BurmaNet News, October 22, 2009

[Editor]

October 22, 2009 Issue #3824


INSIDE BURMA
Irrawaddy: Burma ranks next to last on most corrupt country list
AP: Myanmar says senior US official to visit next week
AFP: Myanmar allows first mobile phones in remote capital
Mizzima News: Restrictions on NLD obstacle to General Assembly

BUSINESS/TRADE
Xinhua: Myanmar booth highlights Muse border town in China-ASEAN trade fair

ASEAN
Reuters: Southeast Asia presses Myanmar over election
Xinhua: Myanmar PM leaves for 15th ASEAN summit in Thailand

REGIONAL
VOV News (Vietnam): State President receives Myanmar military general

INTERNATIONAL
AFP: US lawmaker to rights groups: 'Don't drink the Kool-Aid'
AFP: US warns of 'slow, painful' talks with Myanmar

OPINION / OTHER
DVB: Money for rights at the ASEAN summit – Joseph Allchin



____________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

October 22, Irrawaddy
Burma ranks next to last on most corrupt country list – Lawi Weng

Burma’s military government is still one of the most corrupt countries in
the world, according to the Global Corruption Report 2009 released by
Transparency International (TI) on Thursday.

The Berlin-based group said Burma ranks just ahead of Somalia and tied
with Iraq for the second-lowest score.

The report ranked countries on a scale of 1 to 10. The highest 9.3 ranking
went to Denmark, New Zealand and Sweden as the world’s least corrupt and
most transparent countries, followed by Singapore, at 9.2.

Somalia ranked lowest at 1.0. Burma ranked 1.3, the same position as in 2008.

The TI report said Burma routinely violated human rights and had rampant
corruption among government officials. The country’s score placed it just
behind Haiti at 1.4 and Afghanistan at 1.5.

“These governments should embrace thorough and transparent reviews, which
are the only way to ensure that each country’s anti-corruption efforts are
judged equally and fairly,” said Huguette Labelle, the chair of TI’s board
of directors, in a press release.

Abuse of power and corruption among Burmese officials is common, according
to civil servants and businessmen in the country.

A recent example was the detention of three police officials by military
authorities in Myawaddy Township on the Thai-Burmese border. Sources said
the three officials accepted bribes of about 70,000 (US $2,100) baht from
amphetamine trafficking gangs in Myawaddy.

Police are one of the most corrupt institutions in Burma, and they receive
little respect from the people.

In early October, the Burmese’s junta dismissed the Rangoon Division
police chief following misuse of power and corruption allegations,
according to sources in Rangoon. Sources said he accepted bribes from
massage parlors and karaoke shops, and that he also ran illegal
businesses. His dismissal has not been reported in the state-run media.

 “Corruption has become a custom here. They say it is paying respect
instead of paying a bribe,” said a businessman familiar with Burmese
culture.

A civil servant in Naypyidaw said, “If I want to get a higher position, or
I want to move somewhere that I like in my job, I have no choice but to
bribe them in order to get that chance.”

____________________________________

October 22, Associated Press
Myanmar says senior US official to visit next week

Yangon — A senior U.S. official will visit Myanmar next week in line with
Washington's new policy of engaging the military-ruled Southeast Asian
nation, a Foreign Ministry official said Thursday.

The Obama administration said Wednesday that U.S. officials plan to travel
to Myanmar, also known as Burma, in the next few weeks to talk with
government representatives, ethnic minority groups and the democratic
opposition.

The Myanmar Foreign Ministry official, who asked not to be identified by
name because he is not authorized to speak to the media, said a
high-ranking U.S. official would visit next week as part of the new
approach by Washington, which has shunned Myanmar in the past.

He declined to give the name of the U.S. official.

Myanmar's opposition National League for Democracy party of detained Nobel
Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi said the U.S. Embassy had informed
it of an upcoming visit by Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and
Pacific Affairs Kurt M. Campbell and that he would meet with party
officials.

"We welcome the visit by a senior-level official from the U.S. and hope
that he would be allowed to meet Aung San Suu Kyi," party spokesman Nyan
Win said.

The Obama administration is turning away from the Bush administration's
policy of shunning Myanmar in favor of direct, high-level talks. It has
said isolating the military government has failed to move it toward
democratic reforms.

During testimony Wednesday to the House Foreign Affairs Committee,
Campbell said the government would maintain existing political and
economic sanctions toward the junta.

"The conclusions of our policy review, announced last month, reaffirmed
our fundamental interests in Burma: We support a unified, peaceful,
prosperous, and democratic Burma," he said. "Our dialogue with Burma will
supplement rather than replace the sanctions regime that has been at the
center of our Burma policy for many years."

Campbell said he would travel to Myanmar to continue talks he began in
September in New York with senior Myanmar officials, the first such
high-level contact in nearly a decade. He cautioned that "it will take
more than a single conversation to resolve our differences."

He said tough U.S. sanctions will remain until talks with Myanmar's
generals result in change, explaining that if Myanmar doesn't address U.S.
worries, "we will reserve the option of tightening sanctions on the regime
and its supporters as appropriate."

____________________________________

October 22, Agence France-Presse
Myanmar allows first mobile phones in remote capital

Yangon — Myanmar's authorities have allowed the first mobile phones to be
used in its remote capital Naypyidaw after previously banning them for
security reasons, residents there said Thursday.

"Mobile phones have been allowed since October 9 around Naypyidaw. We have
better communication now," a hotel staff member in Naypyidaw told AFP on
condition of anonymity.

"It's the first time the authorities have allowed a mobile service in
Naypyidaw," she said, adding that many hotels had already applied for
permission to use the network.

But few people are likely to be able to afford the new service in this
impoverished country as she said it cost 1.55 million kyats (nearly 1,500
dollars) to obtain permission from the government's telecommunications
department.

Myanmar's ruling generals moved their entire government from the economic
hub Yangon to Naypyidaw four years ago, after building the new
administrative capital in secret over the previous three years.

Since then military officials have used only walkie-talkies to
communicate. When they moved up in November 2005, the city had few phone
lines and no grocery stores, schools or clinics.

"We want these basic facilities in the capital. That's why CDMA mobile
phones have been allowed, to improve communication," a senior official in
Naypyidaw told AFP.

Another official said authorities were planning to open up to a second
mobile phone network in the next few months.

The military regime's official explanation for its move to Naypyidaw was
to place the capital in a more central location but analysts said the real
reason lies in the generals' paranoia about their own security.

The junta's main headquarters is completely hidden inside a hilly
compound, open only to military officials.

Myanmar has been ruled by the military since 1962.

____________________________________

October 22, Mizzima News
Restrictions on NLD obstacle to General Assembly

New Delhi – Leaders of Burma’s National League for Democracy responding to
requests on Thursday by party members to call a General Assembly said they
are not in a position to call a nation-wide meeting due to the current
political restrictions imposed on the party.

The NLD, in a statement, said while it understands the need for a General
Assembly in order to reform and strengthen the Central Committee and
Central Executive Committee of the party, since party General Secretary
Aung San Suu Kyi and Vice-Chairman Tin Oo are detained and no other branch
offices across the country are allowed to function, it is not possible now
to convene the assembly.

In September, several members of branch NLD offices in various states and
divisions made renewed demands to the Central Executive Committee to
convene a General Assembly and urged it to reform the party leadership by
reconstituting the Central Committee, most of whose members are under
detention or had died.

NLD members of at least 25 townships in Mandalay, Pegu, Magwe and Rangoon
division have demanded that the CEC convene the Assembly and implement
party reformation by filling in places in the CC and CEC, whose members
are unable to perform their functions due to various reasons including
incarceration and deaths.

But the party’s statement on Thursday said, “The Central Executive
Committee will discuss the issue when the CEC meets Aung San Suu Kyi or
will decide when necessary, when the government announces the party
registration laws.”

Khin Maung Swe, a CEC member of the NLD told Mizzima that technically it
is not viable for the NLD to convene a General Assembly as the party’s
branch offices have been closed down, members restricted from organizing
party activities and several key leaders being in detention.

Over the last two decades, the 1990 election winning party is the only
political party remaining in Burma, as the ruling junta banned all other
parties. But the NLD also suffered several set-backs including the closure
of branch offices across the country and the arrest and detention of key
leaders including Aung San Suu Kyi.

However, some members in various states and divisions have time and again
demanded that the party leaders reform and strengthen the CEC and CC. Some
have even demanded a few aging leaders including party chairman Aung Shwe
step down and make way for the younger generation, to help find a way out
of the political impasse.

In April, the NLD held the second nation-wide party meeting, attended by
representatives of all branches across the country. The first nation-wide
meeting was held in 1997, when party leader Aung San Suu Kyi was briefly
released from house arrest.

But Khin Maung Swe said the party had never convened a General Assembly,
since its formation in September 1988, as it requires step by step
Assemblies to be conducted from the grass root level.

____________________________________
BUSINESS / TRADE

October 22, Xinhua
Myanmar booth highlights Muse border town in China-ASEAN trade fair

Yangon – Myanmar booth on display at the 6th China-ASEAN trade fair being
held in Nanning, capital of Southwest China' Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous
Region, highlights the Muse border town as a town of facilitating trade
and cooperation in levying tariff, companies attending the trade fair said
on Thursday.

There are 242 entrepreneurs of 83 companies taking part in the five-day
trade fair which began on Tuesday and will last until Saturday.

These entrepreneurs are from such sectors as agriculture, fishery,
industry, manufacturing, gems, traditional handicrafts, forestry and hotel
and tourism, the sources said.

Since joining the China-ASEAN trade fair in 2004, Myanmar booth featured
the commercial hub of Mandalay in the second trade fair, tourism site of
ancient city of Bagan in the third fair, port city of the former capital
Yangon in 4th fair and cyber city of Yadanarpon in the 5th fair, the
sources said, adding the country won the the best booth, best design and
best creativity awards in the 4th China-ASEAN trade fair in 2007.

In the 5th China-ASEAN trade fair, Myanmar won the best booth award again.

In December last year, a three-day Myanmar-China border trade fair was
held in the Muse 105th Mile Border Trade Zone on the Myanmar side.

The 8th Myanmar-China border trade fair, participated by companies and
enterprises from both countries, displayed products from respective
countries at over 200 booths.

Muse border trade point stands the biggest out of 11 with neighboring
countries, where 70 percent of Myanmar's border trade are carried out.

According to Chinese official statistics, China-Myanmar bilateral trade
amounted to 2.626 billion U.S. dollars in 2008, up 26.4 percent.

Up to the end of 2008, China's contracted investments in Myanmar reached
1.331 billion dollars, of which mining, electric power and oil and gas
respectively took 866 million dollars, 281 million dollars and 124 million
dollars.

China now stands the 4th in Myanmar's foreign investment line- up.

China's Nanning and Myanmar's Yangon established friendship city
relationship in July this year.

____________________________________
ASEAN

October 22, Reuters
Southeast Asia presses Myanmar over election – Jason Szep

Hua Hin, Thailand – Southeast Asian governments raised pressure on
military-ruled Myanmar on Thursday to hold "free and fair" elections next
year, and urged the junta to free pro-democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi.

The sentencing of Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner detained for 14 of
the last 20 years, to a further 18 months of detention this year has led
the West to question whether the election next year in the former Burma
will be a sham.

"They have said many times the elections next year will be inclusive, free
and fair. That remains to be seen," Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya
said after a meeting of foreign ministers from the 10-nation Association
of South East Asian Nations.

Speaking at a news conference in the seaside resort town of Hua Hin, he
said Myanmar had a commitment to promote human rights under an agreement
ratified by its rulers last year to create a so-called ASEAN integrated
community by 2015.

"That's Myanmar's obligation as a member of ASEAN," he said, describing
talks with Myanmar's foreign minister, Nyan Win, as "very cordial".

He said ASEAN's request for the release of Suu Kyi still stood. Earlier in
the year, some Southeast Asian countries had urged ASEAN to take a tougher
stand on Myanmar with a public appeal calling on the junta to grant an
amnesty to Suu Kyi.

That went nowhere. Several ASEAN nations rebuffed it, saying it
contravened the grouping's long-standing non-interference policy in each
others' internal politics.

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCHDOG

Suu Kyi was found guilty in August of breaking a law protecting the state
from "subversive elements" when, while under house arrest, she allowed an
American intruder to stay at her lakeside home for two nights.

The ruling sparked international outrage and was widely dismissed as a
ploy to keep Suu Kyi out of next year's election, the first since 1990,
when her National League for Democracy party scored a landslide victory
the junta refused to recognise.

Kasit made his comments a day before the launch by ASEAN leaders of a
human rights watchdog critics say is already discredited by having
Myanmar, seen as a serial rights abuser, as part of the mechanism.

The new body, called the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human
Rights, has no power to punish members and aims to promote rather than
protect human rights.

It is unlikely to have much influence, for instance, in efforts to free
Suu Kyi or the estimated 2,000 political prisoners in the reclusive
country.

Myanmar's generals allowed Suu Kyi recently to meet with Western diplomats
after Washington said late last month it was embarking on a new policy of
engagement with the junta.

Yangon is touting the election next year as a final destination on its
"roadmap to democracy".

ASEAN's members are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar,
the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. (Editing by Jeremy
Laurence and Ron Popeski)

____________________________________

October 22, Xinhua
Myanmar PM leaves for 15th ASEAN summit in Thailand

Yangon – Myanmar Prime Minister General Thein Sein left Nay Pyi Taw
Thursday to attend the 15th Summit of the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) and related meetings in Hua Hin, Thailand, official
sources from the new capital said.

At the invitation of his Thai counterpart Abhisit Veijajiva, Thein Sein
will be attending the summits scheduled for Friday to Sunday in the
southern Thai beach resort town.

Thailand stands the 2009 ASEAN chairmanship.

The last 14th ASEAN Summit in Hua Hin in February-March this year touched
on the implementation of ASEAN Charter and regional and international
issues, global financial crisis, disaster management, food and energy
security, and regional and international situation.

At the summit, the ASEAN heads of government signed the Declaration on
Roadmap for ASEAN Community. Other agreements were also inked which are --
ASEAN Petroleum Security Agreement, ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement, ASEAN
Comprehensive Investment Agreement, Protocol to Implement the 7th Package
of Commitments under ASEAN Framework Agreement on Service, and three
programs for mutual recognition of ASEAN Quality.

A follow-up ASEAN summits with China, Japan, South Korea, India, East Asia
and the United Nations in Pattaya in April were forced to cancel after
thousands of red-shirt demonstrators of the anti- government United Front
for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) stormed in the summit venues.

Myanmar, which joined the ASEAN along with Laos in July 1997, ratified the
ASEAN Charter in July last year.

Myanmar has urged its people to strive together in building the ASEAN
community, anticipating that the future emergence of the ASEAN community
by 2015 will benefit Myanmar citizens along with other regional members in
sharing the fruits of peace and stability, prosperity and socio-cultural
development.

ASEAN's three pillars are known as political security community, economic
community and socio-culture community.

ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the
Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

____________________________________
REGIONAL

October 22, VOV News (Vietnam)
State President receives Myanmar military general

State President Nguyen Minh Triet has voiced support for the defence
ministries of Vietnam and Myanmar to sign a military agreement as a step
toward gearing up military cooperation.

The State leader assured the Chief of the General Staff of Myanmar Armed
Forces, Gen. Thura Shwe Mann, of Vietnam’s willingness to share
experiences to help Myanmar overcome current difficulties, as well as for
mutual development, during their meeting in Hanoi on October 21.

Mr Triet expressed his belief that the current visit by Myanmar general
would usher in a new stage of development in the military relationship
between the two countries.
“The visit will contribute to strengthening relations between the two
peoples as well,” emphasised the State President.

He said he hoped that Myanmar would successfully hold next year’s
elections and succeed in overcoming difficulties and challenges to turn
the country into one of peace and prosperity.

His view was shared by Gen. Shwe Mann, who said his visit was aimed at
strengthening relations between the two armies and the two peoples.

He also said that with the development experiences shared by Vietnam,
Myanmar is expected to become more stable and prosperous.

He conveyed an invitation to visit Myanmar from Senior General Than Shwe,
Chairman of the State Peace and Development Council of Myanmar to
President Triet, who accepted the invitation with pleasure.

____________________________________
INTERNATIONAL

October 22, Agence France Presse
US lawmaker to rights groups: 'Don't drink the Kool-Aid'

Washington, D.C. — A Republican lawmaker on Wednesday lashed out at US
human rights activists, accusing them of going soft on President Barack
Obama to curry favor with his social circle.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs
Committee, made the stinging criticism at a hearing on Myanmar where a
leader of Human Rights Watch backed administration efforts to engage the
junta.

"It's gotten to the point where human rights organizations are mouthing
the same platitudes" as government officials, said Ros-Lehtinen, a
Cuban-American and outspoken critic of undemocratic regimes.

"I believe many human rights organizations have lost their voice -- they
are no longer standing up for the people who are oppressed, who are
murdered, who are raped," she said.

"It's so easy to be cooperative in this town. Everybody wants to be
invited to White House parties," she said.

"I hope you continue to get invited to every briefing and party and when
you go to those parties, don't drink the Kool-Aid," she said, a reference
to cult leader Jim Jones who led more than 900 followers to drink poison
in a group suicide in 1978.

Tom Malinowski, the advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, defended
himself and said he has "severely criticized" the Obama administration
over China and Sudan.

On China, Malinowski said human rights "has fallen by the wayside" as the
Obama administration seeks broader relations with the emerging economy.

"I don't think I've shied away or my colleagues in the human rights
community have shied away. I also think they're doing some things right,"
he said.

But Malinowski said Obama's new policy of opening dialogue with Myanmar
while maintaining economic sanctions on the military regime was
"appropriately balanced."

"I'm quite capable of changing my mind if the evidence leads me in that
direction, even if I don't get invited somewhere," he said.

It was the latest public drubbing of New York-based Human Rights Watch,
founded in 1978 as Helsinki Watch with a mission to name and shame abusive
governments.

The group's former chairman, Robert Bernstein, wrote an opinion piece in
The New York Times on Tuesday accusing Human Rights Watch of relentlessly
attacking Israel while playing down violations by Arab states.

____________________________________

October 22, Agence France Presse
US warns of 'slow, painful' talks with Myanmar – Shaun Tandon

Washington, D.C. – The United States has warned that its bid to engage
Myanmar will be "slow and painful" as it prepares to send a rare mission
to a country a top official said was more mysterious than North Korea.

Kurt Campbell, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia, said a team
would head to Myanmar to follow on his talks last month in New York, which
marked the highest-level US contact with the military regime in nearly a
decade.

"We intend to go to Burma in the next few weeks for a fact-finding
mission," Campbell testified Wednesday before the House Foreign Affairs
Committee, using Myanmar's earlier name.

Campbell did not specify who would take part in the trip. Another senior
US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Campbell hoped to go
himself but it would depend on whether the junta gives him access to the
opposition.

Campbell told the committee that the US mission hoped to meet with the
junta as well as detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi and
representatives of ethnic groups that have battled the military regime.

The junta has kept Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for most of the
past two decades after her National League for Democracy swept elections
in 1990 but was barred from taking power.

President Barack Obama's administration has sought to engage US
adversaries including Iran, Cuba and Sudan.

The administration, in a policy review, last month concluded that the
longstanding US approach of isolating Myanmar had failed to bear fruit but
said it would not ease sanctions without progress on democracy and human
rights.

Campbell, who has sought to reassure democracy activists, told the House
committee the dialogue would "supplement rather than replace the sanction
regimes that has been at the center of our Burma policy for many years."

"We expect engagement with Burma to be a long, slow, painful and
step-by-step process," Campbell said.

"We will not judge the success of our effort at pragmatic engagement by
the results of a handful of meetings. Engagement for its own sake is
obviously not a goal for US policy," he said.

Campbell said that one goal was simply to gain a better understanding of
the junta, which he described as "a group of men that have self-isolated
themselves.

"In my particular area, the country that we know the least about at a
fundamental level, even less than North Korea, is Burma," said the top US
diplomat for Asia.

Representative Joseph Crowley, one of Aung San Suu Kyi's top champions in
Congress, said he backed the new strategy in part because the detained
Nobel laureate has indicated her support.

But Crowley, a member of Obama's Democratic Party, appealed to Campbell
not to let the talks drag on without benchmarks or time-lines.

"It is a real possibility that the military regime will try and use
ongoing talks to buy time, in order to proceed with a sham election they
have scheduled for next year," he said.

The National League for Democracy plans to shun the elections, the first
since 1990. The United States has voiced skepticism about the upcoming
polls but said it is willing to discuss them with the junta.

Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a conservative Republican, was one of the
few to reject the US outreach to Myanmar altogether, questioning
assertions that the United States needed to learn more about the junta.

"With all due respect, we know all about Burma. It's not an unknown
quantity. It has a vicious gangster regime, one of the most despicable
regimes in this planet," he said.

"We are saying that they are a legitimate government to sit down with.
They are not," he said.

A State Department official, Stephen Blake, quietly visited Myanmar in
March to hold talks with both the junta and the opposition. It was the
first trip by a senior US envoy to the country in more than seven years.

In August, Myanmar's military leader Than Shwe held an unprecedented
meeting with a visiting US senator, Jim Webb, a leading advocate of
engaging the junta.

____________________________________
OPINION / OTHER

October 22, Democratic Voice of Burma
Money for rights at the ASEAN summit – Joseph Allchin

In recent days civil society groups have convened in Thailand to thrash
out their own version of the official regional summit, starting tomorrow,
and plain to see was the frustration at the gulf between the two.

Yesterday, the exiled Burmese activist Khin Ohmar was chosen by civil
society groups to attend the 15th ASEAN summit as representative of
Burmese Civil Society Organisations (CSO). Yet, according to Khin Ohmar,
domestic Burmese organisations riled against her exiled status as being
not representative of Burma. “There were a number of [Burmese]
junta-backed agencies who were present at the ASEAN Peoples’ Forum, and
they wanted to have somebody that they can influence,” she told DVB. This
‘somebody’ would be from a local group inside Burma “who is not able to
have an independent voice to speak on the key problems that the Burmese
people are facing.”

Whilst several of the more ‘modern’ ASEAN leaders play lip-service to
Western discourse on human rights, it seems to have about as much currency
as oil companies who talk about the environment: it’s a co-option of a
‘nice idea’. This ‘nice idea’ was recently honoured with a fresh ASEAN
human rights monitor who would be answerable too, amongst other notable
human rights abusers, the Burmese junta. It will have no punitive powers
but would instead ‘promote’ human rights. “It’s a human rights commission
for the government; it’s already so weak in so many ways,” Ohmar said.

What will no doubt be more on the minds of every well-funded leader, the
military ones included, will be the future of trade both within ASEAN and
between other international blocs and nations. In the pipeline is the
intriguing potential of a free trade agreement (FTA) with China, India and
the European Union, whilst human rights will likely form a pretty part of
the packaging. The diversity of ASEAN will mean that trade agreements will
mean different things to different nations; Burma will be affected in a
very different manner to somewhere like Malaysia or Thailand, for
instance. Many in India are concerned that the industrial might of nations
like Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia will have a negative impact on
India’s own industrial development, with those economies being able to
out-do their Indian rivals.

This alone could have an effect on Burma, whose cheap labour and absence
of industry regulations on the surface provide a tantalizing prospect for
multinationals. It’s an issue that Burma economics expert Sean Turnell has
termed a ‘race to the bottom’ with standards. In a turbulent future
economy, without the debt-led spending of Western nations, Asian nations
may have to compete for bargain basement industry. Labour and
environmental standards could be the first casualty in such a race. Indian
economist Asseem Srinavastava had suggested that a venture into Burma
earlier this year by Tata motors of India provided an example of this,
with the probability that it was done to bypass strict laws in India. In
similar fashion it could induce other ASEAN nations to cut standards.

Burma is already believed to have some of the cheapest extraction costs
for gas and oil, and is a Mecca for other controversial extractive
industries like rare animal parts, traded openly in Burmese markets and
logging. As Jon Buckrell from Global Witness told DVB yesterday, illegal
logging has drastically eaten away at Burma’s forests, with a ton of
Burmese teak now being sold for as little as $US300.

However, according to Turnell, “political instability tends to trump these
sorts of concerns [over industry competition]”, with companies now
“desperate not to locate in Burma”; the lack of infrastructure, rule of
law, a credible banking system and trustworthy exchange rate are
destroying Burma’s chances.

Burma has been a sort of bit part on the side of the more dynamic
economies of ASEAN. Whilst its resources are eagerly tapped by companies
in Singapore and elsewhere, its governance and development has remained
more in league with tiger despots than tiger economies. A way round
Burma’s domestic quagmire has been to bring its cheap labour to Thailand
or Malaysia, which has now created special economic zones to accommodate
the influx of industry. Yet Ohmar speaks of “major concern” over
agreements which “have not consulted the people or civil society and do
not have people integrated into the processes [of formulating trade
regulations]”.

At the ASEAN people’s forum this week, Joy Chavez, an economics and
agricultural expert from the Philippines, warned that the current crop of
FTA agreements are “exclusionary
they do not link with the people of ASEAN
[and] without people’s input there is a big danger”. Turnell further
expressed angst about binding trade agreements with powerful blocs like
the EU: “For me the worry would be the extent that the EU and other
countries could lever away to express their unhappiness about human rights
issues” if they signed an FTA.

The ASEAN policy of ‘non-interference’ is also key: like most bilateral
agreements and bodies, all parties will seek to get the most out of it,
whilst giving the least. So whilst ASEAN intends to become an EU-style
free trade zone by 2020, the member states “will be desperate to protect
their own industry”, according to Turnell, with ‘non-interference’ used to
prevent other nations from upholding regulations. It’s the great legal
expression of conservatism at the heart of the region, and will keep the
economic powerhouses from spreading the potential wealth that exists in
the region.

The cohesion of the group, whether horizontally, between national
governments, or vertically, between its leaders and their subjects, is a
major cause for concern. Essentially ASEAN will never achieve its targets
of being a free trade bloc or of having progressive human dignity for all
if leaders are not prepared to have the humility to submit to principles,
rules and standards that that require interference or accountability. Its
efficacy will be at the mercy of ‘big men’ who, for Khin Ohmar, have
failed to show commitment. “Now we always make a joke; with ASEAN its one
step forward, two steps backward. It’s like the same old story again”.