Burma Related News - June 16, 2006.
- From: "Tin Kyi" <maungtinkyi@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 18:39:27 +0000 (UTC)
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BURMA RELATED NEWS - JUNE 16, 2006.
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HEADLINES
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AP - Myanmar dismisses 8 deputy ministers
Reuters - Chinese police detain Myanmar women sold as wives
Reuters - ILO accuses Myanmar of unprecedented forced labour
CNA - Relative of Myanmar's Suu Kyi files first petition to UN rights
council
Anchorage Daily News - $10,000 Asian oil painting taken from collector's
home
The Hindu - ONGC-GAIL hit huge gas field off Myanmar
UPI - Belarus set to be ejected from GSP
24dash.com - Sheffield will become home to Burma refugees
Human Events Online - Humanitarian Crisis Brews in Burma
LA Times - Opinion - Asia's captive heroine
DVB News - Burmese girl allegedly almost tortured to death by police
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Myanmar dismisses 8 deputy ministers
Fri Jun 16, 10:20 AM ET
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - Myanmar's military government reshuffled its
Cabinet on Friday by dismissing eight deputy ministers, state-run radio
and television said.
A Supreme Court judge also was dismissed, according to the announcement
read on the evening news.
New appointments to fill the vacant posts were not announced.
Last month, the junta dismissed two Cabinet ministers and appointed four
new ministers and four deputy ministers.
The May 15 shake-up was announced after the first day of the quarterly
meeting of the junta, formally called the State Peace and Development
Council. The meeting was held for the first time at the country's new
administrative capital of Naypyidaw, 250 miles north of the old capital,
Yangon.
Several of May's Cabinet appointments were former regional army
commanders.
Myanmar's military junta took power in 1988 after crushing a
pro-democracy movement. In 1990, it refused to hand over power when
pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's political party won a landslide
victory in general elections.
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Friday June 16, 6:25 PM
Chinese police detain Myanmar women sold as wives
BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese police in the poor, inland province of Henan
have rounded up 69 women from Myanmar who were sold to farmers unable to
find local wives, a Chinese newspaper said on Friday.
The women were smuggled into Xincai county from the former Burma some
4,000 km away, and sold for as much as 20,000 yuan ($2,500) each, the
Southern Metropolis Daily said on its Web site
(www.nanfangdaily.com.cn).
It quoted Zhao Heihai, 28, as saying he thought Myanmar was a place in
southwest China's border province of Yunnan, and only found out
otherwise on the second day of his wedding when a fellow villager
congratulated him for marrying a foreigner.
Four days later, police took away his 20-year-old bride Chen Xiaosi.
"She complained about poor living standards in her home town and said
men there were lazy, alcoholic and beat wives," Zhao said. "Many are
also drug addicts."
Myanmar, one of the world's 50 least developed countries according to
the United Nations, is widely criticised for its human rights abuses.
The newspaper said many of the women knew they were going to marry a
Chinese husband at the very start of their trip and did so willingly to
pursue a better life, although police said this was a case of human
trafficking.
The paper also blamed a skewed sex ratio in rural China for the problem,
saying that in some villages there were seven men for every woman.
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ILO accuses Myanmar of unprecedented forced labour
16 Jun 2006 12:49:03 GMT
By Stephanie Nebehay
GENEVA, June 16 (Reuters) - The International Labour Organisation on
Friday accused Myanmar of "unprecedented" use of forced labour, and gave
the ruling junta until the end of July to stop prosecuting
whistle-blowers and release those detained.
At the United Nations agency's annual conference, its 178 member states
also set an end-October deadline for Myanmar to agree to setting up a
credible mechanism for dealing with forced labour complaints. It left
open the option of referring Yangon to the world court if the deadlines
are not met.
Although forced labour is officially outlawed in the former Burma,
critics of the military which has ruled the country since 1962 say the
army frequently obliges people to do unpaid work -- often in areas where
it is fighting rebels.
Myanmar told a three-week conference it was working to wipe out the
practice through cooperation with the agency and also announced a
moratorium on prosecuting those who report abuses.
An ILO report adopted by consensus on the final day of the conference
cited an "unprecedented gravity of the forced labour situation in
Myanmar".
In unusually strong language, it declared that it was "unacceptable to
the ILO that a member state not only tolerated such practices, but was
itself responsible for them."
The ILO has been demanding Myanmar eradicate forced labour since 2000,
in line with ILO conventions banning the practice, which it has
ratified.
RELEASE PRISONERS
Pledging to work with the ILO to wipe out the practice, Myanmar
announced a moratorium on prosecuting those who report abuses. It also
released Su Su Nwei, an activist jailed for reporting two village
leaders who used forced labour.
But the ILO report said that despite limited progress, "there was every
reason to believe that widespread and very serious abuses persisted".
Villagers in some areas have been detained by the army and forced to
carry supplies during military operations in terrible conditions and
subject to "brutal treatment", it said.
The ILO said Myanmar's junta should provide further details on the
prosecutions moratorium and extend it to cover prosecutions it said were
now under way in the town of Aunglan.
Any prisoners currently detained for reporting forced labour, especially
Aye Myint, should be released by the end of July, the agency said.
The lawyer was arrested in August 2005 and charged with "spreading false
information", based on a complaint letter he sent authorities and ILO's
liaison officer in Yangon, it said.
Anyone lodging a complaint during the moratorium should have immunity
from any subsequent reprisals, it added.
The ILO's governing body will re-examine whether Myanmar has complied
with its requests in November.
"The ILO expects Myanmar to take concrete and verifiable action,"
Richard Horsey, ILO's liaison officer in Myanmar, told Reuters in Geneva
on Friday.
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Channel NewsAsia
Posted: 16 June 2006 0945 hrs
Relative of Myanmar's Suu Kyi files first petition to UN rights council
WASHINGTON : A family member of Myanmar's jailed pro-democracy leader
Aung San Suu Kyi on Thursday filed the first petition with a new UN
Human Rights Council challenging her detention by the country's military
junta.
The petition was filed just as the Geneva-based council officially took
over at 2200 GMT Thursday from the discredited UN Commission on Human
Rights, which has been abolished by the world body as part of UN
reforms.
It was filed on the relative's behalf by American lawyer Jared Genser,
who is also president of Freedom Now, a US-based group striving to free
"prisoners of conscience" across the globe.
Freedom Now filed the petition directly to the UN Working Group on
Arbitrary Detention, a five-member panel of human rights experts led by
Algerian judge Leila Zerrougui which will operate under the council.
"I think it is highly appropriate that this first case filed to this new
human rights council is on behalf of such an important symbol of
freedom, democracy and human rights in the world," Genser told AFP.
He declined to name the member of the detained leader's family who
authorised him to file the petition, saying he had to "maintain their
privacy."
Aung San Suu Kyi is the world's only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize
Laureate and has spent more than 10 of the last 17 years under house
arrest.
Defying international demands for her freedom, Myanmar's military rulers
in late May extended her arrest for another year.
Previously, the UN working group had declared that her house arrest was
in violation of international law.
"This new petition to the working group is necessary because the latest
working group's declaration in 2004 expired when the military junta in
Burma (Myanmar) issued a new detention order on May 27, 2006," Genser
said.
"We need to reaffirm that her extended house arrest is a violation of
international law," he explained.
The petition came in the wake of a US bid to seek a UN Security Council
resolution compelling Myanmar's military junta to change its repressive
policies.
Welcoming the petition, the US Campaign for Burma, which is coordinating
a global push to free Myanmar's democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, said it
was a maiden test for the human rights council.
"If the UN working group decides again that the detention is arbitrary,
Mr Kofi Annan (UN Secretary-General) should take the case more seriously
and help push for the freedom of all political prisoners in Burma," said
Aung Din, the
group's co-founder.
"This will be a test for the newly formed council and we hope it will
live up to expectations that it is a new effective mechanism to combat
human rights abuses everywhere," he said.
The council's predecessor had countries named as some of the world's
most notorious rights abusers among its members.
Genser said that based on past procedures, the junta would be given 90
days to respond to the petition, after which the UN working group would
give a judgment.
The junta had always argued that Aung San Suu Kyi was a threat to the
state and her house arrest was not in violation of human rights or
international law.
Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won a landslide
election victory in 1990, but the military government never recognised
the result.
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Anchorage Daily News
$10,000 Asian oil painting taken from collector's home
RARE CRIME: Burglar stole artwork from foyer of south-side house.
By MEGAN HOLLAND
Published: June 16, 2006
A burglar with an eye for fine art broke into a collector's South
Anchorage home and carefully removed a $10,000 oil painting by a Myanmar
artist entitled "Water Lilies," Anchorage police said.
The art heist stands as a rare crime in Anchorage, and a black market
for valuable art does not really exist here, police and art dealers say.
Police have made no arrests and are asking for the public's help in
locating the burglar and artwork.
The 22-inch-by-20-inch piece by contemporary artist U Thet Aung is an
impressionist-style landscape scene of the Southeast Asian country that
the collector bought a couple years ago at an East Coast gallery, the
collector said. It was displayed in the main foyer of her home off De
Armoun Road home June 7 when it was pilfered around mid-morning, between
the time she left on an errand and the time she came back hours later to
take out the garbage, she said.
The thief or thieves bypassed other paintings and sculptures she said
she has been collecting for more than 30 years, everything from bronze
works to fiber arts.
While removing the ornately framed piece from the wall, the burglar or
burglars turned off the Christian radio station the collector says is
always playing throughout her home.
"Art just speaks to me in a silent way," said the 53-year-old real
estate agent. "Some women love shoes; I love art."
" 'Water Lilies,' " she said, "just spoke to me immediately when I saw
it."
She called the theft a personal affront and wonders who would do such a
thing. The thief -- who also made off with some jewelry and silverware
-- had to have known what he was doing, she said.
And what does a thief do with a one-of-a-kind oil painting from an
artist in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma? Offloading the art to a
local pawn shop is unlikely, said Anchorage burglary Sgt. Ron Tidler.
Local art dealer Tennys Owens said it will be hard to make money off it
in Anchorage. "I wouldn't even know where to sell a Burmese piece of
art.
"I think many times people steal artwork for their own personal
pleasure."
Anyone with information about the burglary or the whereabouts of the
painting is asked to call police. To remain anonymous and possibly
receive a reward of up to $1,000, call Crime Stoppers at 561-STOP.
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The Hindu
ONGC-GAIL hit huge gas field off Myanmar
New Delhi, June 16. (PTI): India's largest oil producer Oil and Natural
Gas Corp and state gas utility GAIL (India) Ltd have found a huge gas
field in Block A-3, offshore Myanmar.
The Mya-1 discovery in Block A-3, where ONGC's overseas arm - ONGC
Videsh Ltd - has 20 per cent stake and GAIL 10 per cent interest, flowed
about 57.6 million cubic feet of gas per day during testing, industry
officials said.
South Korea's Daewoo International is the operator of Block A-3, which
lies adjacent to Block A-1 where 4 to 6 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of gas
reserves were previously found. OVL and GAIL together hold 30 per cent
interest in A-1.
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United Press International
Belarus set to be ejected from GSP
Jun 14, 2006, 21:45 GMT
BRUSSELS, Belgium (UPI) -- The European Union is moving to eject Belarus
from its Generalized System of Preferences on trade.
The EU`s administrative arm, the European Commission, says it may
recommend to members such a move, perhaps as soon as this month, the EU
Observer reported Wednesday.
'We can expect in the weeks to come that the commission will convey a
recommendation to the council,' a commission official told EUobserver
Tuesday, adding,
'We are lacking at this stage satisfactory evidence that Belarus is in
compliance with (International Labor Organization) commitments.'
The only other country to be ejected from the GSP is Myanmar.
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24dash.com
Sheffield will become home to Burma refugees
Publisher: Ian Morgan
Published: 16/06/2006 - 10:41:25 AM
Around 75 people from the troubled country of Burma will be arriving to
live in Sheffield later this month.
Funded by the Home Office for the first year, the families will be
supported by workers from the Refugee Council to find work and training
in the city.
Last year, a group of 51 refugees from Burma came to live in Sheffield
as part of the joint UK Government and United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees (UNHCR) Gateway Protection Programme.
"The situation in Burma has been horrendous for a long time and I'm glad
that we are able to offer refuge to this small group of people," said
Councillor Jan Wilson, Leader of Sheffield City Council.
"It's appalling to think that in the 21st century there are still places
where people can be arrested, imprisoned or tortured because they choose
to write for a newspaper or teach history in a school.
"I'm proud of Sheffield's history of welcoming people who are in real
need and the Gateway programme has been an excellent way for us to do
this. Two years ago, we welcomed the first group of arrivals from West
Africa and last year our first Burmese people arrived.
"They have been welcomed by Sheffield people and have settled well into
our community, and I hope this year's group will be made to feel equally
welcome."
In Burma, it's illegal to take part in even peaceful expressions of
political activity - and their interpretation of 'political' is not one
many British people would recognise.
It includes reporting an event or a speech in a newspaper which is not
to the regime's liking, or teaching in school on a period of history
that reflects political opinions different to those held by the regime.
In order to be eligible to come to Sheffield, they have already been
interviewed by the Home Office, had health screening and security
checks, and agreed to contribute to the city's economy as soon as they
can. They are eligible to find work straight away.
The Gateway Programme is the result of the UK's commitment to
participate in the global resettlement scheme that is organised by the
United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR.
Home Office Minister Joan Ryan said: "The Gateway Protection Programme
reasserts our commitment to provide a safe haven to those genuinely in
need, by enabling a number of refugees from some of the most troubled
parts of the world to rebuild their lives in the UK.
"I am grateful to Sheffield City Council for their continued commitment
to the programme which has so far seen 400 people brought out of danger
and offered a new tart in the UK.
"I hope that the positive experiences of Sheffield will encourage other
local authorities to take part so that we can transform Gateway into a
UK-wide scheme."
People arriving in Sheffield under this programme will be housed in
various parts of the city. Safe Haven will be providing the housing.
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Human Events Online
Humanitarian Crisis Brews in Burma
by Dana Dillon
Posted Jun 16, 2006
On June 19, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of
Burma?s democratic opposition, will celebrate her 61st birthday still
under house arrest in Rangoon. She has spent well over half of her last
17 birthdays there for the unpardonable sin of winning a landslide
victory over Burma?s generals in a 1990 election. Her continued
indefinite detention and advancing but finite aging are two lines that
may ultimately meet, with potentially explosive results.
The average life span for women in Burma is 64 years, and Burma is a
country where the health system, along with every other public good, is
rapidly deteriorating. On the evening of June 9, Aung San Suu Kyi was
admitted to a hospital for intestinal troubles. Although it is reported
that she already has been released and is resting at home, this is the
second time she has been hospitalized since she was re-arrested in 2003.
It raises a question of what happens in Burma if she becomes seriously
ill or dies.
The day after Aung San Suu Kyi was hospitalized, senior government
officials in Washington, London, and other capitals expressed concern
for her health and called on the junta to expedite her medical
treatment. But the concern in the world?s capitals goes far beyond the
health of one person and extends to the peace and stability in the
region.
Their worries about regional stability are easy enough to imagine. Aung
San Suu Kyi is by far the most popular figure in Burma, and a prolonged
illness or a lingering death would attract sympathetic crowds to the
hospital. Large gatherings, even peaceful ones, are illegal in Burma and
likely would draw the attention of a military with a well-earned
reputation for using deadly force with little provocation and less
restraint.
A mix of strong emotions, hostile crowds, and a nervous military could
develop into a bloody situation without plan or warning. And if the
worst were to occur, her death and funeral would also attract large
crowds and potentially a military overreaction.
For the international community, unrest in Burma, depending on its
ferocity, could create an enormous humanitarian crisis. The estimated
millions of Burmese refugees are already a problem in the region, and
bloody battles in the streets of Rangoon could dramatically increase
their numbers in all the border countries. There would almost certainly
be calls for United Nations intervention, similar to international
efforts in Kosovo, Somalia, East Timor, and Darfur.
Actually, these calls for UN action have already been voiced. In
September 2005, Vaclav Havel, former President of the Czech Republic,
and Bishop Desmond M. Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town and another
Nobel Peace Prize winner, commissioned a report entitled, ?Threat to the
Peace: A call for the UN Security Council to Act in Burma.?
In their report, Havel and Tutu reviewed the historical conditions that
prompted United Nation Security Council resolutions to intervene in
situations deemed threats to peace. They concluded that Burma was unique
in the world because all five factors they identified in UN
action?overthrow of democratic government, conflict among factions,
human rights violations, refugee outflows, and severe humanitarian
crises?already existed in Burma in 2005.
The United States has also called for UN Security Council action. On May
31, the State Department announced that it ?intends to pursue a UN
Security Council resolution that will underscore the international
community?s concerns about the situation in Burma.?
For the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the oldest and
most important multilateral organization in Asia, Burma has been nothing
but trouble since it joined the regional grouping. ASEAN has changed
dramatically since 1990, the last time the Burmese military cracked
down, and the junta should not expect a political free ride from its
neighbors. This is especially true of the democratic countries?Thailand,
Philippines and Indonesia?whose populations now make up a majority of
Southeast Asians.
There is already a near global consensus that the situation inside Burma
is unacceptable and that the ruling military junta, the SPDC, must
implement its ?road map for democracy.? Aung San Suu Kyi?s birthday
should spur the United Nations Security Council to demand that the junta
do just that. In addition, the Council should further demand that the
SPDC allow immediate and unhindered access to all parts of Burma for UN
relief agencies and other international humanitarian organizations. The
UN must act now before change comes through international crisis and
civil war.
Mr. Dillon is senior policy analyst for Southeast Asia in the Asian
Studies Center at The Heritage Foundation.
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The Los Angeles Times
Opinion - Asia's captive heroine
Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi will turn 61 in forced
solitude.
By Timothy Garton Ash,
June 15, 2006
NEXT MONDAY is the 61st birthday of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese
opposition leader and Nobel Prize winner. Unless she is back in the
hospital, where she was recently treated for a stomach ailment, she will
presumably mark that birthday alone in the rundown villa on the shore of
Inya Lake where she has spent more than 10 of the last 17 years under
house arrest.
We don't know what she will do, what she is writing or what she is
thinking. Her isolation is almost total. According to recent reports,
she sees only a housekeeper, the housekeeper's daughter, a gardener and
occasionally her doctor. It seems unlikely she will even be able to talk
on the phone with sons Alexander and Kim, who live in the West.
We are told she spends time meditating, playing piano and keeping fit,
but that is hearsay. The last foreigner to meet her was a United Nations
envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, who visited Burma ? now officially Myanmar ?
last month and said she was well. There were rumors at the time that her
house arrest would be lifted, but a few days later, the military regime
extended her detention for another year. So much for dialogue.
I will never forget meeting Suu Kyi in Rangoon ? now Yangon ? about six
years ago, when she was still able to leave her house. I delivered a
lecture about transitions to democracy ? which she interpreted ? to a
brave group of activists of the National League for Democracy, or NLD.
Such a meeting would be unthinkable today in a country that has gone
backward while all around are going forward.
I'm sure she will be bearing her solitary confinement with fortitude,
grace and the Buddhist life-philosophy that is so important to her. Yet
I feel a terrible sense of frustration in writing about her and her
country's predicament. What new is there to say? That she is a heroine
of our time, an Asian Nelson Mandela? That the Burmese generals run one
of the worst states in the world, spending about 40% of the country's
budget on the military while most of their people live in poverty and
disease? (The health system is ranked 190th out of 190 countries by the
World Health Organization.) That dialogue with the NLD, which
overwhelmingly won a democratic election in 1990, is the key to
political change? All true. All said a thousand times already. All to no
apparent effect.
But if she doesn't give up, we have no right to. So here are three
modest thoughts about possible ways to thaw this frozen conflict.
First of all, remembering Burma is itself a political act of the first
importance. As the Czech writer Milan Kundera famously observed, "The
struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against
forgetting." Forgetting Burma is just what its rulers want us to do. We
have to keep hammering away. After all, though the comparison is hardly
encouraging, Nelson Mandela was in prison for 27 years, and yet South
Africa moved in the end.
Second, while paying all respect to Suu Kyi's often-repeated call for
tight sanctions against the military regime, we should think again about
the mix of our policies. For example, is there more we can do to
alleviate directly the suffering of the population from the effects of
AIDS or heroin addiction without giving an unacceptable payoff to the
regime? What mixture of carrots and sticks would have a chance of
persuading the Burmese military to loosen up?
Third, if the internal key to change is the reopening of dialogue
between the regime and the NLD, the external key is a change in approach
by at least one of the country's Asian neighbors ? because we in the
West simply don't have enough leverage to do it ourselves.
Where to begin? Surely in India, the world's largest democracy and the
country where Suu Kyi went to school. One hardly expects communist China
to press for liberalization and democracy in its disgraceful little
neighbor, but it is disappointing that democratic India has been so
timid toward its Burmese neighbor. The shape of the conversation should
not be (Washington speaking), "Hey, Indians, you must take our
self-evidently correct Western template and help us impose it on Burma."
It should be: "We're wondering whether you think, judging by your own
values, that this is acceptable behavior in your own immediate
neighborhood?"
This is the shape of the new world order, if there is to be one. If we
are to achieve liberal ends in an increasingly multipolar world, then we
do have to rethink how we say it, and to whom. And we have to listen
more than we have for the last 500 years.
TIMOTHY GARTON ASH is professor of European studies at Oxford University
and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
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Burmese girl allegedly almost tortured to death by police
Jun 13, 2006 (DVB) - A 24-year old woman named Khin Mar Lwin from Ohbo
Ward, 12 Street of Rangoon Kyimyintaing (Kemmendine) Township received
life threatening injuries because of tortures she received in the hand
of the local police chief, according to her family members.
Khin Mar Lwin who is a washerwoman by trade was arrested on 8 June by
the police. A housewife informed the police that some belongings were
missing from her house and told the local police chief Nay Myo to arrest
Khin Mar Lwin without notifying the accused, according to a local
authority member who doesn?t want to be named.
Nay Myo beat up Khin Mar Lwin so badly that her eardrums were broken and
her whole body was blue and black, a family member told DVB. She was
also sexually mistreated by May Myo, another family member alleged. She
was released only after it was found out that she was entirely innocent.
Nay Myo, local authority and women organisation members also tried to
gag Khin Mar Lwin with 200,000 Kyat (Approx. US$150) bribe in attempt to
hush up the incident.
When DVB contacted the police station, an officer duty denied the
report.
The latest incident followed several reports of people dying in police
custody emerged from Burma.
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