BurmaNet News, November 17, 2006

[Editor]

November 17, 2006 Issue # 3089


INSIDE BURMA
New York Times: Myanmar is left in dark, an energy-rich orphan
Washington Post: Misery spirals in Burma as Junta targets minorities
Irrawaddy: Suu Kyi receives ultrasound checkup

BUSINESS / TRADE
Irrawaddy: Great Iron Silk Road halts at Burma’s border
Mizzima: Economists opine on border trade

INTERNATIONAL
AP: U.N. panel votes on human rights measure


____________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

November 17, The New York Times
Myanmar is left in dark, an energy-rich orphan - Jane Perlez

Sittwe, Myanmar: In the balmy waters of the Bay of Bengal, just off the
coast, an Asian energy rush is on. Huge pockets of natural gas have been
found. China and India are jostling to sign deals. Plans are afoot to
spend billions on new ports and pipelines.

Yet onshore, in towns like this one, not a light is to be seen -- not a
street lamp, not a glow in a window -- as women crouch by the roadside at
dawn, sorting by candlelight the vegetables they will sell for two cents a
bunch at the morning market.

Paraffin and wood are major sources of light and heat. People receive two
hours of electricity a day from a military government that is among the
world's most repressive.

But attempts at outside pressure to prod the government to address its
people's needs and curb abuses have faltered, in large part because
China's thirst for resources has undermined nearly a decade of American
economic sanctions.

Critics say that Washington's policy has handed Myanmar, formerly Burma,
to China. Still, as President Bush prepares to meet with leaders at the
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting in Vietnam on Nov. 17,
one topic on his agenda will be how to keep up the pressure. He is not
likely to find cooperation, not from rivals like China and Russia, nor
even countries like Singapore and Indonesia, which trade freely with
Myanmar.

The Asian energy rush is the latest demonstration of how the hunt for oil
and gas, and China's economic leverage, are reshaping international
politics, often in ways that run counter to American preferences.

In many respects, with the rise of China's economic power and its
unflagging support, the government here has become more entrenched than
ever, people inside and outside the country say.

''What can we do about it?'' said a well educated man here, when asked
about the plans to sell the gas abroad in the face of the deprivation at
home. ''What good would it do to protest, what would we get?'' People were
too afraid of the 400,000-member strong army supplied by China, Russia and
Ukraine to complain, he said.

In numerous encounters in Myanmar, where most speak with extreme caution
to foreigners and almost always anonymously for fear of jail, people joked
sardonically that China was the ''big daddy'' and that soon it would
''own'' Myanmar. ''China is a good friend of the government, not of the
people,'' one woman said. ''They are like brother and brother-in-law.''

The Bush administration has pledged that it will not let up on its
sanctions against the government until it releases the opposition leader,
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for 11 of the past
17 years.

Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi's political party won an overwhelming victory in
elections in 1990, and Washington insists that the government recognize
those results, and release an estimated 1,100 political prisoners.

The Bush administration says it plans to file a Security Council
resolution at the United Nations in coming weeks condemning the government
for its human rights abuses, and tightening sanctions further.

The United Nations under secretary general, Ibrahim Gambari, met with the
junta leader, Gen. Than Shwe, on Nov. 11 in Myanmar and urged the
government to mend its ways on forced labor and political prisoners. The
meeting ended inconclusively, United Nations officials said.

With so much energy and other resources at stake, and given its preference
to shun outside interference in internal politics, China's leaders are
seemingly unbothered by what is happening inside Myanmar.

China's National Development Reform Commission approved plans in April to
build a pipeline that would carry China's Middle East oil from a deep
water port off Sittwe across Myanmar to Yunnan, China's southern province.
This would provide China with an alternative to the Strait of Malacca,
which it now depends on for delivering its oil from the Middle East.

Though no date has been announced for work on the new pipeline across
Myanmar, the military appeared to be getting ready to build the deep sea
port on the island of Ramree, to the south of here, local people said.

In another sign of the importance of Myanmar to China, the chairman of the
China National Offshore Oil Corporation, Fu Chengyu, said in a speech this
year that the company would focus its investment in the medium term on two
countries: Myanmar and Nigeria. Engineers at the company, known as Cnooc,
are currently exploring for oil on Ramree, and the company has rights to
other oil deposits in central Myanmar, according to Myanmar government
reports.

India, thirsty for energy to fuel its own fast-growing economy, sees
Myanmar as a place where it needs to contain China. In the late 1990s,
democratic India switched its policy toward Myanmar from antagonism to
friendship.

And Thailand, Southeast Asia's largest economy, spends about $1.2 billion
a year for Myanmar's natural gas, giving the military government badly
needed hard currency.

In conversations with people in a number of towns, a portrait emerged of a
universally unpopular, deeply corrupt government. People told of worsening
poverty, a collapsed education system and a health care system that could
deal only with those who paid. Tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS were
rampant, they said.

The government's budget for its AIDS program in 2004 was $22,000,
according to a recent health survey by John Hopkins University Medical
School.

The junta leader, Gen. Than Shwe, 73, whose early military training was in
psychological warfare, was described by many here as a master manipulator
of his minions. He insisted, apparently out of fear of a coup, that the
capital be moved this year from Yangon, formerly Rangoon, to a new site in
the jungle, Naypyidaw.

The move, costing millions of scarce dollars, was in step with the
general's belief that he marched in the footsteps of the old Burmese kings
-- the name of the new capital means ''Royal City.'' Then, as now, there
was a fierce line between the rulers and the ruled.

For the first time, health workers said they were discovering severe
malnutrition among children in urban centers, a true anomaly in a lush
country that was once the world's biggest exporter of rice.

In Mandalay, the second-biggest city, almost naked children with distended
stomachs scrounged on the riverfront. In one village on the Thwande River
on the west coast, nomadic families were too strapped for food to offer
any to visitors, a traditional courtesy in Myanmar.

''Why is there severe malnutrition in this Garden of Eden? Because people
are poor,'' said Frank Smithuis, a physician who has worked in Myanmar
since 1994 and heads the Doctors Without Borders, Holland, medical
programs. ''People are going from three meals to two meals to one meal.
One meal a day just isn't enough.''

In the village of Leat Pan Gyunt, south of Sittwe, villagers said they
could afford to send their girls to school for only three years. The local
school consisted of one dirt-floored room for all grades from first to
eighth. The desks were planks of wood supported on two bricks.

Afraid of protests by students, the government dispersed the University of
Yangon to sites outside the capital.

At the new Magway University, the medical students were learning surgery
from books and videos, without working on human corpses because the
government refused to pay for formaldehyde, two people familiar with the
situation said.

In contrast to the deepening poverty -- Myanmar's per capita income is
calculated at $175 a year, far below neighboring Bangladesh -- the
military leaders were amassing fortunes, people said.

The latest evidence was a video leaked to a Web site, www.irrawaddy.org,
based in Thailand, of the recent opulent wedding of General Than Shwe's
daughter, Thandar Shwe. The video showed the bride, with her father
alongside her, decked out in a necklace of six ropes of large diamonds,
her hair looped with diamonds as well.

For those educated people who want change, the path is treacherous.

''I don't want to waste myself in jail,'' said one woman, who had two
relatives imprisoned. ''They were not the same when they came out.''

In a similar vein to the dissidents in Eastern Europe in the 1980s, the
woman said she believed change had to come from inside the country. But
unlike Poland under Soviet rule, no unions are allowed in Myanmar, and
most kinds of formal associations are considered suspect.

She said she held classes at her home on how to be more confident, how to
strategize. She was trying to spread her classes to Buddhist monasteries
and Christian churches, she said.

''Only education can change people because people don't know anything,''
she said. ''Only about 10 percent of the people know what is going on.''
Sometimes she was in such despair, she said, that she believed that the
only way to win against the government was ''to think like them.''

''But we can't think like them,'' she added, ''nobody thinks like them.''

Not all opposition groups that work outside the country believe that
Washington's hard line is serving the best interests of Myanmar or the
United States.

With its policy of isolation, the Bush administration was allowing China,
and to a lesser extent, India, to have a free hand in Myanmar to the
exclusion of the United States, said Aung Naing Oo, who spent a year at
the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and who is
the author of several books on Myanmar.

''The geopolitical situation favors the Burmese military,'' he said.
''China and India both want to support it, and the Asian nations have no
teeth.''

Still, on a recent trip to Vietnam, a delegation of Myanmar officials
heard something that astounded them, he said. They went to find out why
Vietnam had become so suddenly prosperous.

''The Vietnamese said one word: 'The Americans.' The Burmese could not
believe that after fighting a war Vietnam was friendly with the United
States.''

____________________________________

November 17, The Washington Post
Misery spirals in Burma as Junta targets minorities - Anthony Faiola

Camp Eituta, Burma: In a burgeoning encampment here on Burma's eastern
frontier, Hay Nay Tha, a 30-year-old mother of three, awakens in the
darkness most nights to the sound of her children's screams.

"They keep having nightmares about our journey here," she said.

That journey, Hay recalled, began when she was four months pregnant and
government soldiers torched her village and forced local farmers off their
land. It ended four weeks later, after her husband died of malaria en
route to this camp. She and her children arrived here this summer
dehydrated and exhausted. Hay soon went into early labor with a stillborn
son.

 "To be honest," the copper-skinned woman said, shyly gazing down at her
hands, "I am having nightmares, too."

Nightmares of all kinds are rife in this camp, where new clusters of
villagers arrive almost daily, a consequence of Burma's largest military
offensive against its own people in more than a decade, according to aid
groups and Western diplomats. The offensive has targeted minorities such
as Hay, a member of the restive Karen ethnic group, which has long
maintained a measure of autonomy.

According to estimates by relief groups, Burmese forces have burned down
more than 200 civilian villages here in Karen state, destroyed crops and
placed land mines along key jungle passages to prevent refugees from
returning to their home villages. Dozens of people have died, and at least
20,000 civilians have been displaced over the past eight to 10 months.

"What is now going on in Burma are crimes against humanity," said Sunai
Phasuk, head Burma consultant for New York-based Human Rights Watch. "The
military government has significantly stepped up their systemic policy of
violence against the ethnic Karen with this offensive. We're talking about
a mounting disaster."
 Burma's military leaders have historically been secretive about their
actions. But observers say they are attempting to build a broad security
cordon around their new capital near the inland city of Pyinmana, located
only a few miles from the border of Karen state. The result has been an
extraordinary use of force to clear out existing villages in the area.

Since seizing control of the country in 1988, Burma's military junta has
taken a series of harsh measures to secure its grip on power, and over the
past several months, it has appeared to step up its arrests of opposition
figures. Win Ko, a leading member of the National League for Democracy,
was arrested last month and sentenced to three years in prison after
staging a petition drive to free political prisoners. The party's leader,
Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, remains under
house arrest.

Observers say the junta has reserved its most brutal treatment for Burma's
eastern ethnic groups, including the Karenni, the Shan and the Mon, as
well as the Karen, the largest minority in the region.

A fiercely independent group of approximately 3 million people, the Karen
speak a separate language from most Burmese, use their own ancient writing
system and have traditionally opposed the military junta. Two decades of
sporadic government campaigns have already driven hundreds of thousands of
Karen and other refugees into neighboring Thailand, where at least 150,000
now live in official camps and an estimated 1.5 million dwell illegally.

Although the military has long fought the Karen National Liberation Army 
--  a seasoned militia of about 10,000, armed with aging assault rifles 
--  it has mostly seemed content to stage small, periodic sieges against
mountain strongholds in Karen state's northwest. These sieges have
typically taken place only during Southeast Asia's dry seasons.

But this year, the government's campaign has extended through the rainy
season and assumed far larger dimensions, appearing to be a final assault
aimed at smashing the resistance. Over the past 10 months, sources
familiar with Burmese military actions say, its forces have pushed into
major Karen strongholds, building 12 new permanent army bases.

Burmese government officials did not return phone calls seeking comment
from their embassy in Washington. But observers say the campaign is almost
certainly tied to a desire to extend security around the new capital,
which is meant to serve as a protective jungle fortress for the junta. The
Burmese have already begun moving government offices there from Rangoon,
the old capital, and are finishing work on a sprawling military bunker.

Economic development appears to be another motivation for the offensive,
according to observers. Burma, a country that was once one of Southeast
Asia's richest nations and is now among its poorest, has sought to create
revenue by signing a deal with Thailand to build multiple dams on the
picturesque Salween River, which runs through Karen state. As the Burmese
military attempts to exert its control over the river, it has moved into
other Karen strongholds.

"The new capital and the dam projects have become an incredibly
destructive pretext for the Burmese military to take control of Karen
state using indiscriminate force," said Jack Dunford, executive director
of the Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC), a U.S.-funded relief group
based in Bangkok. "I fear this may be the beginning of the end there."

An increasing number of Karen civilians fleeing the violence have made
their way here to Eituta, an emergency camp perched on a muddy hilltop
overlooking Burma's border with Thailand. The rows of primitive bamboo
huts are protected by a battalion of armed Karen soldiers.

With Eituta's population topping 1,500, and growing at a rate of about 10
percent a month, Karen authorities here are making plans for a second camp
nearby.

Although the Thai government has adopted a more lenient policy on Burmese
refugees in recent years, aid groups say the bureaucratic process of
admitting new arrivals has been slowed by the sudden uptick in the number
of Karen seeking asylum. With the new military offensive, the number of
arrivals at the already over-crowded official Karen refugee camps in
Thailand has jumped 60 percent, to almost 900 a month, according to the
TBBC.

The situation has effectively created a precarious limbo for the displaced
people at Eituta, located only two hours by foot from the nearest Burmese
military outpost. Almost two-thirds of the refugees here are children
younger than 12, many of whom are sick with malaria and dysentery.

Relief organizations have cut out a section of the dense jungle canopy to
build a small medical clinic. But the wounds of many children here run
deeper than any medicine can cure.

On a recent day at the camp, a foreign journalist with a video camera
approached an ethnic Karen man and a smiling 2-year-old girl sitting on
straw mats in their hut. Suddenly, the girl began screaming
uncontrollably.

"She thinks it's a gun," said her father, Saw Say Nay, pointing to the
video camera.

Saw, a farmer, fled here with his family of four last month. Like many
displaced Karen, they had been living in hiding in the jungle since the
summer, when Burmese troops began constructing a base near their village
of Sayztaing Gyi, about 40 miles from the new capital.

"They were going village by village, forcing men and women into labor," he
said. "Then they started burning villages, so we packed what we could and
escaped into the jungle. From the trees, we saw them set our homes on
fire. They burned our crops. They left us with nothing."

Thin and languid from malaria, Saw said he found out there was no going
back after one villager tried to return, only to lose his leg when he
stepped on a freshly laid land mine.

"We don't know what to do," he said. "My heart wants to go back, but I
know it is not safe for my family. I don't know if we can go to Thailand.
I don't know if they will accept us. So we are here. We have nowhere else
to go."

Travis Fox of washingtonpost.com contributed to this report.

____________________________________

November 17, Irrawaddy
Suu Kyi receives ultrasound checkup - Khun Sam

Burma’s detained pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace laureate Aung San
Suu Kyi received an ultrasound medical checkup on Thursday and initial
reports seem to indicate she is in good health.

“She appears to be fine,” said a source close to her physician, Dr Tin Myo
Win.

Myint Thein, a spokesperson for Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for
Democracy, confirmed to The Irrawaddy on Friday that her doctor conducted
the ultrasound test at her lakeside house in Rangoon.

“We learned her health is generally good,” Myint Thein said. “But we don’t
know the result or details of the ultrasound yet.”

The reason for undergoing the ultrasound test remains unknown. It can be
used to examine a variety of internal organs and can help diagnose heart
conditions, as well as gynecological problems.

Since August, the Burmese government had denied Suu Kyi's personal doctor
access to his patient. The medical checkup came a few days after the UN
envoy Ibrahim Gambari was allowed to meet with the 61-year-old leader who
has been under house arrest for more than 11 of the past 17 years,
continuously since May 2003.

After the meeting, Gambari said she was in good health; however, he urged
the military junta to allow her doctor to make more regular visits.

Suu Kyi had a gynecological operation in September 2003 at the private
Asia Royal Cardiac and Medical Centre in Sanchaung Township, Rangoon, and
a minor stomach ache in June this year.

Myint Thein, the party spokesperson, said recently he was concerned about
her health and urged the junta to allow her to meet with her physician at
least once a week.

“She is now aging, at 61," he said. "It has been a long time since she was
put under house arrest. She could be suffering physically and mentally
from this. She is the leader of the country and a Burmese citizen.
Moreover, as she is important for the country’s national reconciliation,
it is also important she has good health and freedom from detention.”

____________________________________
BUSINESS / TRADE

November 17, Irrawaddy
Great Iron Silk Road halts at Burma’s border

Burma has declined to sign a UN-backed agreement to develop a trans-Asian
railway, dubbed the Iron Silk Road.

The Naypyidaw regime told a two-day conference just concluded in the South
Korean port city of Busan that it agrees in principle with the idea of the
Trans-Asia Railway Network, but “financial constraints” prevent Burma from
beginning any work on upgrading and expanding its rail system.

Representatives from 40 countries took part in the conference, sponsored
by UNESCAP, the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the
Pacific. But only 18 of those countries formally signed up for the
project, including China, India, Russia, South Korea, Thailand, Cambodia,
Laos and Turkey.

The railroad plan involves several routes. Burma is on the main
west-southeast route linking Turkey via India with Singapore.

The South Korean International Cooperation Agency is, coincidentally,
carrying out a survey on a possible rail link between Thailand and Mon
State.

The planners in Busan agreed in principle that the Iron Silk Road would
comprise about 80,000 kilometers of track—much of it already in place, but
in need of modernization.

But a planning consultant working with an international construction
company in Bangkok, where UNESCAP’s Iron Silk Road coordinators are based,
said: “This is a much bigger dream than the Asian Highway proposal. Among
other problems is the issue of track gauge, which is not the same
everywhere.”

A recent study by the Association of Southeast Nations estimated that its
mainland member countries would collectively need to spend about US $2.5
billion on the project.

____________________________________

November 17, Mizzima
Economists opine on border trade - Subhaschandra M

Indian economists in the Indo-Myanmar border areas are for defining the
'Look East’ policy in its entirety and want it to be crystallized into
specific action programmes so that it does not remain a mere policy
statement or an attractive slogan.

To reap the benefits of India's ‘Look East’ policy, industrialization of
the Indo-Myanmar border state like Manipur is essential. Sharing his
thoughts, Dr. Ch Priyoranjan Associate Professor of Economics in Manipur
University, said "industrialization of Manipur is necessary if the state
is to actually reap the benefits of India's new policy".

Professor Priyoranjan, a member of the Joint Study Group headed by
Manipur's Chief Secretary Jarnail Singh, constituted to study why formal
border trade between India and Myanmar is on a down swing, said Myanmar
produces a huge quantity of mustard seeds and lentils. To tap the benefits
of these items, Manipur will need to set up plants to extract mustard oil
as well as to process lentils. This in effect will mean that this border
Indian state can meet its own demand of lentils as well as mustard oil and
also supply the output to other parts of the country. The benefits will
also flow to Myanmar as its farmers will find a ready market in Manipur,
he observed.

The observations of the professor came even as official border trade shows
a downward trend while unofficial trade has seen an upswing. Dr.
Priyoranjan further said that though border trade was opened in April 1995
and covers 22 items, the official trade is plummeting while non-official
trade is booming.

Increasing the number of trade items is one step that can be taken to
counter this trend, he observed. Noting that there is a big demand for
cycles in Myanmar, the professor said that if the required industries are
set up in Manipur, the product (cycles) can be exported to Myanmar. And
given the distance it will be cost effective. The extended benefits will
be a fillip for the transport segment while exporting the cycles, he
added.

Furniture units specializing in teak can also provide immense benefits to
Manipur, he observed. "Border trade has not been able to provide impetus
to industrialization and the productive base, as envisaged in the Look
East policy," he said.

Observing that a majority of traders involved in border trade are from
outside India's border states, another Manipur based economist said that
the government ought to arrange for certain programmes to encourage local
traders as well as residents to be involved." It's not encouraging to have
a large number of contractors without expanding productive bases" he
pointed out.

Though the Indian Commerce and Industries Minister, Mr. Jairam Ramesh
during his recent visit to Moreh border town had assured that there would
be henceforth no restrictions on the number of trade items the Centre has
not taken a definite decision in this regard.

____________________________________
INTERNATIONAL

November 17, Associated Press
U.N. panel votes on human rights measure - Edith M. Lederer

United Nations: A U.N. General Assembly committee has voted to discourage
U.N. human rights bodies from condemning any country on human rights,
despite objections to the measure from the U.S. and many European
countries.

The draft resolution sponsored by Belarus and Uzbekistan, both of which
have been accused of serious human rights abuses was approved by the
assembly's human rights committee on a 77-63 vote, with 26 abstentions. It
now goes to the full 192-member General Assembly for a final vote.

Its key provision stresses the need to avoid "country-specific resolutions
on the situation of human rights" and the "exploitation of human rights
for political purposes."

Before Thursday's vote, Belarus said the idea for a resolution opposing
the targeting of specific countries over their human rights record was
approved at the September summit of the 117-nation Nonaligned Movement.

American officials underscored that Belarus and Uzbekistan had both been
long-term abusers of human rights. The U.S. also said that resolutions
targeting specific countries had given hope to the oppressed and
encouraged reform by some governments.

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton told reporters that the resolution reflected
"a real problem with the U.N. human rights machinery."

The new Human Rights Council in Geneva, which earlier this year replaced
the discredited Human Rights Commission, has met three times to pass
resolutions condemning Israel but hasn't dealt with human rights in
Myanmar, North Korea or Sudan, Bolton said.