Burma Related News - Mar 22, 2006.
- From: "mtinkyi@xxxxxxxxx" <mtinkyi@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 22 Mar 2006 10:00:33 -0800
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BURMA RELATED NEWS - MARCH 22, 2006.
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HEADLINES
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AFP - TB claims 1.7 million lives as it keeps its hold on Africa: WHO
AFP - Asia told to target youth in AIDS battle
Kyodo News - ASEAN envoy to visit Myanmar from Thursday to check on
democracy
Bernama - AIPMC Concerned Over Killing Of Myanmar Political Prisoner
DPA - Myanmar's new capital gets royal surname
ReliefWeb - Myanmar: More IDPs in Karen State
Asia Media - Burma's silence must trouble all
DVB News - Security tightened in Burma's Pegu Division after blasts
in Taungoo
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TB claims 1.7 million lives as it keeps its hold on Africa: WHO
Wed Mar 22, 8:50 AM ET
GENEVA (AFP) - Most of the world is on target to reduce the impact of
tuberculosis, but efforts have yet to bear fruit in Africa where the
disease goes hand-in-hand with AIDS, the UN health agency revealed.
In its annual report on the global impact of TB, the World Health
Organisation said that the disease claimed 1.7 million lives in 2004
and that there were almost nine million new infections.
The Americas, Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific regions are all
expected to reach targets set out by WHO member governments, the agency
said.
These centre on detecting 70 percent of all TB cases and successfully
treating 85 percent.
The WHO said that two of the worst-affected countries, the Philippines
and Vietnam, had already met the campaign target.
It said that five others -- Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia and
Myanmar -- are also believed to have done so, but that the 2005 data
needed to confirm their success would not be available until the end of
2006.
"The trends and progress are clear and positive," said WHO chief Dr.
Lee Jong-wook, who is a TB expert.
"Even in low-income countries with enormous financial constraints,
programmes are operating effectively and producing results," Lee told
reporters.
"However, the figures released in this report still make grim reading,"
he said.
The global number of cases is still rising by around one percent a
year, the study found.
That is largely because of the grip the disease has on Africa, where
people with immune systems weakened by HIV/AIDS are more likely to
catch and fall sick with TB.
A drug-resistant strain of TB is also hampering efforts to bring the
disease under control in the former Soviet bloc, said the WHO.
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Asia told to target youth in AIDS battle
Wed Mar 22, 9:38 AM ET
HANOI (AFP) - East Asian and Pacific nations must focus on young people
in their efforts to control the spread of HIV/ AIDS or face devastating
epidemics of the killer virus, health experts warned.
"It is the youth that is most at risk," said UN Children's Fund
(UNICEF) regional director Anupama Rao Singh, speaking on the first day
of a three-day regional conference on AIDS and children in Hanoi.
"If we don't contain it now, given the population base of Asia, it's
going to have a devastating impact," she said Wednesday.
About 2.5 million people in East Asia and the Pacific now live with
HIV/AIDS and the total for Asia, including South Asia, is 8.3 million,
according to UNAIDS figures.
While that figure is still far lower than sub-Saharan Africa's 25.8
million people, experts warn that HIV/AIDS is now growing faster in
Asia than in any other region of the world.
"In the whole of Asia and the Pacific, we're talking about (a total
population of) three billion people," said Singh. "One per cent
prevalance in that would be phenomenal."
Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar and Papua New Guinea already face
generalized epidemics, and the disease is now spreading in China,
Vietnam and Indonesia from high-risk groups into the general
population, said event organisers.
The focus in the AIDS battle must shift toward children and youths,
experts said, through better education, prevention and treatment, fewer
mother-to-child transmissions, and campaigns to reduce the stigma
associated with the disease.
At the moment "children are notably absent from the response agenda" of
most regional countries, said a briefing paper jointly prepared by
organisers of the meeting that brought more than 200 experts from 20
countries to Hanoi.
"Religious and cultural taboos prevent parents and educators from
addressing HIV/AIDS-related topics such as safe sex, condom use and
harm reduction with children and adolescents," warned the report.
In the East Asia and Pacific region, more than 30,000 children are now
HIV-positive and over a third of them caught the virus in 2005, says
the United Nations in what experts call a conservative estimate.
The number of AIDS orphans is rising. By the end of last year, 450,000
children in the region had lost one or both parents to AIDS, and
hundreds of thousands more were living with a chronically ill or dying
parent.
"We're just seeing the beginning of a very big problem," said UNAIDS
advisor Swarup Sarkar. "In Thailand, 10 per cent of infections are now
mother-child transmissions," he said, a level similar to those in
sub-Saharan Africa.
UNICEF says children are especially vulnerable to infection because of
poverty, violence, human trafficking and the breakdown of families in
an economically dynamic region that is rapidly industrialising and
urbanising.
Singh said increased migration across Asia meant that more men have
multiple sexual partners and more children are being separated from
their parents, making them more prone to high-risk behaviour.
Despite the threat, cultural taboos and gaps in education mean that
"there is generally very poor knowledge about the details of
transmission," said Lindsay Daines, who oversew an Asian youth survey
for Save the Children.
"Even in Cambodia and Thailand, where there've been very strong
education campaigns," he said, "between 30 and 45 percent of children
still thought they could get the virus from mosquitoes."
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Wednesday March 22, 4:54 PM
ASEAN envoy to visit Myanmar from Thursday to check on democracy
(Kyodo) _ Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar will make a
two-day visit to Myanmar from Thursday on a special mission to check
democratic reforms there as an envoy of the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations, ASEAN diplomatic sources said Wednesday.
The mission, taking place amid a growing sense of disenchantment within
the 10-member bloc over Myanmar's lack of progress, comes after months
of delay been blamed on the junta's procrastinations.
The date for the mission has not been revealed to avoid media glare,
but well-informed diplomatic sources told Kyodo News that he will
arrive in Yangon on Thursday afternoon and will leave quietly on an
early evening flight the next day.
During the visit, Syed Hamid is expected to meet at least Myanmar Prime
Minister Soe Win and Foreign Minister Nyan Win. The sources said it is
not clear if he will be allowed to meet opposition leader Aung San Suu
Kyi, although he has mentioned before that he hopes to meet her.
ASEAN Secretary General Ong Keng Yong said Syed Hamid's main tasks are
to gauge Myanmar's efforts at democratic change and also to find out
more about the capital's move from Yangon to Pyinmana.
Syed Hamid is expected to report the outcome of his trip to other ASEAN
foreign ministers during their gathering on the Indonesian island Bali
on April 17-18.
The plan for the mission was conceived with Myanmar's consent at the
annual ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur in December last year, when several
ASEAN foreign ministers expressed concern Myanmar was becoming a
liability for ASEAN's trade relations with Western powers due to its
foot-dragging on political reforms and continued detention of Suu Kyi.
In particular, ASEAN ministers were rattled that Myanmar had kept them
in the dark about its plans to relocate the capital from Yangon to
Pyinmana.
After several delays in settling a date for the mission, ASEAN recently
served an ultimatum on the junta to allow a mission before the foreign
ministers' meeting in Bali.
Ong pressed Myanmar to set a date for the visit on the sidelines of the
ASEAN senior officials meeting in Kuala Lumpur earlier this month.
ASEAN, fearing embarrassment if the mission could not be conducted by
then, even threatened to withdraw support for Myanmar at international
forums such as the United Nations, the sources said.
They added, however, that sanctions or eviction from the group have not
been on the cards.
Despite strong objections from Western powers, ASEAN admitted Myanmar
as a member in 1997, hoping to influence it to change through a policy
of "constructive engagement."
Since, ASEAN foreign ministers discussed the political situation in
Myanmar over dinner at their meetings, but they have taken care not to
openly criticize the junta in public, mainly to keep up with ASEAN's
principle of noninterference in each other's internal political
affairs.
But ASEAN dissatisfaction with Myanmar has been growing due to intense
pressure from ASEAN's biggest trade partners and foreign investors and
the group has become more vocal in criticism of Myanmar recently.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice skipped the annual meeting of
ASEAN foreign ministers in Laos last year, sending a deputy instead,
and although the excuse was that she was busy elsewhere, many analysts
believe Myanmar was the main factor.
Last year, Myanmar gave up its 2006 ASEAN chairmanship to avoid a
damaging Western boycott of the group's meetings.
ASEAN was also forced to shelve its plan to hold the first formal
summit with the United States next year to mark the 30th anniversary of
their dialogue relations, which began in 1977, mainly because it would
be anathema for U.S. President George W. Bush to take part in a meeting
involving the junta that it prefers to ostracize.
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March 22, 2006 20:20 PM
AIPMC Concerned Over Killing Of Myanmar Political Prisoner
KUALA LUMPUR, March 22 (Bernama) --Asean's Envoy to Myanmar Datuk Seri
Syed Hamid Albar has been urged to raise issues of violence by Yangon
authorities against its citizens and the prolonged detention of elected
Members of Parliament during his forthcoming mission to that country.
The Asean Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus (AIPMC) said the brutal
killing of Thet Naing Oo, who three years ago was freed from a decade
of imprisonment for his political beliefs, further proved that violent
acts especially the targeting of pro-democracy activists and members of
the political opposition, were still rampantly occurring in the
military-ruled country.
"AIPMC is greatly concerned with reports of the brutal killing of the
former political prisoner by Yangon officials on March 17 and strongly
calls on the Yangon government to renounce violence against its people
and to discontinue the suppression of its leaders.
"The junta must immediately and unconditionally release all political
prisoners including (pro-democracy leader Ang San) Suu Kyi," its
chairman Datuk Zahid Ibrahim said in a statement Wednesday.
AIPMC also called on Yangon Generals to hold responsible for the death
of Naing Oo.
"Only with the discontinuation of such blatant disregard for human
rights by Myanmar, can Asean be satisfied that the regime is indeed
working towards democratic reforms in the country as called for by the
regional bloc," he said.
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Wednesday March 22, 03:03 PM
Myanmar's new capital gets royal surname
By DPA
Yangon, March 22 (DPA) Myanmar's new capital in the boondocks has been
elevated to 'Pyinmana The Royal City,' state-run media revealed
Wednesday.
Myanmar's state-controlled newspapers, TV and radio stations started
referring to the new capital as 'Pyinmana NayPyiDaw,' after the new
name was first used Tuesday evening on national TV in a weather report.
The name change adds to the mysteries surrounding Myanmar's new
capital, which has yet to be visited by foreign ambassadors based in
Yangon, the old capital, and remains off bounds for tourists and
ordinary citizens.
The country's ruling junta announced on Nov 7 last year that it had
decided to move the capital to Pyinmana, a provincial backwater
situated 300 km north of Yangon, formerly Rangoon.
No formal explanation was provided for the capital shift.
Most ministries have already been moved to Pyinmana NayPyiDaw, although
living quarters and public utilities are reportedly very limited in the
new city.
Armed Forces Day, which marks the birth of the institution that has
ruled Myanmar for the past 44 years, is to be celebrated for the first
time at the new capital on March 27, sources in Yangon said.
Most Myanmar-watchers believe the shift to Pyinmana was made for
security reasons at the behest of military leader Senior General Than
Shwe, head of Myanmar's self-styled State Peace and Development
Council, as the ruling junta calls itself.
Myanmar is a pariah state among Western democracies for its abysmal
human and labour rights record, failure to pursue democratic reforms
and the imprisonment of opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San
Suu Kyi for the past two and a half years.
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ReliefWeb - Date: 22 Mar 2006
Myanmar: More IDPs in Karen State
By Shah Paung
A new counterinsurgency campaign by the Burmese military in western
Karen State has forced more than 400 local villagers to seek refuge in
the jungle, a report from the Free Burma Rangers said on Tuesday.
The report stated that Burmese soldiers attacked a group of displaced
Karen in the Ler Way area, leading some 400 villagers to flee further
into the jungle and bringing the number of newly displaced Karen to
more than 3,400 in recent months, with an additional 3,000 displaced in
northern Karen State.
The attacks occurred along a north-south line stretching from Toungoo
to Shwe Gyin in Nyaunglebin District, western Karen State. "They
[attacks] seem to be aimed at cutting off all support for the
resistance as well as stopping all rice, medicine and other needed
material from reaching the displaced people who are living in these
areas," the FBR report said.
The counterinsurgency appears to be a coordinated effort involving
multiple battalion-sized forces from 66 and 99 divisions of the Burmese
army.
"It is not yet a major offensive, but the area of attacks has increased
weekly for the past four weeks and the numbers of displaced have grown
from 400 newly displaced in February to about 3,400 as of March 21,"
the report said, which claims to originate from a relief team in the
region and to relate information about ongoing Burmese government
attacks.
Security along rail routes and highways leading from Pyinmana to
Toungoo has been stepped up recently, and Burmese troops have been
conducting door-to-door searches in nearby villages, according to Karen
National Union General-Secretary Mahn Sha.
Villagers living near Taungoo claim that Burmese troops active in the
area have conscripted them for forced labor, beat them and burn them
out of their homes. The violence has disrupted agricultural production
in the region and could create lasting problems for local farmers
unable to get their rice crops planted.
"It is like genocide," said Mahn Sha, "and this kind of thing is still
going on."
He added that displaced persons face considerable challenges in getting
to refugee camps, such as the distance to the camps and the fact that
they would need to traverse Burmese army-controlled areas.
Some of the displaced who have managed to reach the Thai border are
trying to get into Mae Ra Moo refugee camp in Thailand's Mae Hong Son
province. Many, however, remain on the Burmese side of the border for
fear of Thai authorities.
The Norwegian Refugee Council's Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre
today released 83-page report ("Internal Displacement: Global Overview
of Trends and Developments in 2005") that stated: "Burma remained the
worst internal displacement crisis in Asia, with 540,000 IDPs."
The group said that displacement mostly resulted from "widespread human
rights abuses committed by the Burmese army and its allies, and-to a
lesser extent-insurgent groups." (Source: The Irrawaddy)
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Asia Media
Burma's silence must trouble all
The Bangkok Post says the absence of information about avian flu,
narcotics is not good for Burma's neighbors
Bangkok Post
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
The traditional cliche holds that North Korea is the hermit kingdom,
but Burma provides competition for the title. Information about our
western neighbour has been as rare as hen's teeth. That is an apt
comparison, given that Burma has even been secretive about as
important, and as international an issue as avian flu.
Burma's taciturn or non-existent answers cover items as banal as what
is the capital city, and as important as an apparent resurgence of
opium and heroin trafficking in the country, if not by its military
dictators.
Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar wasn't helping cut through
the troubling secrecy when he announced he would finally make the trip
to Burma that Asean leaders assigned to him last January. Mr Syed Hamid
told one Malaysian newspaper he would be leaving for Burma "soon,"
meaning in the next nine days.
But he would not give the dates, itinerary or expectations of his visit
because he wanted to keep out of the glare of media.
Of course, a good politician like Mr Syed Hamid knows that journalists
will now give his trip even more attention, which may be his goal. But
there is also the chance he is buying into the dangerous and growing
isolation of the military regime.
When last seen in public, in roughly the middle of last year, the
Burmese junta was bowing to the inevitable, and agreeing to give up its
place in the rotation as the 2007 Asean chair. Late last year, the
generals ordered a midnight move from Rangoon to the new capital, in
remote Pyinmana, as regime-inspired rumours spread that the Americans
were going to attack. The country has held another of its sham
constitutional conventions, with no progress towards democracy.
There has been no move to free democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi,
arrested and imprisoned at home without charge or immediate hope for
personal freedom. Mr Syed Hamid would not say if he even hopes to meet
the Nobel Peace Prize winner, even though his specific warrant from
Asean is to assess the progress of democratic reform.
Last week, Burma announced two outbreaks of avian flu near Mandalay,
among chickens and quail. A United Nations agricultural team from
Bangkok flew to Burma, but health officials remain in the dark. The
government mouthpieces which pass as media in Burma were totally silent
on the outbreak for three days, which only increased the concern in the
minds of consumers and in the poultry markets.
The disregard for their citizens is standard from the generals, but
avian flu is a primary security concern around the world. It is no
surprise the Burmese junta has no regard for its neighbours, but it
remains troubling.
The same holds true for narcotic drugs, which have long been the main
export of Burma. The latest UN survey estimated that about 100,000
hectares (around 625,000 rai) are under poppy cultivation. But even
that is disputed.
Shan State Army commander Col Yod Suk says many fields have been moved
to new areas, and foreigners kept out by the army. The opposition
Democratic Voice of Burma radio claims opium now is grown by Naga
tribesmen, close to India. Of course opponents have a reason to
exaggerate -- but so does the junta.
Their New Light of Myanmar newspaper says drug arrests were up again
last year, to 4,754 people. Authorities claim to have seized 811kg of
heroin and 772kg of opium.
This is not impressive. The 312 tonnes of opium which the UN believes
were harvested in 2005 would yield more than 30 tonnes of heroin -- so
more than 29 tonnes are unaccounted for, even by the regime's
reasoning.
By all accounts, heroin trafficking from Burma has actually increased.
Neighbours including Thailand are concerned. Chinese Prime Minister Wen
Jiabao publicly told his Burmese counterpart to take tougher action
against "drugs flooding across the border". Premier Soe Win promised to
look into it.
In fact, Burma seems likely to continue as the region's top drug
producer and exporter.
Date Posted: 3/21/2006
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Security tightened in Burma's Pegu Division after blasts in Taungoo
Mar 21, 2006 (DVB) - The military authorities have been imposing tight
security measures in Pegu Division, lower central Burma, with the
excuse of trying to prevent exiled political groups and armed
organisations from carrying out the bombings of public places.
Local residents have been forced to guard crowded areas such as
cinemas, hospitals and train stations at night and farmers in rural
areas were also forced to dismantle their farmhouses and 50 of them
were burnt down and destroyed by the authorities at Min Ywa in
Thanatpin Township as their owners refused to obey the order, a farmer
told DVB.
But the Karen National Union (KNU), which was often accused by the
ruling military government of carrying out bombings inside Burma,
denied the accusations and maintained that the junta deliberately uses
the scare tactic thus in an attempt to cow and oppress the civilians
more.
The spokesman of the KNU, Phado Mahn Sha insisted that his organisation
does not carry out bombing activities which hurt the public, and
pointed out that every time there was a bomb blast in Burma, the
military authorities carried out more oppressive actions on the people.
"As it (the bombing) is an act of attack on the public, only those
who regard the public as enemy (i.e. the Burma army) will do such a
thing," Mahn Sha said. "I want to say that only those who regard
the students as the enemy will do such a thing."
Mahn Sha added that more civilians in the rural areas have been
abandoning their homes and fleeing into the jungles due to recent
offensives of the army which opened fire on unarmed civilians and burnt
their villages and farms.
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