Burma’s Deputy Defense Minister Skips Security Summit
HIV Infection on the Rise Among Men Who Have Sex with Men
Ex-inspector says Myanmar has nuclear goals
A Bold-faced Liar
Green Revolution Has Little to Offer New Hungry Mouths
Weekly Business Roundup
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Burma’s Deputy Defense Minister Skips Security Summit
By SAW YAN NAING        Saturday, June 5, 2010

Burmese Deputy Defense Minister Maj-Gen Aye Myint was absent from the 9th annual Shangri La Dialogue, an Asia-Pacific security summit held in Singapore on June 4-6.

The summit brings together defense ministers, academics and security experts to discuss Asia-Pacific security issues, including weapons of mass destruction, biological weapons and humanitarian and disaster relief.

Aye Myint’s absence came as fresh evidence of Burma’s nascent nuclear weapons program was revealed in a documentary aired on the Doha-based Al Jazeera television network on Friday.

Observers said he may have stayed away from the meeting to avoid being questioned about Burma’s nuclear program.

“If someone asked him about it, he would have had to say something,” said Chan Htun, a former Burmese ambassador to China. “That’s probably why he didn’t show up.”

Burma’s ambassador to Singapore, Win Myint, was present at the summit.

One of the issues raised at the summit on Friday was the sinking of a South Korean warship, the Cheonan, which Seoul says was torpedoed by North Korea on March 26.

South Korea President Lee Myung-bak asked the UN Security Council to take action against North Korea over the attack.

According to Dr Zarni, a Burmese academic who attended the summit, Lee also mentioned a bomb attack that targeted a South Korean delegation visiting Rangoon in 1983. The attack, carried out by North Korean agents, killed 17 people.

Lee did not, however, mention North Korea’s current military assistance to Burma.

A UN report last month said that North Korea is exporting nuclear and ballistic missile technology and using multiple intermediaries, shell companies and overseas criminal networks to circumvent UN sanctions.

The report said its research indicates that Pyongyang is involved in banned nuclear and ballistic weapons activities in Iran, Syria and Burma.         http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=18636
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HIV Infection on the Rise Among Men Who Have Sex with Men
By MON MON MYAT / IPS WRITER    Saturday, June 5, 2010

RANGOON —The only son in his family, Maung Maung Oo was forced to marry when he was  24 years old. By then he had been carrying on a sexual relationship with a man for four years û which he continued even after his marriage.

For the next 14 years, Oo led a double life. But in 2005, he finally decided to be true to himself: He left his wife and three children for his male partner.

“My wife was so shocked when she learned of my affair with a man,” says Oo. ”But I can’t change how I feel though I have the body of a man.”

Oo, however, is still living a life in the shadows. Although he and his partner are now living together, their relationship remains a secret to most people. “My partner does not want people to know we are living together as a  couple,” Oo explains. ”He wants to pretend that we are brothers.”

According to Ko Aye, who conducted a pioneering study on men who have sex with men (MSM) in Burma in 2003, stigma remains against people like Oo in this Southeast Asian country of 48 million people. Yet while he says there is “not a very serious or strong reaction” against MSM, many MSM themselves apparently think there is a need to keep their ”true identity” secret.

This has complicated efforts to limit, if not stop, the spread of HIV among MSM in the country. According to official data, HIV prevalence among MSM in Burma was 29.3 percent as of 2008, or 42 times higher than the national adult prevalence rate.

Men who have sex with men include both those who may not identify themselves as homosexual, and those who do and include those in sex work as well. Estimates by the Department of Health and the World Health Organisation put the MSM population in Burma, as of 2007, at 280,000.

Aye says that the stigma against MSM in general stems from “religious principle or traditional beliefs.”  This has led to people like well known make-up artist Soe Soe to believe that having relationships with men could not possibly be called “fortunate.”

“We end up in this kind of life because of karma in the past,” Soe Soe told IPS. “This is not what we choose to be.”

It is a viewpoint that persists despite Aye’s observation of an improvement in the public attitude toward MSM. Thanks to the “development of information technology,” Aye says, “people usually accept it” nowadays.

“For example,” he says, “students may know a teacher is gay, but they accept him as a teacher.”

There are also several prominent members of the entertainment and fashion sectors who are gay, whether they are out in the open or not, but enjoy public acclaim and respect.

Yet, for sure, it has not helped to reassure many that the government continues to portray homosexuality as “evil” or at the very least deserving of public scorn.

Just in February, the prominent ‘Bi-Weekly Eleven Journal’ ran an article quoting supposed medical experts as saying that homosexuality could lead to mental illness and sexual crimes.

Section 377 of the Penal Code also prohibits homosexuality, with penalties ranging from 10 years to life, plus fines. (A travel advisory by the British government says that in June 2007, an “EU national” was sentenced to seven years in prison in Burma for “committing homosexual acts.”)

As a result, many MSM would rather keep their sexual preferences—and obviously their sexual lives—tightly under wraps. Chances are, too, they are reticent in seeking treatment even if they suspect that they already have HIV.

Soe Soe, for instance, says that he does not even ”dare to join an MSM network.”

In truth, despite the official condemnation of homosexuality, there are dozens of local MSM networks in major cities such as Rangoon and Mandalay, with local community-based organizations providing these with information and counseling services.

One of these networks is called ‘Golden Queen’, which has as members 45 MSM, including several who are living with HIV.

Unlike Soe Soe, Myo Tun, a sex worker who has an entirely male clientele, apparently thought nothing of becoming one of Golden Queen’s members. He says, ”Whether society accepts us or not, we have already ended up in this life.”

“We need to raise awareness among our fellow (MSM) as we are at high risk for HIV infection,” he adds. ”We often face problems of condom tearing. That could spread HIV easily.”

Maung Maung Oo now knows this all too well. Two years ago, he discovered that an illness his partner was suffering from was actually one that comes with having AIDS. Not long after, he found out that he himself had it as well.

Unlike many other MSM in Burma, however, Oo and his partner did not hesitate in seeking treatment. They have since been regularly receiving anti-retroviral treatment from an international non-government organization. Every six months, they also have their blood checked to monitor the number of white blood cells that fight infection and that helps indicate the stage of the disease in their system.

Oo says that when he first found out that his lover had HIV, “it was like a flame in my heart.”

“If he dies,” he says, ”I think I’d also die soon after from depression.”

And yet Oo says that he has found his life more meaningful than it was when he was still with his wife and children. “I believe there is real love between us,” he says of his relationship with his partner. “Without that, how can we keep this relationship for 23 years?”
Copyright © 2008 Irrawaddy Publishing Group | www.irrawaddy.org
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=18629
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Ex-inspector says Myanmar has nuclear goals
Associated Press / June 5, 2010

VIENNA — Secret documents and hundreds of photos smuggled out of Myanmar by an army defector indicate its military regime is trying to develop nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, a former senior United Nations nuclear inspector said yesterday.

Robert Kelley said the evidence he has seen and heard from the defector is the most compelling yet to support suspicions that Myanmar is interested in atomic arms. “This is probably the best source . . . since Mordechai Vanunu,’’ he said, referring to the former Israeli nuclear technician whose leak to a British newspaper revealed details of the Jewish state’s nuclear program and led to the now generally accepted belief that Israel has nuclear weapons.

Kelley, who came to the International Atomic Energy Agency after working at Los Alamos, retired from the Vienna-based IAEA in 2008 after holding senior positions. He was commenting on a report he coauthored that was released yesterday by the Democratic Voice of Burma, an expatriate media group located in Norway.

The report said the defector had been involved in the nuclear program and smuggled out extensive files and photographs describing experiments with uranium and specialized equipment needed to build a nuclear reactor and develop enrichment capabilities. But the report concluded that Myanmar is still far from producing a nuclear weapon.
© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2010/06/05/ex_inspector_says_myanmar_has_nuclear_goals/
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BEYOND 1988 — REFLECTIONS
A Bold-faced Liar
By AUNG NAING OO        Saturday, June 5, 2010

My years as a diplomat for the ABSDF and the National Council of the Union of Burma (NCUB) were not all smooth sailing. At times, I made some serious blunders, which may not have had such a negative impact on these organizations, but were profoundly embarrassing for me.

For example, not long after President Bill Clinton was re-elected in 1996, he visited Thailand. William Cohen, a Republican senator who was about to retire, was being tipped to become Clinton’s Defense Secretary. Cohen and another senator, Bill Frist, both accompanied Clinton on his trip.

They requested to meet representatives of Burma’s pro-democracy and ethnic groups during their visit based in Thailand.

At that time, I sat on the Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) of the NCUB. There were five of us on the committee—two from the ABSDF, Aung Htoo and myself; a representative each from the Karen National Union (KNU) and the National League for Democracy-Liberated Area (NLD-LA); and Teddy Buri, from the exiled National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, who served as the FAC chairman.

But the late Tin Maung Win, a seasoned pro-democracy leader and member of the NCUB Presidium, often led us in important meetings, given his long experience in dealing with diplomats and foreign governments. We knew the meeting with Cohen was important, so he participated in our preparations and joined us for the meeting with the senators.

The FAC met twice beforehand to strategize. We discussed what we should say and tried to anticipate what the senators might ask or want to know.

During our preparation meetings, we figured that Cohen would probably ask us about the bombing of the gas pipeline in southern Burma. The bombing had occurred a month or so before his visit.

Three people had been killed in the attack. US oil giant Unocal was involved in the pipeline venture, making the incident likely to be of interest to the Americans.

During the preparatory discussions, we asked the KNU representative if it was the handiwork of the KNU, which was most the formidable fighting force among the various armed ethnic groups. He said no, the KNU had nothing to do with it.

We were happy to hear that, as the KNU’s insistent denial of responsibility would make it easier for us to explain that none of our organizations were involved in the fatal attack.

In reality, I did not know who fired the rocket-propelled grenade at the pipeline. It could have been any of the groups operating in the area—the Karen, the Mon, the remnants of the Communist Party of Burma, or smaller, unknown splinter groups from some of these major organizations.

The ABSDF was also active in the area close to the pipeline. But I knew that it was not involved.

There were also arms dealers in the area. They smuggled surplus weapons from Cambodia across from the Gulf of Thailand, through Burma’s border and the numerous uninhabited islands on the Andaman Sea, and on to various insurgent outfits in India’s northeast and areas bordering Burma.

Once we agreed on our objectives for the meeting with the senators, each of us was assigned to focus on specific issues to raise in the discussion.

Rehearsals over, on the appointed day, we dressed up to meet the senators and made our pitch for the US to strengthen its support for the democracy cause, mostly on the issue of sanctions. The senators seemed receptive. Then, as we had predicted, Sen. Cohen asked us about the shooting at the pipeline.

As per our plans, I had been assigned to deny that any of us had anything to do with the bombing, and so I dutifully told the visiting senators and their staffers that we had no idea who did it. I explained there were many armed outfits operating in the pipeline area, but that resistance groups such as our allies would not commit any crimes against civilians.

My explanation was backed by Aung Htoo. Then Cohen turned to the KNU representative. The Karen leader started talking about the pipeline and how it was viewed by local people. But when Cohen asked a second question, and then a third  with a bit of a twist, the Karen representative unwittingly admitted that his group was responsible for the attack on the pipeline.

As he made his revelation, the room fell silent and my face went pale. I had just explained to the senators that we were not the culprits. Now, I was revealed as a bald-faced liar. I felt so embarrassed I could not participate in the meeting anymore, nor do I recall how Cohen and Frist reacted to the confession.

I did not have the guts to look at the senators and prayed for the meeting to end as soon as possible.

I rushed out of the hotel as soon as the meeting was finished, though as I left I overheard Tin Maung Win and Teddy Buri scolding the KNU representative.

My embarrassment did not disappear for a long time. But I also felt sorry for the KNU. Their fortunes had begun to change after the fall of Manerplaw, their headquarters. Dr Marta, the KNU’s previous Foreign Affairs Secretary, was younger, well-dressed, well-educated, smooth and self-confident, befitting a big organization.

After his departure, the KNU was left with older officials who were often out of touch with the politics of the outside world and what our supporters would consider acceptable tactics for our struggle.

The Karen are simple and straightforward, and despite his good English and our previous discussions, the KNU official, a courteous gentleman in his 60s, seemed unable to lie. Or was it the case of his hearing problem? I did not know.

However, this is not the only time I was to see his inherent honesty.

A year later, the same group minus Tin Maung Win had lunch with a Danish diplomat, mainly updating him on my recent travel to Europe and the situation in Burma with a focus on Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, the NLD.

Then the diplomat turned his attention to the KNU representative and asked him about the latest situation on the border. The old Karen resistance fighter happily reported to the diplomat how the Karen had successfully defended against recent Burmese military offensives.

The KNU representative then revealed the secret of their military success: the group’s ability to lay a lot of landmines to deter the advances of the Burmese troops. We were horrified. Just a week before our lunch, the landmine ban treaty, the result of years of campaigning by global activists, had been signed in Oslo.

Anticipating Teddy Buri’s dismay at the unintended blunder, I got out as quickly as possible after lunch and hailed a taxi. Just before I left, I saw him berating the KNU representative for his natural—but politically inconvenient—instinct to tell the truth.

For more than 10 years after my departure from the ABSDF and FAC, I did not meet the KNU representative. But I had a chance meeting with him last year at a funeral in Mae Sot. He was old and frail but still firm in his beliefs.

Meeting him reminded me of my blunder with Sen. Cohen.

In May I learned that the old Karen revolutionary had passed away earlier this year. May he rest in peace!

Aung Naing Oo left Burma after the 1988 uprising and went to Thailand, joining the All Burma Students’ Democratic Front and becoming the organization’s longest serving foreign affairs secretary. He was camp secretary of the Thay Baw Boe camp, Karen State and head of the “Jungle University.” Based now in Thailand, he writes about Burmese politics.
Copyright © 2008 Irrawaddy Publishing Group | www.irrawaddy.org
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=18632
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Green Revolution Has Little to Offer New Hungry Mouths
By MARWAAN MACAN-MARKAR / IPS WRITER    Saturday, June 5, 2010

BANGKOK — As it took root in the rice fields across Asia, it was hailed as the solution to the hunger afflicting millions of people in the region. But four decades on, the much vaunted Green Revolution appears to have reached its limits, unable to meet new demands, to feed new mouths.

United Nations food experts are increasingly touting the region’s chronic hunger figures for 2009 to confirm this reality. Last year saw the proportion of people in the grip of chronic hunger hit 17 to 18 percent in the Asia- Pacific region, up from 16 percent in 2006.

Children eat free porridge distributed by a child welfare group calling to end hunger and malnutrition on World Day for Social Justice on February 20 in Tondo district, Manila. (Photo: Reuters)
It was the first time that the number of the hungry had risen since the Green Revolution spurred a downward trend. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned this week of a change in grain production since the late 1960s, which saw the output of rice, a regional staple, triple.

The Green Revolution was a series of initiatives, including the introduction of high-yielding rice varieties, launched in the late 1960s to boost agricultural production and feed a growing world population.

According to Hiroyuki Konuma, the FAO’s regional head, the high yield of rice resulting from the introduction of the Green Revolution accounted for a 300 percent increase in the past 40 years, consequently seeing a “deduction of food prices by 40 percent in real terms” and helping to “reduce the proportion of hunger from 34 percent in 1970 to 16 percent in 2006.”

But with a repeat of such achievement now in question, the FAO is appealing to the heartstrings of the world’s public and private sector investors to perform a rescue act to help feed children dying of chronic hunger.

Among the grim facts the FAO is laying on the table are the 14,000 children who die of hunger every day and the five million children who die every year, the majority of whom are in Asia.

“This is unacceptable!” asserted Konuma, during a Bangkok press conference this week that sought to sound the alarm about the emerging food crisis in the region and beyond.

“Of the 1.02 billion hungry people in the world, 642 million live in this region,” he added to reinforce the message that “food security and agriculture are back as a priority on the global development agenda for the first time after the Green Revolution.”

The death of children due to hunger stems from malnutrition than starvation. “Children in Asia are not receiving the correct micronutrients; they lack sufficient vitamins and minerals in their food,” said France Begin, regional nutrition adviser of Asia-Pacific office of the United Nations Children’s Fund.

“Children die of chronic hunger in Asia because their immune systems are weak,” she told IPS. “Pneumonia and diarrhoea are the two main killers.”

To help such victims, the FAO has set its sights on a groundbreaking investment forum in Manila in early July to attract public and private sector investment to help boost the region’s agriculture sector. The Investment Forum for Food Security in Asia and the Pacific in the Philippines capital will be the “first such forum to attract public and private sector security-related initiatives in the region.”

But the planned forum from Jul. 7-9, co-hosted by the Asian Development Bank (AsDB) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), in addition to the FAO, faces a formidable financial challenge.

After all, investments in agriculture in the developing world have plummeted in the past three decades. Overseas Development Assistance for agriculture has dropped from a high of 18 percent in 1978 to a little over four percent in 2008, according to the Rome-based IFAD.

Governments in Asia have mirrored similar neglect of a sector that is still home to a majority of the world’s farmers. Government expenditure “as a proportion of total expenditure in 27 Asian countries showed a noticeable decline beginning in 1990, reached a low in 2001 and recovered somewhat in subsequent years,” according to the FAO.

“The proportion of agriculture expenditures to total expenditures declined from about 8.5 percent in 1990 to less than two percent in 2001,” it added. “This declining trend in the share of agriculture expenditures on agriculture in Asia is symptomatic of the neglect of the sector.”

In fact, argued the UN food agency, gross annual investments of 209 billion US dollars are needed in primary agriculture and downstream services in developing countries to meet global food needs by 2050, 90 percent of which will be in the developing world.

The need for crop production to mirror the output of the Green Revolution is also being touted by the Rome-based FAO for another pressing concern—the limit of new land available for agriculture.

In the Asia-Pacific region, according to the FAO, there has been a marginal increase in agricultural land in developing countries during the 1997-2007 period, from 495 million hectares to 519 million ha, representing a share for agricultural land of 19.4 percent and 20.4 percent, respectively, of the total land area.

But beyond the rice fields, the cost of food has also condemned millions into food insecurity, states the AsDB in the April-June 2010 edition of ‘Development Asia’, a quarterly magazine. In Cambodia, nearly 71 percent of a family’s expense goes toward food, notes the publication in a survey of food security across Asia.

Following this South-east Asian nation are Tajikistan and Burma (Myanmar), where 70 percent goes to a family’s food bill, Georgia, 64 percent, Azerbaijan, 60 percent, and Nepal, 59 percent.

The irony among victims of food insecurity in Asia is that most of them live in rural areas that produce food. “Small farmers are net buyers of food from the market,” said FAO’s Konuma. “The rice they produce is sold to buy other food items.”
Copyright © 2008 Irrawaddy Publishing Group | www.irrawaddy.org http://www.irrawaddy.org/highlight.php?art_id=18634
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Weekly Business Roundup (June 5, 2010)

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By WILLIAM BOOT Saturday, June 5, 2010

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Burma’s Economy “Unbalanced, Unstable” on Eve of Elections

An assessment of Burma’s economy on the eve of promised national elections concludes that it is “unbalanced, unstable and largely without the institutions and attributes necessary to achieve transformational growth.”

“Macroeconomic policy making in Burma is not just ill-conducive to sustained economic growth, but is actively destructive of Burma’s prospects,” says the study by Sean Turnell of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.

The economics professor specializes in Burma and Southeast Asia and also produces the Burma Economic Watch news bulletin.

He says there is evidence that per capita GDP in Burma, already among the lowest in the world, is actually declining.

The report finds that basic elements necessary for economic health and development remain missing in Burma­including lack of protection for private property, lack of business freedom, dysfunctional infrastructure and irrational and inconsistent policy making.

“Such institutional attributes are not yet present in Burma, and their absence denies not just the implementation of sound economic policies, but even the spaces within which they can be discussed. The 2010 elections notwithstanding, meaningful economic reform in Burma is, regrettably, neither in progress, nor in prospect,” Turnell concludes.

Study: Burma Export Earnings from Energy to Double in 5 Years

The Burmese regime’s export earnings from the country’s growing energy sector will double in the next five years, says a US study.

Earnings will “at least double” as a result of the gas and oil transit pipelines now being built through the country into China, said the Washington-based United States Institute of Peace.

This could mean annual earnings from gas, oil and other energy of more than US $6 billion, the institute calculated in its report, “The Economy of Burma on the Eve of the 2010 Elections.”

The calculation is based on energy exports­mostly gas­accounting for at least 45 percent of the $6.6 billion earnings declared for 2008.

“Burma’s export earnings from this sector are expected to at least double within five years as a result of dual pipelines to be built from a port and pumping station on the Arakan coast diagonally across the country to Yunnan Province in China,” says the report.

According to the report, there is a “glimmer of hope” that the next Burma government “will consider economic policies conducive to sustainable economic growth, thereby improving the environment for political reconciliation.”

It added: “If so, the challenge for the international community will be to find ways to support economic policy changes in this direction that do not trigger a backlash from the country’s military rulers.”

China Electricity Giant to Build Coal-Fueled Plants in Burma

One of China’s biggest state power firms has signed an agreement to build coal-fueled and hydroelectric power plants in Burma.

The Beijing-based Guodian Corporation gave no details of the projects.

The brief announcement comes as Burma’s central economic-administrative corridor between Rangoon and Naypyidaw through Mandalay suffer severe electricity shortages.

Any coal-fueled electricity plant construction is likely to be in Shan or Kachin states, where much of the country’s known coal deposits are located.

“It’s not surprising that central Burma is experiencing severe power problems,” said Bangkok energy industries consultant Collin Reynolds. “The development of the new city [Naypyidaw] will have put much strain on what was already an inadequate supply and delivery infrastructure.”

He added: “If Guodian is going to build new plants, there will need to be also an upgrading of transmission lines to cope. At present Burma’s entire capacity to generate electricity would not light up Bangkok.”

Guodian Corporation’s electricity-generating capacity in China was 82,000 megawatts at the end of 2009­more than the combined electricity capacity of Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Indonesia.

Beijing Envoy Urges More Chinese to set up Business in Burma

The Burmese government has called on Chinese firms to invest more in the country, especially in energy, telecommunications and transport.

The proposal was made by Burma’s ambassador to China, Thein Lwin, in a statement published by the official China Daily newspaper.

“China can do more for economic cooperation and infrastructure development in Myanmar [Burma],” Thein Lwin told the paper.

Two-way trade reached US $1.73 billion between January and August last year, said the paper, without explaining why the figure was not for a full financial year.

It said Chinese investment in Burma during that eight month period totaled $330 million.

Thein Lwin cited gas and oil pipelines being built through Burma from the coast into southwest China as the biggest investment, adding, “I hope [that] project will bring in more Chinese business people to Myanmar.”

India-Burma Trade Taxes Slashed in Asean Deal

Tax on hundreds of products traded between India and Burma has been slashed up to 70 percent under the terms of an Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (Asean) free trade agreement.

The tax cut came into force between India and Burma and Vietnam on June 1.

Similar cuts were made between India and Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia last August.

The duty reduction agreement covers agricultural produce, seafood, clothing, some manufactured goods and chemicals.

Copyright © 2008 Irrawaddy Publishing Group | www.irrawaddy.org http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=18631

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