BurmaNet News, November 3, 2009

[Editor]

November 3, 2009 Issue #3832

INSIDE BURMA
Mizzima: Junta chief visits cyclone devastated delta twice in a row
Mizzima: Arrested poet Khant Min Htet untraceable

INTERNATIONAL
Guardian: Top US diplomats begin talks with Burmese junta
Al Jazeera: US envoys arrive in Myanmar
Irrawaddy: Suu Kyi to meet Campbell in Rangoon hotel

ON THE BORDER
AFP: Myanmar Rohingyas swap suppression for squalor
SHAN: Junta’s strategy is to leave Kachin, Wa till end

TRADE
The Australian: Pipeline could boost military regime

DRUGS
Asia Times: Drugs, guns and war in Myanmar
DVB: Drugs burned during ceremony ‘were fake’

OPINION / OTHER
The Nation (Bangkok): Lifting Burma sanctions will not silence the screams
– Ko Bo Kyi

____________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

November 3, Mizzima News
Junta chief visits cyclone devastated delta twice in a row

Chiang Mai – Burmese junta supremo Snr Gen Than Shwe is making yet another
trip to Laputta and Mawlamyinekyun towns in cyclone devastated Irrawaddy
delta on Tuesday.

Sources in the military establishment said, during the trip, the Than Shwe
led team will spend a night in Bassein (Pathein) town, capital of the
Irrawaddy division, and will return to Rangoon on Wednesday.

Colonel Thein Nyunt, who is also a senior member of the junta-backed Union
Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), is reportedly planning a
grand reception for the Than Shwe led team.

On Monday a 32-member team led by Than Shwe paid a day’s visit to Bogale
and Pyapone towns in the Irrawaddy delta in three helicopters but returned
to Rangoon in the evening. Than Shwe’s delta trip has been planned since
early October but was later cancelled and re-scheduled.

The members of the team were informed of the trip at the eleventh hour on
October 30, the source said.

Than Shwe’s visit to the delta, coincides with the visit of United States’
Assistant Secretary of State, Kurt Campbell and US ambassador to the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Scot Marciel to Burma.

The four-member US delegation, which on Tuesday morning arrived in
Naypyitaw, will be meeting several junta officials including Minister for
Information Brig-Gen Kyaw San and will spend the night in Burma’s new
jungle capital.

According to the US embassy in Rangoon, the US delegation will arrive in
Rangoon and meet the detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi on
Wednesday morning. It will also have a press interaction including a photo
session before departing from the country later in the evening.
____________________________________

November 3, Mizzima News
Arrested poet Khant Min Htet untraceable - Nem Davies

New Delhi – The whereabouts of poet Khant Min Htet, also the layout
designer of Rangoon based Ahlinkar Wutyee Journal, picked up by the police
about two weeks ago from his home, is still not known, his family said.

The Special Branch (SB) of the police arrested him on October 22 from his
home in Thaketa Township. Four days after his arrest, a four-member SB
team came to his home again and searched his house. They seized some CDs
from his home and a computer hard disk from his journal office.

"They just said that they are taking him for questioning but we still do
not know his whereabouts. The family is terribly worried," father of Khant
Min Htet and Padauk Pwint Thit Editor-in-Chief Maung Sein Ni told Mizzima.

His family felt his arrest has something to do with politics but the
authorities did not disclose anything about it, his family said.

The Thailand based 'Association for Assistance to Political
Prisoners-Burma' (AAPP-B) said that at least 41 political activists
including members of the Cyclone Nargis volunteer relief workers group
'Lin Let Kye' were arrested in Rangoon last month.

(Edited by Ye Yint Aung)

____________________________________
 INTERNATIONAL


November 3, The Guardian (UK)
Top US diplomats begin talks with Burmese junta

Meetings with senior military officials in Burma are test of Obama
administration's new policy of engagement with dictatorship

US diplomats Kurt Campbell (left) and Scot Marciel arrived in Burma today
for meetings with senior junta officials. Photograph: Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty
Images

The Obama administration's new policy of engagement with Burma faces its
first test today as two senior diplomats begin America's highest-level
visit to the military dictatorship for more than a decade.

Kurt Campbell, the US assistant secretary of state for east Asian affairs,
and his deputy, Scot Marciel, arrived in Burma for meetings with senior
junta officials. They will also meet the country's imprisoned
pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who was sentenced to another 18
months' house arrest in August after being found guilty of harbouring an
American intruder at her home in May.

World leaders denounced the sentence, which will prevent her from taking
part in elections planned for next year.

Campbell's two-day trip marks a significant shift from the policy of
isolation supported by previous administrations.

The US, which imposed sanctions in the late 1990s, tightened the measures
two years ago after the Burmese military brutally suppressed peaceful
democracy protests led by Buddhist monks.

The last senior US diplomat to visit the country was Madeleine Albright,
who went in her role as Bill Clinton's US ambassador to the UN in 1995.

Five years earlier the regime drew international condemnation after it
ignored an election victory by Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for
Democracy (NLD). The Nobel peace laureate has been detained for 14 of the
last 20 years.

Washington has said it will maintain political and economic pressure while
it waits for Burma to improve its human rights record, implement
democratic reforms and cut its military ties with North Korea.

Campbell said last month that if the junta failed to respond, "we will
reserve the option of tightening sanctions on the regime and its
supporters as appropriate".

He was scheduled to meet the Burmese prime minister, Thein Sein, in the
administrative capital, Naypyitaw, today, but not the junta's hardline
senior general, Than Shwe, who has led the country for the past 17 years.
Campbell will meet Aung San Suu Kyi and other NLD members in Rangoon
tomorrow, reports said.

Washington's policy shift came after more than a decade of sanctions
failed to force Burma to implement democratic reforms or release the
country's estimated 2,200 political prisoners.

Campbell's visit comes amid signs that the junta may be willing to soften
its stance against Aung San Suu Kyi, who said recently she supported
Washington's fresh diplomatic approach.

Thein Sein reportedly told other Asian leaders last month that the regime
saw "a role" for her in bringing about reconciliation before next year's
elections, although it was not clear what that role would be. A Japanese
delegate suggested that the junta could be preparing to relax the
conditions of her house arrest.

But Burma observers played down the prospects for progress this week,
describing the trip as a test of the generals' sincerity.

"The US wants to suss out whether or not they have a genuine dialogue
partner," Sean Turnell, an analyst at Macquarie University in Australia,
told Reuters. "The overtures towards warming ties with the US have come
from officials lower down, and the US is trying to get a feel for how
committed the generals are."

____________________________________


November 3, Aljazeera.net
US envoys arrive in Myanmar

Two senior US envoys have arrived in Myanmar as the Obama administration
steps up efforts to engage the country's military government.

Kurt Campbell, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific
affairs, and his deputy Scot Marciel, arrived in the remote jungle capital
of Naypyidaw on Tuesday at the start of the most high profile American
visit to the country in 14 years.

Campbell is the highest ranking US official to travel to Myanmar, formerly
known as Burma, since Madeleine Albright went as US ambassador to the UN
in 1995.

But Myanmar officials said the two envoys will probably not get to meet
Senior General Than Shwe, the head of the military government, only
getting access to Thein Sein, the prime minister.

The officials are also expected to travel to Yangon on Wednesday to meet
Aung San Suu Kyi,
the opposition leader, according to the US embassy in Yangon.

'First stage'

Nyan Win, a spokesman for Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy
(NLD), told the AFP news agency that the party sees the visit "as the
start of direct engagement between the US and Myanmar government".

"But we do not expect the exact and big change from this meeting. This
visit is just a first stage," he added.

He said the NLD had been told that the US envoys would meet the party's
central executive committee at their headquarters on Wednesday and would
meet Aung San Suu Kyi  the same day.

Washington signalled a sharp shift in its policy towards Myanmar in
September, saying it would be "engaging directly with Burmese
authorities", and holding the highest-level contact in a decade with
Myanmar officials in New York later in the month.

But the US has also said that it will not ease sanctions on the Southeast
Asian country without progress on democracy and human rights.

Larry Dinger, the charge d'affaires at the US embassy in Yangon, said in
an interview published in the semi-official Myanmar Times newspaper this
week that Washington wanted to make progress on "important issues" but
would maintain sanctions "until concrete progress is made".

Backing engagement

Aung San Suu Kyi has welcomed US engagement of the military government and
in late September wrote a letter to Than Shwe to offer her co-operation in
getting Western sanctions lifted after years of backing harsh measures
against the ruling generals.

The generals granted the Nobel peace laureate two rare meetings with a
government minister and allowed her to see Western diplomats last month.

Thein Sein, Myanmar's prime minister, told Asian leaders at a summit in
Thailand last month that the government sees a role for Aung San Suu Kyi
in fostering reconciliation ahead of the promised elections next year, but
it was not clear what form this would take.

Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent 14 of the past 20 years in detention,
continues to be kept under house arrest after having her detention
extended by 18 months in August over an incident in which an American man
swam to her lakeside house uninvited.

A foreign diplomat in Yangon told the AFP that the visit by the US envoys
was "important but at the same time without immediate consequence".

"It is necessary to be cautious. Everyone knows there is a risk of
relations going cold again in two months," the diplomat said.

____________________________________

November 3, Irrawaddy
Suu Kyi to Meet Campbell in Rangoon Hotel – Wai Moe

The US delegation led by Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell is
scheduled to meet pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi at Rangoon’s Inya
Lake Hotel on Wednesday morning.

The meeting was confirmed by an official with the US embassy in Rangoon.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity said the embassy had been
responsible for arranging the meeting at the hotel.
A Burmese woman in Australia wears a badge of Aung San Suu Kyi to show her
support for the release of the pro-democracy leader on October 27. (Photo:
Getty Images)

Following the meeting with Suu Kyi, Campbell will hold talks with
opposition and ethnic leaders, the official said.

Campbell will hold a press conference on Wednesday at Rangoon
International Airport before leaving Burma, the official announced. The
State Department official will also report to the press on his Tuesday
talks with senior regime officials in Naypyidaw.

Journalists in Rangoon report that Burma’s Ministry of Information is
allowing photographers access to the US delegation and Suu Kyi when they
meet on Wednesday.

“We are permitted by the authorities to take photos of the meeting between
the US officials and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, but only a photo opportunity,”
said one Rangoon journalist. “The authorities told us ‘no questions’.”

Ahead of Campbell’s trip to Burma, Suu Kyi told her lawyer last week that
she is “keenly monitoring” the State Department officials’ two-day visit
to Burma.

Some observers remain skeptical about the visit and its chances of
success. “We are not that excited,” said a senior Rangoon correspondent,
speaking on condition of anonymity. “We have seen this kind of cosmetic
[by the junta] in the past.”

“The real question is whether they [the military regime] have genuine
political will,” the journalist said. “People have given them the benefit
of a doubt, but whatever they do we treat it with a pinch of salt.”

A week before Campbell’s visit, the junta arrested more a dozen relief
workers who helped Cyclone Nargis victims, including eight journalists,
according to human rights groups.

Campbell’s visit follows the launch of a new Burma policy by the Obama
administration in Washington. US officials led by Campbell met with a
Burmese delegation headed by U Thaung, the Minister of Science and
Technology who is a former Burmese ambassador to the US, in New York on
Sept. 29.

On Oct. 9, the Burmese junta acceded to a request by Suu Kyi for a meeting
with diplomats from the US, Britain and Australia to talk about the
effectiveness of sanctions.

The meeting prompted speculation that Suu Kyi had shifted her stance on
sanctions.

“I think most outside observers are misjudging Suu Kyi’s stance,” said
Bertil Lintner, a Swedish journalist who is author of many books on Burma.
“She has not changed her minds about sanctions as such. Sanctions are not
an end in themselves but they are there to achieve a goal.”

Lintner told The Irrawaddy on Tuesday that if the regime is not willing to
compromise, then, of course, she would like to see sanctions remain in
force until those goals are met.

“By making that statement, Suu Kyi has once again become an active player
in the Burmese imbroglio,” he added. “Now, no one can ignore her. She has
showed that she is flexible and reasonable.”

Along with the US efforts for democratization in Burma, a key issue in
US-Burma relations is cooperation in the fight to defeat the drug trade.

“There are a number of areas in which we might be able improve cooperation
to our mutual benefit, such as counter-narcotics, health, environmental
protection, and the recovery of the remains of World War II-era missing
Americans,” Campbell told the US Congress on Oct.21.

Shortly before Campbell’s arrival in Burma, Prime Minter Gen Thein Sein
travelled to the Kokang town of Laogai in northeastern Burma on Saturday
to attend the incineration of seized narcotic drugs and precursor
chemicals.

“This is a kind of signal by the junta to the US,” said Aung Kyaw Zaw, a
former communist fighter who observes the Burma situation from China’s
Yunnan Province.      “But an open secret here is that the ruling generals
have been involved in and ignored drug trading in the country for at least
two decades,”

____________________________________
ON THE BORDER

November 2, Agence France Presse
Myanmar Rohingyas swap suppression for squalor - Shafiq Alam

Kutupalong, Bangladesh — As one of Myanmar's ethnic Muslim Rohingya,
45-year-old Manjurul Islam endured a lifetime of oppression before he
finally fled the country for a squalid refugee camp in Bangladesh.

Described by UN officials as one of the most persecuted minorities on
earth, the Rohingya are not even recognised as citizens by the Myanmar
junta. They have no legal right to own land and are forbidden from
marrying or travelling without permission.

For Islam, decades of systematic discrimination came to a head six months
ago, when he says his 18-year-old niece and another woman in his village
were raped by soldiers.

Islam said he "foolishly" took the case to the chief of the local army camp.

"He listened and I thought we had made progress, but then they tied me and
my friends up, beat us with leather belts and bamboo sticks and kicked our
chests with their boots."

Rohingyas hail from Myanmar's Arakan state. Widespread abuse and
exploitation have prompted hundreds of thousands to flee across the border
to Bangladesh since the early 1990s.

Islam and his friends were released a few days later -- but only after his
family paid a bribe.

Then a group of soldiers destroyed their village's shrimp farms -- their
only source of income -- forcing Islam and his neighbours to make a
decision they had seen so many make before them.

"In the night, we piled into a boat and crossed the river Naf into
Bangladesh," he said.

According to Islam, more than 800 people fled his village over a two-week
period in April, with some crossing into Bangladesh by boat and others
walking across the forested, hilly border.

"My fifth child was born in the jungle under the open sky as we were
fleeing," said Shamsun Nahar, 32, showing her six-month old baby. "Thanks
Allah that both of us survived."

But survival brought with it fresh deprivation as Nahar and Islam joined
an estimated 25,000 Rohingyas living in appalling conditions in a
sprawling, refugee camp.

Only 28,000 Rohingyas in Bangladesh have been granted official refugee
status, allowing them access to three official camps which provide basic
amenities.

The rest, like Nahar, are confined to the unofficial camp in Kutuplaong in
conditions which even hardened aid workers find difficult to imagine.

"There is no water or power. Barring children and pregnant women, none
have access to food or medicine. When it rains it's impossible to walk and
the mud shacks became too muddy to even sleep in," said a worker with
Action Contre la Faim (Action Against Hunger, ACF).

Following EU pressure, the Bangladeshi government has since May this year
allowed ACF and another French charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF)
limited access to the unofficial camp.

"Twenty five thousand Rohingyas are living in dire humanitarian
conditions. It's extremely disturbing," said Paul Critchley, the MSF head
of mission in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh says it is unable to cope with the continued influx of
Rohingyas and the spread of the unofficial camp has stoked local tensions.

In July, police moved into the camp and destroyed several hundred
makeshift dwellings in an operation condemned by MSF as "aggressive and
abusive".

Despite the squalor and alienation, many Rohingya still feel they are
better off here than back in Myanmar.

"Here at this camp there are days I don't have any food. But at least I
can live freely," said Mamun Rafiq, a Rohingya farmer who migrated three
years ago.

"In Myanmar if you are a Rohingya, you are entitled to a dog's life: They
don't even allow us to wear clean shirts or travel outside our village."

Rights groups like the New York-based Human Rights Watch say they have
gathered volumes of personal testimony to the abuses visited on the
Rohingyas by the Myanmar authorities, including extra-judicial killings
and forced labour.

"The Burmese government does not just deny Rohingya their basic rights, it
denies they are even Burmese citizens," said Elaine Pearson, a deputy
director at Human Rights Watch.

Mohammad Ali, a Rohingya and head of the Bangladesh-based Arakan
Historical Society, said his community's plight began the day Myanmar,
formerly Burma, gained independence.

"Our fathers fought hand in hand with the Burmese people to win freedom
from Britain in 1948. But once Burma won independence, the new rulers
thought it was their country not ours," Ali said.

Such was the experience of Ezhar Hossain, the son of a wealthy farmer who
was elected as a lawmaker in Burma's second post-independence polls in
1956 when he was still in his early 20s.

"But my rivals alleged that I used the religion card in the elections. In
February 1957, the authorities stripped me of my parliamentary
membership," said Hossain, now 75.

When democratic rule ended in 1962 following a military coup by general Ne
Win, Hossain, still a prominent Rohingya leader, was accused of being a
foreigner and standing illegally for election.

"I did not wait for justice. I've seen how other leaders were hounded and
jailed by the junta. I took a boat one night and fled," he said.

Hossain now lives in southern Bangladesh in a tin-shed shack with his son,
a janitor at a college.

Hossain was lucky in one respect as he became a naturalised Bangladeshi
when the country won independence in 1971.

For contemporary refugees like Islam and Nahar, the future offers a
devil's alternative between life in the camp or a risky and illegal
journey by boat to another Southeast Asian country.

Hundreds of Rohingya migrants were rescued in Indian and Indonesian waters
between December and February after being abandoned at sea with few
provisions by the Thai navy.

Scores are feared to have died as they drifted in rickety boats for weeks
before reaching land. ____________________________________

November 3, Shan Herald Agency for News
Junta’s strategy is to leave Kachin, Wa till end

The winning strategy of the Burmese military junta brass, ensconced in
Naypyidaw,  is to subdue smaller ceasefire groups first and deal with the
strongest ones, namely, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and United Wa
State Army (UWSA) later, according to an informed source from the
country’s capital.

Meanwhile, the two would be under siege in order to restrict their
movements, cut their revenue and increase their expenditure. “Like Kokang
in August and Khun Sa’s Mong Tai Army in 1996, the regime will also try to
create and exploit divisions within each group,” he said.

Khun Sa decided to surrender after a mutiny broke out in mid 1995. Until
then, he had been staunchly withstanding blockades imposed not only by the
Burmese Army and the UWSA, but also by Thailand, where most of his
supplies came from.

“Among the four remaining ceasefire groups, Naypyidaw may not think much
of the Kayan New Land Party (KNLP) and the New Mon State Party (NMSP) as
both are small and isolated,” he explained. “But as for the two others,
the Shan State Army (SSA) North and Mongla, they are considerably stronger
and, more importantly, they cover the Wa’s western and southern flanks.
The regime will therefore focus their efforts on the two.”

The Wa’s northern border with Kokang has already been occupied by the
Burmese Army in August.

Since then, Mongla, officially Shan State Special Region #4, and the SSA
North, officially Shan State Special Region #3, have been under pressure
to accept the Border Guard Force (BGF) proposal and Home Guard Force (HGF)
proposal respectively.

Mongla, on October28, had been “advised” to resign itself to the BGF
status. The media-shy SSA North, meanwhile, was recently told by Maj Gen
Aung Than Tut, Commander of the Lashio-based Northeastern Region Command,
to stand by their 23 June 2009 letter that said its leadership
“appreciates” the ruling military council’s “good intentions” and had been
meeting and persuading its lower ranks to “accept” the proposal, according
to a report yet to be confirmed.

The situation nevertheless might not turn out as planned, according to
veteran border watchers. “Mongla territory, located in the triangle
(China, Burma and Laos) is considered by the Wa as their lifeline,” said
one. “It might not let it go, even if it wants to. That might trigger
premature military confrontation with the Burmese Army.”

Out of Burma’s 17 official ceasefire groups, five are no longer of
ceasefire status. Six have already accepted the BGF proposals.

____________________________________
BUSINESS / TRADE

November 3, The Australian
Pipeline could boost military regime

Hsipaw, Burma - CHINA and its neighbours are moving ahead on a
multibillion-dollar oil and gas pipeline project that promises to greatly
strengthen Burma's military regime financially and boost its political
clout in Asia.

As a multibillion-dollar pipeline to China gets under way, the quiet
mountain town of Hsipaw may never be the same again.

That promise comes as the US seeks ways to weaken Myanmar's regime, which
has used force and imprisonment over the years to subdue political
opposition and ethnic separatists.

Past strategies, including the use of economic sanctions to hobble Burma's
junta, have largely failed.

Many details of the pipeline project remain a mystery.

Burma's highly secretive military government has disclosed little and the
main foreign companies involved, including China National Petroleum and
South Korea's Daewoo, have said little in recent months aside from some
general outlines and cost estimates of their plans.

According to residents, activity is increasing along the proposed route.

In September, a crew of 24 Chinese engineers showed up to survey the path
through Hsipaw, a once-quiet mountain town that is becoming a major
crossroads for trade with China, a few hours drive away.

``It's very hard work in the mountains,'' one worker said as he ate fried
eggs and papaya one morning in a local guesthouse.

The man said he worked for an arm of CNPC.

When completed, the pipeline will help unlock large untapped deposits of
natural gas off Burma's coast and carry it hundreds of kilometres to
southern China, expanding Burma's role as one of Asia's energy exporters
and increasing its influence over other countries that rely on its
supplies.

The project is expected also to include a port that can take deliveries of
oil from the Middle East and Africa before transferring them to China.

That will give China a new route for oil that bypasses the congested
Strait of Malacca near Singapore, which handles a large portion of China's
imported crude.

All this should improve China's energy security and generate $US1 billion
($1.1bn) or more in annual revenue for Burma's government over 30 years,
according to estimates by advocacy groups, including Thailand's Shwe Gas
Movement, which are tracking the project.

This is an annual payday equivalent to about a third of the country's
existing foreign exchange reserves.

The project is an important part of China's wider strategy to diversify
energy sources and reduce its reliance on supplies that could be blocked
easily by foreign powers or pirates.

Chinese media reported this year that full-scale construction of the Burma
pipeline would begin in September, but an official at a pipeline division
of CNPC said work had been delayed by ethnic tensions along the pipeline
route.

An official at Daewoo said work on the gas portion should begin by the end
of the year. According to Daewoo, the overall investment, which includes
developing the offshore gas with other partners would cost at least
$US3bn.

Other partners have put the total at almost double that.

The project will probably make it harder for US officials to weaken the
Burmese regime.

The US and Europe imposed tough sanctions on Burma after its ruling junta
ignored a 1990 national election won by supporters of opposition leader
Aung San Suu Kyi, who remains under house arrest.

Many analysts argue sanctions have only pushed Burma deeper into the arms
of Asian countries, such as China and North Korea.

The pipeline project is not without risks, especially for China, because
the route traverses border regions, including areas near Hsipaw, that are
rife with ethnic tensions.

Many residents in the area say they detest China's growing influence and
in August, Burmese military forces clashed with local rebels near the
pipeline route, killing more than 30 and sending 30,000 residents fleeing
into China, resulting in a rare public rebuke of Burmese leaders by China.

The project has attracted the ire of human rights groups that say any
project built in Myanmar will lack sufficient environmental and social
safeguards.

The advocates point to the other major pipeline project in Burma: the
Yadana project that carries gas to neighbouring Thailand for its power
grid, even as much of Burma suffers from daily power outages.

International advocacy groups allege a host of human rights abuses
associated with the project, including forced labour and land
confiscations.

The project was developed by Total, Unocal and others in the 1990s.

In September, Washington-based group EarthRights International claimed
Burma's military had siphoned off $US4.8bn in revenue from the project,
storing much in foreign banks.

Total and Chevron, which bought Unocal, claim they are not connected with
any abuses and that their investments are benefiting local residents.
____________________________________
DRUGS

November 4, Asia Times
Drugs, guns and war in Myanmar - Brian McCartan

Bangkok - Mounting tensions between Myanmar's military government and
ethnic groups with which it has ceasefire agreements in the country's
northern regions have spurred a surge in drug trafficking. Driven by
militias' growing demand for weapons to counter anticipated government
offensives, a narcotics fire-sale is raising concerns of greater
instability along the borders of several neighboring countries, including
China.

Myanmar's military regime has demanded that the insurgent groups with
which it agreed ceasefires in the late 1980s and early 1990s hand over
their arms to government control. A deadline set for the end of October
has been allowed to pass and discussions between the military and two main
ethnic armies, the United Wa State Army (UWSA) and the National Democratic
Alliance Army

Neither side appears willing to back down, prompting speculation that new
fighting may be imminent. Under the government's proposed Border Guard
Force plan, ethnic armies would be downsized into several battalions
consisting of 326 men. Each would have a contingent of Myanmar army and
non-commissioned officers and operate under the central command of the
Myanmar Army. The junta has said it will provide weapons, equipment,
uniforms and even salaries to the proposed units.

The generals have indicated that a handover of weapons, either through the
border guard scheme or through forced surrender, is key to their plan to
achieve national reconciliation by holding general elections next year.
The political stakes for that plan are high. The junta has demonstrated a
willingness to risk the ire of ally China through an assault in August on
the Kokang ceasefire group, which caused a flood of refugees to stream
across the border into neighboring China.

Both the Myanmar army and the Kokang have since reinforced their troops
and appear to be preparing for further hostilities that security analysts
predict could spill over into other insurgent-controlled territories. It's
still unclear if Myanmar will risk its relations with Beijing by attacking
the remaining and better armed ceasefire groups along the Myanmar-China
border, a battle plan that has the potential to significantly destabilize
southern China.

Under the government's plan, the ceasefire groups' political wings will be
allowed to transform into political parties to contest the general
elections. Ethnic leaders, however, say that handing over their armed
forces to government control would entail relinquishing their bargaining
power vis-a-vis a regime that frequently uses military force to press its
demands. It would also mean handing over much of the apparatus that
protects, produces and transports their narcotics trafficking operations.

Since a 1989 mutiny that broke up the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) and
spawned several ethnic armies in the north - including the UWSA, NDAA and
the Kokang group - the drug trade has steadily expanded in the region. The
military government has both permitted and profited from the groups' drug
production and trafficking, despite official claims to lead an
internationally assisted counter narcotics campaign and disingenuous
pledges by several of the insurgent groups to be drug-free.

The ceasefire groups have plowed their profits into places such as
Panghsang and Mong La along the Myanmar-China border, transforming them
into boom towns. They have also invested in more legitimate businesses in
central Myanmar, as well as in neighboring China and Thailand. For
example, the UWSA's financial controller, Wei Xuegang, who is wanted for
narcotics trafficking in the United States and Thailand, has built an
extensive business empire in Myanmar around his Hong Pang Group.

Without firm autonomy agreements with the Myanmar government, a
substantial portion of ceasefire groups' profits have gone towards the
upkeep of their armies and the procurement of new weapons. According to
security analysts, the UWSA has since its 1989 ceasefire agreement grown
into the largest and best armed fighting force in Myanmar outside the
government's army. The narco-trafficking militia consists of between
15,000 and 20,000 heavily armed foot soldiers.

Should negotiations over the border guard plan collapse and a renewed
civil war break out in northern Myanmar, ethnic insurgents risk losing
access to their extensive drug-financed business operations. According to
Sai Khuensai Jaiyen of the Shan Herald Agency for News, an exile-run media
organization that closely tracks the drug trade in Shan State, there are
reports that Wei has started to sell parts of his business holdings and
has suspended some of Hong Pang Group's operations in apparent preparation
for hostilities. The company is involved, among other things, in lumber,
agriculture, gas stations and department stores in the towns of Lashio,
Mandalay and Yangon.

Security analysts and counter-narcotics officials in Thailand believe
that, without access to funds from their business interests, insurgent
groups like the UWSA will be forced to step up their narcotics production
and trafficking activities. As nationalist Chinese Kuomintang general Duan
Xiwen said in 1967 about fighting in Shan State: " ... to fight you must
have an army, and an army must have guns, and to buy guns you must have
money. In these mountains the only money is opium" - and now
methamphetamines.

Insurgent patron
China has been the main patron of the ceasefire groups along its border
since the CPB mutiny in 1989. The relationship, from Beijing's
perspective, is a pragmatic one that ensures that China has leverage
against Myanmar's generals with which to protect its large and growing
economic and strategic interests in the country. China has provided
development and economic assistance to the ceasefire groups, as well as
advanced weapons and even some training in their usage. This has included
120mm and 130mm artillery and hand-held surface-to-air missiles.

China's goodwill towards the ceasefire groups has been partly contingent
on their agreement to curtail drug smuggling into and through China.
Pressure from Chinese officials has been placed on ethnic insurgent
leaders to prohibit the smuggling of narcotics into China. Much of the
drug trade to China consists of opium and heroin, which is becoming a
growing problem seen in rising addiction rates in the country.

The ability of the UWSA, NDAA and other ceasefire groups to fight will be
partially dependant on whether China permits them to maintain their known
cross-border businesses and investments, as well as access to weapons and
ammunition. Without the ability to generate income through these
operations, ethnic insurgent leaders will be faced with the choice of
either surrendering once their stocks of ammunition are depleted - as
happened to the Kokang in August - or stepping up narcotics production and
trafficking to raise funds and purchase arms and ammunition from dealers
in Thailand and China.

The insurgent groups' main market for narcotics is Thailand. While heroin
is still exported to the outside world via well-established and
well-protected trafficking routes in Thailand, most of the
methamphetamines produced are destined for Thai consumption. China, too,
could soon be faced with an upsurge in narcotics smuggling, both to its
growing addict population and through well-documented routes across its
southern region out to Shanghai and Hong Kong. Myanmar remains China's
main source of heroin.
Thai counter-narcotics officials are already claiming that the UWSA is
engaged in a fire sale by cutting prices to quickly move its stores of
narcotics to buy more weapons before hostilities with government forces
begin in the approaching cool season. In August, the Thai army quietly
revived an elite counter-narcotics force previously known as Task Force
399 and renamed as 151st Special Warfare Company.

Task Force 399, which was tasked with interdiction at the border and
supported by US Special Forces personnel, was known previously for taking
a proactive approach to interdicting drug traffickers including, some
analysts of the drug trade say, pursuit across the border into Myanmar
territory.

Over the past five months, there have been frequent reports in the Thai
media about arrests of drug traffickers, disruption of smuggling gangs and
seizures of large quantities of narcotics. The New York Times in an
October 1 article cited Thai Office of Narcotics Control Board (ONCB)
figures that 1,268 kilograms of heroin had been seized between January and
August this year, a huge increase on the 57 kilograms seized in the region
last year.

Last week, the government announced plans for a new drug suppression force
to combat trafficking in border provinces next to Myanmar. Thai Deputy
Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban linked the creation of the new force to
an increase in drug trafficking from Myanmar, according to media reports.
The plan still needs government approval, but if enacted the new unit will
by coordinated by the army's Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC).

Regional reach
While the bulk of the drug trafficking ceasefire armies are stationed
along the Myanmar-China border, the UWSA has also built up a substantial
area along the Thai border, contiguous with Thailand's northern Chiang Mai
and Chiang Rai provinces, through which much of its heroin and amphetamine
trade now passes. Because the Myanmar army controls territory between the
main UWSA units, each is largely self-sustaining through their narcotics
trafficking. Maintaining the security of this area will be key for access
to the Thai market.

Another key narcotics trade point is across the Mekong River into Laos.
The NDAA operates at least one major trade point jointly with the UWSA at
Sop Lwe on the Myanmar side of the river near the small Lao town of Xieng
Kok in the northern Luang Nam Tha province, says a researcher familiar
with the trade who recently visited the site. This route, stretching
across the width of UWSA and NDAA-held territory along the China-Myanmar
border, avoids the necessity of sending narcotics shipments south across
government-held territory to reach the Thai border.

Observers of the regional drug trade have claimed that the UWSA and NDAA
have established methamphetamine laboratories in Laos, an accusation that
Lao officials have consistently denied. Trafficking routes, however, are
much harder to deny. Thai counter-narcotics officials claim
methamphetamines and heroin are smuggled through Laos to less
well-patrolled points in northeastern Thailand, including Nong Khai,
Mukdahan and Ubon Ratchathani provinces.

The ONCB reckons between three million and five million methamphetamine
pills are smuggled into northeastern Thailand from Laos each year. In a
sting operation in July, Thai police arrested two Lao men and a Thai woman
in northeastern Udon Thani province with 160,000 methamphetamine tablets
worth as much as US$1.4 million when sold in Bangkok. Police allege one of
the Lao men was an important trafficker in Laos with direct contact to
Myanmar-linked drug labs.

An increase in production and trafficking in Myanmar could have
far-reaching regional implications. In Vietnam, there has been in recent
years an upsurge in trafficking of methamphetamines and other synthetic
drugs smuggled through Laos and traced back to northeastern Myanmar. The
drugs are known to be smuggled to the northern cities of Hanoi and
Haiphong and down the length of country to Ho Chi Minh City, feeding a
growing addiction problem. Demand has increased in Vietnam as its large
population becomes more affluent. Cambodia and Malaysia have also seen an
increase in narcotics trafficked from Myanmar.

The production and trafficking of narcotics has fueled a succession of
insurgent groups in Myanmar's northeastern region since the 1950's and
will continue to do so should fighting with the government resume. Better
communications and more efficient trafficking routes and methods, as well
as more easily produced synthetic drugs in mobile laboratories, have
financed the growth of certain Myanmar insurgent groups. And as they
prepare for new hostilities against the government, the region's narcotics
problem seems set to grow.

Brian McCartan is a Bangkok-based freelance journalist. He may be reached
at brianpm at comcast.net.

____________________________________

November 3, Democratic Voice of Burma
Drugs burned during ceremony ‘were fake’ - Naw Say Phaw

 Around 15 police officers in northeastern Burma have been arrested after
allegedly substituting seized drugs, thought to be worth $US20 million,
for fake ones prior to them being destroyed.

The officers, who belonged to the Taunggyi Special Police Narcotics Unit
in Shan state, were arrested following a ‘ceremony’ to mark Drug
Eradication Day last week, according to a source close to the unit.

“A lot of fake drugs were allegedly substituted before burning but the
amount of substitution is not yet known exactly,” said the source under
condition of anonymity.

Locals from Taunggyi told DVB that similar incidents had occurred before
but that no official had been arrested or questioned.

The former head of the Taunggyi Special Police Narcotics Unit, police
chief Khin Maung Lwin, is reportedly under investigation for the incident.

The state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported on Monday that the
event took place in the Kokang region of Shan state, which in August and
September was the site of heavy fighting between Burmese troops and an
ethnic Kokang army.

Thailand-based Burma expert Bertil Lintner said however that the ceremony
may have been a “public relations exercise” to tarnish the image of the
Kokang army.

Shan state is the world’s second largest heroin producer after
Afghanistan. Recently however it has seen a huge growth in
methamphetamine, or ‘yaba’, production, much of which arrives in Thailand.

It is believed that the United States’ delegation currently in Burma will
bring up the issue of the country’s drugs trade during talks with
government officials.



____________________________________
OPINION / OTHER

October 31, The Nation (Bangkok)
Lifting Burma sanctions will not silence the screams – Ko Bo Kyi

Mae Sot, Thailand - THE DAY I was arrested was just like any other. I was
having lunch with my family, when officers from the Burmese Military
Intelligence came to my home and took me away. They shoved me into a car,
cuffed my hands behind my back and put a dirty hood over my head. I was
forced to lie on the floor so I couldn't be seen, and they pressed guns
into my ribs to stop me from crying out.

I was being driven to an unknown location and upon arrival, kicked into a
room, the door locked behind me. I removed the hood, and looked around the
3x3-metre room and saw blood spattered on the walls. The names of many
people were written there, including some of my friends. "Where are they
now?" I thought. "Have they been tortured to death? Or are they in
prison?" I realised that my own torture had started.

I was denied food and water for several days. I was blindfolded and
repeatedly interrogated. After each answer I gave, I was punched in the
stomach so hard it knocked me to the ground. Every time I was forced to
stand up and take it, over and over again. I lost all track of time.

I later found out I had held in the interrogation centre for nine days. My
"crime" was that I'm a leading member of the All Burma Federation of
Student Unions, a banned organisation in Burma.

That was in 1990 - but it could have been yesterday.

New testimony from political prisoners released under an amnesty in
September is remarkably similar to my own. None of it is surprising to me.

Myo Yan Naung Thein, a 35 year-old student leader, was released from
Thandwe prison in Arakan State. He was arrested on December 15, 2007, and
sentenced to two years in jail. After his release, he described his
arrest: "While I was on the phone to my mum at a shop on the corner of
Hledan Junction [in Rangoon], two men grabbed me
 I shouted out because I
thought that they had kidnapped me by mistake. And then one of them got me
by the throat, put his hand over my mouth, and pushed me into a taxi. They
hooded me and I was forced to lie down in the taxi. One of them sat on top
of me."

Describing his own experiences at the interrogation centre, Myo Yan Naung
Thein said: "They were very brutal. My hands were tied behind my back,
they kicked and punched me. They locked me in a dark wet room with no
windows. I didn't know whether it was day or night."

Myo Yan Naung Thein suffers from a neurological disease that has left him
unable to walk. He was denied proper medical treatment in prison, another
form of psychological torture.

He was one of 7,114 prisoners released by the ruling military regime "on
humanitarian grounds". Just 128 of them, like Myo Yan Naung Thein, were
political prisoners - less than 2 per cent. More than 2,100 remain in
detention centres, prisons and labour camps across Burma.


In the same month as the amnesty, the regime arrested 39 activists,
including my friend and colleague Nyi Nyi Aung (also known as Kyaw Zaw
Lwin), now an American citizen. He, too, was taken to various
interrogation centres, where he was kicked and beaten, deprived of food
for seven days and questioned throughout the night.

The underlying purpose of torture is to effectively destroy the soul of a
human. It is designed to break down the identity of a strong man or woman,
turning a union leader, a politician, a student leader, a journalist or a
leader of an ethnic group into a non-entity with no connection to the
world outside of their torture chamber.

In Burma, the regime uses torture to create a climate of fear, in order to
maintain its iron grip on power. Arbitrary arrest, physical and
psychological torture, unfair trials, long-term imprisonment and denial of
medical care in prison are all intended to crush the human spirit of
pro-democracy activists.

But there is another, unintended, effect of torture. For those of us who
share that experience, it creates an unbreakable bond between us. I
co-founded the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma)
(AAPP) with my friend Ko Tate Naing nearly ten years ago.

We heard each other's screams under torture. Since we founded AAPP in
2000, we have documented hundreds of accounts of torture in Burma's
interrogation centres, prisons and labour camps. Even though Burmese
domestic law and international law forbids torture, no officials are ever
held accountable their actions. We will never turn our backs on each
other, or our friends and colleagues in prison. As Myo Yan Naung Thein
said after his release, "Who will keep fighting if we don't? We have to
carry on."

There is no doubt about it: torture is state policy in Burma.

The latest accounts are further evidence of the deteriorating human rights
situation in my country. Over the past two months, human rights groups
have documented increased attacks against civilian populations in ethnic
nationality areas; more cases of rape and sexual violence by Burmese army
soldiers and many instances of forced labour.

There has been renewed debate about the role of sanctions against Burma
and strategies of engagement with the regime by the US and other
countries. I welcome the move by Aung San Suu Kyi to contribute to the
debate on sanctions with the military regime and ambassadors from the West
in Burma. As a political prisoner herself, I have no doubt that she will
have respect for human rights at the heart of that position.

Until there are concrete improvements on human rights, sanctions cannot
and must not be lifted. Torture must stop, all political prisoners must be
released and human rights violations across the country must cease. The
generals must not be allowed to stifle the screams from Burma's prisons.




Ed, BurmaNet News