Burma Related News - May 24-25, 2007.
- From: TIN KYI <mtinkyi@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 25 May 2007 06:55:45 -0700
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BURMA RELATED NEWS - MAY 24-25, 2007.
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HEADLINES
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Reuters - Myanmar junta extends Suu Kyi detention by a year
Reuters - Myanmar junta "too scared" to free Suu Kyi
AFP - Myanmar under pressure to release Aung San Suu Kyi
AFP - EU demands Myanmar release Aung San Suu Kyi
AFP - Laura Bush asks China to join US to restore rights in Myanmar
AFP - Myanmar moving towards democracy: Cambodian FM
AP - China will stay out of Myanmar's affairs
Bernama - Muslim Rohingya Men From Myanmar Take Case To High Court
PD - Myanmar's businessmen urged to export 10 major goods
IHT - US criticizes Myanmar's human rights record, says refugee flow
burden to region
IHT - Myanmar battling to contain polio outbreak that afflicted three
M&C - Yangon International Airport opens new terminal
Asia Times - Slow train through a forgotten capital
BKK Post - More reserves in Burma
The Nation - Burma extends Aung San Suu Kyi's detention
DVB News - Location of arrested activists still unknown
DVB News - Solo protestor arrested in Myitkyina
DVB News - Su Su Nway hospitalised
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Myanmar junta extends Suu Kyi detention by a year
15 minutes ago
YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar's military junta has extended opposition
leader Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest by another year, a government
source said on Friday.
"Home Ministry officials went to her residence and read it out to
her," the source said of the order extending the Nobel Laureate's
detention, which was due to expire on Sunday.
The order was issued despite urgent appeals from the White House,
European Union, United Nations and fellow Nobel peace prize winners to
the generals in charge of the former Burma.
Suu Kyi, 61, who has now been in detention for more than 11 of the
last 17 years, is being held under an obscure security decree that has
to be renewed every 12 months.
Quite why the junta, which ignored a sweeping election victory by her
National League for Democracy in 1990, makes such a show of observing
the rule of law in keeping her in isolation, without a telephone and
requiring military permission to receive visitors, is a mystery.
"They just make the laws for their own convenience," Khun Saing, an
exiled dissident now living in neighboring Thailand, told Reuters this
week.
Suu Kyi's latest stretch of detention started "for her own safety" on
May 30, 2003, after clashes between her supporters and pro-junta
demonstrators.
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Myanmar junta "too scared" to free Suu Kyi
By Ed Cropley
Wed May 23, 11:27 PM ET
MAE SOT, Thailand (Reuters) - A rare spate of protests in Myanmar
means the junta is very unlikely to release democracy icon Aung San
Suu Kyi when her latest year of house arrest expires this weekend,
former political prisoners say.
In what is becoming an annual ritual in the run-up to Sunday's
deadline, the White House, European Union, United Nations and fellow
Nobel peace prize laureates have issued urgent appeals to the generals
running the former Burma to set her free.
But the pleas for the release of the 61-year-old woman, who has been
behind bars or under house arrest since mid-2003, are even more likely
than usual to fall on deaf ears.
Two exiled dissidents said a prayer campaign for Suu Kyi last year and
protests this year against deteriorating living conditions in the main
city, Yangon, had sent shivers through the junta top brass -- even
though the demonstrations have been tiny.
"They are scared of her, especially at the moment," said 54-year-old
activist Khun Saing, who spent 13 years behind bars before fleeing to
the Thai border town of Mae Sot in 2006.
The last time Suu Kyi was released from house arrest, in 2002, she
drew huge crowds on a tour of the country, a reminder to the generals
of the huge sway the daughter of independence hero Aung San still held
over Myanmar's 54 million people.
"In 2002, the regime thought they could control the people not to
support her. They were shocked by the level of support -- people came
out to greet her in great numbers," Khun Naing said.
"SACRIFICE"
Suu Kyi, who has now been in detention for more than 11 of the last 17
years, is being held under an obscure security decree that has to be
renewed every 12 months, giving her supporters annual cause for
optimism.
Quite why the junta, which ignored her party's massive election
victory in 1990, makes such a show of observing the rule of law in
keeping her in isolation, without a telephone and requiring military
permission to receive visitors, is a mystery.
"They just make the laws for their own convenience," said Khun Saing,
standing beside a wall of black-and-white photographs of Myanmar's
estimated 1,100 political prisoners in the offices of the Assistance
Association for Political Prisoners in Mae Sot.
Near an image of Suu Kyi is journalist Win Tin, now 77, Myanmar's
longest-serving prisoner of conscience.
He was jailed for 20 years in 1989 for offences including subversion
and anti-government propaganda -- writing a critical human rights
report and sending it to the United Nations.
While there has been no progress under a junta "roadmap to democracy"
unveiled in 2003, former prisoner Bo Gyi, 42, said the recent protests
could be signs of a stirring public conscience.
"The people are doing something for their rights. We are seeing
complaints about living conditions," he said, taking a long drag from
a dark green cheroot.
The army crushed the last mass uprising against military rule
ruthlessly in 1988. Hundreds, if not thousands, were killed as troops
machine-gunned students in Yangon and elsewhere.
Those leading the current campaigns, many of them members of the "88"
uprising, were well aware of the risks, Bo Gyi said.
"Any struggle without sacrifice cannot succeed. They are sacrificing
their lives for the future generation," he said.
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Myanmar under pressure to release Aung San Suu Kyi
by Shino Yuasa
Fri May 25, 1:28 AM ET
BANGKOK (AFP) - Military-run Myanmar is under growing international
pressure as it prepares to review the detention of democracy leader
Aung San Suu Kyi on Sunday, with many nations calling for her
release.
The Nobel peace laureate has spent most of the last 17 years under
house arrest at her lakeside Yangon home, and observers say the junta
-- fearful she could rally her supporters to threaten its rule -- is
unlikely to free her.
"They are afraid of her popular appeal both at home and abroad, and
that's why she remains under house arrest," said Walter Lohman,
director of the Asian Studies Center at the Heritage Foundation in
Washington.
"She is a very powerful symbol. They have no more sophisticated ways
of dealing with her than house arrest because their position is so
fundamentally weak."
The last time the 61-year-old opposition leader -- the only Nobel
peace laureate in detention -- was able to leave her house was
November 2006, when the junta allowed her to meet visiting UN envoy
Ibrahim Gambari for one hour.
She has little contact with the outside world, apart from her live-in
maid and visits from her doctor.
The latest period of her detention, which began after a May 2003
attack on her convoy by a junta-backed militia, is to expire Sunday,
prompting global appeals for the release of the woman known simply as
"The Lady" in Myanmar.
Sunday also marks the 17th anniversary of the election won by Aung San
Suu Kyi's opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD).
Despite its landslide victory, the party was never allowed to govern.
US ex-president Bill Clinton and 58 other former world leaders urged
Myanmar to release her in a joint letter last week to General Than
Shwe, head of the junta.
Two other Nobel peace laureates -- former US president Jimmy Carter
and former South Korean president Kim Dae-Jung -- were among those who
signed the appeal.
Citing Myanmar's rights violations, including Aung San Suu Kyi's
detention, the United States last week renewed sanctions against the
regime for another year, as did the European Union in April.
US First Lady Laura Bush on Wednesday called on China, an ally of
Myanmar, to join efforts to free her, saying that American women
"stand with her and that we watch her and we think about her a lot."
But observers say Myanmar's generals are likely to keep her under
detention regardless.
"She remains very popular among the public. If she goes free, the
junta is very afraid that she will crisscross the country and create
an opposition movement," said an Asian diplomat in Yangon, who asked
not to be named.
Stanley A. Weiss, who recently visited Myanmar and is founding
chairman of the Washington-based Business Executives for National
Security, a nonpartisan group, said the country's military rulers
needed her under lock and key.
"The junta uses Aung San Suu Kyi as a chit in its contentious
relations with the rest of the world and, more importantly, as a tool
to preserve what it cares about most -- the regime's own survival
against threats both foreign and domestic," Weiss said.
The junta is also worried her release could become a catalyst for
political unrest among a population increasingly frustrated with the
government's handling of chronic economic problems, the Asian diplomat
said.
While Myanmar is rich with natural resources, it is one of the world's
poorest nations due to decades of financial mismanagement and the
effect of Western sanctions.
The junta has detained at least 60 pro-democracy activists in the past
week as they went to pagodas to pray for Aung San Suu Kyi's release,
and 45 people, mostly NLD members, still remain in custody.
Amnesty International said Wednesday the human rights situation in
Myanmar had worsened during the year with authorities stepping up
repression against political opposition.
The United Nations has estimated there are 1,100 political prisoners
in the country, which has been ruled by the military since 1962.
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EU demands Myanmar release Aung San Suu Kyi
Thu May 24, 11:51 AM ET
BERLIN (AFP) - The German presidency of the EU on Wednesday called on
Myanmar to release iconic democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi as the
country's military junta prepares to review her detention this
weekend.
"The EU strongly reiterates its call on the authorities of Myanmar to
release Daw Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest and to free all other
political detainees," the presidency said in a statement.
Aung San Suu Kyi, 61, a Nobel peace laureate and leader of the
opposition National League for Democracy, has spent most of the last
17 years under house arrest at her lakeside home in Yangon.
Her latest detention period has lasted four years and is due to end on
Saturday.
But analysts expect the regime to turn a deaf ear to calls to release
her. The United Nations, the United States and former US president
Bill Clinton have all called for her to be freed.
"The end of her present term of detention on May 27 should be seen as
an opportunity for national reconciliation and genuine democratic
transition," the EU said.
Myanmar is one of the world's poorest nations and has been under
military rule since 1962. It is facing increasing international
pressure over human rights abuses.
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Laura Bush asks China to join US to restore rights in Myanmar
Wed May 23, 7:09 PM ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) - US First Lady Laura Bush on Wednesday called on
China to join hands with Washington in efforts to restore human rights
in military-ruled Myanmar.
"Well, I think that China, especially, because of their closeness to
Burma, should worry about the human rights abuses that are there," the
wife of President George W. Bush said at the lauching of the US Senate
Women's Caucus on Burma.
Burma is the previous name of Myanmar, which has been ruled by the
military since 1962.
Last January, China joined Russia in vetoing a UN Security Council
resolution urging Myanmar's rulers to free all political detainees and
end sexual violence by the military.
Laura Bush said it was "important" for Myanmar's rulers to know "that
the world is speaking together to them" and "and so I urge China to
stand with us, as well."
She said China should be concerned about the drug trafficking and
public health problems in Myanmar and their impact on the Southeast
Asian state's neighbours as well as the world in general.
"So I think the people in the regime in Burma do know that their
neighbors are losing patience. And I think that's important for them
to know, that the world is speaking together to them," she said.
The United Nations has estimated there are some 1,100 political
prisoners, including 61-year-old Aung San Suu Kyi, the world's only
detained Nobel peace laureate.
Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy overwhelmingly won
1990 elections, but were never allowed to take office, and she has now
spent more than a decade under house arrest.
Laura Bush, who had campaigned for women's rights in Afghanistan and
Iraq, is to send a personal letter to the United Nations Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon seeking pressure on the military junta to release
Aung San Suu Kyi as well as the other political prisoners, senators
said.
Her letter will accompany a similar appeal by the Senate Women's
Caucus on Burma.
Asked whether she had a special message for Aung San Suu Kyi, Laura
Bush said she wanted the democracy icon to know that the women of the
United States "stand with her and that we watch her and we think about
her a lot."
Aung San Suu Kyi's detention is due to be reviewed by the military
junta in Yangon on Sunday. But analysts expect Myanmar's military
rulers to turn a deaf ear to calls for her release from UN rights
experts and world leaders.
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Myanmar moving towards democracy: Cambodian FM
PHNOM PENH (AFP) - Myanmar is moving towards democracy, Cambodian
Foreign Minister Hor Nam Hong said Wednesday, adding that he hoped the
reclusive state's constitution would be finished this year.
"We hope that in the near future constitutional rule will be
implemented and democratic reform will move forward," he said
following a three-day visit to Myanmar with Cambodian Prime Minister
Hun Sen.
The military-run state has held sporadic negotiations aimed at
drafting a new constitution, but these have been dismissed as a sham
by the international community including the United Nations, European
Union and the United States.
Opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who
remains under house arrest, and her National League of Democracy have
boycotted talks on what the regime calls a "road map" to democracy.
During their trip, Cambodian officials did not raise the issue of Aung
San Suu Kyi's detention, Hor Nam Hong said, with the leaders focusing
instead on boosting trade and tourism links.
"It is an internal affairs of Myanmar's," he told reporters.
Cambodia has close diplomatic ties with Myanmar, which has been under
military rule since 1962 and is one of the most isolated nations in
the world.
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China will stay out of Myanmar's affairs
Wed May 23, 5:45 PM ET
BEIJING (AP) - China said Wednesday that the detention of Myanmar
democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is an internal matter for the
Southeast Asian country's government, declining to join other nations
urging her release.
China's stance came a day after the 10-country Association of
Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, broke with its core policy of
noninterference and pointedly called on Myanmar's military-backed
government to release Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
China's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that "the Aung San Suu
Kyi matter is Myanmar's internal affair. The Chinese side hopes to see
Myanmar maintain political stability and continue to make progress in
the process of national reconciliation."
The discord between ASEAN and Myanmar - one of its members - puts
China in a bind.
China has worked hard to build close relations with the group's
members, seeing their support as crucial to its economic and
geopolitical rise, and is trying to portray itself as a responsible
world player. But Beijing has also provided diplomatic support to
Myanmar's junta and crucial investment, especially in oil, gas and
minerals.
In a sign of this balancing act, China, along with Russia, vetoed a
U.S.-backed resolution in the U.N. Security Council in January,
calling on Myanmar to end political suppression. However, in doing so,
China's U.N. ambassador said Beijing would support ASEAN in its
policies toward Myanmar.
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Muslim Rohingya Men From Myanmar Take Case To High Court
MELBOURNE, May 25 (BERNAMA) -- Seven Myanmar men who spent several
years in Malaysia before taking a boat to Australia have taken their
fight for asylum in Australia to the High Court.
The men are now detained by Australian authorities on the remote
island of Nauru.
Lawyers for the group, apprehended on Ashmore Reef off Western
Australia last September, lodged documents with the court today, the
Australian Associated Press reported.
The Myanmar men, of Muslim Rohinga ethnicity, last year rejected an
Australian Immigration Department offer to return them to Malaysia
from where they fled after living there for years without legal
status.
The High Court documents said the men's only alternative was to go
through a long processing of their refugee status for resettlement in
a third country, which could never be Australia.
Lawyer David Manne from the Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre said
the Immigration Department was refusing to allow the men to have their
visa applications heard under Australian law.
"The ultimate question in this case is whether or not the court will
recognise that these men have an entitlement under Australian law to a
fair go to have their (visa) applications processed under Australian
law, rather than having the Australian government dodge its
obligations and assess them under an inferior process," Manne was
quoted as saying.
They were asking the court to order the Minister for Immigration and
the Commonwealth of Australia to process their claims under Australian
law, Manne said.
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People's Daily Online - May 25, 2007
Myanmar's businessmen urged to export 10 major goods
Myanmar's businessmen engaged in border trade are urged to export more
than 10 major goods for the development of normal trade.
The major goods to be exported on a wider scale through the Muse 105th
Mile Border Trade Zone, which lies opposite to Ruili in southwest
China's Yunnan province, included green gram, rubber, fish, prawn,
rice bean, cow pea, white sesame, dried small fish, jelly fish, eel
and mango., said an editorial of Friday's daily newspaper the New
Light of Myanmar.
The Muse border trade zone, the largest of its kind and opened in
April 2006, serves as an economically strategic zone not only for
Myanmar-China border trade but also for trade among ASEAN member
countries and East Asian nations.
The government is rendering assistance to national entrepreneurs to
spread their wings in their businesses, the editorial said, calling on
respective chambers of commerce and entrepreneurs to join hands for
development of bilateral trade, putting border trade on the trend of
normal trade and helping the government collect taxes correctly.
According to the authorities, all Myanmar's 13 border trade points
have adopted the normal trade system to replace the border trade one.
Myanmar official statistics show that the country's foreign trade hit
8 billion U.S. dollars in the fiscal year 2006-07 which ended in
March, a record high since 1989. The exports came to 5 billion
dollars, while the imports amounted to 3 billion dollars, registering
a trade surplus of 2 billion dollars.
Myanmar mainly exports natural gas, agricultural, mineral and marine
products, and imports machinery, crude oil, edible oil, pharmaceutical
products, cement, fertilizer and consumers goods. (Source: Xinhua)
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The International Herald Tribune
US criticizes Myanmar's human rights record, says refugee flow burden
to region
The Associated Press: Published: May 25, 2007
MANILA, Philippines: The U.S. scolded Myanmar for its poor human
rights record Friday, and expressed concern that the exodus of
hundreds of thousands of people from the Southeast Asian nation has
created a region-wide refugee crisis.
"We've raised concerns, first of all, about Myanmar's human rights
record," U.S. Assistant State Secretary Christopher Hill said at a
meeting in the Philippines of senior officials from the 26-country
ASEAN Regional Forum, which includes Washington and Myanmar, also
called Burma.
ASEAN, or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, is a bloc of 10
countries.
"We will also be raising our concern that it's representing a kind of
regional problem as well, because Myanmar has created a huge flow of
refugees," Hill said. "This is quite a burden to the region."
Decades of fighting between Myanmar's military regime and ethnic
minorities have sparked massive internal displacement and an influx of
refugees to neighboring Thailand.
An estimated 700,000 refugees have flooded out of Myanmar, said Egoy
Bans, spokesman of the Free Burma Coalition, an activist group
supporting democracy in Myanmar.
Hill did not specifically address Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San
Suu Kyi's continued house arrest during his brief remarks to the
media.
A senior ASEAN official said diplomats meeting behind closed doors
urged Myanmar to release Suu Kyi. Myanmar's delegates, however, did
not indicate whether she would be freed after her sentence expires
Sunday, or whether the detention order would be extended, the official
said.
"All called for the release of Suu Kyi," the official told The
Associated Press on condition of anonymity due to the talks'
sensitivity.
She said Myanmar's representatives reiterated their position that the
government was following its own road map to democracy, including
peace agreements with ethnic groups and crafting a national
constitution.
The official said Hill also criticized Myanmar for developing a
nuclear facility while its people faced many other pressing problems.
Aung Bwa, Myanmar's representative, responded by saying the facility
was for peaceful purposes and that his country had the right to
develop nuclear energy for civilian use, the official said.
The U.S. State Department last week said it opposed a Russian plan to
help design and build the nuclear research center because Myanmar has
no standards for safe handling of nuclear materials, and the possible
diversion of nuclear fuel for use in a weapons program.
Russia's federal atomic energy agency, Rosatom, said the center will
have a 10-megawatt light-water research reactor, as well as facilities
for processing and storing radioactive waste. It said the project will
be overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
As Hill spoke at Manila's Shangri-la Hotel, about 20 protesters
holding coffee mugs bearing Suu Kyi's picture gathered outside the
hotel to condemn the pro-democracy leader's continued detention.
"They are delaying the move to pressure the Burmese junta," Bans said.
"Burma should be made to adhere to the democratic ideals of ASEAN."
Other ASEAN members also urged that Suu Kyi be released.
Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won elections in 1990, but it
was not allowed to replace the junta. Suu Kyi has spent much of the
time since in detention.
Myanmar has been under military rule since 1962. The current junta
took control in 1988, allowed the elections two years later and
cracked down hard after Suu Kyi's resounding victory.
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The International Herald Tribune
Myanmar battling to contain polio outbreak that afflicted three
The Associated Press: Published: May 25, 2007
BANGKOK, Thailand: Health authorities are working to contain a polio
outbreak in Myanmar that has afflicted three toddlers, the latest case
confirmed this week, the World Health Organization said Friday.
All three cases - affecting children between 15 and 23 months old -
were reported in the Maungdaw District on the border with Bangladesh,
prompting authorities to launch a cross-border vaccination campaign.
"We have three cases confirmed in Myanmar near the Bangladeshi
border," Oliver Rosenbauer, a spokesman for the WHO's Polio
Eradication Campaign, told The Associated Press. "The cases in Myanmar
were an importation from Bangladesh. It's genetically linked to that."
The outbreak in Myanmar has prompted authorities in conjunction with
UNICEF to launch the first of three synchronized immunization
campaigns early this month in Bangladesh and Myanmar that is expected
to cover 2 million children under age 5, Rosenbauer said.
In Myanmar, UNICEF spokeswoman Susan Aitkin said that the first
campaign ran from May 14-18 but was slowed by torrential rains that
hit the region and the difficulty reaching some island villages, which
were only accessible by boat.
The second campaign will be launched in early June and the third
campaign in July, Rosenbauer said.
"The challenge will be reaching every child," Rosenbauer said. "The
thing we have going is that both countries have relative strong
routine immunization services. We are not seeing explosive outbreaks
as we saw in Indonesia."
Myanmar's first polio case since February 2000 was detected last June
in a 19-month-old boy in central Myanmar. The latest outbreak has no
connection to that case. Two other suspected cases in Myanmar have yet
to be confirmed in lab tests, Rosenbauer said.
Polio resurfaced in Bangladesh last year after a nearly six-year
absence, forcing the government to launch a new series of immunization
campaigns in April 2006.
About 22 million children age 5 and under were vaccinated on April 8.
Another round of nationwide vaccinations was conducted March 2.
Similar immunization days were also held last year.
Polio is spread when people - mostly young children - come into
contact with the feces of those with the virus, often through water.
The virus attacks the central nervous system, causing paralysis,
muscular atrophy and deformation and, in some cases, death.
About 1,526 people were afflicted by polio worldwide in 2006, down
from more than 350,000 before 1988, when WHO launched a global anti-
polio campaign.
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Monsters and Critics
Yangon International Airport opens new terminal
May 25, 2007, 7:07 GMT
Yangon - Yangon International Airport on Friday officially opened its
new passenger terminal with capacity to handle 2.7 million visitors a
year, state officials said.
'The new terminal building can handle 1,800 passengers per hour and
2.7 million per year, and five aircraft can be landed per hour,' said
Myanmar's transport minister, Major General Thein Swe.
The new terminal, which cost 13.3 million dollars, was built by the
privately owned Asia World Company, a Myanmar construction company.
'In the past, when this kind of modern building was constructed, we
had to hire a foreign contractor and consultant, but this new terminal
building has been successfully constructed by national experts,' Thein
Swe said.
Myanmar has been subject to economic sanctions and a cutoff from funds
from development banks, such as the World Bank and Asia Development
Bank, since 1988 when the military launched a bloody crackdown on pro-
democracy demonstrations that left an estimated 3,000 people dead.
Over the past 19 years, nearly all development projects have been self-
financed, with many of them handed over to well-connected Myanmar
private companies in return for forestry concessions or special
business licenses.
'Prior to 1988, the Yangon International Airport was the only airport
that could accommodate large aircraft,' said Lieutenant General Thein
Sein, first secretary of the State Peace and Development Council, as
Myanmar's ruling military junta styles itself.
'But now, there are seven airports, including Mandalay International
Airport, where Boeing 747 aircraft can land and 13 airports where
aircraft up to Boeing 737 size can land,' said Thein Sein, who
attended the Yangon terminal opening ceremony.
Yangon International Airport last year handled 800,000 international
passengers and 1.2 million domestic passengers.
Airlines that currently offer regular flights to Yangon include Thai
Airways, Myanma Airways, Silk Air, Indian Airlines, Mandarin Airlines,
Air China, Qatar Airways, Jetstar Asia, Malaysia Airlines, Bangkok
Airways and Thai AirAsia.
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Asia Times - May 25, 2007
Slow train through a forgotten capital
By Dylan C Williams
YANGON - It's monsoon season in Myanmar's forgotten capital of Yangon,
a time when flooding overwhelms sewage canals, infectious disease
festers, and the already impoverished population's misery
intensifies.
The slow commuter train that circles Yangon's outlying townships
passes through a vast landscape of clapboard shanties situated in and
around trash-strewn pools of untreated black sewage.
Public-health experts say infectious diseases run rife in these areas,
including high rates of tuberculosis, malaria and chronic diarrhea.
Recent independent assessments indicate that malnourishment among
children over the age of one runs as high as 35%. [1]
Ill-health is readily apparent in the inordinate number of young
commuters with distended bellies and unsightly untreated growths
hanging from their faces and appendages. While this correspondent took
the three-hour journey, a woman holding a rash-covered infant
spontaneously broke down in tears.
She and the train's other riders represent some of the most
disadvantaged people in what is one of the world's most mismanaged and
poorest countries. And recent political and economic developments
indicate that their plight is likely to get worse before it gets
better.
Over the past four decades, Myanmar's uninterrupted line of military-
run regimes created these decrepit townships, forcibly relocating
masses to relieve population pressure on the green and leafy capital
city, where senior generals and their family members maintain posh
spacious residences behind razor-wire-strewn high walls.
With the ruling State Peace and Development Council's sudden move in
2005 to a newly built capital at Naypyidaw - 400 kilometers north of
Yangon and replete with plans for four new golf courses - the
reclusive junta has apparently abandoned its responsibility for
maintaining Yangon's declining townships.
There is a palpable sense in traveling through these semi-urban areas
that the old capital is teetering on the brink of social collapse. In
2005, Myanmar ranked among the bottom 10 countries for health
spending, earmarking less than 0.5% of gross domestic product. Now,
Yangon-based expatriates say that the sanitation situation in the
townships has deteriorated markedly since the junta pulled up roots
and moved north that same year.
Yangon-based World Health Organization representatives declined to
comment on the current public-health situation in the city's outlying
townships; a WHO representative based outside of the country who
recently visited Yangon would only say that local health workers are
doing the best they can with "close to zero resources".
When the WHO presented its global list of health-care performances
recently, Myanmar ranked 190 out of 191 countries surveyed. Local WHO-
affiliated doctors receive the kyat equivalent of about US$7 per month
and are required to pay their own travel expenses when called to
combat outbreaks of disease, according to one Myanmar medical
professional.
Senior junta members, meanwhile, frequently fly to Singapore for their
personal medical treatments.
Misery, woe and corruption
Endemic corruption [2] has long hobbled social-service delivery, and
there are indications the situation has worsened since the junta moved
north. A Yangon-based expatriate researcher contends that municipal
workers frequently sell off a proportion of the gasoline they are
rationed to run garbage trucks and that refuse is now seldom if ever
collected in the poorest townships.
One local woman working with a multilateral aid agency told Asia Times
Online that municipal officials had turned off the furnaces of the
crematorium halfway through the incineration of her deceased
grandmother. She said they only agreed to reignite the flames when her
family agreed to pay a bribe. A free funeral service run on public
donations had emerged to fill the social-service gap, but municipal
authorities recently refused to renew the body-collecting outfit's
operating license.
To be sure, misery, woe and corruption are nothing new to Myanmar's
township residents. Their lot worsened in 2003 and 2004, a two-year
period over which the national economy contracted and inflation
hovered around 20%, according to independent assessments. [3] Yet the
present deterioration in the townships' already abysmal standard of
living is taking place amid an economic mini-boom that the junta has
monopolized for its own benefit.
The Commerce Ministry this week reported that Myanmar's trade volume
had jumped 40% to $7.9 billion on the just-ended fiscal year. That
growth entailed a record trade surplus of $2.1 billion, led by
substantially higher natural-gas exports, according to the ministry.
It said it expects foreign trade to exceed $8 billion in the fiscal
year that ends in March 2008.
A large proportion of those energy resources are being sent to China
to fuel that once-poor country's extraordinary economic growth. There
are bigger plans in the works for building a massive new pipeline to
pump Myanmar's natural-gas resources directly into southern China's
Yunnan province - overtly bypassing dire local energy needs.
It's an irony not lost on even Yangon's downtown residents, who
consistently suffer from rolling power blackouts. Nor is it lost on
China, whose Foreign Ministry this week released an
uncharacteristically critical report expressing dismay over how such a
"poor" country could afford such an "expensive" move to its newly
built capital Naypyidaw.
How much of the country's billion-dollar energy bonanza is being
diverted to build new ministry facilities, military installations,
golf courses and private residences at Naypyidaw is altogether
unclear. The reclusive regime has not publicly released financial
figures related to the new capital's construction costs - though
officials have been quoted in the state-controlled media saying the
massive project would not dent the national coffers.
There has been much debate inside and outside Myanmar concerning what
really motivated the junta abruptly to move the national capital from
Yangon to Naypyidaw. Some have speculated that fears of a preemptive
US invasion, similar to its armed intervention in Iraq, drove the
junta to its inland, mountain-covered redoubt.
But the slow train that snakes through Yangon's hangdog townships
suggests another possibility: the junta's more legitimate fears of a
social revolt among the once nearby, now distant, old capital's woe-
begotten citizens.
Notes
1. See Christopher Len's and Johan Alvin's "Burma/Myanmar's Ailments:
Searching for the Right Remedy" published by the Central Asia-Caucasus
Institute Silk Road Studies Program, March 2007.
2. Global corruption watchdog Transparency International in its 2006
global survey ranked Myanmar as the second-most-corrupt country in the
world, lagging only Haiti.
3. Official statistics indicate an average GDP (gross domestic
product) growth rate of 12.6% over the six-year period from 1999-2005,
which if accurate means Myanmar would have been the fastest-growing
economy in the world.
Dylan C Williams is a Bangkok-based correspondent
********************************************************
Bangkok Post - Friday May 25, 2007
More reserves in Burma
ENERGY : PTT Exploration and Production Plc (PTTEP) has reaffirmed
potential reserves of petroleum in exploration block M9 in the Gulf of
Martaban off the coast of Burma.
PTTEP, the operator and sole shareholder of the block, said in a
statement that the appraisal well Zawtika-3 indicated maximum natural
gas flow rates of approximately 26.68 million standard cubic feet per
day (mmcfd). The nearby Zawtika-4 well indicated maximum gas flow
rates of approximately 71.1 mmcfd.
''The successful results of the appraisal wells affirmed the
commercial potential of natural gas in Zawtika area,'' the company
said. As a result, it plans to drill three more appraisal wells by
July.
PTTEP shares closed yesterday on the Stock Exchange of Thailand at 99
baht, down two baht, in trade worth 686.87 million baht.
********************************************************
The Nation - Fri, May 25, 2007 :
Burma extends Aung San Suu Kyi's detention:
Rangoon - Military-run Burma on Friday extended the detention of
democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, police sources told AFP, despite
growing international calls for her freedom.
"We issued an order of further detention," a police source said
without giving further details.
The Nobel peace prize-winner's latest period of detention began in May
2003 and was set to expire this weekend.
Japanese Jiji press news agency said the junta extended the house
arrest for another year, but the police source declined to comment.
An Asian diplomat in Rangoon said a police car was seen entering her
lakeside home here during the afternoon.
The 61-year-old Aung San Suu Kyi has spent most of the past 17 years
under house arrest and has little contact with the outside world,
apart from her live-in maid and visits from her doctor.
The last time the opposition leader -- the only Nobel peace laureate
in detention -- was able to leave her house was November 2006, when
the junta allowed her to meet visiting UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari for
one hour.
The extension of her house arrest was widely expected, with observers
saying the junta is fearful the hugely popular democracy leader could
threaten its rule.
Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) won a landslide
victory in 1990 elections but was never allowed to govern.
Political figures from across the world have ramped up calls for her
release, with ex-US president Bill Clinton and 58 other former world
leaders sending a joint letter last week to junta head General Than
Shwe.
Two other Nobel peace laureates -- former US president Jimmy Carter
and former South Korean president Kim Dae-Jung -- were among those who
signed the appeal.
US First Lady Laura Bush on Wednesday called on China, an ally of
Burma, to join efforts to free her, saying that American women "stand
with her and that we watch her and we think about her a lot."
Citing Burma's rights violations, including Aung San Suu Kyi's
detention, the United States last week renewed sanctions against the
regime for another year, as did the European Union in April.
In the past week the junta has detained at least 60 pro-democracy
activists as they went to pagodas to pray for Aung San Suu Kyi's
release, and 45 people, mostly NLD members, still remain in custody.
Amnesty International said Wednesday the human rights situation in
Burma had worsened over the past the year with authorities stepping up
repression of political opposition.
The United Nations has estimated there are 1,100 political prisoners
in the country formerly known as Burma, which has been ruled by the
military since 1962.
********************************************************
Location of arrested activists still unknown
May 25, 2007 (DVB)-The whereabouts of high-profile activist Ko Htin
Kyaw and seven other protestors arrested by the military on April 22nd
are still unknown according to their friends and families.
Protestors who were with the group when they were detained told DVB
yesterday that they had reportedly been transferred from the Aung
Thabyay interrogation centre to a facility in the Kyaikkasan area of
Rangoon.
"We heard that they are still being interrogated . . . The authorities
do not disclose any information about the detainees to their family
members who have tried to see them," an activist close to Ko Htin Kyaw
said.
"The authorities say they don't know anything about the group and they
won't let their family members meet with them . . . We have also heard
that four people who remain in custody have been ill," the source said
on condition of anonymity.
The group of protestors were handcuffed by special police and led away
on April 22nd after they staged a demonstration calling for lower
commodity prices and 24-hour electricity in Thingangyun township.
It was the third time Ko Htin Kyaw had been arrested since he led a
similar protest near Sule pagoda in February. The military has not
released information on the reasons behind the recent arrests or the
charges faced by the group.
********************************************************
Solo protestor arrested in Myitkyina
May 24, 2007 (DVB)-Former political prisoner U Htun Lwin was arrested
today in Myintkyina, the capital of Burma's Kachin State, after he
staged a solo protest calling for the release of detained democracy
leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
U Htun Lwin, from Aye Can Tharyar, reportedly dressed in a prison
uniform, shackled himself and waved a placard saying 'Free Daw Aung
San Suu Kyi, U Tin Oo and all political prisoners'.
Eyewitnesses told DVB that U Htun Lwin protested for about 20 minutes
before being arrested by an unknown group of men. "He was all by
himself. He staged the demonstration in a crowded area between two
markets," an onlooker said.
"Details of where he is now are still unknown. It is unclear who
arrested him but some people in town say they saw a number of people
and special police."
U Htun Lwin's arrest comes as the number prayer campaigns and
political protests increase across Burma, with the military arresting
a number of activists.
********************************************************
Su Su Nway hospitalised
May 23, 2007 (DVB)-High-profile Burmese rights activist Su Su Nway has
reportedly been hospitalised in Rangoon at a Muslim clinic on
Mahabandoola Garden street.
Su Su Nway was arrested along with a large group of activists
participating in a peaceful prayer campaign for the release of Daw
Aung San Suu Kyi on May 15. She is reportedly still in the military's
custody.
National League for Democracy spokesperson U Myint Thein said today
the party had been informed that Su Su Nway was in hospital by
activist Ko Khin Htun
who was arrested after attempting to visit her today.
"He went to the Muslim charity hospital . . . to visit Ma Su Su Nway.
Witnesses confirmed that he was taken away by a group of about five or
six people. We assume he is being held at the Kyaikkasan detention
center," U Myint Thein said.
It is unclear why Su Su Nway has been admitted to hospital but some
activists have suggested she may have been attempting to stage a
hunger strike while in detention.
The Burmese government has yet to explain the reasons for the
activist's arrest.
********************************************************
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