, the majority of them Myanmese
refugees. Dr Maung works with teams of backpackers that carry medical
supplies through military-controlled areas. She estimates they have access
to about 150,000 of the half a million who are displaced within eastern
Myanmar.

Voravit Suwanvanichkij, a physician and researcher with the Centre for
Public Health and Human Rights at Johns Hopkins University, who worked
with Dr Maung on the report, said the medical crisis was vast.

"The lack of rule of law, collapse of public health, and extensive
corruption have resulted in widespread availability of medicines without
control, which often means medications are adulterated or taken
inappropriately," he said. "The end result of which is, for entities such
as malaria and TB, increasing drug resistance rates, already documented
along the Thai-Burma border. Similar things may also be occurring for
HIV."

India and China have come in for sharp criticism over links to the Myanmar
regime, with the countries poised to benefit from natural gas fields being
developed off Myanmar's west coast. The fields are being opened by South
Korea's Daewoo corporation, which could earn the regime between US$12
billion and US$17 billion over the next 20 years, according to figures
released in June by Thai-based NGO Shwe Gas Movement. So far, advocacy
groups from Thailand, the US, South Korea and India have condemned the
venture as providing direct support for a regime with an atrocious human
rights record.

As the world's second largest energy consumer, China this year signed a
memorandum of understanding with Myanmar for the sale of large off-shore
natural gas imports, worth an estimated US$37 billion to US$52 billion.

"The only way to conduct business in Burma is by gaining the trust and
favour of the junta, which is a notoriously difficult business partner,"
said Matthew Smith, with Earth Rights International, an environmental and
human rights organisation.

Aid groups point to the experience of the Yadana pipeline, a gas supply
line built in the 1990s across a short span of eastern Myanmar, where
thousands of villagers were forcibly displaced, raped and murdered.
Lawsuits ensued, resulting in out-of-court settlements in the  US and
France over the past few years, indicating that the western businesses
invested in the project - the French company Total and the American Unocal
(now controlled by Chevron) - were guilty of complicity as the abuses took
place.

"Why do human rights abuses happen in Burma?" asked David Mathieson, a
researcher with New York-based Human Rights Watch in Thailand. "You just
allow business from three countries to finance repression in Burma for
another 20 years. Where do you think that the money is going to go? It's
not going to education or health programmes - it's going to the military
to build a better command  centre to repress the population as the regime
sells off the wealth of the nation."

_____________________________________

September 25, Irrawaddy
Thailand-Burma border crossings reopen

Several border crossings between Thailand and Burma have reopened
following the sealing of the border after the military coup in Thailand
last week.

Among crossings reopened are by both sides are Mae Sot, those in Mae Sai
district opposite Tachilek in Burma, and Ranong in the far south.

An immigration officer in Mae Sot said on Monday the checkpoint there is
again permitting the movement of people and goods.

But Banpot Korkiatcharoen of the Chamber of Commerce in Tak province said
although wood products were again flowing into Thailand from Burma, the
export of Thai products were blocked by the Burmese.

At Ranong, the border reopening has allowed several score Thai employees
at the Andaman Club Hotel casino inside Burma to return home after being
trapped on the Burmese side for several days.

Meanwhile, the Thai Third Army says it is being more vigilant in border
areas to prevent the current political situation encouraging drug
traffickers to using the aftermath of the coup to move more drugs into
Thailand, according to the Thai News Agency.

_____________________________________
BUSINESS / TRADE

September 24, Narinjara News
Burma's natural gas contributes to $1.3 billion trade surplus - Iftekhar
Ahmed

Military-ruled Burma achieved a surplus of 1.38 billion U.S. dollars in
foreign trade in the first four months of the fiscal 2006-07, a figure
which is up 77.8 percent from the country's 776.1 million dollar surplus
in the corresponding period of 2005-06.
According to the Ministry of Commerce in Burma, its exports amounted to
2.112 billion dollars, while imports accounted for 732.9 million dollars,
giving the country a total foreign trade volume of USD 2.844 billion
during the first quarter.

The ministry attributed the trade surplus mainly to the sale of natural
gas, followed by agricultural, mineral, and marine products.

In 2005-06 Burma's foreign trade was 5.5 billion U.S. dollars, a record
high for 17 years since 1989, when the country began to move towards a
market-oriented economy, official statistics say.

____________________________________

September 23, The Nation
Competition intense for Burmese gas

While India, China and Thailand have proposed to lay pipelines to their
respective countries for trans-porting gas from the Shwe gas field in the
Bay of Bengal, South Korea has proposed liquefying it and trans-porting it
in the form of liquefied natural gas, industry sources said.

New Delhi has proposed laying a 1,400-kilometre Burma-India pipeline,
originating at Sittwe in Burma, entering India through Mizoram and then
passing through Aizawl, Dispur and Guwahati in Assam and Shilig-uri in
West Bengal to join the Jagdishpur-Haldia pipeline at Gaya in Bihar.

China has proposed a 2,380km-long pipeline originating at Kyaukphyu and
terminating at Ruili in China's Yunan province after passing through Pagun
Tuywintanuag and Mandalay. Thailand has proposed a 1,100km pipeline.

Burma is looking for a buyer that will pay the maximum price for the gas
found in Block A-1 and in the adjacent A-3 block. In both blocks India's
ONGC Videsh Ltd and GAIL hold a 30-per-cent stake.

Sources said the Indian offer was attractive because the length of
pipeline was shorter.
For transporting gas to the Indian border, a pipeline of just 250km length
would be required in Burma while to do the same to China or Thailand would
require lines in Burma of about 1,000km.

____________________________________
REGIONAL

September 24, Agence France Presse
Thai coup darkens hopes for democracy in Myanmar: analysts - Frank Zeller

Thailand's coup will embolden the ruling generals in neighbouring Myanmar
and weaken efforts to push for democratisation in the isolated pariah
state, analysts and diplomats say.

The sight of tanks on Bangkok's streets and of men in uniform usurping
power from premier Thaksin Shinawatra does nothing to help international
efforts to bring change in the country also known as Burma, they say.

The reaction from Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) members
to the power grab has been relatively muted, said political scientist John
Harrison of the Singapore-based Institute of Defence and Strategic
Studies.

"Myanmar can now argue rather effectively: how can any organisation tell
us that we have to reform democratically when you all have been very
silent on the undemocratic change in Thailand?" Harrison said.

"They can say, if you don't condemn and isolate Thailand, how can you
condemn and isolate us?"

Diplomats agree that Tuesday's coup in Thailand, long seen as one of
Southeast Asia's most vibrant democracies, sends the wrong message to
Myanmar and across the region.

"When you look at the issues in Burma, the Philippines, Indonesia and a
lot of other countries where there are concerns about the potential role
of the military, it's a bad model having the military overthrow an elected
government," said one diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.

International pressure has mounted over Myanmar's dismal human rights
record and repression of political opposition, including the years of
house arrest the regime has imposed on democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

The UN Security Council last week placed on its formal agenda the issues
of political repression and human rights violations in Myanmar.

Bangkok and Yangon have long maintained regular diplomatic and military
contact, providing Myanmar with a communication channel to the outside
world.

Thaksin and the army chief who led the coup against him, General Sonthi
Boonyarataglin, only recently visited Myanmar, although the talks focused
on drug suppression and economic ties.

Thailand's new military leaders will be even less likely to pressure
Myanmar on democracy and rights, said Harrison, who pointed out that
"doing so would highlight their own democratic shortcomings."

In Thailand the coup has sent a chill through the large community of
Burmese exiles and refugees, many of whom fled their homeland after a
junta seized power and crushed an uprising in 1988.

Since the coup, Burmese activist groups have kept a low profile and
postponed meetings "until the dust settles," according to one member.

"The coup was a big shock and caused a lot of anxiety among Burmese exiles
in Thailand," said Debbie Stothard of the advocacy group the Alternative
ASEAN Network on Burma. "After all, most of them had to leave Burma
because it is under a military regime."
Despite the bad memories that the Thai coup has brought back for the
activists, many of them also see a silver lining in the ousting of a
government they felt was doing little to help their cause.
"There are many activists who are quite happy to see the back of Thaksin,"
said Stothard.

"Like many Thai human rights activists, they were concerned about how
Thaksin manipulated the political system for his own benefit and how the
security situation for refugees, asylum seekers and activists has
deteriorated."

Win Min, a politics expert from Chiang May University and himself a
Burmese refugee, pointed out that Thaksin had long defended the Myanmar
regime while pushing telecommunications and other business interests
there.

"The whole world criticised Burma, but for a long time ASEAN defended
Burma because Thaksin intervened," said Win Min.

Many Burmese exiles were offended when Thaksin recently likened the time
he spent locked down at home after a car bomb was found in Bangkok to Aung
San Suu Kyi's house arrest.
After the sleight against the democracy icon, many expressed some glee at
Thaksin's current exile in London.

"There's a joke going around the exile community," said one activist.
"Last week Thaksin compared him-self to Aung San Suu Kyi. Now he knows
what it's like to be member of the Burmese government in exile."

_____________________________________
INTERNATIONAL

September 24, Asian Tribune
Burma’s crisis will not be overlooked says US first lady Laura Bush - Daya
Gamage

Washington, D.C.: America’s first lady Laura Bush, convening a roundtable
discussion of experts to discuss what could be done to ensure the release
of political prisoners, promote national reconciliation and restore
democracy and highlight the repressive and destabilizing situation in
Burma said on September 19 in New York that U.S. will work diligently with
the U.N. Security Council to ensure that the crisis in Burma is not
overlooked. Laura Bush initiated roundtable discussion Laura Bush
initiated roundtable discussion

The discussion dominated the issue of regime’s treatment of democracy
activist and Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house
arrest for most of the past 17 years.

United Nations Under Secretary for Political Affairs Ibrahim Gambari is
scheduled to visit Burma in October, and the UN Security Council is
expected to meet him before and after his return from Burma. Mr. Gambari
last visited Burma in May and met with Burma’s military junta Senior
General Than Shwe.

On September 15, after a yearlong effort, the United States succeeded in
having the situation in Burma officially placed on the agenda of the U.N.
Security Council. (See Asian Tribune report of 16 September captioned U.S.
gets U.N Security Council to review situation in Burma)

According to the State Department human trafficking has become a major
problem in the country.

In its Trafficking in Person report for 2006, the State Department said
Burma does not fully comply with minimum standards for the elimination of
trafficking and "is not making significant effort to do so."

Burmese men, women and children are trafficked to Thailand, China,
Bangladesh, Malaysia, Korea and Macau for domestic service, forced and
bonded labor in industrial zones and agricultural estates, and
prostitution, according to the report. The regime’s economic
mismanagement, human rights abuses and forced labor policy are driving
factors behind the country’s large human trafficking problem, the U.S.
State Department report says.

The participants at this Laura Bush initiated roundtable discussion
presented very valuable information and facts. Most Burmese are too poor
to afford medicine, but even those who can are getting inadequate doses
because the drugs available to them are rather counterfeit or below par,
it was revealed.

Because the government is not spending sufficient money on health issues,
the country also has drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis and malaria
that easily can be transmitted across borders.

It was also revealed that about 200,000 refugees who have fled conflict
and persecution in Burma now live in Thailand, Malaysia, India and
Bangladesh. As many as 3,000 ethnic Karen refugees entered Thailand in
2006 after several military offensives against opposition forces in Burma.

"We want to call attention to the situation in Burma and the threat that
its policies pose to the region and, more broadly, to the fact the
government of Burma’s policies are not changing," U.S. Ambassador to U.N.
John Bolton said.

The Laura Bush led roundtable discussion brought a positive message: the
United States will not stand idle in the midst of Burma’s deteriorating
situation.