BURMA RELATED NEWS – JULY 20, 2010
Jul 20th, 2010
3 hours 32 mins ago
Ambika Ahuja and John Ruwitch
HANOI (Reuters) – The United States and Britain have said the general election would be illegitimate if the junta denies a role to thousands of political opponents now in prison. Southeast Asia’s top regional bloc, which follows a policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of member states, has been less critical in public.
But Surin Pitsuwan, chairman of the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) which includes Myanmar, said concern was expressed at a regional security meeting in Hanoi.
“Myanmar, I think, got an earful last night,” Surin told reporters on the sidelines of an ASEAN foreign ministers’ meeting. “ASEAN is very much concerned.”
That contrasts with upbeat comments expressed by Asian leaders in October after talks with Myanmar Prime Minister Thein Sein during a summit of 16 Asia-Pacific nations.
Several Asian leaders emerged from those meetings saying they were given assurances by Myanmar its elections would be fair, and they expressed hope political prisoners would be freed, including detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent 15 of the past 21 years in detention.
Suu Kyi remains under house arrest, while more than 2,000 political prisoners are behind bars.
Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo told reporters the elections will help to open up Myanmar’s economy.
“Once the generals take off the uniforms and they’ve got to win votes and kiss babies, and attend to local needs, the behaviour will change, the economy will gradually open up and this will be an important change in Myanmar,” he said.
“We don’t see a sharp break from what it is today but we see an important turning which will lead Myanmar into a different situation — a constitutional government and one which will have a more open economy,” he added.
Suu Kyi, daughter of the hero of the country’s campaign for independence from British rule, was first detained in 1989, a year after she emerged as a champion of political reform during an unsuccessful student-led uprising for democracy.
Her party won a landslide election victory in 1990, only to be denied power by the military.
This year’s election will be the first since then, but critics have already denounced it as a sham that will leave real power with the military. No date has been given for the poll but it is expected between October and December.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who arrives in Hanoi on Thursday for the ASEAN Regional Forum, Asia’s largest security dialogue, will raise U.S. doubts about election preparations in Myanmar, said a U.S. official in Washington.
Southeast Asia has been divided over the issue. Early last year some countries urged ASEAN to take a tougher stand with a public appeal calling on the junta to give Suu Kyi an amnesty.
But the proposal collapsed after several nations rejected it, saying it contravened the bloc’s non-interference policy.
By JIM GOMEZ, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 55 mins ago
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) – Southeast Asian foreign ministers gave Myanmar’s military-run government an “earful” while demanding that it hold free and fair elections — a rare stand by the cautious group often accused of overlooking rights abuses in member nations.
Foreign ministers from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations ended their annual meeting Tuesday in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi, where they tackled a diverse agenda — from setting up a European-style economic community by 2015 to bolstering ties with the West and regional powers China, Japan and India.
But at a dinner on the eve of the conference, Myanmar took center stage as diplomats vented their concerns about planned elections, which the junta has said will be held this year, without giving a date.
Many ministers told their counterpart from Yangon that the junta should hold “free, fair and inclusive” elections. Such straight talk is unusual given ASEAN members’ bedrock policy of not interfering in one another’s domestic affairs.
“Myanmar, I think, got an earful last night that ASEAN is very much concerned,” ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan told reporters on the sidelines of Tuesday’s meetings. The ministers also offered to send observers to the elections.
Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win, in keeping with his government’s typical secrecy, did not give a date for the vote. “The responsibility is for the … elections commissioner, not the foreign minister,” he said.
Some ministers expressed hope for some change within the regime, while continuing to press for the release of detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, 65, who has spent 15 birthdays in detention over the past 20 years, mostly under house arrest. She is the world’s only imprisoned Nobel Peace laureate.
“Once the generals take off their uniforms and they’ve got to win votes and kiss babies and attend to local needs, the behavior will change and the economy will gradually open up,” Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo told reporters on the meeting’s sidelines. “We suggested quite strongly to our Myanmar colleagues that they consider having ASEAN observers at the elections.”
Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa told reporters that Nyan Win has agreed to inform the ASEAN members whether their offer to help is approved by the government.
In a joint statement after their meeting on Tuesday, the ASEAN ministers devoted one of 73 paragraphs to repeat their call for free elections in Myanmar. It did not mention demands to release Suu Kyi and other prisoners, reflecting efforts to avoid embarrassing Myanmar officially.
Critics have dismissed the election — the first in two decades — as a sham designed to cement nearly 50 years of military rule in Myanmar, also known as Burma. Suu Kyi is not allowed to participate in the election, and her party is boycotting the vote and has been disbanded.
“The way that the military regime is treating political prisoners led by Aung San Suu Kyi even makes the ASEAN countries embarrassed, ” said Trevor Wilson, a Myanmar expert at the Australian National University in Canberra. “And they’re pretty good at treating political prisoners badly themselves.”
On Monday, Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya also raised concerns about allegations that Myanmar may be interested in developing a nuclear weapons program with help from North Korea. Myanmar has denied those claims.
The ministers also discussed North Korea’s nuclear program. The Philippines has proposed that a group be formed to persuade the North to return to stalled talks aimed pressuring the regime into giving up its nukes, according to a diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak to the press.
Tensions between the Koreas are high following the deaths of 46 South Korean sailors in the sinking of a warship blamed on Pyongyang earlier this year. The North has denied involvement.
“We deplored the incident of the Cheonan ship sinking,” the ministers said in their statement, referring to the South Korean ship. “We urged all parties concerned to exercise the utmost restraint.”
The North’s top diplomat is expected to arrive in Hanoi on Wednesday and attend an ASEAN security forum later in the week with all members of the disarmament talks, including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The last talks, which involve the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States, were held in Beijing in 2008.
ASEAN, founded in 1967, includes Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
by Ian Timberlake – 27 mins ago
HANOI (AFP) – The sinking of a South Korean warship and elections in military-ruled Myanmar dominated a meeting of Southeast Asian foreign ministers in Vietnam on Tuesday, ahead of a regional security forum.
Ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) met in Hanoi ahead of the region’s main security dialogue Friday, which also gathers major powers including China, the United States and the European Union.
ASEAN chief Surin Pitsuwan said Myanmar’s foreign minister “got an earful” of criticism from his regional colleagues about the need for elections scheduled later this year, the first in 20 years, to be fair and credible.
A draft ASEAN statement also said the 10 member states supported a nuclear-free Korean peninsula and urged a resumption of six-party disarmament talks “as soon as possible”, following the sinking of the warship in March.
“We deplored the incident of the Cheonan ship sinking and the rising tension on the Korean peninsula,” it said, referring to an explosion that ripped apart the corvette near the disputed inter-Korean border, killing 46 sailors.
It said the six-party talks involving North and South Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia were still the “main platform to achieve long-lasting peace and stability”.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui-Chun will attend the 27-member ARF meeting alongside their counterparts from the six-party process.
It will be the first time the top diplomats from the disarmament dialogue will be in the same room since the Cheonan incident dramatically raised tensions on the Korean peninsula.
Surin said it was an opportunity to “engage in a discussion to see if the six-party talks can be given a new life”.
Clinton will arrive in Vietnam after visits this week to Pakistan and South Korea, where she is due to attend a memorial for the dead sailors and visit the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) alongside Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
South Korea, the United States and other nations, citing the findings of a multinational investigation, accuse the North of firing a torpedo that sank the warship.
The North vehemently denies the allegations and has warned that any attempts to punish it could trigger war.
But the country has also said it is willing to return to the multilateral disarmament talks, which it abandoned last year, after the United Nations Security Council on July 9 condemned the sinking but did not assign blame.
The United States, which has 28,500 troops in the South, has expressed scepticism about the North’s sincerity and responded by announcing plans to hold naval exercises with South Korea in the Sea of Japan starting Sunday.
During a visit to US troops north of Seoul on Tuesday, Gates said the drills were “a strong signal of deterrence to the North” but were not intended to provoke China, Pyongyang’s strongest ally.
South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan wants some form of direct condemnation of the North to be included in the ARF’s final statement, and would oppose any declaration that includes Pyongyang’s denials.
On Myanmar, the draft ASEAN statement calls for elections in the military-ruled member state to be free and fair and involve “all parties”.
Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s opposition party is boycotting the poll, which is due some time this year, and the democracy icon remains under house arrest.
Surin said Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win “listened very, very attentively” as his counterparts grilled him about the election during a dinner meeting late Monday.
But the minister left without announcing an election date.
Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo said Myanmar — a constant source of embarrassment for more democratic members of the bloc — was asked to consider inviting ASEAN “observers” to monitor the polls.
He said the generals would have to change their behaviour once they “take off their uniforms” and “go to win votes, kiss babies and attend to local needs”.
ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
2 hrs 20 mins ago
BANGKOK (AFP) – Myanmar has completely shut a major border checkpoint with Thailand amid a dispute over construction of a river dyke, Thai officials said on Tuesday.
Myanmar had already prevented vehicles using the Friendship Bridge linking the town of Mae Sot in northwest Thailand with Myawaddy in eastern Myanmar, and since the weekend has also stopped people crossing on foot.
“Myanmar has completely sealed off the checkpoint since Sunday,” Mae Sot district chief Kittisak Tomornsak told AFP by telephone. “Now we have stopped building the dyke.”
The closure has affected traders using the bridge, although many Myanmar migrants cross the porous border illegally.
Myanmar is believed to be unhappy with the construction of embankments on the Thai side of the Moei River because they can cause erosion on its side.
Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva had planned a visit to Myanmar in early August but the trip has been postponed, government spokesman Panitan Watanayagorn said, adding that the delay was not connected to the border issue.
“It’s possible that the visit might be delayed beyond August because Myanmar has not yet set the exact date,” he said, adding that Thailand had complied with international standards in the construction of the artificial riverbank.
July 20, 2010, 8:34 AM EDT
July 20 (Bloomberg) — Southeast Asian nations offered to send observers to the first election in two decades in Myanmar, whose military rulers have come under fire in the U.S. for excluding detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
The proposal was made during a meeting last night of foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Hanoi. Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win responded positively, Singapore’s Foreign Minister George Yeo told reporters today.
“We suggested quite strongly to our Myanmar colleagues that they consider having Asean observers at elections, bringing in members of the family into what is really their own domestic affair,” Yeo said in Hanoi. “I think the foreign minister will put it back to his government.”
Myanmar has yet to disclose an election date. Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, which won the country’s last elections in 1990, was disbanded after announcing plans to boycott the poll. She has spent more than 14 of the past 20 years in detention, with her latest stint beginning in May 2003.
U.S. envoy Kurt Campbell said in May that Myanmar’s planned elections would lack credibility unless the military regime permits greater participation.
“We would be keen to ensure the election is as Myanmar itself said, a free, fair, democratic and inclusive one,” Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said in an interview in Hanoi today. “We were informed that once the registration process of the political parties is completed, the election date would be announced.”
Policy of Engagement
Regulations announced in March prohibit Suu Kyi and about 2,100 political prisoners from standing for election. Campbell’s May trip to Myanmar was part of the Obama administration’s policy of engagement with a regime that remains subject to U.S. sanctions.
Yeo said that the election process was likely to bring about some change in Myanmar.
“Once the generals take off their uniforms and they have to win votes and kiss babies and tend to local needs, their behavior will change and the economy will gradually open up,” Yeo said. “We don’t see a sharp break from what it is today but we see an important turning which will lead Myanmar into a different situation.”
Myanmar’s foreign minister reiterated that the country has no nuclear weapons program nor any ambition to start one, Yeo said.
Plan For Asean Observer For Myanmar Election
By Jamaluddin Muhammad
HANOI, July 20 (Bernama) — Asean foreign ministers on Tuesday proposed to send the grouping observer to monitor the Myanmar election towards being fair, free and inclusive.
Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Anifah Aman said the foreign ministers made the proposal to Myanmar during the Asean Ministerial Meeting (AMM) retreat session.
“We are saying Myanmar should look, not only into its interest but also Asean’s interest…because in this respect, we are talking about credibility, ” he told Malaysian journalists after attending the AMM retreat session at the National Convention Centre here.
In calling for free and fair election, he said, therefore it was better if Asean was involved as an observer.
Asean would then discuss how to elect one or two observers from within Asean if the proposal was accepted by Myanmar.
Myanmar is expected to hold elections this year after the last election was held 20 years ago. Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who led the National League for democracy, won the 1990 election but the result was not recognised by the junta.
“Asean stand on the issue (election) is the same and very consistent that the election must be fair, free and inclusive,” said Anifah. Apart from the proposal, Asean would also offer its assistance for Myanmar in running its election, he said. He said Myanmar told the meeting that it would inform Asean, once it had fixed the date for the election and to date, 38 parties were registered to take part in the election.
Touching on the 2nd Asean-United States Leaders Meeting to be held in Washington D.C by year-end, Anifah said Tuesday’s meeting agreed that no Asean member state should be excluded from participation.
All Asean leaders must be invited for the meeting, he added. (It appears that Asean foreign ministers made the stand, following the US’ cold approaches towards Myanmar).
On the regional architecture, he said the meeting welcomed the US and Russia joining the East Asia Summit (EAS), and emphasied the need to maintain Asean centrality in the evolving regional architecture.
If accepted by the Asean Summit in October here, the proposal from the foreign ministers on the inclusion of the US and Russia in the EAS would pave the way for the expansion of EAS, from l6 countries to 18.
EAS is a forum held annually by leaders from 16 East Asian countries ?- the 10 Asean member countries, together with Japan, China, South Korea, India, New Zealand and Australia.
Asia Times Online – Myanmar’s nuclear plans under fire
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK – When Southeast Asian foreign ministers gather in Hanoi this week for a series of annual security meetings, the region’s most troublesome member, military-ruled Myanmar, is due to come under scrutiny after reports of its alleged nuclear ambitions.
Alarm bells have been going off in Southeast Asian capitals since the early June expose by the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), an Oslo-based broadcasting station run by Burmese journalists in exile, reported that the ruling junta intended to build nuclear weapons facilities.
Indonesia, the largest country in the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), is among those expected to seek an explanation from Myanmar during the meetings in the Vietnamese capital, which will run from July 20-23.
“Jakarta is concerned about this issue,” a Southeast Asian diplomatic source said.
Myanmar, also known as Burma, is expected to face similar queries from the Philippines, which in May had an envoy, Libran Cabactulan, chair the 2010 review conference of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty at the United Nations’ headquarters in New York.
At that meeting, Cabactulan urged delegates to work towards the treaty’s common goals: disarmament, non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and the right to the peaceful use of nuclear technology. The treaty, which entered into force in 1970, remains the cornerstone for building a global nuclear non-proliferation regime.
ASEAN, whose members include Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand in addition to Myanmar, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam, itself has a nuclear weapons-free zone agreement. The Southeast Asian Nuclear-Weapon- Free Zone Treaty came into force in 1997, the same year Myanmar became an ASEAN member. Myanmar signed the regional nuclear weapons moratorium treaty at a 1995 meeting in Bangkok.
Against the backdrop of reports of Myanmar’s nuclear plans, the ASEAN prohibition on building and storing nuclear weapons now faces a serious challenge. “The issue will be raised at this meeting even though the concrete evidence may be hard to find,” said Kavi Chongkittavorn, a columnist on regional affairs for Thailand’s English-language daily The Nation. “This is about intention and motive.”
According to media reports, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who will be in Hanoi to join ASEAN counterparts in a broader security forum, is likewise expected to seek clarification about Myanmar’s nuclear intentions. Washington has also expressed concern about Myanmar’s close links to North Korea, which is under sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council.
UN Security Council Resolution 1874, adopted unanimously by the Security Council in June 2009 in the aftermath of an underground nuclear test by North Korea, also calls on UN members to search North Korean cargo ships, but Myanmar has reportedly not adhered to this provision.
The DVB’s investigative report, entitled “Burma’s Nuclear Ambitions” pointed to Myanmar-North Korean collaboration in building a network of tunnels for military purposes in the secretive nation. The report has already prompted the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to send a formal letter of inquiry to the junta, which has denied the DVB’s findings. The military regime has also issued two formal statements denying it has any nuclear ambitions.
Those statements, however, have not turned the heat off the regime. Proliferation experts have entered the fray, arguing that “Myanmar’s nuclear ambition is apparently real and alarming”, according to one commentary recently published in The Nation.
“Although [Myanmar’s] pursuit of nuclear weapons has long been rumored, the [DVB] documentary contains new information from a recent defector who provided DVB with photographs, documents and a view from inside the secretive military that should finally put to rest any doubt about Myanmar’s nuclear ambition,” wrote Robert Kelly, a recently retired director of the IAEA, in that commentary.
“The evidence includes chemical processing equipment for converting uranium compounds into forms for enrichment, reactors and bombs,” Kelly added. “Taken altogether in [Myanmar’s] covert program, they have but one use: nuclear weapons.”
ASEAN’s latest troubles with Myanmar come on top of mounting pressure from Western nations and human-rights groups for ASEAN to urge the junta to enable a free and fair general election it has promised to hold within this year.
ASEAN is already grappling with the plight of tens of thousands of refugees from Myanmar who have fled due to the army’s campaign against separatist rebel groups, as well as the estimated two million undocumented migrant workers who have left a crumbling economy.
Thus far, ASEAN has not viewed this exodus as an urgent threat to regional security. But the nuclear threat could end its silence and cooperation with Myanmar, analysts suggest.
“For decades, Myanmar’s ruling regime has been regarded primarily as a menace to its own people,” Aung Zaw, editor of Irrawaddy, wrote in Monday’s edition of the Bangkok Post newspaper. “But with recent reports confirming long-held suspicions that the junta aspires to establish [Myanmar] as Southeast Asia’s first nuclear state, there is now a very real danger that it is emerging as a threat to the rest of the region.”
“Myanmar is not North Korea, but the country’s military rulers are no less capable than their fellow despots in Pyongyang of holding their neighbors to ransom if they believe their own survival is at stake,” he added. “They have taken the first steps toward realizing their nuclear dream; now the international community must act to prevent it from becoming a nuclear nightmare for the rest of us,” Aung Zaw wrote.
The Daily PCIJ – Burmese polls a surreal exercise
Posted by: Ed Lingao | July 20, 2010 at 12:34 pm
Filed under: Cross Border
OUR ELECTIONS are far from perfect, but recent encounters with friends from Burma remind us we still have a lot to be thankful for. The PCIJ played host to some Burmese visitors a few months ago, and just last week, we also hied off to Bangkok to conduct a workshop for Burmese journalists. Our Burmese friends have been asking us: What are elections like? How do you cover them?
And the most crucial, yet quite poignant, question: What happens when you vote?
The innocence is staggering, but the determination is breathtaking; an entire generation has grown up with no knowledge or experience in elections.
You see, in a month, maybe two, or maybe even never, the people of Burma – renamed ‘Myanmar’ by the ruling junta — will come out and vote for the first time in 20 years. And a day after that, or maybe two days, or maybe never, the people of Burma will have a new set of members for their local and national parliaments, also known as Legislative Bodies, or Pyithu Hluttaws.
Burma’s elections, if they do take place, are more than just an occasional exercise of quasi-democracy; they are also an exercise in speculation and wishful thinking.
Consider these:
-The ruling Junta announced the holding of elections for the Pyithu Hluttaws this year; exactly when this year is a gambler’s guess. It was supposed to be in May; now there is talk of having it in October. Given that the last election on Burmese soil was held in 1990, the Junta appears to treat the election as a very trivial pursuit.
-The 1990 elections weren’t encouraging anyway. The opposition won majority of the seats in Parliament in the 1990 elections, but rather than quibble with election protests, the junta simply nullified the results and threw the opposition in jail. No more arguments, problem solved.
-The other, more recent political exercise was not very encouraging either. In 2008, while Myanmar teetered on the brink of a breakdown because of Typhoon Nargis, the junta decided to hold a referendum for a new Constitution. Unsurprisingly, the new Constitution was ratified with 92.48 percent in favor of the charter. Unsurprisingly, too, voter turnout was a high of 91.8 percent, says the Burmese junta. It is enough to put our Commission on Elections to shame.
-While the political lines are clearly drawn between the junta and the opposition symbolized by Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, voters are at a quandary because no one from the opposition is running.
The opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) has announced a boycott of the elections, fearing that the polls would just legitimize the junta’s rule. At the same time the junta has prohibited anyone who has ever been arrested or convicted from running in the elections, effectively banning the entire opposition from the polls.
There are many more reasons why elections in the magical kingdom of Myanmar would be surreal.
To begin with, the Constitution which the people of Myanmar apparently wholeheartedly ratified after staggering out of the mud and waste of Typhoon Nargis, reserved 25 percent of the seats in both houses of the national parliament for the military. As if that were not enough, the Constitution also reserves one-third of the seats in the parliaments of the 14 states and regions of the country for the exclusive use of the military. In other words, while the Burmese people are still confused as to when they will cast their votes, one out of every four parliamentarians has already been appointed by the military. People want to vote, after having been deprived of this right for 20 years. But what do you do when you don’t have anyone to vote for except the junta?
Talk to a Burmese about the referendum for the Constitution, and you are likely to get a blank stare. Despite the apparently magnificent turnout, few people really know what happened. That’s because journalists are not allowed 300 feet from the voting centers. There are no such things as observers, and watchdogs are those little mongrels with four legs that are meant to guard prisons. More than that, no one is allowed to watch or observe while the government’s election commission counts the votes. It is government’s way of saying, trust us, you have no choice. We have already won anyway.
Yet Burmese journalists intend to cover the supposedly upcoming polls, even if their government swats at them like seditious little fleas. Recently, a Burmese journalist was sentenced to 20 years in prison for violating the so-called Electronics Act. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) identified the journalist as Hla Hla Win, who was arrested for interviewing monks for the anniversary of the 2007 Saffron Revolution. The CPJ says there are at least nine Burmese journalists in prison that the group knows of, although there are probably many more.
Burmese are under no illusions that the previous referendum, or the coming elections, are going to be clean. When we told some Burmese of the phenomenon of “flying voters” in the Philippines, where people are paid to go from one voting precinct to another to vote using fake IDs, one Burmese remarked that they had “swimming voters.” Apparently, people who had drowned during Typhoon Nargis had still been able to “cast their votes” in the 2008 referendum for the Constitution. One would wish that politics could breath new life to people in a different way.
By Monte Whaley
Posted: 07/20/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT
GREELEY — BeBe offered a gap-toothed grin when she described how she and 17 other Burmese refugees got lost in Greeley.
“I rode a long time,” said BeBe, the mother of four and somewhat of a matriarch to the small but growing Burmese community at the Pines apartment complex in south Greeley.
“The first time, I went along with them on a bus just to show them how to get around,” said Maria Sanchez, who is helping to integrate BeBe, who said this was her full name, and other Burmese into the community. “The second time, they all scattered, and we had to run around and find them.
“This getting used to another country and way of life . . . is going to take baby steps.”
There are nearly 500 Burmese in Greeley. Most work in local meatpacking plants. Many are religious and political refugees, who fled the military dictatorship ruling the southeast Asian country now called Myanmar.
Most are from farming villages, and most have never seen a computer, said Christine Gylling, 23, who came from Myanmar with her family 10 years ago.
Gylling was helping Sanchez instruct about 50 to 60 families at the Pines on how to prepare their children for American schools. Most of the refugees — who were aided by Lutheran Family Services in finding homes in Greeley — don’t speak much English and aren’t well-versed in other parts of the culture, said Gylling.
“This is definitely a shock to them,” said Gylling, a pre-med major at the University of Northern Colorado. “Most have nothing. Most sleep on the floor. And for many, the most high-tech thing they own is a book and a pencil.”
Also daunting are the language barriers. Burma has about 14 tribes with several dialects, Gylling said.
But, said Sanchez, the Burmese are willing to learn and become Americans. “They want to be part of our culture so badly,” she said.
Sanchez — director of the Realizing Our Community program at UNC that has been helping the Burmese — said many are enrolled in a Right to Read course and are getting tutoring in other aspects of American life.
Twice a month, they get lessons on subjects such as dental hygiene, applying for jobs and putting on makeup. “Many want shiny, black hair like American women,” Sanchez said.
On Tuesday, the Burmese families were told they need to present Social Security numbers, proof of residency and inoculation records to officials at Centennial Elementary School before their children can enroll.
Their children will also have to wear the Centennial uniform. Jan Jervis, principal at Centennial, said there are already 90 Burmese refugees at the school as well as several from east Africa.
“There is so much for them to learn, so much for them to do,” said Jervis.
But they are grateful for the opportunity, said Hlaing Moe Than, a physicist who fled Myanmar two years ago.
Because he protested the treatment of Buddhist monks by the military, Than was imprisoned for 10 years. He finally got his refugee status and came to Greeley from New York to work.
“This country is amazing,” Than said. “Back home, it is very dangerous. This is peaceful here.”
13:20, July 20, 2010
Myanmar has claimed there is existence of potential for a new oil field in the south of Maubin, the country’s southwestern Ayeyawaddy division, according to Tuesday’s official daily New Light of Myanmar.
Test oil wells are being drilled in the region for exploration of the energy resources, the report said.
Myanmar Energy Minister U Lun Thi inspected the deep test well- 1 in the weekend, instructing for completion of the drilling of the test wells on schedule, the report added.
There were 19 onshore oil and gas fields before 1988, but the number had reached 31 after 1988. Many more new onshore and offshore oil and gas fields were found one after another over the past more than 20 years.
According to the geological condition, Myanmar has 14 geological valleys in the onshore regions, among which the state- run Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise has conducted surveys in the central region, Pay and Delta regions.
It was reported that there remains many more promising regions for exploitation of oil and gas in the country.
By Andrew Buncombe
4:00 AM Wednesday Jul 21, 2010
Myanmar’s military ruler, Than Shwe, is set to receive the red-carpet treatment in India when he makes a rare overseas visit to further cement a controversial relationship that is increasingly vital to both countries.
The senior Burmese general, who has ruled the country with unceasing authoritarianism for the past two decades, will make the four-day official state visit next week to discuss military co-operation and a series of energy and business deals.
There was a time when the world’s largest democracy might have thought twice about so enthusiastically playing host to a man whose regime holds more than 2100 political prisoners behind bars.
In the aftermath of a large democracy uprising in Myanmar in the late 1980s which the regime brutally crushed, India opened its arms to many activists and campaigners forced to flee.
In 1993 it awarded the opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who had lived and studied in India, the country’s highest civilian honour, the Jawaharlal Nehru Award.
But times have changed and New Delhi has decided it needs to take a more “pragmatic” approach with its eastern neighbour.
With its economy growing at 10 per cent and with an aspirational middle class hungrily buying everything from air conditioners to washing machines, India, with growing energy needs, believes it cannot afford to ignore a country like Myanmar, which has large reserves of untapped natural gas.
Earlier this year it was announced that India was to invest US$1.35 billion ($1.9 billion) in gas projects on Myanmar’s coastline.
Conscious of China’s already considerable influence in the Southeast Asian nation and having lost out to its rival for a previous gas deal, India is keen to massively boost its investment in the country.
Already this year it was revealed that Indian officials had visited Myanmar to try to kick-start hydroelectricity projects, and that India’s largest vehicle manufacturer, Tata Motors, had agreed a deal to establish a heavy truck plant in the country.
The plant is to be funded with credit provided by the Indian Government.
Dr Marie Lall, a South Asia expert at London’s Chatham House, said the new approach by India was driven largely by its energy needs.
But she said there were other factors as well; ongoing conflict with insurgents in northeast India, many of whom had historically operated out of camps inside Myanmar, meant the need for increased military co-operation. India was also keen to counter China’s general regional influence.
“I think officials in Naypyidaw [Myanmar's remote jungle capital] are also wary of too much Chinese influence,” she said.
But some activists argue that India – which, unlike China, has no permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council – will always be chasing Beijing.
“India is trying to compete with China in terms of influence and natural resources but privately officials admit they are losing the battle. They are always going to play second fiddle,” said Mark Farmaner of the Burma Campaign UK.
“It would make far more sense for them to back the democracy movement … the generals are not going to be in Burma forever.”
Jul 20, 2010, 11:05 GMT
Hanoi – ASEAN leaders are unsure about Myanmar’s nuclear ambitions, a regional foreign policy expert said Tuesday.
A documentary produced by Burmese journalists alleged in June that Myanmar, a member of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), is developing nuclear weapons.
Myanmar could be purchasing nuclear weapon technology from North Korea, said Tim Huxley, executive director of the Singapore branch of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, but ASEAN members are reluctant to comment on that in ’strong terms.’
‘ASEAN countries aren’t sure how to deal with’ Myanmar’s alleged nuclear ambitions, Huxley said. ‘If they confront Myanmar, Myanmar will just say they have a right to develop nuclear energy for civil purposes, and they would simply deny any links to North Korea.’
Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa told the German Press Agency dpa that nuclear weapons would not be on the agenda of his bilateral meeting with Myanmar officials Tuesday.
Earlier on Tuesday, ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan told reporters in Hanoi that there was no consensus among member nations about Myanmar’s nuclear ambitions.
‘But there is certainly the ASEAN charter and the (South-East Asia Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone) treaty, which requires that South-East Asia be free of nuclear weapons,’ Pitsuwan said.
The 1997 treaty binds ASEAN countries to a pledge against the use, manufacture or transport of nuclear weapons. They also promised not allow other countries to develop or manufacture nuclear weapons inside their borders.
A spokesman for US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said last week that the United States was concerned about a lack of transparency surrounding Myanmar’s ‘commercial interactions’ with North Korea. Clinton plans to attend the ASEAN Regional Forum in Hanoi on Thursday and Friday.
ASEAN groups Brunei, Myanmar, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Jonathan Fernandez
Tuesday, July 20th, 2010 12:23:00
RAWANG: When it rains, it really pours.
This sums up the predicament of refugee Myanmar couple Nai Tint, 34, and Mi Kyi Win, 32, who are now broke and desperately seeking RM42,000 for their two-year-old daughter, who is suffering from leukaemia, to get medical treatment.
The couple had been hopeful of starting a new life in Malaysia after fleeing Myanmar early last year with their daughter Mi Thaw Thar.
As they belonged to the Mun Chin tribe, they were treated as outcasts in their native country.
The family arrived in Malaysia last year to seek a better life. With help from their friends who had already been living in Malaysia for some time, they managed to obtain refugee status here from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Nai Tint has since then found work as an odd-job contractor and the mother, Mi Kyi Win, does odd jobs in restaurants. And just when their lives seemed to be improving, their daughter fell terribly ill about three weeks ago.
“At first, she seemed very uneasy and kept crying all the time. Then, she was suddenly down with fever for two to three days.” said Nai Tint.
“We took her to a clinic and she was treated as normal. But a week later, she was still so weak and she suddenly couldn’t even walk anymore. We immediately took her to the clinic again.
“The doctor was very worried. And then he broke the bad news to us and said all her symptoms were early signs of cancer. He recommended we rush her to the Sime Darby Medical Centre in Subang Jaya.”
Following this advice, the couple’s worst fears were confirmed as their only daughter was found to be suffering from leukaemia.
“The next shock was the hospital bill. We had never been to a private hospital, so we didn’t know what to expect. But we certainly didn’t expect it to be so much, RM6,500, which basically wiped out all our lifetime savings,” said Nai Tint.
With no money and almost no hope left, little Mi Thaw Thar still needed various treatments like chemotherapy, a bone marrow transplant and surgery to help her recover.
Given the couple’s financial plight, they were advised to approach a government hospital as a more affordable option.
“When we approached Kuala Lumpur Hospital (HKL), we were advised it would cost RM42,000 for the whole treatment of about two years. Obviously, we don’t have that kind of money and HKL didn’t allow us to just pay a deposit and follow up with instalments.
“We then approached the UNHCR office for help and were told it would take time for such financial aid to come through.
“But we do not have time. Our daughter is in urgent need of treatment. Her blood count has already dropped to very low levels. The longer we wait, the worse her condition becomes.
“We are trying to do whatever we can to raise the funds needed. We love our daughter and we would give our lives in a second to save her. We can’t even go back to our country and ask for help as the police will arrest us for fleeing the country and obtaining refugee status.
“My wife and I haven’t worked in over a week. I am forced to return to work this week but my wife has to stay at home to look after our daughter.
“Things are looking very bleak for us now and unfortunately I cannot do anything at all to make things better for my family,” Nai Tint said, with tears rolling down his cheeks.
For those who would like to help little Mi Thaw Thar get a second lease on life, contact The Malay Mail at 03-79472288.
By THAN HTIKE OO – Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Police arrested a 14-year-old boy in Rangoon on Monday after he was caught in possession of books written by Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her colleague, Win Tin, a National League for Democracy executive member.
A Rangoon resident who requested anonymity said the boy was caught in a bus station in South Okkalapa township in Rangoon with six copies of Suu Kyi’s famous “Freedom From Fear” and five copies of Win Tin’s recently-released “What’s that? Human hell?”
The books,which are collections of political essays and articles, are banned in Burma.
The boy remains in detention in an undisclosed location, according to Bo Kyi, the joint-secretary of the Association of Assistance of Political Prisoners in Burma (AAPP), a Thailand-based advocacy group for Burma’s political prisoners.
“We still don’t know if the boy has been freed. But, we are concerned that he might be tortured for information on how he obtained the books,” he said.
Suu Kyi’s “Freedom From Fear”, which contains the famous quote, “ It is not power that corrupts but fear,” was edited and published by her late husband Michael Aris in 1991.
Win Tin’s book, which depicts the hardships and cruelties imposed by the regime during his 19 years in prison, was published outside Burma by the Democratic Voice of Burma and distributed by AAPP this year.
By KO HTWE – Tuesday, July 20, 2010
The transformation of the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) into the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) is clear evidence that Burma’s military regime does not intend to hold a legitimate 2010 election, according to Human Right Watch (HRW).
The New York-based NGO released a report on Monday, after USDA spokesman Myint Oo announced that the USDA no longer exists and has been replaced by the USDP, which has received all USDA property.
HRW Asia director, Elaine Pearson, said, “The morphing of Burma’s largest mass-based organization into the military’s political party is a brazen if predictable distortion of the electoral process.”
The report also noted that the military government has long used the USDA for partisan political purpose.
“For nearly two decades, Burma’s military has carefully manipulated society by creating a social organization to ensure extensive local coercive capacity ahead of the 2010 polls,” Pearson said. “The new USDP behemoth can now marginalize any semblance of an opposition, making participation by other parties and opposition figures even more difficult.”
China, India and Russia are “dumbstruck by the shameless manipulation of these elections,” the report said.
“Staying mute as this mockery of democracy proceeds will only damage their international reputations, ” Person said.
The USDA transfer of assets has drawn the attention of various political parties which plan to contest in the elections.
Phyo Min Thein, the chairman of the Union Democratic Party (UDP), told The Irrawaddy, “Their act is not in accord with electoral laws, and they cannot transfer propety like that. The USDA is a national organization that uses state assets.”
The Political Parties Registration Law clearly prohibits political parties from receiving state funds or state-owned properties.
The USDA has engaged in numerous public activities including including paving roads and granting small loans to low-income people.
Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Tuesday, Khin Maung Swe, the leader of the National Democratic Force (NDF), said, “We will object that it is not in accordance to the Electoral Law. We have to abide by the Electoral Law, and we need to be equal.”
On April 29, Prime Minister Thein Sein and 26 ministers and senior officials formed the USDP, which the Election Commission officially recognized as a political party on June 8.
The military junta organized the USDA as a social organization in 1993, and its major patron is military chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe. Most government personnel and students are forced to become members of association, which claims to have 24 million members nationwide.
Thu Wai, the chairman of the Democratic Party, told the The Irrawaddy on Tuesday: “I heard that USDA members don’t know the association has been abolished.” He also raised the question of whether USDA members would be expected to become USDP members.
In 1988, the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP), formed by the late Burmese dictator Ne Win, was transformed into the National Unity Party (NUP) to compete in the 1990 election.
Han Swe, a member of the NUP central cxecutive committee, said, “The transformation of the BSPP into the NUP was in accordance with the law. It is hard to tell about the USDA and USDP because I don’t know what the bylaws of the USDA and USDP would say on the matter.”
By LAWI WENG – Tuesday, July 20, 2010
A moratorium on the construction of new hotels on the banks of Burma’s Inle Lake and a freeze on new tomato-growing floating gardens were recommended at a three-day conference in Taunggyi, the capital of Shan State.
The conference held on July 12-14 was attended by about 300 Burmese officials, environmentalists, water experts, tourism representatives and local people.
The meeting agreed on 27 measures that should be taken to save the lake, one of Burma’s major tourist destinations, from drying up altogether.
Among the other recommended measures were water-purification technology and a ban on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, to be replaced by natural products. More than 30 research papers were presented at the meeting.
U Ohn, a prominent Rangoon environmentalists, said the conference had been a success. “It is first time I have ever seen such a successful meeting, ” he said.
The lake’s floating gardens are one of Inle Lake’s main attractions. More than 100,000 people earn their livelihood by growing tomatoes in the gardens, mostly using chemical fertilizers and pesticides to produce higher yields.
Water from the lake is no longer safe to drink or use in household cooking. The lake’s fish population, another main source of income, is declining rapidly—creating a vicious circle as fishermen turn to tomato farming to earn a living.
But the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides is not the only cause of Inle Lake’s environmental decline. Both drought and deforestation—which increase the impact of drought by causing silt to build up in the lake—also play a major role.
Burmese environmentalists have found that the climate and biodiversity in the lake have changed to the point that this unique floating world may vanish forever.
According to a 2007 report by the University of Tokyo’s Integrated Research System for Sustainability Science, Inle Lake has decreased in size by more than one-third in the past 65 years, from 69 square km to just over 46 square km. The report blames the expansion of the lake’s famous floating gardens for 93 percent of the recent loss of water.
For the campaign to save Inle Lake to succeed, local people must be made aware of the dangers to the lake’s future and government encouragement is also necessary, the Taunggyi conference agreed.
U Ohn said: “We will treat Inle Lake as if it is a national heritage site. Nevertheless, it will take time—perhaps as long as 15 years.”
Monday, 19 July 2010 23:41 Salai Tun
New Delhi (Mizzima) – A peace and development council in Northern Shan State has been giving preferential treatment to a junta-sponsored party while restricting the movement of an ethnic Palaung party, an activists group says.
The Mantone Township Peace and Development Council in Northern Shan State had treated the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) and Taaung (Palaung) National Party (TNP) unequally during their campaigns, the Taaung Students and Youth Association, based in Thailand, said.
Council chairman Kyaw Zin told the TNP early this month it must give seven days advance notice if the party wanted to campaign in Mantone, a restriction the USDP was clearly not bound by during its recent campaigning.
“The USDP have conducted electoral campaigns since few months ago. They didn’t need to obey any government restriction. But, the freedom of TNP’s movement for the forthcoming election is being limited,” Taaung Students and Youth Association secretary Mai Aung Ko told Mizzima. “That is a clear evidence of a strong bias in favour of the USDP. They want to give the USDP a powerful position to win in the forthcoming elections.”
“The authorities have restricted TNP’s electoral actions and directed the TNP to let them know about their electoral campaigns seven days in advance. On the other hand, the USDP hasn’t needed to inform them. Currently, they are freely conducting electoral campaigning in Maimaw village”, he added.
The TNP started its campaigning early this month, but the order from the chairman of the council disturbed its campaigners.
“Some TNP campaigners are about to start their electoral campaigns so they can’t decide whether they should go on to conduct the campaigns or go back. Mantone campaigners told me they had encountered many difficulties”, Mai Aung Ko said.
Party general secretary Mai Ohn Khine Ko, currently in Mandalay, confirmed with Mizzima he had heard of his party campaigners’ difficulties but had no details.
“I heard yesterday that we needed to inform about our campaigns to local authorities seven days in advance but I don’t know any details because of poor communication links with that area,” he said.
TNP will contest in Namsan, Mantone, Namkham, Kyaukme, Kutkhine and other townships in Northern Shan State in the forthcoming election.
It is estimated that the USDP, led by current Prime Minister Thein Sein, and the National Unity Party, will also contest in Northern Shan State constituencies.
The Taaung Students and Youth Association rejects Burma’s 2008 constitution and distrusts the junta’s forthcoming election.
By ALEX ZUCKER
Published: 19 July 2010
Readers of this website should need no convincing of the seriousness of ongoing human rights violations against minority ethnic groups in Burma. Medicins Sans Frontieres has described Burma’s ethnic Rohingya minority has one of the world populations “most in danger of extinction” and leading scholars, including William Schabas, president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, have suggested that the Muslim group may be victims of crimes against humanity, a sentiment that has been echoed by multiple other bodies.
Numerous human rights and legal advocacy groups have similarly said that Burma’s other ethnic minorities – the Chin, Kachin, Karen, Karenni, Mon, and Shan – are also seriously threatened by the ruling junta, which has held power in various forms since 1962.
In the past decade and a half, there has been significant progress in our understanding of genocide and how to prevent it, mainly as the result of our failures to do so. One of the most crucial lessons learned from this bitter experience is that, from the standpoint of saving human lives, the question of whether or not a situation meets the legal definition of genocide is beside the point. And the point, for those in the field of genocide prevention today, is not how to stop genocide once it has begun, but rather how to prevent it from happening in the first place.
To that end, the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation, based in New York, operates a genocide prevention program targeting the women and men in government who shape and implement the policies that determine whether or not a society will tip over the edge into mass slaughter. Key to the program is the forging of a community of policymakers to support one another in their everyday work. Given that some of those who take part come from countries that are at risk of genocide, or perhaps even in the midst of one, we do not take a position on whether or not the situation in any particular country constitutes genocide. To do so would defeat our purpose, since the countries that are most at risk of genocide are the very ones we most hope to attract.
This is important because, up until now, there has been no community of prevention between the level of grassroots activism and the officialdom of national governments and the UN. And research has shown that the more connected a country is to the rest of the world – especially economically and politically – the less likely it is that conflict there will escalate into genocide. Some of the other risk factors for genocide, according to US political scientist Barbara Harff, include a prior history of genocide, ethnic and religious divisions within society, exclusionary ideology, and autocratic rule.
Burma has all these in spades. Other researchers may look to different indicators, but the pattern is unmistakable. Most genocide scholars and human rights groups agree there has already been one genocide in Burma since 1962 – that of the Rohingya – and there is ample evidence to suggest that government killings of other ethnic groups constitute at least crimes against humanity, if not full-blown genocide.
US political scientist Ted Robert Gurr recently published a brief paper titled ‘Options for the Prevention and Mitigation of Genocide: Strategies and Examples for Policy-Makers’. His analysis and recommendations are grounded in the most recent experience of the international community as well as the most up-to-date scholarship. Other, more comprehensive attempts to address the issue have come from Minority Rights Group International, which focuses on UN policy; the Genocide Prevention Task Force, focusing on US policy; and the Will to Intervene Project, which looks at both US and Canadian policy.
There are several drawbacks, however, to all of these approaches. One is that they tend to stress intervention over prevention, which tilts the balance toward short-term military solutions and away from longer-term, political or economic approaches. The second is that they view the solution as coming from outside the country at risk, as opposed to from within.
In any case, history clearly suggests that it would be naïve to expect direct action by the international community to prevent genocide in Burma anytime soon. Perhaps the most promising avenue for change at the moment is the recently created International Criminal Court (ICC), which is empowered to investigate and prosecute genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. In 2009, the former UN special rapporteur on human rights in Burma called on the UN security council to investigate crimes against humanity in Burma with an eye to referring the case to the ICC. And earlier this year, the British government issued a statement saying that it would support a referral of Burma to the ICC by the UN Security Council. The wheels of international justice grind slowly, though. The question is, can they grind quickly enough for Burma’s ethnic minorities?
Alex Zucker is Communications and Development Officer of the New York-based Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation.