AP – Aung San Suu Kyi’s trial delayed a week in Myanmar AP – Quiet support expressed for Suu Kyi Monsters and Critics – Two Myanmar monks injured in second temple accident within a week Bloomberg – Myanmar’s Trade Ties Let Junta Ignore Democracy Calls AJC – Burmese dictators get a free pass The Lima News – Refugees are walking to bring peace to Myanmar Philippine Star – Myanmar anticipates closer cooperation between ASEAN, South Korea Asia Times Online – Jury’s out on Myanmar’s election Asia Times Online – A hard reign continues in Myanmar Borneo Bulletin – Myanmar nationals in Malaysia call for Suu Kyi’s freedom CNW Telbec – Burma Blogger Zarganar completes first year in prison, 34 years to go The New York Times – Situation Seen as Deteriorating at Aceh Refugee Camp Mizzima News – Junta launches fresh offensive against KNU Mizzima News – State media accuses U.S. and UK embassies of nexus with NLD The Irrawaddy – India Should Reassess its Burma ‘Sweetheart’ Policy

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Aung San Suu Kyi’s trial delayed a week in Myanmar
Fri Jun 5, 6:45 am ET

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) – The trial of Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi on charges of violating conditions of her house arrest was delayed for a week over efforts to reinstate three defense witnesses, one of her lawyers said Friday.

The court adjourned Suu Kyi’s trial until next Friday while a higher court hears a request by her attorneys to reinstate the witnesses who were earlier barred from testifying, lawyer Nyan Win said. The Divisional Court announced Friday that it would make a ruling Tuesday.

The lower District Court earlier had disqualified all but one defense witness – legal expert Kyi Win. Those rejected were all members of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party.

They consist of prominent journalist and former political prisoner Win Tin, party Vice Chairman Tin Oo, currently under house arrest, and lawyer Khin Moe Moe.

Security around Yangon was especially tight Friday, witnesses said, with truckloads of riot police and groups of pro-junta supporters stationed outside the Divisional Court, the headquarters of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, and City Hall in downtown Yangon. Riot police also patrolled the city.

If the Divisional Court rejects the witnesses next week, Suu Kyi’s lead attorney, Kyi Win, said the defense team would appeal the ruling to the High Court, which could further delay the trial. The High Court is Myanmar’s top court.

Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained last month after American John W. Yettaw swam to her lakeside home without her consent and stayed for two days. Yettaw, a part-time contractor from Falcon, Missouri, says he had a dream that Suu Kyi would be assassinated and went to warn her.

Suu Kyi has pleaded not guilty. Her defense team acknowledges that Yettaw entered her lakeside home, but they argue it was the duty of government guards outside her closely watched house to prevent intruders.

Both Yettaw and Suu Kyi could face up to five years in jail.

The trial has drawn condemnation from the international community and Suu Kyi’s local supporters, who worry the military junta has found an excuse to keep her detained through elections planned for next year.

Suu Kyi, 63, has already been held in detention for 13 of the past 19 years, including the past six.

Her party overwhelmingly won the last elections in 1990 but was not allowed to take power by the military, which has run the country since 1962.

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Quiet support expressed for Suu Kyi
Signs of defiance sprouting for pro-democracy leader
By ASSOCIATED PRESS | Friday, June 5, 2009

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — The spray-painted demands appear overnight — “Free Aung San Suu Kyi” read the scrawls on walls across this city — only to be whitewashed by security forces as soon as they are discovered.

Since the trial of Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader began last month, these small signs of defiance hint at the undercurrent of anger over the treatment of a woman considered to be a living icon by many of her compatriots.

But out in public, under the watchful gaze of the military regime, supporters feel helpless to do more as the trial winds to an end.

There is little sign that private anguish will explode into the mass protests — all violently suppressed — that have marked the history of Myanmar, also known as Burma, since the military began its rule in 1962.

“I’m so upset about what has happened in my country,” said Zin, a 28-year-old housewife who, like most Burmese, won’t give her full name for fear of retaliation. “People are angry and people are sad, but we can’t do anything for her. We have no power.”

Mrs. Suu Kyi, 63, a Nobel Peace laureate, is being tried on charges of violating her house arrest after an American, John W. Yettaw, swam uninvited to her lakeshore home and stayed for two days.

She has already been held in detention for 13 of the past 19 years, including the past six. Closing arguments have been delayed, but expectations are high that she will be found guilty because Myanmar’s courts operate under the command of the ruling military.

Lawyers for Mrs. Suu Kyi met Monday to prepare for the trial’s closing arguments, said Nyan Win, one of her defense team and a spokesman for her National League for Democracy party.

“We are very confident that we will win the case if everything goes according to law,” Nyan Win said. The defense has not contested the basic facts of the case, but argues instead that the relevant law has been misapplied by the authorities.

The trial has drawn condemnation from the international community and Mrs. Suu Kyi’s local supporters, who worry that the military junta has found an excuse to keep her detained through elections planned for next year.

But with memories of the government’s bloody crackdown against the Buddhist monk-led uprising in 2007 still vivid, few people are willing to challenge a regime with no qualms about using violence against its own citizens. At least 31 people were killed that September, including a Japanese journalist, the United Nations says.

Aung, a 55-year-old businessman who witnessed the military’s response to the protests two years ago, said the Burmese learned a bitter lesson from that experience.

Thousands were detained in the aftermath of demonstrations that drew 100,000 people into Yangon’s streets. Hundreds of activists were sentenced to lengthy prison terms.

“The person who becomes involved in protests, their whole family is persecuted. If you want to be brave, OK, but do you think all your family must be brave too?” he said. “Nobody wants to risk that now.”

Longtime observers say it is unlikely that major public demonstrations will follow Mrs. Suu Kyi’s sentencing.

“If Suu Kyi is found guilty and jailed, there will be much popular anger, but it won’t make a real difference because [the government] is well-equipped and experienced in dealing with the people’s protests,” said Donald Seekins, a Myanmar expert at Japan’s Meio University.

Mr. Seekins said the regime has already posted soldiers throughout Yangon, the largest city, “and can suppress demonstrations with little difficulty.”

For a nation still recovering from the devastation of Cyclone Nargis last year, which left at least 138,000 dead, the ongoing economic hardship makes coping day-to-day — not politics — the priority for many Burmese, said Aung.

“People are so disturbed, so angry” about Mrs. Suu Kyi, he said, clenching his fist for emphasis. “But Nargis was a big hit. Everybody’s suffering and when people suffer, they don’t have time to think about anything.”

In the streets of Yangon this past week, there was little evidence of heightened tension, with businesses operating normally.

However, increased security could be seen around Mrs. Suu Kyi’s gently decaying lakeshore home as well as near her party’s headquarters as a key anniversary was marked — 19 years since Mrs. Suu Kyi’s party won a landslide victory at the ballot box but were prevented from taking office.

A few political stalwarts have still managed to keep the faith. At a small celebration Wednesday attended by foreign diplomats, senior party members wore T-shirts calling for Mrs. Suu Kyi’s freedom and then released a total of 64 doves and balloons into the air at the dilapidated party offices. She will turn 64 on June 19.

Meanwhile, several dozen faithful, including 80-year-old former political prisoner Win Tin, have been holding daily vigils in the rain outside the gates of Insein Prison, where Mrs. Suu Kyi is being held, despite the presence of plainclothes security videotaping their movements and recording their identities.

Acknowledging the difficulties faced by regular Burmese, Win Tin said last week that “everyone is angry, but people are concerned with earning their daily bread. They are afraid, and there is no leadership.”

Even if people wanted to talk about the incarceration of “The Lady,” as Suu Kyi is known, the dangers of criticizing the ruling regime too openly are known to everyone, said Thein, a 48-year-old English teacher.

Instead, he said, political discussions are reduced to furtive whisperings in neighborhood tea shops and small gatherings in private homes.

“People have been frustrated a long time,” Thein said. “We don’t trust anything. We don’t trust each other. Always we think, ‘Is he a spy?’ The rule is: ‘Don’t talk politics.’ ”

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Monsters and Critics – Two Myanmar monks injured in second temple accident within a week
Asia-Pacific News
Jun 5, 2009, 9:46 GMT

Yangon – Two prominent Buddhist monks were injured in an elevator crash while inspecting the country’s tallest Buddha statue in the second temple-related accident within a week, monastry officials said Friday.

‘Sayadaw (Abbot) Ashin Sandar Dika and Sayadaw (Abbot) Yawainwe-Innma were injured on Thursday at about 6 pm when the temple lift suddenly dropped,’ an official from the Bawdi Ta Htaung monastery said.

The Bawdi Tahtaung monastery in Monywa, 136 kilometres north-west of Mandalay, is famous for its 130 metre-high Buddha statue that was completed in 2007.

The monks were inspecting the stature in a maintenance lift, witnesses said.

The cause of the failure of lift was still unknown and was under investigation, sources said.

‘The two abbots are now in a hospital in Mandalay with leg injuries,’ said a monastery source, who asked to remain anonymous.

Ashin Sandar Dika and Yawainwe-Innma are well-known monks in Myanmar who have published many books on society and religion.

The accident was the second temple-related mishap within a week.

On 30 May, the Danok Pagoda, situated in Dalla township across the Yangon River from the former capital, collapsed, killing at least two people on the spot and injuring dozens of others.

The historic Danok Pagoda, which was damaged by Cyclone Nargisin May 2008, was under renovation. On May 7 Kyaing Kyaing, the wife of Myanmar’s military chief General Than Shwe, had conducted a religious ceremony at the temple.

In superstitous Myanmar, a predominantly Buddhist country, such accidents are widely deemed inauspicious for the ruling regime.

The two accidents come at a time of rising tensions between the junta and anti-military activists.

The regime opened a new case on May 11 against opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi for allegedly breaking the terms of her house detention by allowing US national John William Yettaw, a Mormon, to swim to her lakeside home-cum-prison on May 3 and stay, uninvited, for two nights.

If found guilty, Suu Kyi, 63, faces a minimum of three and maximum of five years in jail. The Nobel Peace Prize laurate has spent 14 of the last 20 years under house arrest.

The new case against Suu Kyi, who leads the opposition National League for Democracy has outraged world leaders, prompting US President Barack Obama last week to call the proceeding a ’show trial based on spurious charges.’

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Myanmar’s Trade Ties Let Junta Ignore Democracy Calls
Last Updated: June 5, 2009 02:20 EDT
By Daniel Ten Kate, dtenkate@bloomberg.net

June 5 (Bloomberg) — Myanmar’s growing trade ties with Thailand and China, driven by natural-gas sales, are allowing the military to ignore international calls to free opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and return the country to democracy.

Myanmar’s junta has used Asia’s seventh-largest natural gas reservoir to increase foreign currency reserves four-fold to $3.6 billion, a return that will grow as daily output is forecast to double by 2015.

The sales and new trading partners are giving Myanmar a financial cushion, rendering ineffective economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and European Union designed to press the junta to introduce democratic changes and drop charges against Suu Kyi that could result in a five-year prison sentence in the country formerly known as Burma.

“Outside influence on the regime’s calculations is minimal,” said Thant Myint-U, a former United Nations official and author of “The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma.” The regime “is arguably in a stronger financial position than ever before,” mostly because of its gas sales.

Myanmar’s exports to the U.S. and European Union amounted to less than 7 percent of total trade in 2007, according to EU data. The country also receives less humanitarian aid than 38 so-called fragile states identified by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Economic Growth

The junta says Myanmar’s annual economic growth was more than 10 percent from 1999 to 2007, with gross domestic product quadrupling in U.S. dollar terms to $383.3 billion. The figures haven’t been verified by the International Monetary Fund.

Non-official estimates say the figure is about half that, the Asian Development Bank said in its 2009 outlook.

The country has capitalized on providing gas to energy- hungry neighbors Thailand and China. Exports to Thailand have more than tripled since 2003 to $3.3 billion in 2008 thanks to natural gas, which accounts for 92 percent of shipments. Thailand buys about 30 percent of its gas from Myanmar. About two-thirds of Thailand’s electricity comes from domestic gas supplies and those from its neighbor.

China plans to start construction of oil and gas pipelines through Myanmar that will allow it to access Middle Eastern crude without passing through the Malacca Straits. A group led by South Korea’s Daewoo International Corp. signed an agreement in December to sell gas from Myanmar to China National Petroleum Corp., the country’s biggest oil company, for 30 years.

On Trial

The junta last month put Suu Kyi, 63, on trial for breaching her detention order. Pro-democracy supporters say the generals are looking for a legal pretext to keep her out of elections in 2010, the first since her National League for Democracy party won a 1990 ballot that the military rejected.

The trial was adjourned today until June 12 while a higher court hears an appeal by the defense to allow three witnesses to testify, the Associated Press reported, citing Nyan Win, one of Suu Kyi’s lawyers.

Suu Kyi was charged with breaching her house arrest order after an American man swam uninvited to her house in early May. The Nobel laureate has spent 13 years in detention since the NLD won the 1990 elections.

President Barack Obama called Suu Kyi’s case a “show trial” and demanded the regime release her immediately. The United Nations Security Council called for her release and “genuine dialogue” to achieve national reconciliation.

Internal Affair

China said the trial is an internal affair. It “involves the internal judicial procedures of Myanmar, whose judicial sovereignty and independence should be respected,” Ma Zhaoxu, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, told reporters on May 26.

A prison sentence for Suu Kyi will ensure she won’t be a factor in the 2010 ballot under a new constitution that allows a multiparty system where the army retains significant powers.

Myanmar defended the trial, saying that Suu Kyi’s sheltering of the Vietnam War veteran on two occasions violated her house arrest and legal action was “taken unavoidably.”

The junta on June 2 rejected Thailand’s call for Suu Kyi’s release, saying its neighbor was “unreasonably interested” in Myanmar’s affairs. Thailand “should not impose pressure,” U Maung Myint, Myanmar’s deputy foreign minister, was cited as saying in the state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper.

Myanmar says it released 15,315 prisoners in the past year, while the U.S. says more than 2,100 political detainees are still behind bars.

“They are still pretty comfortable as a regime, but everyone else is complaining bitterly and there’s the potential for widespread hunger by the end of the year,” said Sean Turnell, a professor at Australia’s Macquarie University who conducts research on Myanmar’s economy.

The country is recovering from Cyclone Nargis that devastated the main rice-producing region in May last year, leaving at least 138,000 people dead or missing.

“The pile of cash could even provide a false comfort,” he said. “The extent to which they feel they don’t need to make concessions and engage in dialogue could force them into error.”

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Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Burmese dictators get a free pass
By Frida Ghitis, For the AJC
Friday, June 05, 2009

Every time we become distracted, the generals in Burma manage to jolt us back to attention. The world’s most despotic regime is alive and well, inflicting suffering on its people after five decades in power, while the world does little more than issue an occasional statement of outrage. We’ve grown awkwardly accustomed to that. Now, security forces in the former capital Rangoon (now named Yangon) have sprung into action. The junta’s most recent move comes perfectly timed to ensure continuing hopelessness.

The latest outrage in Burma, the country renamed Myanmar by its ruling generals, came May 14, when startled witnesses saw a security convoy speeding from the home of pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi, headed for the horrific Insein prison. After years of house detention, the ailing Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, was moved to prison to face a show trial. The generals had found a convenient excuse to extend her detention.

The 63-year-old Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy was denied its election victory in 1990, has spent most of the past three decades under house arrest as the ruling junta keeps a tight grip on the power it has refused to relinquish since 1962. The latest detention term was set to expire this month. Then, an American man called John Yettaw swam the distance of the lake adjoining Suu Kyi’s house and visited with the woman known simply as “The Lady.”

Security forces charged her with violating the terms of her detention, which call for almost complete isolation broken only by a monthly visit by her doctor. Her doctor, too, incidentally, was recently jailed while Suu Kyi’s health deteriorated.

The trial’s outcome is all but assured. Now that Suu Kyi’s house arrest has officially expired, she is — in Orwellian fashion — technically free, but confined to one of the world’s worst prisons.

Some will blame Suu Kyi’s new predicament on Yettaw. That misses the point. The unauthorized visitor gave the junta a convenient pretext. The regime was not about to free the one person who stands as a symbol of the Burmese people’s endlessly postponed wish for democracy, reminding us all of the illegitimacy of the government. In fact, it is conceivable that the generals knowingly allowed him to dodge security and reach the house. (I attempted to see Suu Kyi in Rangoon several years ago. The plainclothesmen guarding the perimeter made it coldly clear I would get nowhere.)

After years of sanctions and high-minded rhetoric, the international community has nothing to show for its efforts at persuading the generals to remove their boot from their country’s throat. The generals have grown obscenely wealthy exploiting the land’s mineral riches as their people live in grinding poverty. Burma spends less on health care than any country.

When a hurricane swept ashore last year and killed more than 140,000, the toughest task for aid groups was convincing the authorities to let them help. The generals are so intensely despised that a few years ago they suddenly decided to move the capital from the biggest city, Yangon, to a piece of land in the thick of the Asian jungle, where presumable coup attempts would face more difficult odds.

The junta has spent decades pretending change is just around the corner; that’s why they allowed the 1990 election, which Suu Kyi shocked them by winning. Their latest charade says there will be another election in 2010. Nobody expects it to be open. They certainly would not allow Suu Kyi to go free just in time for 2010.

The Obama administration is reviewing America’s failed Burma policy. A new approach should include pressuring Burma’s Asian neighbors — including China — to take a tough stand against the regime. A dictatorship should receive the message that without freedom for Suu Kyi and true reform, force is an option to bring change.

During this latest incident, cries for Suu Kyi’s freedom have come from Europe and America, but Asia has remained eerily quiet. After all, the governments of countries surrounding Burma have benefitted from its vast natural resources and from trading with the corrupt rulers.

Aung San Suu Kyi has long stood as a symbol of the Burmese people’s hopes for an end to despotism. But her defiant, dignified visage brings to mind more than the aspirations of an oppressed country. It also reminds us of how dismally ineffectual the international community has proven in protecting a people from the brutality of their own government. Suu Kyi reminds us all that we have failed.

Frida Ghitis, a resident of Decatur, is a world affairs columnist and author.

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The Lima News – Refugees are walking to bring peace to Myanmar
June 4, 2009 – 7:19 PM
Nancy Kline
Published June 5, 2009

PUTNAM COUNTY – Myanmar refugee Min Oo became a soldier by choice when he was 12 years old.

He said he became a freedom fighter to protest the military regime in his country.

“They are burning our villages, raping the ladies and forcing children into the military. We need coordinated actions from the international community,” he said. “I chose on my own to become a soldier.”

Now he, along with four other Myanmar refugees, is making a peace walk from Fort Wayne, Ind., to New York City. Part of their walk took them through Putnam County as they walked down U.S. Route 224 carrying signs.

The five-member group is in solidarity with the Long March and Hunger Strike campaign that is urging the U.N. Security Council to take action for the freedom of Myanmar and for the immediate release of Aung San Suu Kyi, 1991 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and 2000 U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom award winner who is now in jail.

“We used our own money to come over and do this walk,” Min Oo said. He said they would present a petition to the U.N. Security Council upon their arrival in New York City.

“We are campaigning for the freedom of Burma [the former name of Myanmar] and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.”

Min Oo said they sometimes stay in hotels and other times camp out on their journey. They left Fort Wayne, Ind., on May 27 when Aung San Suu Kyi’s house arrest was supposed to have ended. They plan to arrive in New York City by Sept. 9 and make their presentation on Sept. 27.

“Our country has been under military control for two decades. We feel this peace march is very important. Dire situations call for dire actions from the international community,” Min Oo said.

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Philippine Star – Myanmar anticipates closer cooperation between ASEAN, South Korea
Updated June 05, 2009 08:05 PM

YANGON (Xinhua) – Myanmar official media today expressed belief that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations ( ASEAN) and the Republic of Korea (ROK) will be able to work more closely in a number of sectors guided by a recent ASEAN-ROK Commemorative Summit held in Jeju Island of South Korea.

These sectors cover education, technology for rural areas, substitute fuel, small-and medium-scale industries, communications, technology, finance and tourism industry.

Quoting Prime Minister General Thein Sein who attended the summit, the New Light of Myanmar said in its editorial with regard to the ASEAN-ROK cooperation and the future goal that ASEAN-ROK relations had shifted from the sectorwise relations to dialogue partner since 1989 and that the relations improved to a certain degree by signing the 2004 joint statement on friendly relations for all-round cooperation.

The editorial stressed that the whole region will gain benefits from the support by South Korea for peace, freedom, neutralization and establishment of Southeast Asia as a nuclear-free zone.

Noting that agreements on trade, investment and services have been signed between ASEAN and ROK, the editorial also emphasized the need to make continued efforts to establish the ASEAN-ROK Free Trade Zone.

At the summit, the Myanmar prime minister invited investors of ASEAN member countries and South Korea to invest in exploration of oil and gas and voices cooperation with ROK in conservation of environment in Myanmar.

The summit, which marked the 20th anniversary of the establishment of dialogue partner between the grouping and the East Asian country, was attached with related summits of bilateral summit and ASEAN-ROK CEO summit.

South Korea stands as the 10th largest foreign investor in Myanmar with its investment in the country so far, reaching $244 million since 1988, according to official statistics.
South Korea’s investment in 37 projects accounted for 1.52 percent of Myanmar’s total foreign investment of 15 billion dollars.

The commemorative summit, which also provided opportunity for private entrepreneurs of Myanmar and South Korea for a meeting there, would pave way for an increase of 10 percent in the South Korean investment in Myanmar in 2009, a ROK diplomat said here..

The two countries’ bilateral trade amounted to $360 million in 2008.

Recently, South Korea offered exemption of tariff on most of the goods imported from ASEAN nations including Myanmar.

South Korea has become the 8th largest trading partner of Myanmar with about 3,000 items of Myanmar goods exported to the East Asian country, covering agricultural produces, marine and forest products, and garments, while Myanmar mainly imported from S. Korea steel, garment, electrical and electronic goods.

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Jun 6, 2009
Asia Times Online – Jury’s out on Myanmar’s election
By Swe Win

The ongoing trial and anticipated incarceration of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi has revealed the impotency of Myanmar’s opposition forces and the inability of the outside world to affect change with the embattled country’s ruling military junta.

Even before the trial resumes on June 12 and the international scrutiny eventually begins to fade, the pro-democracy movement must confront the grim challenges to its continued political survival. The international community, led by the European Union, the United States and the United Nations, will also be sent back to the diplomatic drawing board to weigh alternative strategies to somehow engage the xenophobic government. Meanwhile, the suffering of Myanmar’s citizens continues.

The next big benchmark for all concerned is the scheduled 2010 national elections – the so-called “road-map to democracy”.

While the trial of Suu Kyi has been taking place, the Myanmar regime has not stopped its preparations for the controversial vote. Regional commanders are increasingly making campaign trips to different parts of the country, expounding election rhetoric to locals. The generals have also urged government-aligned businessmen and entrepreneurs to stand in the election. Even the rare regional criticism have had little visible effect.

There are reports that many political groups are waiting for the enactment of an election law expected to come out this year before making their decision on the election. At this point, however, the only confirmed candidate parties are the government’s State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) and the government-backed Union of Solidarity and Development Organization (USDO), an allegedly thuggish force used to suppress anti-government activities.

Some within the opposition camp are now claiming that the 2010 election might not happen at all if Suu Kyi is jailed, as is widely expected. “If the junta jail her they might as well forget about 2010 and any semblance of credibility – without her and the NLD [the Suu Kyi-led National League for Democracy], 2010 is rubbish,” said Dr Maung Zarni, a leading activist and founder of the Free Burma Coalition whose efforts led to the withdrawal of the Pepsi company from Myanmar.

According to Zarni, the regime seems prepared to proceed from “show proceedings” to a “show civilian government”. A source from Naypyidaw, the new capital, said that the government had already ordered furniture for congress, parliament and the supreme court.

Despite the likelihood of Suu Kyi’s extended jail term and the unlikelihood of the regime agreeing to the NLD’s preconditions, a senior NLD opposition leader in Myanmar has not ruled out joining the election.

“We cannot be too emotional about her. We still have to wait and see,” the leader who requested anonymity told Asia Times Online.
Others anticipate that the forthcoming election laws will strip the NLD of its status as a legal party. For the generals, the NLD’s abolishment would burn any tenuous claim the government had to a credible democratic process. For all the criticism of its inefficient leadership, the NLD has served the people as a symbol of hope. In the consciousness of the Myanmar public, the NLD has fought against injustice on their behalf.

This kind of illusory emotional dependence might be why the regime did not completely quash the entire NLD leadership years ago. Instead, the party was allowed to exist as a suppressed and dysfunctional political entity – a group occasionally made a scapegoat by the regime for all the problems facing the country.

As the drumbeat of international condemnation for the government continues, political forces in exile have stepped up calls to punish the regime. These forces – a disparate group of some seven alliances comprising more than 100 parties – are harboring hopes that people inside the country will launch a revolution.

The calls have fallen mostly on deaf ears. Even though such a revolution is not theoretically impossible, another 1988 uprising or Saffron Revolution such as in 2007 would not come about without brave citizens prepared to sacrifice their lives in street battles against machine gun-toting soldiers.

Successive generations have fought against the regime since its 1962 coup against a civilian government. All have been brutally suppressed. As evidenced by the monks-led protests in 2007, it was not the scholars, opposition leaders and campaigners, most of whom sought exile, or political leaders inside the country, most of whose children are studying or working abroad, who took to the streets. Instead, it was disgruntled and mostly uneducated young people who strode forward against the flying bullets.

A majority of young people such as these are from farming families. They anticipate only two things: to join in detonating what former prime minister of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew called the “time-bomb” of Myanmar’s dictatorship; or to leave their homeland to work and study abroad.

It is these young people faced with a defunct education system and an crumbling economy who will determine the future of Myanmar. It is important to understand what they face.

A crisis of education
Each day, throngs of people jostle for passports at the Burmese Immigration Office in Yangon. The sought-after exodus attests to the colossal damage successive military leaders have done to the country. Commuting in overcrowded buses, an average worker makes an equivalent of $30 per month. Sometimes, it is the only source of income for a whole family.

Many high school graduates leave for neighboring countries to work as laborers. Those a bit more fortunate learn basic English in state-run universities that are little more than makeshift shacks of brick and corrugated iron.

It wasn’t always this way. The now-shuttered Rangoon University was once the most prestigious university in Southeast Asia. Now, students in state-run universities newly built in remote parts of Myanmar are not allowed to visit any other department from that where they study. Entrances are protected by iron doors and guarded by university lecturers forced to work as security staff. Any kind of group activity is discouraged.

In the bleak classrooms, students memorize a 20-page history book about the British colonization in English, which they already learned throughout high school in Burmese. According to a 2008 study by Macquarie University, Myanmar spends a mere 1.4% of gross domestic product on health and education, less than half that spent by the next poorest member of Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN).

The regime tried its own style of a market economy in the early 1990s, and was successful to some extent from 1995-1997. “The generals think they can follow China’s model by enticing people with money and making them forget about politics,” said a local resident in Yangon. “The short period of economic prosperity was almost spawning a generation indifferent to politics and distant to the 8888 uprising. They lost that generation in the Saffron Revolution.”

With no legal enforcement and rampant corruption, the market economy turned into a failure. The junta is now eviscerating the country’s natural resources for its only source of income. Much of an estimated $2.5 billion from the annual gas export is being used to build the new capital, Naypyidaw, according to local reports.

Acts of atonement
The killing of monks in 2007 created a discord in the monastic order, an act considered a great crime to Myanmar’s Buddhists. In response, junta chief Senior General Than Shwe has used a bewildering variety of methods to make up for his crimes of karma and sustain his rule. For one thing, commissioning a jade Buddha image resembling his appearance and facial proportions in Shwedagon, the largest pagoda in Myanmar. Also ubiquitous all over the country are Buddha images he and his family donated. Many of those images are strangely housed in glass cases, presumably on astrological advice.

“Glass in Burmese pronunciation is hman meaning ‘correct’. So, every time you look at the Buddha image through the glass, you are supposed to have the impression that he [Than Shwe] is correct,” said the same local resident who declined to be named.

Despite reports that there are officers within the military establishment who resent Than Shwe’s idiosyncrasies and alleged crimes against his own people, it is doubtful many in the military will turn against the system on which they depend. There is a fierce animosity towards military personnel among the Myanmar public.

While the trial of Suu Kyi continues, Myanmar citizens can’t but look on in despair. Defiance is shown in small, personal ways: some release balloons, others free fishes and the most daring distribute photos of Suu Kyi.

Towards evenings in Yangon, old people tune in to the Burmese-language broadcasts of the British Broadcasting Corporation, the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia in an attempt to smother their anger. Many young men march to cafes to watch football, while many girls and women glue themselves to Korean movies nightly broadcast by state-run television.

Under the decades of dictatorship, the citizens of Myanmar have become masters of resilience, even in the most difficult circumstances. As long as the current injustice keeps going on, they will be forced to do so once again.

Swe Win is a former political prisoner now working as a freelance reporter.

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Jun 6, 2009
AN ATOL INVESTIGATION
Asia Times Online – A hard reign continues in Myanmar
By Rajeshree Sisodia

MAE SOT, Thailand – For three days in 1989, Htay Aung was blindfolded and forced to crouch on the balls of his feet with his hands behind his neck in an interrogation cell. Then the questions would start.

His tormentors, in the Military Intelligence (MI) interrogation camp in Myanmar’s former capital Yangon, fired questions like rifle shots: “Why did you get involved in political activities?”; “What were you doing?”; “Who else is helping you?” His answers were always wrong. Finally, he shouted back: “Which students have you arrested?” Then the blows rained down.

Intelligence officers beat Htay Aung with aluminum and rubber truncheons on his calves and back. Last month, during a series of interviews conducted in refugee camps along the Thai-Myanmar border, he replicated the position he was forced to stand in 20 years ago. This is his story and that of others like him.

Htay Aung was lucky; he managed to escape. The continued detention and ongoing trial of Myanmar’s most famous political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Laureate and leader of Myanmar’s main opposition party the National League for Democracy (NLD), has helped train the world’s gaze onto thousands of other dissidents currently in jail in Myanmar.

The number – which stands at 2,156 – is the highest figure of long-standing political prisoners the country has seen since at least 1988, according to Amnesty International. As recently as last November, more than 200 people were sentenced to prison terms of between 65 and 104 years each.

Many of their detentions began much like Htay Aung’s. It was a morning in August 1989 when seven plain-clothes Special Branch police officers came to the home in Yangon that Htay Aung, a student leader in the country’s 1988 mass pro-democracy uprisings, shared with his mother and seven siblings. He was handcuffed, blindfolded and taken to the interrogation camp.

“I fell down a few times when I was forced to stand in that position. They would not let me sleep, eat or drink water. It was like that for three days. For the first two days, they would not let me go to the toilet. I never told them who I was helping on the outside. That time, they did not torture me too much,” said the 45-year-old with a smile. After three days of beatings, Htay Aung was transferred to Insein prison, a maximum-security facility and the largest of Myanmar’s jails. He was not allowed to see a lawyer or his family.

After spending two months in a windowless cell where his toilet was a hole in the ground, he was released without explanation and without being charged.

The beatings and detention had little effect. Htay Aung continued to work for an underground movement called the All Burma Federation of Student Unions (ABFSU), a nationwide student group that spearheaded the 1988 uprisings. It cost him more than a decade in prison after he was re-arrested three times; first in 1990 and twice in 1996.

“I was taken to the same camp, and to Insein, and had the same torture. They were becoming like second homes to me, the camp and the prison. I got to see my old friends in prison. We didn’t want to be beaten or to be arrested or to die. It’s normal to feel fear. I felt afraid [but] some of our friends were missing, some arrested, some were beaten. At that time, we knew that if our country had democracy, these horrible things would not happen, so we wanted that. I hated the regime,” he said.

Htay Aung came under the scrutiny of the MI again in 2007. Fearing re-arrest, he fled Myanmar in November 2008 and crossed illegally into Thailand. It was a self-enforced exile that led him to his new home in the Thai border town of Mae Sot.

A town on the brink
The Moei River cuts along the western flank of Mae Sot, on Thailand’s western border with Myanmar. The “Friendship Bridge” with its guards and immigration offices is the official artery into Thailand, across the water from the Myanmar town of Myawaddy. Visitors from Myanmar are issued day passes when the crossing opens daily from 6am to 6pm. Others leave Myanmar as long-term migrants looking for work and better lives.

Trickles of former political prisoners like Htay Aung also slip across in secret. Mae Sot sprang to life as a trading post between the two countries in the 1990s after Myanmar’s military regime legalized cross-border trade. Myanmar migrants, official and illegal, soon began to leave for Thailand via the town, a hub where gems and teak timber are siphoned off to the international market. Most of Mae Sot’s 150,000 people are from Myanmar; migrants, refugees and those on the payroll of the MI.

“They’re here. I don’t now how many, mostly informers. They know where I am and what I am doing,” said Bo Kyi, the 44-year-old activist who runs the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP). The group has campaigned for Myanmar’s political prisoners, monitored their well-being and provided advice to their families since 2000.

Bo Kyi was also imprisoned by the junta for being a leader in the mass protests of 1988; a seminal point in Myanmar’s history that saw millions of unarmed demonstrators, led by students, protest against the dictatorship’s one-party rule and a crumbling economy. The groundswell of dissent was brutally suppressed. Official estimates vary but some 3,000 men and women were believed to have been killed when the Tatmadaw, the name of Myanmar’s military, opened fire.

“I was frightened, but since I became involved in the struggle, I knew if I was lucky I would stay alive. But I knew that I would be arrested sooner or later,” he said. Bo Kyi was arrested three times by the MI, in 1989, 1990 and 1994. The first time, Bo Kyi escaped, but his luck ran out in 1990 and he was arrested. On April 2, 1990, he appeared before a closed military court, under Myanmar’s 1950 Emergency Provisions Act, in Insein prison and was convicted.

“In the court, the military officer asked me one question; ‘Did you commit any crime?’. I replied, ‘Absolutely not’. He replied: “Three years’ imprisonment with hard labor’. I had no lawyer, no family members there and no judges, just three military officers, one from the army, navy and air force. I expected more than three years. I expected 10 or 20 years,” said Bo Kyi.

He served his sentence in Insein and Mandalay prisons before being released on his 28th birthday. He resumed pro-democracy campaigning after his release and he was arrested and imprisoned in 1994 for five years.

“During the ‘88 uprising, I saw friends who were killed, shot before my own eyes. We can’t forget their faces. They died because they wanted to change the political system to a democratic one. That’s what they wanted; they sacrificed. Many of my colleagues remain in prison, so how can I stay away?” he asked.

Outside, the AAPP offices were alive with activity. A whiteboard on one of the walls kept a running tally of arrests of dissidents. Myanmar’s most famous daughter, Suu Kyi, looks down from a poster inside the association’s ground-floor museum. Iron shackles political detainees are forced to wear and rubber truncheons used to beat prisoners are among the exhibits smuggled out of Myanmar now on display. Rows of photographs of men and women in detention line the walls. Some stare blankly, others smile. Name after name; Su Su Nway, Than Than Htay, Khin Htar Aye; the list goes on, until names seem pointless; catalogues of lives Myanmar’s junta is trying to destroy, resistance it is trying to break.

Thousands of political dissidents remain in detention in Myanmar. The AAPP estimates about 10,000 former political prisoners still live inside the country and continue to face the threat of imprisonment.

An ever-tightening grip
It is clear the Myanmar’s junta is tightening its stranglehold over its people. The past several years have seen dissidents in custody face a growing prospect of having their prison terms extended. Those facing trial now are also more likely to be handed out long sentences. The junta has also introduced a neighborhood watch system by which ordinary people are coerced to form committees and spy on their neighbors.

The policy is a continuation of the regime’s increasing crackdown since the Saffron Revolution in 2007, when more than 4,000 people were rounded up and detained after thousands of lay people and monks took to the streets to demand democratic and economic reforms. The program is also a means to ensure elections scheduled to take place next year progress trouble-free and an attempt by the junta to smother any human-rights movement inside Myanmar. The Orwellian methods the regime is using to frighten its 55 million people appear to be working.

Myanmar’s recent history reads like a glossary of human-rights abuses. The regime’s systematic use of rape, torture, detention, extra-judicial killings, forced labor and land confiscation – alongside intermittent ethnic insurgencies – have been well documented.

It wasn’t always like this. When Myanmar freed itself from British rule in 1948, with Burmese revolutionary leader and Suu Kyi’s father Bogyoke Aung San at the helm, the Union of Burma was born and the country became an independent democratic republic. Its people had high hopes.

All that changed in 1962 when General Ne Win seized power in a violent coup and established a socialist military government. The generals were hell bent on the “Burmese way to socialism” – a disastrous mix of political and economic policies that propelled Myanmar, a country the World Bank in the 1950s predicted would become one of Asia’s economic success stories, into poverty and repression.

So began the nation’s downward spiral as the junta began to implement increasingly isolationist political and economic policies and deprived its people of democracy, human rights, free speech, education and healthcare.

The regime’s, or State Peace and Development Council’s (SPDC), continued mishandling of its economy has led to widespread suffering. While neighboring countries including Thailand, China and India have witnessed economic growth in recent years, the junta’s isolation and mismanagement mean the average citizen is no better off now than 20 years ago. Most earn less than a dollar a day and the average yearly salary is US$286. Meanwhile, the junta has spent around $330 million a year on its military, more than four times the amount it invests annually on education and healthcare combined.
Profits from natural gas, Myanmar’s biggest export, have also fallen due to the worldwide financial slowdown. Economists predict Myanmar will this year earn around $1 billion from gas exports, almost all of which is exported to Thailand, down from $2 billion last year. Money from sales of beans and pulses, mostly to India, has also fallen. Not that this lost revenue would have been used to help improve the lives of its people; most of it ends up as bribes, lines the generals’ pockets, is spent on the military or sits in the coffers of the junta and its allies’ off-shore bank accounts or in the state-owned Myanmar Foreign Trade Bank.

The 1988 uprising and the 2007 demonstrations were largely fueled by a demand for economic, as well as political, changes, after spiraling inflation meant ordinary Burmese people could no longer afford to make ends meet. The link between politics and human rights is the dismal state of the country’s economy. Similarly, the international community, including the United States, the European Union, the United Nations, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), China and India, have to accept that economic and diplomatic pressure must underpin any influence they exert over the SPDC to reform.

The recent increase in political repression in Myanmar and Suu Kyi’s trial illustrate two factors: the SPDC is not willing to relent and that international policy in pushing the regime to change, with a few exceptions, has so far largely failed. The paths traditionally taken to try to coax, cajole and threaten Myanmar have been a policy of engagement by Asian countries and the West’s hardball approach of isolation and sanctions. Neither has worked.

China – and to a lesser extent – India and Russia are the key players and the only governments that can initiate concrete progress. Beijing is Myanmar’s biggest military, political and economic ally. China is the largest supplier of weapons to the regime. It has reportedly sold millions of dollars in arms, including tanks, armored personal carriers, military aircraft and anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns to Myanmar. India, Russia, Serbia and the Ukraine also sell weapons to the junta.

China’s economic footprint in Myanmar is growing. In the past several years, Beijing has invested billions of dollars in huge natural gas, oil, hydropower and mining projects in resource-rich Myanmar by signing up to more than 90 lucrative deals with the SPDC. China is also the biggest exporter of consumer goods into Myanmar.

It’s no surprise then that Beijing and Moscow continue to protect Myanmar in the international political arena. China and Russia vetoed a draft UN Security Council resolution put forward by the US and Great Britain in 2007 that would have called on the junta to ease political repression and the persecution of ethnic minorities. The UN Security Council earlier on May 22 issued a watered-down statement expressing its concern the impact Suu Kyi’s continued detention and trial may have on stability in the region. The statement fell short of openly condemning Myanmar after China and Russia protested.

At this stage, Beijing has no desire to push the SPDC to implement change and has been selective in its use of influence over Myanmar in recent years. China is not a democracy so is fearful of any possibility the junta will be forced to loosen its grip or be overthrown. Democracy in Myanmar would be a disaster for Beijing, particularly as parts of restive western China border Myanmar.

Beijing has found itself with a sensitive balancing act; too much repression in Myanmar could lead to greater economic hardship, further mass protests, instability and internal conflict. This is the last thing China wants as it moves to protect its lucrative investments, establish a stable market dependent on Chinese imports and to protect a growing ethnic Chinese population in Myanmar.

China’s main rival and neighbor, India, is also courting the SPDC as it vies for Myanmar’s huge reserves of gas and oil. But while the US and EU have recently extended sanctions against the regime and ASEAN and the UN Security Council have also taken the unusual step of publicly condemning the junta, so far the EU, US and UN have done little to corner China and India.

According to Benjamin Zawacki, Myanmar researcher at Amnesty International:
Until and unless they release all the political prisoners, nothing said by the regime can be trusted – that’s when we will see whether or not the increased pressure has had any effect. The lynch pin in that is China. The Indians could also apply pressure [but] India has shown itself to be patently unhelpful. It never tires of saying that it is the world’s largest democracy, yet its democratic and human rights credentials with regards to Burma are shameful. Individual Indian MPs have spoken up on behalf of Aung San Suu Kyi [but] India has remained completely silent over the last few weeks.
Nyo Ohn Myint, spokesman for the NLD-in-exile in Thailand, urged the West to push China and India to pressure the SPDC, but also called for the NLD to engage in dialogue with the regime’s generals.

“Myanmar is a failed state. We have no negotiators inside Myanmar who are willing to talk to the generals and the regime is very tight; none of the generals wanted to talk with the NLD. Members of the NLD inside Burma [Myanmar] should be more flexible, to engage in dialogue. We need trust-building on every level between the two camps,” Nyo Ohn Myint said.

Sources have confirmed senior Chinese officials have visited Myanmar in recent days to try to coax the regime to improve on human rights. It is also known that the NLD has held unofficial talks with ASEAN members and officials from Beijing to try to break the deadlock. So far, there has been no progress.

While Beijing and New Delhi compete to woo Myanmar’s generals and the international community drags its feet, the resulting political impasse suggests that Myanmar’s future, in line with its recent history, will be pockmarked with tragedy and bloodshed.

A hard rain
A world away from the seats of power in Washington, Brussels and Beijing, at Um Phien refugee camp – one of Thailand’s nine holding camps for official Burmese refugees – former political prisoner Thiha Aung sits cross-legged on the floor of the two-room hut where he has lived since fleeing Myanmar in December 2006.

His blue and white longyi only party covers the scars on his legs, daily reminders of the beatings he suffered almost two decades ago when Myanmar’s MI discovered he was campaigning for the ABFSU and was a member of the NLD. Thiha Aung, 45, was arrested seven times between 1987 and 1996, spending almost nine years in police and military intelligence custody or in Insein prison.

“I wanted to change the government, I wanted to sacrifice my life for the people,” he said. “But Burma will never change. The military government doesn’t want to change so I think Myanmar’s political situation will never change. If I go back to Myanmar now, they will arrest me for sure and it will be a big sentence. I can never go back.” reign Um Phien, a two-hour bus journey north from Mae Sot, is a ramshackle collection of wooden huts perched on a mountainside barely 30 kilometers from the Myanmar border. It is home to around 20,000 Myanmar refugees. The monsoon season had just begun and the rain from the day before had made the air sultry.

Many of Um Phien’s refugees eke out a livelihood by collecting and selling firewood or as daily wage laborers on nearby farms. They rely on food rations from non-governmental organizations. In some ways, the camp seems a self-contained rural community with shops and schools. But the camp authority office and the barbed wire that guard it shatter any veneer of normality. Families are not allowed to leave the camp without permission from camp officials and the Thai authorities.

Thiha Aung has built a new life as a refugee in Thailand. He teaches the camp’s children English and he recently remarried. His new wife Mange, 38, sits beside him as he cradles their newborn son in his arms and stares outside the one glassless window in his home. Outside, storm clouds hang low, threatening another downpour.

(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

Rajeshree Sisodia is a British freelance reporter and photographer specializing in human rights and social issues. She was based in New Delhi for four years until the end of December 2008 – during which time she covered South Asia and Southeast Asia – including reporting from India, Afghanistan and Myanmar – for various publications and websites including the South China Morning Post, the New Statesman and al-jazeera’s English-language website. She continues to work as a freelancer based in London.

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Borneo Bulletin – Myanmar nationals in Malaysia call for Suu Kyi’s freedom
June 5, 2009 Friday

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) – At least 30 supporters of Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi held a noisy demonstration outside the country’s mission here Thursday to demand her release.

During the brief protest, the Myanmar nationals shouted slogans such as “We want democracy,” and “Free Aung San Suu Kyi” and carried placards with the words: “We oppose the 2010 elections.”

“The protest is to press the military junta to free Aung San Suu Kyi and other leaders,” Thein Aung, 38, told AFP.

Aung San Suu Kyi, who won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, faces up to five years in jail on charges of breaching the conditions of her house arrest after a bizarre incident in which an American man, John Yettaw, swam to her lakeside home in May.

Authorities in Myanmar have accused her of covering up the American’s presence and have rebuked her for offering him food and shelter.

The trial, the latest episode in a nearly two-decade test of wills between the pro-democracy champion and Myanmar’s ruling junta, has provoked an international outcry.
But leaders have dismissed outside criticism, saying the trial was an internal matter.

The junta headed by reclusive Senior General Than Shwe has kept Aung San Suu Kyi in detention for a total of 13 years since 1990, when it refused to recognise her party’s landslide victory in Myanmar’s last elections.

The military has ruled Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, since 1962 and critics say next year’s elections are a sham as they will be held under a new constitution which gives the army a role in any government.

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CNW Telbec – Burma Blogger Zarganar completes first year in prison, 34 years to go

MONTREAL, June 5 /CNW Telbec/ – Reporters Without Borders reiterates its call for the release of Zarganar, a dissident blogger and comedian who was jailed a year ago today on a charge of disturbing public order. He was given a 45-year jail sentence by special court inside Insein prison last November and then received an additional 14-year sentence a few days later. The combined jail terms were reduced to 35 years on 16 February.

“The sentence alone shows that Zarganar has been subjected to a travesty of justice,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Do you give such a long jail term just for ‘disturbing public order’? The military government had him arrested and then denied him due process because he had become a reliable source of information in a country throttled by censorship and repression.”

The press freedom organisation added: “The conditions in which Zarganar is being held are very bad and his health is deteriorating steadily. These are additional reasons why he must be released.”

Suffering from jaundice and hypertension, Zarganar is not getting access to adequate medical care in Myintkyina prison, to which he was transferred in December.

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The New York Times – Situation Seen as Deteriorating at Aceh Refugee Camp
By PETER GELLING
Published: June 5, 2009

JAKARTA – Conditions at a refugee camp holding almost 200 men in Indonesia’s northernmost province of Aceh have deteriorated in recent months, leading to the escape of a known people smuggler and his nephew, according to a nongovernmental organization working there.

A combination of lax security, little funding and poor communication has led to food shortages, violence and an overall atmosphere of fear and distrust among the refugees, who are increasingly nervous about what their future might hold, said Sara Henderson, director of the Building Bridges to the Future Foundation, a small nongovernmental organization.

“It is more critical than ever to ensure timely and appropriate communication to the local authorities and the refugees. But this has not yet happened, and as a result there has been panic and tension in the camp,” Ms. Henderson said. “In addition the security at the camp has not been improved and could be said to have become worse.”

The escaped people smuggler has been on the run since Saturday and is believed to have about $100 and a cellphone on him, according to Irfan Kamal, a local government official who is in charge of the camp. The smuggler, Rahmatullah, 38, is from Myanmar and was first caught illegally transporting people by the Malaysian authorities several years ago, according to Dina Kosasih, who works with the Building Bridges Foundation. A well-known human trafficker, the Indonesian authorities believe he has contacts in Aceh who are helping him.

Even before the escape on Saturday, a number of security issues had arisen at the makeshift camp, which is located in the small port town of Idi Rayeuk. A handful of men attempted to escape in April, but were quickly rounded up by the Indonesian military. Several refugees also attacked a number of Indonesian Red Cross workers a few months ago and at least one minor, also a refugee, has been raped, according to Ms. Henderson.

The men are a mixture of Muslim Rohingya from Myanmar and Muslim Bangladeshis who had been found by a fisherman off the coast of Aceh on Feb. 2 after floating adrift for three weeks. They were part of a larger group of refugees who had been rounded up by the Thai military and cast out to sea in motorless boats, a policy of “push-backs” that has since been halted.

There is another group of about 200 men being held at a navy station in Sabang, on the northern tip of Aceh, who were discovered in early January. Several more boats were discovered by the Indian authorities.

The refugees have been waiting for the process of “status determination” to be completed by the United Nations, the International Organization for Migration and the Indonesian government. The process will decide who among the refugees will be repatriated and who can stay or be sent to a third country. The United Nations said it had filed its recommendations to the Foreign Ministry but was still waiting for final decisions to be made.

“We still can’t make any final decisions yet because we are still talking with the country of origins,” said Teuku Faizasyah, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry.

Mr. Faizasyah said the Foreign Ministry was negotiating with the Bangladeshi government to see if it would take the refugees back, many of whom he said were willing to return. For the Burmese Rohingya, he said the ministry was still seeking a third country that could take them.

“We are in a position to provide the Rohingya with assistance while they are here, but there are limits to what we can do,” he said.

The ethnic Rohingya are considered some of the most persecuted people in the world. They are denied citizenship in Myanmar and denied passports, and their travel is restricted. The United Nations estimates that there are about 723,000 Rohingya living in Myanmar’s Rahkine State. Thousands of Rohingya try to escape to Bangladesh, Thailand and other nearby countries every year.

“I can go anywhere, but I can’t go back to Myanmar. It is too dangerous for me there,” said one of the Rohingya refugees, Alam Shah, 38, during an interview in April.

Mr. Faizasyah said he was aware of the difficulties facing the local government in Idi Rayeuk but added that the Foreign Ministry did not have enough personnel to send to the camp.

Only recently was a fence built to contain the men. Before the fence they could easily sneak in and out and were seen on numerous occasions using cellphones and socializing with people from the local community outside.

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Mizzima News – Junta launches fresh offensive against KNU
by May Kyaw
Friday, 05 June 2009 21:21

Chiang Mai (Mizzima News) – Burmese Army troops are preparing to launch an offensive against the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) and heavy fighting is likely on Saturday, a Karen officer said.

“It seems like they are preparing to attack. I think fighting is likely tomorrow [Saturday],” said Brigadier General Jonny of the KNLA.

Soldiers of the Burmese Army along with its allies, Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA)’s battalions 999, 333 and 555 have jointly attacked the KNLA battalion 7, the armed wing of the Karen National Union, in Pa-an district. The KNU is an ethnic armed resistance group fighting for self-determination for more than 60 years.

The Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG) on Friday issued a statement saying the impending conflict has forced about 700 Karen people ,who lived in Pa-an area, to flee to the Thai-Burmese border fearing for their lives.

While the Burmese Army has raided and tried to occupy the military camps in the area controlled by KNU, the longest operating revolutionary organization in Burma, a Karen splinter group, the DKBA has been expanding its troop strength.

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Mizzima News – State media accuses U.S. and UK embassies of nexus with NLD
by Salai Pi Pi
Friday, 05 June 2009 21:07

New Delhi (Mizzima) – The military government has accused officials of the US and British embassies in Rangoon of allegedly dropping into the office of the Opposition party  – the National League for Democracy – 25 times in May alone.

The junta’s mouthpiece, the New Light of Myanmar, on Friday reported that officials of the US and British embassies in Rangoon had visited the NLD office 25 times and passed on instructions and unknown materials to NLD members.

“During their visit, they met Central Executive Committee (CEC) members of the party [NLD] and gave them large and small envelopes and parcels,” the newspaper said.

But Win Tin, a former political prisoner and a CEC member of the NLD made light of the accusation saying the visits by US and British embassy officials were in keeping with ‘normal relations’ that diplomats maintain across the world.

“It is just maintaining normal relations. It is not strange,” Win Tin said.

It is only normal for diplomats to maintain a relationship with the government, political parties including the Opposition and with the media in countries they are stationed in, he said.

Win Tin said the NLD is an independent political party and does not act on anyone’s behest or advice including the US and British embassies. But any advice does help in garnering diverse opinions on several issues including political, economic, social and also natural disaster.

“It doesn’t mean that NLD accepts whatever they suggest or advice. It depends on us,” he said.

“Sometimes they ask about Aung San Suu Kyi’s case? How we are tackling it and our plans to react among others,” he added.

Win Tin admitted that embassy officials had brought parcels and envelopes that contained newspapers, news bulletins and other world related papers.

He said the junta by publishing such information in its newspaper, has revealed that it has been monitoring the NLD. It wants to defame the party as leaning towards the west.

“The issue is not worthy of mention in a newspaper. The government has exposed how naïve it is… it only degrades their dignity,” Win Tin said.

Speaking to Mizzima, a Rangoon-based western diplomat said, the visit to NLD office is not surprising as many foreign diplomats including those from the US maintain a good relationship and often pay visits to the office. But the diplomat declined to elaborate further.

“They [NLD] have regular meetings with foreign diplomats not just those from the US. Many foreign diplomats have been invited to NLD’s headquarter,” a diplomat, who wished not to be named, said.

“Recently there was the anniversary of the election [1990 elections] results. The chief of the US embassy was there along with many foreign diplomats but I don’t know about the parcels and envelopes,” the diplomat added.

The US and British embassy officials were not immediately available for comment.

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The Irrawaddy – India Should Reassess its Burma ‘Sweetheart’ Policy
By NEHGINPAO KIPGEN, Friday, June 5, 2009

India and Burma not only share a common border, but are home to millions of people from the same ethnic communities, separated during the creation of the two countries in 1947 and 1948.

They include the Kukis, Nagas and Shan, who live side by side in the Indo-Burmese region.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Indian government was noticeably sympathetic and supportive to the Burmese democracy movement. Burmese activists were openly welcomed and sheltered in India, whose government was vocal on human rights and democracy.

One notable staunch supporter of the Burmese democracy movement was George Fernandes, the then Indian defense minister in the National Democratic Alliance coalition government. His official residence housed Burmese democracy activists, where a large picture of Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel peace laureate, was placed.

Support for Burma’s democracy movement faded with the introduction of India’s “Look East” policy. A dramatic foreign policy shift, from pro-democracy to pro-military, began during the Congress government of Prime Minister P V  Narasimha Rao in 1991, and was augmented by the Bhartiya Janata Party under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1998-2004).

Salient factors for India’s policy shift were its national interest and security. Opening doors to Southeast Asia provided a gateway to expanding its international market.

Tackling insurgencies in the northeastern part of the country and countering China’s influence in the region were the primary security concerns.

As long as China is economically and strategically engaged in Burma, India is likely to stick with the defunct non-aligned movement doctrine of “non-interference” in the internal affairs of others, which serves its national interest. There is no foreseeable sign, at least in the near future, that New Delhi will retreat from a sweetheart relationship with Naypyidaw.

International outrage over Suu Kyi’s trial in Rangoon is not shared by the Indian government, which is prevented from advocating human rights and democracy because of economic interests and its fear of antagonizing the Burmese military regime.

The safety of Suu Kyi is one rare common concern shared by pro-sanctions and pro-engagement governments alike. Her trial has sparked an unexpectedly critical reaction from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), which has traditionally been silent on Burma. As a member of Asean, Burma has a responsibility to protect and promote human rights, according to a statement released by Thailand, which currently chairs the bloc.

The statement, issued on May 19, said in part: “With the eyes of the international community on Myanmar [Burma] at present, the honor and the credibility of the government are at stake.”

A similar statement was expected from India, the world’s largest democratic nation, but it was never heard.

Engaging Burma is not a wrong policy. However, engaging the military generals for the sole purpose of economic partnership and counterbalancing China’s influence in the region is discouraging.

New Delhi’s overture to root out Northeast Indian militants from Burma also remains an open question. The militants still enjoy free passage.

Burma will not be under a military dictatorship forever. It is important that a democratic nation like India does not compromise its cardinal democratic values just to dance in the tune of the Burmese military generals.

The new Congress-led coalition government, under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, needs to look beyond the Northeast militancy problem and its relations with Communist China.

While the United States is reviewing its policy toward Burma, India should offer every possible support to formulate a coordinated international strategy. A democratic Burma would better serve the interests of a diverse and democratic India.

Nehginpao Kipgen is general secretary of the US-based Kuki International Forum (www.kukiforum.com) and a researcher on Burma’s politics.

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