US urges end to abuses of Myanmar minorities
By MATTHEW PENNINGTON, Associated Press – 9 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States sees encouraging new signs of openness in isolated Myanmar, but after decades of military rule, the Asian country has a way to go before it loses its pariah status and rids itself of tough sanctions.

Special envoy to Myanmar Derek Mitchell said Monday there seems to be a trend toward greater openness in that Asian country but questions remain about its commitment to democratic change.

Myanmar, also known as Burma, held elections last year which, although flawed, were its first since pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi swept a 1990 vote and was barred from taking power.

In late September, the government stopped work on a controversial China-backed dam, saying the $3.6 billion project was “against the will of the people.” And last week, authorities freed as many as 250 of the country’s 2,000-plus political detainees.

Mitchell welcomed the government’s recent moves as encouraging and said his September visit yielded productive meetings with Myanmar officials, traditionally viewed as xenophobic. He said they were willing to discuss any issues he raised.

“Right now I think there are a lot of restrictions that make them into a pariah state. And Burma is a proud country with a tremendous history, and they deserve to come out of the shadows and take their prideful place in the region,” Mitchell told a news conference in Washington.

Myanmar, a former breadbasket of Southeast Asia, has suffered not just repressive government but poor economic management during nearly 50 years of military rule. It is subject to wide-ranging trade, economic and political sanctions from the U.S. and other Western nations, enforced in response to brutal crackdowns on pro-democracy protesters in 1988 and 2007 and its refusal to hand power to Suu Kyi’s party after the 1990 elections.

Sanctions and isolation have failed to force change and served only to complicate U.S. engagement with the economically vibrant Southeast Asian region, as Washington looks to deepen its existing alliances and forge new ones to counter China’s rise.

The Obama administration has sought to engage Myanmar, and after two years there are signs of change, although whether that is in response to U.S. overtures is difficult to tell. Myanmar also is vying to assume the rotating chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in 2014 and may be trying to impress ASEAN leaders before they meet at a November summit, when the decision could be made.

When it comes to rewarding Myanmar for reforms, Washington is likely to have tougher criteria than ASEAN, and it is likely to proceed in an incremental manner.

Mitchell would not give specifics about what those steps might be. David Steinberg, a Myanmar expert at Georgetown University, said a first move could be to allow the World Bank and Asian Development Bank to help Myanmar.

The U.S. already has made some positive gestures, such as easing travel restrictions that enabled Myanmar’s foreign minister to visit the State Department last month.

For more tangible concessions, a key test will be action on political prisoners. Mitchell urged releases of all such detainees, including 1988-era student protest leaders Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi, and a monk at the forefront of the 2007 protests, Gambiri.

Mitchell also said that while the government has held high-level talks with democratic opposition leader Suu Kyi, it has not made comparable progress in its relations with ethnic minorities in the north and east of Myanmar. He noted credible reports of continued human rights abuses, including against minority women and children.

“We made it very clear that we could not have a transformed relationship as long as these abuses and credible reports of abuses occur,” he said.

Myanmar is an ethnically diverse nation, and most of the minorities have taken up arms at some point against the government dominated by the military and the ethnic Burman majority. Legions of villagers have been displaced by brutal military campaigns, and this year has seen violence flare in the Kachin and Shan states against ethnic armies that had reached cease-fires with the Myanmar regime.

Steinberg said the U.S. also would be looking to see a further decrease in media censorship and the legalization of Suu Kyi’s political party, which was outlawed for boycotting the 2010 elections as unfair.

Independent – ‘They were screaming: Die, die, die!’: The dramatic inside story of Aung San Suu Kyi’s darkest hour
It was Aung San Suu Kyi’s darkest hour – and it very nearly ended in her murder. Here, in an exclusive extract from a major new biography of the Burma democracy leader, Peter Popham uncovers the truth about the terrible events of 30 May 2003
Sunday, 16 October 2011

Almost a year after Aung San Suu Kyi’s release from house arrest, Burma finally seems to be on the path of reform. A series of highly symbolic moves, starting in August with an invitation to the democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prizewinner to meet the new president, culminated this week with a significant release of political prisoners – one of the opposition’s key demands. But if both Suu herself and the outside world react with caution, it is understandable. Burma has been down this road before, and has been bitterly disappointed. The elections which brought the present, notionally civilian government to power were widely condemned as fraudulent; the president himself is a former top general; and standing behind him are the monstrously corrupt generals, headed by former Senior General Than Shwe, who ransacked the country while amassing vast wealth.

The first time Suu was released from house arrest, in July 1995, after nearly six years, she was barred from leaving Rangoon. She was detained again in September 2000, but when she was freed in May 2002, the UN’s Special Envoy, Razali Ismail, persuaded Burma’s military junta to agree not merely to let her leave her home but to go wherever she chose. It was widely believed that the regime was keen to open negotiations with her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD): her release, granting her full freedom to travel, was seen as the first step.

She wasted no time putting the agreement to the test. She took her democracy show, which had galvanised the country in 1989 at the start of her political career, back on the road, travelling to every corner of the country. But the epic journeys very nearly ended in her death.

When Suu started travelling again in 2002, it was as if she had never been away, as if nothing had happened in the 13 years since her last election campaign trip in May 1989. If anyone supposed that the Burmese masses had forgotten all about their heroine in the intervening years, it was a rude awakening. As videos shot during her meetings prove, everywhere she went the crowds were again vast, and vastly good-humoured. Her tours in 1989 had been the most dramatic political manifestations in Burma’s independent history, the most vivid demonstrations, nationwide, of the strength of opposition to the junta and the strength of support for her. The re-runs in 2002 and 2003, despite the passing of the years, were no less so.

But this time around there was a sinister new element. One of the initiatives taken by Senior General Than Shwe after taking power in 1992 was the creation of a mass organisation to counter the influence of Suu’s NLD. The Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) was the military’s civilian proxy: its means of securing the allegiance of millions of ordinary Burmese at every level of society by giving them favourable access to services and facilities, ranging from paved roads to courses in computing, from which the masses of those who don’t belong are excluded. Last year the organisation mutated into the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), which is now Burma’s notional ruling party.

Both the USDA and USDP have their respectable faces, but there is another side that is not respectable at all. When occasion demands, the USDA provides hoodlums, thieves, drunks, drug addicts and other men with nothing to lose with the weapons and training to do the dirty jobs which k the regime does not care to entrust to regular soldiers. The USDA can rapidly mutate into a force of mercenary vigilantes, given a vicious edge by opening the gates of the jails, offering drink, drugs, crude weapons and meagre bribes to the inmates, then sitting back and watching the mayhem.

Suu had long experience of their tactics. “The USDA has become a very dangerous organisation,” she said back in 1996. “It is now being used in the way Hitler used his Brownshirts… [it] is being used to crush the democratic movement.” The same year, when Suu and her colleagues were driving from her house in University Avenue to address a meeting nearby, a USDA gang attacked the car and smashed the windows; two years later, other thugs from the organisation forced her car off the road. And during her new tours of the country, this shadowy militia dogged Suu and her colleagues every step of the way.

The trips had begun in June 2002. Suu travelled in a new Toyota Land Cruiser, and to counter the USDA threat, her team included a significantly larger number of student bodyguards than previously. They criss-crossed the country, visiting 95 cities, towns and villages. Then, on 29 May 2003, she left the northern city of Mandalay, heading west to the town of Monywa.

The journey was planned as carefully as a military manoeuvre – which in a sense it resembled, despite the authorities’ formal approval of the itinerary. Suu had warned her companions that if they were attacked by the USDA, they were not to retaliate. So their only hope of safety was in careful planning, and in numbers.

Wunna Maung, one of her bodyguards, said later in testimony to the US Congress: “Before our journey we heard many rumours that local officials of the military regime were training their troops with blunt weapons, including clubs, spears and iron spikes. For this reason, Daw Suu [literally, Aunt Suu, an honorific title] advised us absolutely to avoid any words or behaviour that might lead to confrontation with any members of the military. She told us that if we were attacked we must not fight back. Even if we are struck or killed, she said, we should absolutely not fight back.”

Suu was well aware of the potential danger they faced. During one of the most tense periods of her previous spell of freedom, in November 1996, the secretary of the USDA, U Win Sein, who was also Minister of Transport, had told a meeting of villagers near Mandalay that killing Aung San Suu Kyi was their duty. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, “the creator of internal political disturbances” must be “eradicated”, he said. “Do you understand what is meant by eradicated?” he asked them. “Eradicated means to kill. Dare you kill Daw Suu Kyi?” Villagers within earshot later testified that he repeated the question five or six times but received no reply.

Given this high-level interest in her elimination, Suu was taking no chances. At 9am on 29 May, seven NLD cars and 20 motorcycles rolled out of Mandalay on the road west. In the lead, a few hundred yards ahead of the rest, was a scout car; next came Suu’s dark-green Toyota, driven by a law student and party member called Kyaw Soe Lin, followed by two other cars filled with senior NLD figures, including party vice-chairman U Tin Oo, then the cars of local supporters. The group consisted of about 100 people in all.

The trouble that awaited them had been carefully prepared. Starting six days earlier, the military authorities in the area, under the command of plump, pasty-faced Lieutenant Colonel Than Han, had mustered local USDA members from townships around the town of Shwebo, 100km north of Mandalay, a total it is claimed of about 5,000 men, and brought them to the grounds of Depayin High School along with more than 50 lorries and 10 pick-up trucks, to train them for the assault. On the day of the attack they were issued with their weapons: bamboo staves, baseball bats, sharpened iron rods, and similar crude implements, many of them specially made by a local blacksmith.

After spending the night at a supporter’s home and making a speech in the centre of Monywa, Suu did as she had been doing up and down the country and re-opened the local NLD office. Then she and her party set off again, bound for Shwebo district, 50km to the north-east.

As usual, they had obtained full authorisation for this journey in advance. But as the jabs and taunts of their enemies intensified, they must have felt like an army patrol travelling through hostile guerrilla country: never sure when the next attack would come or what form it would take.

And now, as they approached Depayin township, the army joined in the harassment. “When Daw Aung San Suu Kyi arrived near Zeedaw village,” an eyewitness later testified, “military authorities from the Northern Command headquarters stopped the convoy, including the cars of the people of Monywa who had come to see them off.” Suu and her party were permitted to proceed, but when her supporters returned later to the same village on their way back to Monywa, “the police waiting in readiness beat them up and put them under arrest”.

Unaware of this, Suu and her team drove on to the town of Butalin, where she once again performed the ceremonial re-opening of the local party office. They were now deep into the flat paddy fields of the countryside, far from any sizeable town and even further from the gaze of foreign diplomats and journalists. They stopped at the little town of Saing-pyin, where Suu had an emotional encounter with the family of the local NLD MP-elect, who was still serving a jail sentence. Meanwhile, her minders sent a car on to scout the road ahead. Ominously, it failed to return. Motorcycles were sent to find out what had happened to it. But they, too, disappeared.

Still miles from their destination, with darkness closing in, Suu and her team were driving blind into terra incognita, with a hostile army presence behind them and no way of knowing what lay ahead. By the time they arrived at the little village of Kyi, it was pitch-dark. They had not planned to stop here, but a little way beyond the village the headlights of Suu’s car picked up two elderly monks sitting on the roadside, who hailed them as they approached.

“They asked if Suu could address a gathering,” Kyaw Soe Lin, her driver, recalled. “I told Daw Daw Suu that we shouldn’t stop, as we usually get harassed around dusk. But the monks said they had been waiting for Suu Kyi since the evening before and requested that she give a speech and greet them.” To turn down such a request from two old monks would be the height of bad manners, whatever the circumstances. Suu fell into the trap. According to Kyaw Soe Lin, “Daw Daw said we should stop for them.”

The old men were not monks at all, but imposters from the USDA. And as the convoy halted on the road while Suu decided how best to accede to their request, the full fury of the USDA fell upon them. Four vehicles which had been tailing them, two lorries and two pick-up trucks, now roared up alongside the convoy and armed men poured out, shouting anti-Suu slogans. When the local villagers, who had come out of their houses to see what was going on, started shouting back at them, the USDA thugs attacked them with iron rods, bamboo staves and baseball bats. One of the USDA lorries took a run at the villagers in its headlights, and the villagers scattered in terror – whereupon a much larger USDA force – 4,000, according to some eye-witnesses, though the figure is impossible to verify – who had been waiting to ambush the convoy poured from the sides of the road and attacked the NLD cars and their motorcycle outriders and local supporters.

“We watched helplessly and tried to show courage,” said Wunna Maung, the bodyguard. “Because we had been told to never use violence, we tried to protect Suu’s car by surrounding [it] with our bodies in two layers. As we waited, all the cars behind us were being attacked, and the USDA members beat the NLD members mercilessly. The attackers appeared to be either on drugs or drunk.

“The USDA members struck down everyone, including youths and women. They used the iron rods to strike inside the cars. I saw the attackers beat [NLD vice-chairman] U Tin Oo and hit him on the head before they dragged him away. He had a wound on his head and was bleeding.

“The attackers beat women and pulled off their longyi [skirts] and their blouses. When victims, covered in blood, fell to the ground, the attackers grabbed their hair and pounded their heads on the pavement until their bodies stopped moving. The whole time, the attackers were screaming the words, ‘Die, die, die…’ There was so much blood. I still cannot get rid of the sight of people, covered in blood, being beaten mercilessly to death.”

What saved Suu’s life, according to Aung Lynn Htut, a senior military intelligence officer who later defected to the United States, was that the officers in charge of the attack had not expected her car to be at the front – which was why the initial attack was concentrated on the cars in the middle and the rear. But it was not long before they realised their mistake.

“As the USDA members approached Daw Suu’s car, we braced ourselves for the attacks,” Wunna Maung recalled. “The attackers first beat the outer ring of my colleagues on the left side of Daw Suu’s car, and smashed the window… As my colleagues collapsed one by one, the attackers then started beating the inner ring of security. The attackers hit my colleagues ferociously, because they knew we would not fight back.” Wunna Maung was saved only because he was on the right side of the car, while the attacks were concentrated on the left.

Inside the car, Suu’s driver pleaded with the attackers, telling them who exactly he was carrying in the back – but that only inflamed them further. “My anger exploded,” he admitted, “I wanted to run them over.” He put the vehicle into reverse, stamped on the accelerator and the car hurtled back; the assailants reacted by raining blows on the car, breaking the windows both in the front and the back, where Suu was travelling, as well as the wing mirrors and the headlights, and battering the car’s bodywork.

Over his shoulder as he roared backwards, Kyaw Soe Lin saw wounded colleagues sprawled across the road, in his path; frightened that he might run them over, he again reversed direction – but now the road ahead was blocked by trucks. Pulling over to the verge he succeeded in squeezing past them, but then found himself faced by dozens more trucks, their lights illuminating more attackers – 200 to 300 was his estimate, some holding banners with anti-NLD slogans.

The USDA men looked on “in surprise”, he said, as he hurtled towards them. Some of his party’s bodyguards were clinging to the outside of the vehicle, hanging on for dear life. “I was worried that the attackers might pull them off if we got too close,” he said, “so I drove straight at them, pretending I was going to run into them, and they scattered. Then I pulled the car back on to the road and kept driving.”

In the murk ahead he saw more roadblocks, but resolved to get through them without stopping. “I realised that all of us, including Daw Daw, would die if we didn’t get out of this place, so I kept on driving.” As he roared through the hostile mob they threw objects at the car, smashing the remaining windows, and one of them striking him. “Daw Daw asked me if I was OK. I said I was fine and kept on driving. I knew that if I stopped at the road blocks they would beat us to death.” He wove through another barricade of trucks and past a line of police with their guns pointed at the road, and other figures with guns who looked like soldiers. “I drove through them but didn’t hit anyone, as they jumped out of the way,” he recalled. “Daw Daw said we should stop only when we reached Depayin.”

But they didn’t make it that far. As they entered the town of Yea-U, armed guards forced them to stop, demanded to know who was in the car, and made them wait. Half-an-hour later a large contingent of soldiers turned up. “One officer, apparently a battalion commander, arrived and put a gun to my temple and ordered us to go with them,” Kyaw Soe Lin said. “Daw Daw nodded at me, so I did as they said. We were taken to Yea-U jail.” Suu’s year of freedom – her year of living more dangerously than ever before – was over.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT

Suu survived the Depayin massacre without serious injury, thanks to the courage and skill of her driver, but it cost the lives of about 70 of her supporters. She herself was first put in jail and then, after protests from the UN Envoy Razali Ismail, sent back to house arrest. For the outside world, and for most people in Burma, too, Depayin was a major setback. The hopes for a negotiated return to democracy that had been raised with her release from detention in May 2002 were dashed.

But the true story was not that simple.

Soon after the attack, Senior General Than Shwe admitted having ordered it: in a letter to Asian governments he justified it by claiming that Suu and her party were “conspiring to create an anarchic situation… with a view to attaining power”. But when the US tightened sanctions and Japan, the regime’s most reliable friend, suspended aid, it became clear that the assault had been a colossal mistake, and its failure a personal humiliation.

To recoup some ground he promoted military intelligence chief Lieutenant General Khin Nyunt, the third man in the ruling triumvirate and the man who had pushed for talks with Suu, to prime minister. Khin Nyunt announced a “seven-point road map to democracy”, intended to produce a constitution and elections. He then launched the regime’s first-ever serious negotiations with Suu, so secret that their existence emerged only after Suu’s release last year

After a number of meetings, the two sides were close to agreement: “We were almost there,” Suu revealed last November. But when Khin Nyunt presented Than Shwe with the deal, the Senior General took fright. Both Khin Nyunt and the brigadier who had led the negotiations were purged and jailed, and Burmese politics went back into the deep freeze. Another six years were to pass before Suu was released.

This extract is adapted from ‘The Lady and the Peacock: the Life of A

Washington Post – US envoy sees greater openness in Myanmar but wants end to abuses of ethnic minorities
By Associated Press, Updated: Tuesday, October 18, 12:06 AM

WASHINGTON — The United States sees encouraging new signs of openness in isolated Myanmar, but after decades of military rule, the Asian country has a way to go before it loses its pariah status and rids itself of tough sanctions.

Special envoy to Myanmar Derek Mitchell said Monday there seems to be a trend toward greater openness in that Asian country but questions remain about its commitment to democratic change.

Myanmar, also known as Burma, held elections last year which, although flawed, were its first since pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi swept a 1990 vote and was barred from taking power.

In late September, the government stopped work on a controversial China-backed dam, saying the $3.6 billion project was “against the will of the people.” And last week, authorities freed as many as 250 of the country’s 2,000-plus political detainees.

Mitchell welcomed the government’s recent moves as encouraging and said his September visit yielded productive meetings with Myanmar officials, traditionally viewed as xenophobic. He said they were willing to discuss any issues he raised.

“Right now I think there are a lot of restrictions that make them into a pariah state. And Burma is a proud country with a tremendous history, and they deserve to come out of the shadows and take their prideful place in the region,” Mitchell told a news conference in Washington.

Myanmar, a former breadbasket of Southeast Asia, has suffered not just repressive government but poor economic management during nearly 50 years of military rule. It is subject to wide-ranging trade, economic and political sanctions from the U.S. and other Western nations, enforced in response to brutal crackdowns on pro-democracy protesters in 1988
and 2007 and its refusal to hand power to Suu Kyi’s party after the 1990 elections.

Sanctions and isolation have failed to force change and served only to complicate U.S. engagement with the economically vibrant Southeast Asian region, as Washington looks to deepen its existing alliances and forge new ones to counter China’s rise.

The Obama administration has sought to engage Myanmar, and after two years there are signs of change, although whether that is in response to U.S. overtures is difficult to tell. Myanmar also is vying to assume the rotating chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in 2014 and may be trying to impress ASEAN leaders before they meet at a November summit, when the decision could be made.

When it comes to rewarding Myanmar for reforms, Washington is likely to have tougher criteria than ASEAN, and it is likely to proceed in an incremental manner.

Mitchell would not give specifics about what those steps might be. David Steinberg, a Myanmar expert at Georgetown University, said a first move could be to allow the World Bank and Asian Development Bank to help Myanmar.

The U.S. already has made some positive gestures, such as easing travel restrictions that enabled Myanmar’s foreign minister to visit the State Department last month.

For more tangible concessions, a key test will be action on political prisoners. Mitchell urged releases of all such detainees, including 1988-era student protest leaders Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi, and a monk at the forefront of the 2007 protests, Gambiri.

Mitchell also said that while the government has held high-level talks with democratic opposition leader Suu Kyi, it has not made comparable progress in its relations with ethnic minorities in the north and east of Myanmar. He noted credible reports of continued human rights abuses, including against minority women and children.

“We made it very clear that we could not have a transformed relationship as long as these abuses and credible reports of abuses occur,” he said.

Myanmar is an ethnically diverse nation, and most of the minorities have taken up arms at some point against the government dominated by the military and the ethnic Burman majority. Legions of villagers have been displaced by brutal military campaigns, and this year has seen violence flare in the Kachin and Shan states against ethnic armies that had reached cease-fires with the Myanmar regime.

Steinberg said the U.S. also would be looking to see a further decrease in media censorship and the legalization of Suu Kyi’s political party, which was outlawed for boycotting the 2010 elections as unfair.

The Nation – Editorial: Burma: So close and yet so far from real change
October 18, 2011 9:06 am

The Thein Sein administration in Burma is playing with international opinion quite effectively, as it always does. Earlier this month the regime decided to free more than 6,000 prisoners, including over 200 political prisoners. This, of course has raised expectations in the international community about the pace of reform in the country. As expected, opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi praised the releases and urged the government to free all political prisoners. However, there are still an estimated 2,000 such prisoners in jails in various parts of the country.

Last week in Bangkok, Kurt Campbell, US assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific Affairs made some kind comments on Burma regarding the ongoing reforms but again urged Burma to do more. The US and Burma have recently been attempting to mend fences after two decades of bitter ties, including economic sanctions imposed on Burma by the US. Burma now seems to realise that without sufficient change, the opportunity for ending sanctions will remain nil for the time being because of the upcoming electoral campaign in the US.

At the moment, however, the US-Burma “friendship” could be bolstered, especially as a small open space has opened since Naypyidaw halted construction of a controversial dam in Myitsone in the Kachin State until 2015. This was a clear signal from Burma to the US that Washington’s support is urgently needed to counter the growing influence of China. The action on the Chinese-funded dam has won Burma a certain amount of praise and admiration from around the world, especially from the civil society movements, even the most hostile ones. But the project’s temporary stoppage has stirred up a strong response from the Chinese government, which reiterated that Burma must adhere to the contract, which was signed in 2006.

It is obvious that Burma has set forth a priority. First, it wants to deal with the present economic crisis and make sure that it wins sizeable financial loans and assistance from the World Bank and the Asian Development Fund. It also wants to reduce the effects of all sanctions thereafter. Thus the regime has to be seen to be doing all it can to win a measure of support from these organisations and its numerous critics around the world.

If this works, Burma will then seek the Asean chair for 2014, which will be decided at next month’s Asean summit in Bali. Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa will visit Burma at the end of October, which could be a rubber stamp from the current chair. If everything turns out as the Burmese wish, in Bali Thein Sein could become the first Burmese president to come face to face with a US president. That could be the outcome!

The US motive continues to be driven by the desire to counter China’s downward influence. Obviously, Burma is at the region’s strategic crossroads. Everybody knows that, through Burma, China will have access to two major oceans, the Pacific and the Indian. Washington is thus eager now to improve ties with Burma. But it can do that only after Burma shows sincerity in its reforms, and the release of political prisoners is a critical issue in this regard. Some concrete responses from the US are expected in the near future.

The Burmese comedian “Zarganar” asked why the regime’s leaders were so “stingy” in freeing political prisoners, because there are still many more in jails. The answer is that the regime wants to make sure outsiders take it seriously. Without political prisoners, Naypyidaw will have no bargaining power left.

The Nation – Cabinet endorses protection pact for Thai investment in Burma
October 18, 2011 10:19 am

The Cabinet today approved the Foreign Affairs Ministry’s draft pact to protect Thai-Burmese investment, paving way for parliamentary screening.

Deputy Government Spokeswoman Anuttama Amornwiwat said that this pact would protect investors who are doing business in the neighbouring country and give them an assurance in case of disputes.

She said that Thai businesses have invested in 59 projects in Burma with combined value of US$7.4 billion, or 47 per cent of total foreign investment in the country. The biggest investor is PTT Exploration and Production Plc.

Oct 19, 2011
Asia Times Online – China behind Myanmar’s course shift
By Bertil Lintner

CHIANG MAI – Recent developments in Myanmar, including talks between new President Thein Sein and pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, a relaxation of media censorship and the release of some political prisoners, have stunned many foreign observers and sparked speculation that the historically military-run country is on the verge of a new era of democracy and openness.

The Brussels-based International Crisis Group has published optimistic reports claiming that fundamental changes are under way in the country’s political landscape, while Norwegian Deputy Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide recently exalted after a mid-October whistle-stop to the country: “I almost left the country thinking they’re moving a little too fast. I never thought I would say that about Myanmar.”

After decades of broken promises and fake reforms, Myanmar’s population has been tellingly less enthusiastic and optimistic about the future. Zarganar, Myanmar’s most famous comedian, said in an interview shortly after his release from prison on October 11: “Originally, I was encouraged by the new government. But not anymore, not since I was released. We [jailed dissidents] are like hostages in the hands of Somali pirates. It now begs the question, for what ransom was our freedom secured?”

Indeed, what was the behind-the-scenes “ransom” paid for the release of approximately 200 political prisoners, and what is the reality behind recent seemingly daring moves by Thein Sein, a former general and prime minister under the old military junta?

As an army commander and later government leader, he was not known for his initiative, boldness or liberalism. In May 2001, for instance, while serving as chief of the Myanmar army’s Golden Triangle Command, he said in a speech before local leaders in Mong La on the Chinese border: “I was in Mong Ton and Mong Hsat for two weeks. U Wei Xuegang and U Bao Youri from the Wa group are real friends.”

Wei is named in several US drug reports as the kingpin of the Golden Triangle narcotics trade and both American and Thai law enforcement authorities have a bounty on his head. Both of Thein Sein’s “real friends” have been indicted by US courts for their involvement in the Golden Triangle’s narcotics trade.

There are also questions about the foreign company the supposedly reformist president keeps. On August 1 last year, the Pyongyang’s official news service, the Korea Central News Agency, reported on a visit by Thein Sein, then prime minister of the previous military junta, where he “noted with high appreciation that the Korean people have made big strides in strengthening of the military capability and economic construction under the wise leadership of Kim Jong Il … The government of Myanmar will continue to strive for strengthening and development of the friendly and cooperative relations between the two countries.”

These are less the statements of a reform-minded liberal and more of a puppet leader who takes and exercises obediently orders from above.

It is becoming clear that there are serious disagreements within the military over relations with North Korea, and more importantly Myanmar’s heavy dependence on China. This became evident on September 30 when Thein Sein announced that he had decided to suspend the China-backed US$3.6 billion joint-venture Myitsone dam project in Myanmar’s far north Kachin State.

However, the official explanation that the project was “against the will of people” is hardly credible in a country where popular sentiments have long been ignored and popular calls for political change met consistently with brute military force.

The dam would have flooded an area bigger than Singapore, 90% of the electricity was scheduled for export to China, and once online would have done grave harm to the Irrawaddy River, the nation’s economic and cultural artery. A massive popular movement against the dam was gaining momentum and an escalation of anti-China tensions could have led to riots even more serious than in 1967, when angry mobs ransacked businesses and homes owned by ethnic Chinese in Yangon, then the national capital.

China’s commercial presence is more pronounced nowadays, as tens of thousands of Chinese merchants and migrants have recently settled in the country, mainly in the old royal capital of Mandalay. China’s domination of local commerce and rising ownership of local lands has stoked Myanmar nationalist sentiments and risks potentially destabilizing splits inside the still ruling Myanmar military.

It is this dynamic that is mainly driving Thein Sein’s political course shift, not a newfound desire for democracy and human rights.

My friend, my enemy

The controversial dam project reflects the strained relationship Myanmar has always had with its powerful northern neighbor. From the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 until Myanmar’s 1962 military putsch, Beijing maintained a cordial relationship with the non-aligned democratic government of prime minister U Nu.

Myanmar, then known as Burma, was in fact the first country outside of the communist bloc to recognize the new regime in Beijing. Trade was negligible, but the common border was demarcated and relations were friendly.

After General Ne Win’s 1962 coup, the Chinese, long wary of the ambitious and sometimes unpredictable general, began to prepare for all-out support for the insurgent Communist Party of Burma (CPB). The 1967 anti-Chinese riots in Yangon, orchestrated by military authorities to deflect public anger at a rapidly deteriorating economy, provided a convenient excuse for China to intervene directly in Myanmar’s internal affairs. On New Year’s Day 1968, the first armed CPB units entered northeastern Myanmar from China’s southwestern Yunnan province.

During the decade spanning 1968-78, China poured more aid into the CPB effort than any other communist movement outside of Indochina. Assault rifles, machine-guns, rocket launchers, anti-aircraft guns, radio equipment, jeeps, trucks, petrol, area maps, and even kitchen utensils were sent across the frontier into the CPB’s revolutionary base area.

Thousands of Chinese “volunteers” also streamed across the border to provide additional support to the CPB. Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, and more importantly the return to power of the pragmatist Deng Xiaoping a year later, marked the beginning of the end of massive Chinese aid to the CPB.

It was no longer seen to be in Beijing’s interest to support revolutionary movements in the region, but neither could the Chinese completely cut off the CPB, which still controlled most of the strategic border areas inside Myanmar. Chinese support continued, albeit on a much reduced scale, until the hill tribe rank-and-file of the CPB’s army rose in mutiny in 1989 and drove the entire Maoist Burman leadership into exile in China.

The CPB subsequently split along ethnic lines into four different regional armies. All of them soon entered into ceasefire agreements with the government, which also made cross-border trade possible for the first time in decades.

It was also clear that China coveted Myanmar’s forests and rich mineral and natural gas deposits, as well as its hydroelectric power potential. In fact, China first mooted its intention to build Myitsone in an article in the official Beijing Review in September 1985.

Entitled “Opening to the Southwest: An Expert Opinion”, the officially written article outlined the possibilities of finding an outlet for trade for China’s landlocked southern provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan through Myanmar to the Indian Ocean. It also mentioned that the Myanmar railheads of Myitkyina and Lashio in the northeast and the Irrawaddy River as possible conduits for Chinese exports.

At the time those trade links were a remote dream, but the 1989 CPB mutiny ushered in a new, more cordial era in Sino-Myanmar relations. Apart from supplying Myanmar with vast quantities of military hardware at a time when the West shunned and sanctioned the military regime’s abysmal human-rights record, Chinese experts also assisted in a series of infrastructure projects to rehabilitate Myanmar’s poorly maintained roads and railways.

Chinese military advisers formally arrived in 1991, the first foreign military personnel to be stationed in Myanmar since Australia dispatched a contingent to train the Myanmar army in the 1950s. Soon after the Chinese officials arrived, cross-border trade between China and Myanmar began to boom.

By the late 1980s, China had begun to penetrate the Myanmar market through an extensive economic intelligence reporting system. This network monitored the availability of domestically produced Myanmar products as well as the nature and volume of trade from other countries in the region such as Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and India.

When the border was opened for trade in the early 1990s, more than 2,000 carefully selected items were reported to be flooding the Myanmar market – among them bicycles, sewing machines, beer, soap, cigarettes, cheap textiles, stationery, spare machinery parts, radios, medicines, and petrol. These goods were priced deliberately cheaper than those from other neighboring countries and Myanmar-made products.

In March last year, China’s official People’s Daily Online reported that bilateral trade between the two countries hit US$ 2.9 billion in 2009, an increase of 10% over the previous year and up from virtually zero in the late 1980s. The trade balance weighed heavily in China’s favor: in 2009, Chinese exports amounted to $2.3 billion, while its imports from Myanmar totaled a mere $646 million. More current trade figures are not publicly available, but are believed to be even higher and still weighted in China’s favor.

While Myanmar has been denied access to international monetary institutions due to US and European Union sanctions, China has provided Myanmar with low interest loans and major investment capital. That is particularly true of the energy sector.

An agreement to build a gas pipeline from the Bay of Bengal will be supplemented with an oil pipeline designed to allow Chinese ships carrying fuel imports from the Middle East to skirt the congested Malacca Strait. In September last year, China agreed to provide Myanmar with $4.2 billion worth of interest-free loans over a 30-year period to help fund hydropower projects, road and railway construction, and information technology development.

Myanmar’s growing economic and financial dependence on China has caused considerable consternation its military leadership. Aung Lynn Htut, a former intelligence officer who sought political asylum in the US in 2005, wrote in a September 30 commentary for exile-run The Irrawaddy that the country’s military leaders have not forgotten that they once fought against the China-backed CPB and that many of their comrades were killed by Chinese arms.

For instance, Tin Aung Myint Oo, the current first vice president, earned his title thiha thura (brave lion) in 1989 after taking part in heavy battles with the CPB just before the mutiny. According to Aung Lynn Htut, many of his officers and soldiers, including his commander, died on the battlefield.

Despite the deepening of Sino-Myanmar relations, China still maintains close contacts with the United Wa State Army (UWSA), the main successor to the CPB. The UWSA is equipped with modern weapons, including artillery and anti-aircraft guns, obtained from what is euphemistically called the “black market” in China, but which is more a “gray market” as it is run mainly by former Chinese military officers.

The UWSA today is much stronger and better equipped than the CPB was in the last years before the 1989 mutiny. Chinese duplicity in maintaining relations with Naypyidaw and the armed militias opposed to its rule has made many Myanmar army officers wary of China’s long-term intentions.

Survival instincts

According to many Western observers, recent positive developments in Myanmar reflect a power struggle between “reform-minded moderates” and “hardliners” within the government and the military that controls it. But the “moderates” have to tread carefully, one cautious step at a time, to avoid upsetting the “hardliners” waiting in the wings, the analysis goes. It may appear that way on the surface, but the political reality is far more convoluted and complicated.

Myanmar’s new 2008 constitution and last year’s rigged elections were not implemented to change the country’s basic power structure that has been in place since the military first seized power in 1962, but rather aim to institutionalize it by creating a national parliament, regional assemblies, and a superficially civilian-led government.

Since 1962, Myanmar’s military has viewed itself as the sole force capable of protecting the country’s independence and unity. The ruling military is not divided over how much democracy should be allowed, or the degree of respect it should show for human rights. Rather, disagreements within Myanmar’s military are more over questions of national sovereignty, internal security and, most importantly, regime survival.

Vice President Tin Aung Myint Oo is often referred to in the Western media as a “hardliner”. But that characterization is misleading as it is the state of relations with China, not degrees of democracy, that historically has caused the biggest rifts inside the Myanmar military. Apart from the Myitsone dam issue, sources familiar with the inner workings of the Myanmar military assert that hostility towards China is growing among the officer corps, especially when it comes to ongoing Chinese support for the heavily armed UWSA.

By suspending the controversial dam project, Thein Sein took the wind out of the sails of a situation that could have caused a serious conflict inside the military and been channeled to the public at large. For now, Thein Sein has weathered the storm, but by suspending rather than canceling the project he strategically left a door open for future negotiations with China.

Myanmar cannot turn its back to China: the two countries share a long border, while the United States and the European Union are distant powers of lesser importance to the long term survival of the regime.

The forces behind Thein Sein have skillfully played the China card vis-a-vis the West in a new bid to lessen the country’s dependence on China and smooth over potential conflicts brewing within the armed forces.

On September 29, Myanmar Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin met in Washington with newly appointed US coordinator on Myanmar Derek Mitchell, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell, and human-rights official Michael Posner. It was not a coincidence that the next day Thein Sein’s government decided to suspend the Myitsone dam until 2015.

Even before Thein Sein started to send reform signals, the US had started to rethink its punitive policy towards Myanmar. Ever since the 1988 massacres of pro-democracy demonstrators in Yangon, Washington has been the military regime’s fiercest international critic. When Barack Obama took over the US presidency in January 2009, a new policy of “engagement” was adopted to shift that course. In April that year, US senator Jim Webb, known to be close to Obama, became the first top-level US politician to visit Myanmar in years.

While paying lip-service to democracy and human rights during talks with then junta leader General Than Shwe, Webb revealed his real motives at a breakfast meeting with defense reporters in Washington after returning from his trip:

We are in a situation where if we do not push some kind of constructive engagement, Myanmar is going to basically become a province of China … we all respect Aung San Suu Kyi and the sacrifices she has made. On the other hand, how does the US develop a relationship that could increase stability in the region and not allow China to have dominance in a country that has strategic importance in the region?

That view, if widely held, represents a significant shift in Washington’s perspective. In March 1989, a senior US diplomat in Yangon told the Washington Post: “Since there are no US bases and very little strategic interest, Burma [Myanmar] is one place where the United States has the luxury of living up to its principles.”

With China’s fast rise and US concerns about Myanmar’s budding military relations with North Korea, strategic interests have now returned to the forefront of Washington’s Myanmar policy.

Myanmar is now in the process of rebalancing its foreign relations to ensure the regime’s survival and future cohesion of the armed forces. Thein Sein and the powerful military forces that back him realize that there must be some icing on the cake for the US and the European Union to accept his nominally civilian regime and consider lifting sanctions.

That is the “ransom” that has been paid for the release of dissidents like Zarganar and warming overtures towards Suu Kyi. While Myanmar may have embarked on a more palatable political course, it has more to do with regime survival than a desire to supplant military rule with democratic governance.

Bertil Lintner is a former correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic Review and author of several books on Burma/Myanmar. He is currently a writer with Asia-Pacific Media Services.

Oct 18, 2011
Asia Times Online – India burnishes its Myanmar ties
By Sudha Ramachandran

BANGALORE – Space for an enhanced Indian role in Myanmar appears to be opening up with Myanmar’s new government taking tentative steps towards democratization of the country. Not only will this enable India to engage without inhibitions, Myanmar’s rulers could also turn to India for experience in building democratic institutions and processes.

During President U Thein Sein’s visit to India last week, for the first time in several decades India’s handshake with Myanmar’s president was far from awkward.

In the past, Delhi has hosted the entire top brass of Myanmar’s military junta, including the chairman of the State Peace and Development Council, Senior General Than Shwe; its vice chairman, Vice Senior General Maung Aye, as well as Thein Sein in his earlier avatar as prime minister in the military government.

Although it rolled out the red carpet, it was clearly embarrassed with shaking hands with these military rulers. Officials would go on the defensive explaining India’s interaction with the junta. Under sharp criticism at home and abroad for its courting of the junta, Delhi sought to keep its relationship with Myanmar under wraps, especially denying the military cooperation between the two countries.

That is now changing. India’s engagement of President Thein Sein in Delhi last week was far from defensive.

Although a former general who came to power through a deeply flawed election, Thein Sein is reportedly a moderate and keen on reform. In recent months he has taken small but significant steps towards making his government inclusive and seeking reconciliation with the opposition.

He is engaging in talks with the junta’s bete noire and National League for Democracy (NLD) leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. Thein Sein’s government has granted amnesty to about 200 political prisoners, ended restrictions on the Internet and lifted the ban on trade union activity. In an attempt at building confidence, he has appointed a former liaison officer to Suu Kyi as his minister of social welfare, relief and resettlement and her close friend, U Myint, as his chief economic adviser.

India was among a handful of countries that had quietly supported general elections in Myanmar last year. Unlike the West, which focussed on the flaws in the election, Delhi saw in it opportunity for change. It was in fact keen on the NLD contesting the election.
The risk Delhi took in backing the elections appears to have paid off. Myanmar has a long way to go before it can be regarded democratic, but for the first time in five decades there is hope.

While some continue to dismiss Thein Sein’s moves as superficial and unlikely to last, Suu Kyi herself has welcomed them, admitting that he seems to want to “achieve positive change”.

It was against the backdrop of these positive changes that Thein Sein visited India.

India signaled its strong support to Thein Sein’s reform efforts by announcing a US$500 million credit line to Myanmar – its largest ever – for specific projects, including irrigation. This comes in addition to $300 million of credit extended last year towards construction of railways, roads, power transmission lines and oil refineries.

Congratulating Myanmar’s president for “the transition towards democratic government”, India “offered all necessary assistance in further strengthening this democratic transition”.

Two decades ago, India was among the most vociferous champions of Myanmar’s pro-democracy movement. Following the brutal suppression of mass protests in 1988 and in the wake of the NLD’s landslide victory in the 1990 elections, it sharply rebuked the military rulers and called on them to hand over power to the NLD. For some years thereafter, its diplomatic efforts were focussed on pushing for restoration of democracy in Myanmar.

Then from the mid-1990s it changed tack. Its “Look East” policy, counter-insurgency operations in the northeast, its interest in Myanmar’s energy and other resources as well as China’s growing influence in Myanmar forced it to engage with the generals, rather than confront them. This required it to tone down criticism of the junta, especially its human-rights violations.

Consequently, over the past decade, the focus of India’s policy towards Myanmar was economic and security cooperation. That has changed in recent months. Increasingly, its engagement is people-centric. As K Yhome, research fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, a think-tank in New Delhi, told Asia Times Online in June, India “is now beginning to broad-base this engagement to include cooperation and capacity-building in health, agriculture and education”. Agriculture provides employment to two-thirds of Myanmar.

The areas of India-Myanmar cooperation can be expected to expand further to include democratic institution-building, capacity building, people-to-people contact, etc.

As noted Indian political commentator B G Varghese points out, “Rather than be a passive spectator or late actor, India should move energetically to engage the new Thein Sein administration to assist and encourage its transition to full democracy, ethnic reconciliation and economic and social reconstruction at all levels, governmental and non-official.

“Why shouldn’t the [Indian] government and credible civil society institutions invite delegations of Burmese parliamentarians, trade representatives, ethnic nationality groups and security analysts to visit India and talk to their counterparts and potential collaborators here? Scholarships and seats in training institutions should be readily on offer as this is perhaps Burma’s greatest need. Charter flights should be organized both ways to promote tourism and understanding. And high level Indian political and trade and investment delegations should visit Burma as early as possible,” Varghese said.

These steps should help hitherto reclusive Myanmar come out of its isolation.

The Thein Sein government will also be looking to India to convince the United States and Europe to lift sanctions against Myanmar.

There are signs too that Myanmar is seeking to reduce its dependence on China. The Thein Sein government recently suspended a $3.6 billion Myitsone dam project that China was constructing in Kachin State. This is the first time since the two became close allies in 1988 that Myanmar has snubbed Beijing. Should this become more than a one-off tiff between the two, Myanmar can be expected to look for other partners. It could increasingly look to Delhi.

To what extent India will benefit from Myanmar’s reported distancing from Beijing depends on how serious the rift is. Many believe that the suspension of the dam project by the Thein Sein government is an eyewash aimed at signaling to the international community that the new government is responsive to the sentiments of the people, especially the ethnic minorities, and that the Sino-Myanmar bond has not weakened.

However, Myanmar’s military, their close ties with Beijing post-1988 notwithstanding, distrust the Chinese. Many in the armed forces, especially those of the older generation, were involved in fighting the Burmese Communist Party’s armed insurgency for decades. They have not forgotten China’s role in nurturing and fueling that insurgency.

And its not just the military that is suspicious of China, the public too, especially in towns like Mandalay that have become Sinicized by the influx of Chinese, are deeply apprehensive of their giant neighbor to the north. Thus, if Myanmar’s government persists with being responsive to public sentiment, it will be keen to reduce its extreme dependence on China.

Given its deep distrust of all foreign powers, whether western or Asian, Myanmar will avoid turning too much to India for support through its transition. Yet it is likely that the bilateral bond will deepen in the coming years should it move towards democratization.

However, an expansion in India’s role in Myanmar is not inevitable. India has been executing projects in Myanmar at a glacial pace. The Kaladan multimodal transport project [1], the Tamanthi and Shwezaye hydropower projects [2] are running way behind schedule, contributing to a perception in Myanmar that Indian companies, unlike the Chinese, do not deliver on time.

India it seems is its worst enemy in Myanmar. Conditions for an expansion in its role there are ripe. But it will have to pull up its socks if it wants to play a larger role in that country.

Notes
1. The Kaladan project envisages connectivity between Indian ports on the eastern seaboard and Sittwe Port in Myanmar and then through riverine transport and by road to Mizoram, thereby providing an alternate route for transport of goods to northeast India. 2. India’s government-owned National Hydroelectric Power Corp in 2008 signed an agreement with the Myanmar government to develop the 1,200-megawatt Tamanthi and 600-megawatt Shwezaye hydroelectric projects on Myanmar’s Chindwin River.

Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore. She can be reached at sudha98@hotmail.com

Oct 19, 2011
Asia Times Online – Thein Sein as Myanmar’s Gorbachev
By Andrew Selth

Strategic analysts who studied the Soviet Union during the 1980s can still recall the excitement and intellectual challenge of trying to interpret developments as Mikhail Gorbachev first introduced his policy of perestroika (restructuring), and followed it two years later with glasnost (openness).

As is now well known, there were some diehard Cold Warriors in official and academic circles who steadfastly refused to believe that a creature of the Communist Party, who had enjoyed the patronage of figures like KGB chief Yuri Andropov and risen to the rank of general secretary, would ever challenge the system that nurtured him.

Then there were those experts who, on the basis of a careful analysis of the objective realities, were prepared to give Gorbachev the benefit of the doubt and accept that he was trying to introduce a range of genuine reforms, albeit for his own purposes. Few observers, however, went so far as to predict the downfall of the entire Soviet power structure.

It is useful to keep that period in mind when looking at developments in Myanmar, also known as Burma, since the inauguration of a hybrid civilian-military government this January.

President Thein Sein, a former army general widely believed to have been hand-picked by strongman Senior General Than Shwe, has made several public statements and promised a number of changes that appear to herald a more open-minded and conciliatory approach to government.

There is no question that the armed forces intend to remain firmly in control of Myanmar, but there now appears to be the possibility of greater personal freedoms, rational economic policies and a more relaxed attitude towards the development of civil society.

Thein Sein and his ministers have also taken a number of steps that seem designed in large part to meet the oft-repeated concerns of the international community. For example, the president has met with prominent opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has expressed herself “happy and satisfied” with his intention to introduce “real positive change”.

Over 200 political prisoners have been released, a move which addresses – to a certain extent at least – another major sticking point with the Western governments that maintain sanctions against the regime. Myanmar’s ambassador in Vienna has also assured the International Atomic Energy Agency that his country has neither the capacity nor the intention to develop nuclear weapons, long a subject of speculation and concern.

These developments have prompted widely varying reactions. A number of respected academics and commentators have taken a strategic view and, with the usual caveats, sought to highlight what they believe to be the start of a gradual process of political reconciliation and incremental reform.

The International Crisis Group has gone even further and announced that “major reform is under way” in Myanmar. A hard core of activists and their supporters, however, have dismissed recent developments as part of a massive confidence trick by an entrenched military regime. Focusing on more immediate issues, some have even called for harsher economic and financial sanctions against Naypyidaw.

Given the dearth of reliable information about internal developments in Myanmar, and the highly politicized nature of the Myanmar-watching community, this divergence of views is not surprising. In another echo of the Cold War, when the academic community was deeply divided by ideological leanings and different approaches to professional contacts with the communist bloc, scholars and commentators have tended to split into two main camps.

As The Economist opined recently, one sees the glass half full while the other sees the glass half empty. Some exchanges between the two sides have become quite heated, exposing an ugly side to the Myanmar debate.

In the case of the Soviet Union, the optimists were ultimately proven correct, but even they failed to predict the full impact of Gorbachev’s revolutionary policies, and the power of the forces unleashed by his relaxation of the old rules. It is possible that the activist community is right, and the shift in Naypyidaw’s approach is simply a clever ploy to prompt the lifting of economic sanctions and to win Myanmar the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) chair in 2014.

Yet, if that is the plan, then Thein Sein seems to have forgotten Alexis de Tocqueville’s famous dictum that the most dangerous time for a dictatorship is when it begins to loosen its grip – for whatever reason. As Gorbachev found, once such a process is set in train, it is very difficult to control.

There is another scenario that needs to be kept in mind. Notwithstanding the opaqueness of Myanmar’s politics, it is known that there are hardliners within the current leadership who oppose Thein Sein’s new approach, particularly his attempts at reconciliation with Aung San Suu Kyi and the pro-democracy movement.

These elements favor continued strong military control of the country and the elimination of any dissent. Myanmar’s armed forces have been remarkably loyal and cohesive over the past 50 years, giving the country the world’s most durable dictatorship. A split in the ruling hierarchy is still unlikely, but if events are seen to be getting out of control an attempt to reinstate direct military rule cannot be ruled out.

Faced with all this uncertainty, the key policy question faced by governments and international organizations is whether to take Thein Sein’s promises at face value and seek to encourage genuine reforms, or to dismiss recent developments as a sham and impose more punitive measures.

To date, most have tended to favor the former approach, cautiously welcoming the changes that have occurred and have been promised, while pointing out the need for concrete actions to suit the president’s words. If this is indeed a tipping point in Myanmar’s modern history, and positive change is a real possibility, that seems the very least they can do.

Andrew Selth is a Research Fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute in Brisbane, Australia.

The Star – US welcomes Myanmar moves but unsure of real reform
October 18, 2011

WASHINGTON, Oct 18 — There are signs that Myanmar may be moving toward greater openness but it is unclear whether it has embarked on genuine, thorough-going political reform, a senior US official said yesterday.

The official, Derek Mitchell, said the United States welcomed Myanmar’s release last week of about 200 political prisoners but made clear it wants to see the nearly 2,000 dissidents who remain imprisoned to be freed.

“We have seen encouraging signs over time,” said Mitchell, noting that Myanmar had not, however, curbed violence against ethnic minorities in the north and east of the country.

“What we’re looking for is a release of all political prisoners without condition to really send the signal of genuine commitment to democracy in the country,” said the US special representative and policy coordinator for the country, which the United States refers to by its colonial name, Burma.

Mitchell did not directly answer questions about whether the United States deemed the latest prisoner release sufficient for Washington to take reciprocal steps toward Myanmar.

Western nations have shunned Myanmar for decades because of its poor human rights record, but its new civilian government, which came to power this year after the military nominally gave up power, is taking tentative steps to end its isolation.

The release of about 200 political detainees tomorrow, under a general amnesty for 6,359 prisoners, followed a loosening of some media controls and more dialogue with pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

The United States, Europe and Australia have said the freeing of political prisoners is essential to considering lifting sanctions that have crippled Myanmar and driven it closer to China.

Saying he had “very, very productive and candid meetings” when he visited the country in September, Mitchell said “we’ve seen … since then even more gestures and more moves by the government that seems to be a trend towards greater openness.”

But Mitchell said there are still questions within the US government “about whether, in fact, we are seeing something fundamentally different in the country.

“Are we seeing a real path to reform as they laid out their goals of democracy, human rights, national reconciliation, and development, national development for the country?”

“There are still questions about how far they’re going to go and where this is going to lead,” he said. “If in fact we do see change, reform along those lines of democracy, human rights, national reconciliation and development, they will have a partner in the United States … that is what we have sought to pursue for many years now.”

ABC Radio Australia – Burma’s army committing abuses in Kachin State: rights group
Updated October 18, 2011 15:47:19

A human rights group says Burma’s military is committing serious rights abuses against ethnic Kachin civilians in the area where a huge hydro-dam was going to built until the plans were suspended three weeks ago.

A report Human Rights Watch released on Tuesday says renewed fighting in Kachin state has forced tens of thousands of people to flee through the mountains and jungle at the height of the rainy season.

Presenter: Liam Cochrane
Speaker: David Mathieson, Burma researcher for Human Rights Watch

Listen: Windows Media(http://www.abc.net.au/ra/connectasia/stories/m2040565.asx)

The Hindu – India should strengthen ties with Myanmar
Srinath Raghavan

The Myanmar President, Mr Thein Sein, and the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh… The agreement to extend a credit line of $500 million to Myanmar is a welcome move.

Myanmar is looking to break out of its uneasy embrace with China. India should give its ties with Myanmar a push.

The recent visit to India by the President of Myanmar took place against the backdrop of significant changes in his country. When President Mr Thein Sein took office last November, there was much scepticism about the new ‘civilian’ government. Since then he has surprised his critics by initiating a slew of political and economic reforms. To be sure, these are tentative first steps. But it is likely that the reforms will continue; for, the process is driven by three inter-related considerations that cannot be wished away.

First, Mr Thein Sein realises that if Myanmar is to break out of its international isolation, it will have to institute a modicum of political accountability and economic transparency. The trade and financial sanctions imposed by the US and the EU are unlikely to be lifted in the immediate future. But Myanmar could reasonably hope for much-needed technical assistance from international financial institutions.

Second, the government is rather keen to chair the Asean summit in 2014. The reforms currently under way are essential to secure the approval of other members of Asean. Tightening its links with these countries is critical both to enable Myanmar to deal with the consequences of an extended Western boycott and to prepare the ground for wider acceptance by the international community.

Third, Myanmar does not wish to be locked in an exclusive embrace with China. For a good part of the last six decades — to go back no further in time— it has had a troubled relationship with China.

Through the 1950s, the presence of Kuomintang fighters in Northern Burma and their American intelligence advisors was a major source of friction between the two countries. China, for its part, began supporting an insurgency led by the Communist Party of Burma. During the fevered years of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, there was a major riot in Rangoon against Chinese people and property and a retaliatory siege of the Burmese embassy in Beijing.

EQUATION WITH CHINA

Things began to change in the early 1990s, when both countries faced international ostracism owing to the military takeover after the Myanmar elections of 1988 and the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989.

In the following years, China emerged as Myanmar’s most dependable friend. China is by far the largest investor in Myanmar, its second largest trading partner (after Thailand) and largest source of imports, and its main supplier of military equipment. In 2009-10, China accounted for around 61.5 per cent of foreign investment and 47.3 per cent of Myanmar’s trade.

The local economy of Myanmar’s regions adjoining China is almost entirely controlled by Chinese entrepreneurs and businesses.

The bulk of Chinese investment in Myanmar is geared towards extraction of natural resources — oil, gas, hydropower, and minerals.

Myanmar’s economists and officials are worried that only 15 per cent of the FDI last year was directed to manufacturing and services. Even in areas of potential comparative advantage such as garments and footwear, there has been no growth of small and medium enterprises.

The most dramatic expression of the unease over China’s economic profile was Mr Thein Sein’s decision to put on hold the $3.6 billion Myitsone hydro-electric project financed by the Chinese government.

Interestingly, this step followed the suspension of another such project in Bhamo.

The decision on Mytisone was all the more surprising because it was taken in response to popular protests in the Irrawaddy valley —protests that received the endorsement of Ms Suu Kyi. It is unwise to read too much into one incident, and Myanmar is already trying to mollify China.

But it is undeniable that Myanmar’s ruling class is not only concerned about China’s economic dominance in the country but also about its political implications.

INDIA’S OPPORTUNITIES

India could help address some these underlying issues and so provide impetus to the reforms in Myanmar. Before the 1960s, Myanmar had closer political ties with India than any of its other neighbours.

Thereafter Myanmar’s self-imposed isolation and the junta’s refusal to step down in favour of an elected government resulted in the deterioration of the relationship.

In the late 1980s and early 90s, New Delhi supported Ms Suu Kyi. But once the military junta’s staying power became clear, India embarked on a course correction.

New Delhi now accorded greater priority to its economic and security interests. The former pertained to accessing Myanmar’s huge gas reserves and improving connectivity in order to facilitate India’s access to its north-eastern states as well as other south-east Asian countries.

The latter related to securing Myanmar’s cooperation in tackling insurgent groups operating in north-east India and to ensuring that China’s mounting presence in Myanmar did not impinge upon Indian interests in the country and in the Bay of Bengal.

There is considerable room for deepening economic and political ties with Myanmar. Bilateral trade in 2009-10 was a $1.2 billion, just 9.16 per cent of Myanmar’s total trade. Pulses and wood products account for 97.5 per cent of Myanmar’s exports to India; buffalo meat and pharmaceuticals account for 45 per cent of its imports from India. India is the 13th largest investor in the country: its investment amounting to a paltry $189 million.

The Indian private sector has little presence in Myanmar. The recent agreement to extend a credit line of $500 million is a welcome step.

But if India wants to redress its position in Myanmar, it must pay attention to three key issues.

For one thing, it needs to ensure timely delivery of projects. Excessive delay, particularly in infrastructure projects, calls into question India’s credibility and invites unfavourable comparisons with China.

For another, it must focus on upgrading infrastructure in the north-east. Despite four Indian states sharing a border with Myanmar, the bulk of trade does not happen over land.

Similarly, the absence of a pipeline implies that India is unable to benefit fully from its investment in Myanmar’s gas blocks. Finally, India should use its increasing influence in international forums to push for an end to the sanctions.

A Myanmar that is more closely integrated with the international community will have better prospects for sustained political reform.

And it will also advance India’s interests in its extended eastern neighbourhood.

Sun Star – Philippines bows to Myanmar in Asean women’s football
Tuesday, October 18, 2011

THE Philippine women’s football team Malditas has earned the respect of its more experienced opponent, Myanmar, after putting up some fierce resistance before bowing out.

“Sure we were expecting to score lots of goals but the Philippines have improved a lot and that made it tough for us,” Yoshinori Kumada, the chief coach of Myanmar, said in an interview posted in the website of the Asean Football Federation late Monday.

One of the lowly-regarded squads in the region, the Malditas (Fifa rank: 133) made sure that they won’t be peppered with goals throughout the 90-minute contest as they stood their ground all the way to the finish.

Myanmar (Fifa rank: 46) was only able to convert two goals, courtesy of My Nilar before fans at the National Stadium in Vientiane, Laos.

The closest the Malditas came to scoring a goal was a free kick at the half hour mark but the swerving shot from Natasha Alquiros flew just over the crossbar, according to the AFF.

“We have to improve obviously from this first game where although the team played to instruction, we just did not score enough goals and we have to remedy that for the next match,” Kumada said.

The Philippines is bracketed under Group B, which includes Malaysia, Thailand, and Myanmar. The Malditas are set to face Thailand on Wednesday and Malaysia on Friday to end the group matches.

Group A, meanwhile, consists of Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia and host Laos.

Jakarta Post – Editorial: Myanmar’s token reforms
The Jakarta Post | Tue, 10/18/2011 8:51 PM

The release of several hundred prisoners in Myanmar last week was another token gesture from the military junta, trying to convince the world of its intention to introduce some form of democracy in the country. As welcome as the gesture is — since any move in that direction in Myanmar at this stage is almost progress — we still have to take it with a grain of salt.

Among those released in the first batch of 6,300 who received a general amnesty from the government were 80 political prisoners. Amnesty International says there are more than 2,000 prisoners of conscience in Myanmar, those imprisoned chiefly for their political beliefs, and it is uncertain how many of those were included in this round of amnesty.

Until a clearer picture emerges about the fate of those political prisoners in coming weeks, we should refrain from applauding the Myanmar regime. The Myanmarese, as well as people around the world, have become accustomed to the junta’s empty promises. The farce election last year was a case in point and it served to undermine the credibility of its “road map to democracy”.

Some may argue that these token measures of democracy would eventually amount to something, but so far they are not enough to even provide the Myanmarese with their fundamental rights. Other Southeast Asian nations are also moving slowly and cautiously in giving greater space for free expressions, but at least their people lead a decent life.

When Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa visits Myanmar later this month, he should convey the message to the junta in the strongest terms that it needs to do a lot more to convince the world. Releasing all the political prisoners would go a long way.

As chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Indonesia needs to pressure the junta to show that the regional group’s constructive engagement all these years is actually paying off. No less than ASEAN’s own credibility is at stake.

Myanmar itself is due to take over the rotating ASEAN chair in 2014, and the junta has somehow confidently expressed its intention to take it up. The ASEAN chairmanship, however, is not automatic. As the current chair, Indonesia should use this leverage to ensure speedier and bolder political reforms in Myanmar.

It may seem like a long shot, but it is worth trying.

The Christian Science Monitor – In Burma: a fake out – or real reform?
Longtime Burma (Myanmar) watchers say recent reforms may amount to a genuine democratic opening for the authoritarian regime, but critics dismiss the moves as a propaganda offensive.
By Joseph Alchin, Contributor / October 16, 2011

After nearly a half century of brutal military rule, Burma’s government, which formally made the transition to a civilian government in March, has made a series of reforms that could signal more than superficial reform.

Burma (Myanmar) is no stranger to public relations efforts. It periodically releases large numbers of prisoners out of “goodwill.” In May, military rulers released some 14,000 prisoners. In 2009, the country released around the same number, but in both instances, only a tiny percentage were considered “political.”

Still, the amnesty of thousands of prisoners, the induction of a parliament, the scrapping of a major dam project, and a number of other more minor actions – such as allowing a picture of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s main opposition leader, to appear in government-censored publications – seem to indicate a noticeable shift.

Is Burma, a country that has been in virtual isolation for the past 50 years and is often compared with North Korea, taking steps to embrace democracy?

Burma’s location, nestled between China, India, and Thailand, puts it in a key position to be a major regional player. When the military seized control in 1962, the country was considered more developed than Thailand. Now sheer poverty pushes millions to leave the country in search of work. The military held on to power by crushing any sign of dissent through detention and torture.

But in late September, Burma’s new government turned heads when it announced that a massive $3.6 billion Chinese dam project would be “suspended” after years of planning because of public pressure. And on Oct. 12, the government freed iconic comedian Zarganar and announced that more than 6,350 other prisoners would also walk free in amnesty.

Zarganar was arrested twice for poking fun at the military and inciting violence, and served three years of an initial 59-year sentence. He told the Burma Today journal that the amnesty “was like putting lots of makeup on an old lady’s face.”

Out of an estimated 2,000 political prisoners in jail, Human Rights Watch estimates that the current amnesty applied to only 200.

Indeed, according to the state-run newspaper, only prisoners “who do not pose a threat to the stability of state and public tranquility” would be released on humanitarian grounds.

It was a step, but a small one, says Human Rights Watch’s Burma researcher David Mathieson, and it was “disappointing, given the limited number of political prisoners released.”

Critics such as Bo Kyi of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners Burma point out that criminal records of released political prisoners are not erased, and that there was no indication of wrongdoing from the government or a change in the laws that put them there.

Key players such as Min Ko Naing, a leader of the 1988 student protests, will remain in jail. “Leaders like these guys … have a lot of cachet and the government knows they can’t control them. They challenge its legitimacy,” Mr. Mathieson says.

Still, he adds, “the recent wider reforms have been uncharacteristic of previous regimes.”

For example, until a new law was passed on Oct. 11, workers were banned from forming or joining unions under an autocratic 1962 law passed soon after military rule began.
Now, workers will potentially see “massive” benefits, according to the head of the International Labor Organization in the country, Steve Marshall.

This law would guarantee not only the right to join unions but also to strike, making it illegal for employers to breach that right.

The government has also begun unblocking news websites such as those of Reuters and the BBC. Press has been heavily censored in the country; dozens of journalists have been sent to jail.

Another possible reason for Burma’s concessions is the dire state of the economy. Economist Zaw Oo recently noted that “many officials became quite dependent on the artificial exchange rate,” but have since realized the magnitude of Burma’s economic problems.

Some fear the recent reforms are all part of a propaganda offensive.

“Based on my current experiences, I dare not think changes are real and big this time either … the release of prisoners was just a sprinkle – way too little,” said Zarganar to the local news after his release. Still, expressing that sentiment would most probably not have passed the censors a year ago.

Scoop.co.nz – Burma: National reconciliation through hostage taking
Tuesday, 18 October 2011, 10:03 am
Press Release: Asian Human Rights Commission
October 17, 2011

Burma: National reconciliation through hostage taking

Among the many analyses of the release of a couple of hundred political prisoners in a total of over 6000 detainees let out of Burma’s prisons last week, the most precise and succinct came from a famous comedian, Zarganar. Imprisoned for criticising the relief effort in the wake of Cyclone Nargis in 2008, Zarganar spoke to the BBC Burmese Service shortly after his release. Asked about the claims of the country’s president, former general Thein Sein, that his government is working towards national reconciliation, and Zarganar laughingly likened this form of national reconciliation to putting makeup on a paralyzed elderly woman and taking her out on the town. He also said that he and other political detainees were like hostages, being released at a trickle in exchange for deals being struck with various parties at home and abroad.

Zarganar is correct that national reconciliation through hostage taking is a fraud. The reason that he is correct is that national reconciliation through hostage taking rests implicitly on the notion that the victim, the hostage, is expected to be grateful to the perpetrator, the hostage-taker, for letting him go. It is premised upon the notion that the government in Burma, as a perpetrator of crimes, ought to be congratulated for acts of apparent generosity towards persons whom it has persecuted relentlessly.

Over the last few years, prisoner releases in which political detainees have also featured have been a regular event in Burma. Each release is an opportunity for the political leadership to temporarily pay the role of benefactor, and enjoy some praise for whatever largesse it has managed to generate through the freeing from detention of persons who should have never been detained in the first place, persons whose “crimes” constituted acts that in most other countries are taken for granted. It is for this reason that such releases of detainees are indicative not of a system operating according to rational law, but one operating according to feudal principles, in which a regal figure earns the gratitude of his subjects for the merciful exercise of arbitrary power.

But the method only works well when those released show the required deference to the powers that have released them. When, as in the case of Zarganar, they continue to show defiance and scorn, national reconciliation through hostage taking is, rather than being an effective political device, exposed as a fraud.

For this reason, the authorities in Burma are afraid to release many of the remaining political detainees there, including the leadership of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy and the 88 Generation Students group, on both of whom the Asian Human Rights Commission has previously issued appeals, since to do so would threaten the method’s effectiveness. Similarly, they have on this occasion not released most other persons on whose behalf the AHRC has campaigned for some years, including the founder of Human Rights Defenders and Promoters, U Myint Aye; persons accused of having links with exiled opposition groups and media, including Sithu Zeya and his father U Zeya; National League for Democracy member Aye Min Naing and colleagues; and, people falsely accused of involvement in bombings around the country, including Htun Oo and others in Pegu, and Phyo Wai Aung, whose trial is continuing in Rangoon.

Since the method of national reconciliation through hostage taking requires the existence of a pool of hostages that can be drawn upon if and when the authorities see fit, the only way for this method to be brought to an end is through the release of all persons who constitute the pool of hostages. And, since the method of national reconciliation through hostage taking is a fraudulent form of reconciliation, the only way for the government of Burma to initiate genuine national reconciliation is to dispense with its fraudulent counterpart. Therefore, all political detainees can and must be released from Burma’s jails before genuine national reconciliation can begin.

About AHRC: The Asian Human Rights Commission is a regional non-governmental organisation that monitors human rights in Asia, documents violations and advocates for justice and institutional reform to ensure the protection and promotion of these rights. The Hong Kong-based group was founded in 1984. www.humanrights.asia

MYANMAR: Improving maternal and childcare in the east

MAE SOT, 17 October 2011 (IRIN) – In conflict-afflicted eastern Myanmar, until recently obstetric care was often crude, unsterile and dangerous for both mother and child, health experts say.

When labour pains began, traditional birth attendants routinely pushed the woman’s stomach, sometimes injuring or killing the baby; others used sharp slivers of bamboo, which had been cleaned with charcoal, to cut the umbilical cord, leading to deadly infections.

“Services were very limited. Maternal deaths, pregnancy-related issues like anaemia and infant mortality, were very high,” Nay Htoo, programme director for the Burma Medical Association, a Mae Sot-headquartered community-based organization (CBO), told IRIN.

In parts of eastern Myanmar, the infant mortality rate is 73 deaths per 1,000 live births, compared with 14 in neighbouring Thailand.

At the same time, the maternal mortality rate is 721 per 100,000 live births, three times the country’s national rate of 240. In neighbouring Thailand, that figure stands at 48.

With high levels of conflict, forced labour and human rights abuses, such health indicators are particularly dire, but ignorance and dangerous traditional practices are also at fault.

Training

To address these problems, in 2005 several CBOs, the Center for Public Health and Human Rights at Johns Hopkins University, and the Global Health Access Program launched the Mobile Obstetric Medics (MOM) project – dramatically boosting access to care.

The MOM project brought community-based maternal and child health workers from Myanmar’s Shan, Mon, Karen and Karenni states – unstable regions where ethnic militia and Burmese troops for decades have waged war – to Thailand for training in ante-and postnatal care, sterile deliveries, treatment for complications, as well as family planning services.

These maternal and child health workers would then pass on their new knowledge and skills to village health workers and traditional birth attendants, making sure that if complications arose, this triumvirate would cooperate and coordinate to provide care.

In the year after the MOM project began, only 5.1 percent of deliveries were attended by a skilled provider, according to research published in 2010.

By 2008, births attended by health providers trained to deliver emergency obstetric care had increased to 48.7 percent.

“The MOM project was a huge success,” Luke Mullany, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and lead author of the 2010 paper, said.

“Our collaboration and the work of our implementing partners produced a three-tiered network of community-based providers who were able to provide elements of basic emergency obstetric care at high coverage,” Mullany explained.

Dangerous practices

Integer, a former maternal and child health worker in Karen state’s Kler Lwee Htoo District, who like many Burmese goes by just one name, said some traditional birth attendants kept long nails in case of difficult deliveries, to fatally puncture a baby’s head, releasing tissue to shrink the head, allowing the baby to be delivered.

“Before, they didn’t know sterile methods or even the stages of delivery and when to begin the delivery,” said Integer, now reproductive health programme coordinator for the Karen Department of Health and Welfare, a CBO involved in the MOM project.

“After training, they got that knowledge, and they also learned about high-risk pregnancies. When they see a high-risk pregnancy, they can send the patient to the nearest clinic for further examination.”

The maternal child health worker travels around her area to train, supervise and assist the traditional birth attendant twice a year.

Older birth attendants

Each year, about 25 health workers illegally cross the border into Thailand for a MOM project refresher course with the Burma Medical Association.

One challenge, say Nay Htoo, is passing on these lessons to older traditional birth attendants.

“Some still lack the skills to follow the protocol, step by step, especially the very old traditional birth attendants. Most are illiterate, so you have to use symbols to train them,” Nay Htoo said.

“The traditional birth attendant is a stakeholder in the community. If they don’t trust you, they will not join the programme, and you cannot implement the programme successfully. To change people’s ideas, especially the older people, is not easy.”

Health workers in the MOM project are given traditional birth attendant kits that include gloves, scissors, gauze, cotton as well as dietary supplements and medicines.

Because of ongoing tensions between ethnic groups and the Burmese government, ethnic Burmese CBOs try to improve care in their home country from Thailand.

“Even though we are based in Thailand, our services are in Burma, particularly in IDP [internally displaced persons] communities. We want to be based in Burma to provide our services to the communities effectively; however, the time does not permit us to be based there yet,” Nay Htoo said.

“Every time we bring people back and forth for training and project re-supplying purposes it’s very difficult, but we know how to deal with local authorities in Burma and Thailand.”

Myanmar vice president calls for efforts in reducing poverty rate
English.news.cn   2011-10-18 11:46:02

YANGON, Oct. 18 (Xinhua) — Myanmar Vice President Dr. Sai Mauk Kham has called for efforts in narrowing gap between urban and rural areas in a bid to reduce poverty rate down to 16 percent in 2015 to meet the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal, a state media reported Tuesday.

Addressing a meeting of the Rural Development and Poverty Alleviation Work Committee in Nay Pyi Taw Monday, Sai stressed the need to carry out the tasks up to December 2015 in line with the 10 work programs worked out for poverty alleviation, said the New Light of Myanmar.

He emphasized the need to extensively grow crops which are favorable to regional climate, drawing farm activities and non- farm activities programs for rural people.

He maintained that one village one product program and rural industrialization program play an important role in implementing the non-farm activities, stressing the need to supply raw material, electricity and smooth transportation for development of small- scale industries .

He also stressed development of micro-credit scheme for vendors, hawkers and daily-waged workers as well as development of cooperatives societies to gain confidence from the people.

Other calls include development of socio-economic life of rural people with priority given to education, health, transportation, safe drinking water and irrigation.

Moreover, production of energy from biogas and environmental conservation were also encouraged.

Myanmar has started its poverty alleviation efforts with rural areas in some townships across the country with regional work committees at different level being set up for the implementation.

Model farms are being projected to be established to speed up the process of mechanized farming along with integrated farms and micro producing enterprises village-wise, providing micro finance for successful formation of private micro finance institutions, improving education, health and social affairs to improve the socio-economic status of the rural people.

Managable scale production of energy such as bio-gas and solar energy for adequate energy supply to rural areas, prevention of deforestation and afforestation of bare land for environmental conservation are also covered by the tasks.

Myanmar’s new government has formed the Central Committee for Rural Development and Poverty Alleviation to monitor tasks for rural development and poverty alleviation with foundation in transport, supply of clean and irrigation water, education, health and economy in rural areas and the committee is now in pursuant of eight tasks to achieve the goal.

In accordance with the target set for 2015 by the UN Millennium Development Goals, the Myanmar government is giving high priority to poverty reduction and rural development scheme despite the decrease of Myanmar’s poverty rate from 32 percent in 2004-05 to 26 percent in 2009-10.

Myanmar is yet to strive for further bringing down the country’ s poverty rate by 16 percent by 2014-15 from 26 percent in 2009-10 in accordance with the UN Millennium Development Goal.

Of Myanmar’s total population of bout 60 million, 70 percent live in rural areas.

The government claimed that it is heading for its fifth five- year plan (2011-12 to 2015-16) for national economic development, setting an annual target of 10.5-percent economic growth for the fiscal year 2011-12 which started in April.

The Irrawaddy – A Spirit That Never Dies
By AUNG ZAW Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Tuesday marks the 49th birthday of one of Burma’s most influential dissidents, Min Ko Naing.

He was not among those released from prison in last week’s amnesty. As one of the most influential leaders within the 88 Generation Students group, he played a key role in Burma’s historic anti-government uprising in 1988 and was later jailed for 15 years until his release in 2004.

Min Ko Naing (real name Paw Oo Tun) was imprisoned again in 2006 for several months. After his release in early 2007, he and fellow 88 Generation Students group members initiated protests against a sudden hike in fuel prices, and all were arrested and sentenced to 65 years in jail.

To many people, Min Ko Naing’s high-profile political activity puts him second only to detained Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi as the most respected leader in Burma’s democracy movement. The following story was originally published in 2001.

Of all the leaders who emerged during the heady days of Burma’s pro-democracy uprisings in 1988, Min Ko Naing, meaning “Conqueror of Kings,” stands out as perhaps the most heroic. Min Ko Naing is the nom de guerre of Paw Oo Htun, who was born in Rangoon in 1962, the year his country’s fledgling democracy fell to the dictatorship of Gen. Ne Win.

Now, after a decade in prison for his role in instilling a sense of political responsibility in a people long accustomed to oppression, his name still expresses courage, commitment and hope. The formative years of Min Ko Naing’s political consciousness coincided with the final years of Ne Win’s direct control over Burma.

As a popular, artistically gifted student at the Rangoon Arts and Science University (RASU), he was an active member of the arts club, where he enjoyed reading, writing poems and drawing cartoons, especially satirical ones. But as Moe Thee Zun, a close friend and fellow activist, recalled, “Our conversations went beyond the usual topics of poems and cartoons, and we began to talk about politics and the country’s future.”

In a country where student unions were banned by law, Min Ko Naing and his friends were forced to discuss their political views in secrecy. As the first signs of serious public unrest in Burma began to appear in 1985, the year Ne Win’s Burmese Socialist Program Party demonetized the 100-kyat note, Min Ko Naing and his close colleagues secretly established an underground student union in anticipation of a political uprising.

Min Ko Naing’s creative character provided him with the means to express his views publicly through participation in Than Gyat, a traditional contest held during the Burmese New Year in April. This contest involves the performance of songs and plays by colorfully dressed troupes.

Traditionally, the performers parodied those in power, but under Ne Win, direct criticism of the government was forbidden. When Min Ko Naing and his friends started their own troupe in 1985, however, they attempted to revive the original spirit of Than Gyat. Calling themselves “Goat Mouth and All-Seeing Eye,” they made jokes at the expense of Ne Win’s regime and highlighted the lack of freedom and democracy in Burma, as well as the corruption among its officials.

Min Ko Naing’s Than Gyat troupe proved to be very popular with its audiences of ordinary Burmese. It also attracted the attention of the dreaded Military Intelligence Services (MIS), whose agents were seen following them one night after a performance.

But, convinced that the time would soon be ripe for political change, Min Ko Naing and his friends pursued their study of the country’s deteriorating political, social and economic conditions, and planned to start apolitical movement in the near future.

They managed to conceal these activities from the watchful eyes of the MIS until 1988. The democracy movement in 1988 Dissatisfaction with Ne Win’s regime came to a head in March 1988, when university students in Rangoon started protesting against the government’s brutal killing of some students from the Rangoon Institute of Technology (RIT).

On March 16, 1988, about 3,000 students came to listen to “a thin, dark-skinned young man with curly hair, a slight moustache and beard who was giving anti-government speeches at Taung Ngu dormitory in the RASU campus,” recalled another prominent activist.

Min Ko Naing called on students to speak out against the government’s mistreatment. He also told them about the history of student movements in Burma, and the role they played in national politics, something the military government tried to play down in their textbooks.

It was Min Ko Naing’s first public speech. The students then marched to the Convocation Hall where he and other student leaders gave more speeches. He told his audience about the fate of earlier students’ movements that had challenged the present regime: “Our brothers in the past sacrificed to topple this military dictatorship but their demands were only met with violence, bullets and killing.”

When the speeches had ended, the students left the RASU campus to join a small demonstration at RIT. They soon found themselves facing a barricade of barbed wire manned by dozens of soldiers on the Prome Road. Confronted with this show of force, Min Ko Naing asked the students to sing the national anthem and salute Burma’s independence heroes, including Gen Aung San, founder of the Burmese army. Then they shouted, “The peoples’ soldiers are our soldiers.”

Min Ko Naing and two other students then went to negotiate with the army officer in charge. Stressing the importance of good relations between the army and the people, he asked the officer to let them pass.

The officer refused, insisting that he had to follow orders from his superiors, but Min Ko Naing’s words seemed to have had some effect. After hearing him speak the soldiers lowered their guns and the tension eased.

Suddenly, however, hundreds of riot police rushed in from behind and, without warning, started beating the students. Some tried to escape their attackers by fleeing to nearby Inya Lake, where many drowned. Those who couldn’t escape were severely beaten and taken to Insein prison.

After this, the government closed down the universities and colleges. Min Ko Naing and his fellow student activists went into hiding to continue their activities. When the universities and colleges were reopened in June, the activists immediately began distributing anti-government leaflets urging students to join the student movement.

News of young students being tortured in Insein prison spread all over the country, but on the campuses, the protests continued and the student movement was gaining momentum.
On June 12, 1988, a crowd of students formed on the RASU campus to look at copies of a poster drawn by Min Ko Naing which depicted a girl being beaten by soldiers near Inya Lake. The caption below the drawing said: “Don’t forget March 16th. If we are cowed into submission and fail to rise up this time, then the country will be ruled by even more repressive rulers in the future.”

Several students were moved to speak out, demanding the release of student activists and the reinstatement of students who had been expelled from universities for political reasons.

Within a week the government closed all universities and colleges again. To everyone’s surprise, Ne Win stepped down the following month. His loyal supporter, Gen Sein Lwin, replaced him as president of Burma, and student activists were released from prison. However, as Sein Lwin was widely disliked, fresh protests broke out in cities and provincial towns.

A day after the detained students were set free, on July 8, Min Ko Naing and his fellow students issued a statement saying “We shouldn’t be swayed by the release of our fellow students. We will continue to fight.”

It was on this occasion, in fact, that Paw Oo Tun officially became known as Min Ko Naing, “Conqueror of Kings.”

The statement was also significant for another reason. It had been issued under the name of the All Burma Federation of Students’ Unions (ABFSU), an organization that had played an important role in the struggle against colonial rule.

Many of its early leaders were later recognized as independence heroes and statesmen, but when Ne Win came into power in 1962, he brutally repressed the organization and had the historic Students’ Union building demolished.

The reemergence of the ABFSU was undoubtedly seen as a formidable challenge to the Ne Win government. 8-8-88 The ABFSU released a series of statements signed by Min Ko Naing in the following weeks. By far the most important was the one calling for a general strike on August 8, the date that would always be remembered as the start of the 8-8-88 pro-democracy movement.

On August 8, 1988, despite the heavy presence of troops, intimidation and threats, thousands of people took to the streets. Anti-government demonstrations broke out simultaneously in towns and cities all over the country.

In Rangoon, workers, monks, and students marched to the center of the city to join the protests.

In the afternoon, a large crowd gathered to listen to Min Ko Naing give a speech in front of the US embassy.

“We, the people of Burma, have had to live without human dignity for 26 years under an oppressive rule. We must end dictatorial rule in our country. Only people power can bring down our repressive rulers,” he told the crowd.

He concluded his speech by saying, “If we want to enjoy the same rights as people in other countries, we have to be disciplined, united and brave enough to stand up to the dictators. Let’s express our sufferings and demands. Nothing is going to stop us from achieving peace and justice in our country.”

That night, the army opened fire on demonstrators gathered in front of Rangoon’s City Hall. Hundreds of people were gunned down. Troops were given the same orders in the provinces, where hundreds more died.

The violence continued the next day, as crowds from around Rangoon converged to form huge masses of humanity demanding change. Once again, the soldiers opened fire, killing hundreds of peaceful demonstrators.

On August 23, Min Ko Naing spoke to a large audience in front of Rangoon General Hospital, site of many recent killings. He was joined by Moe Thee Zun and Tin Oo, a former defense minister now opposition leader, who would later become a chairman of the NLD. Once again,

Min Ko Naing called on people to be strong: “World history has shown that people with strong spirit, unity, courage and discipline can bring down authoritarian governments. We believe in people power. Without your participation, we can achieve nothing.”

On August 26, Min Ko Naing and other activists arranged for students in Rangoon to listen to Aung San Suu Kyi’s first public speech. Several hundred thousand people went to Shwedagon Pagoda, Burma’s most famous sacred shrine, to hear her speak.

On August 28, Burma’s first student congress in 26 years was held on the RASU campus. Thousands of students, veteran politicians and former student activists from the 1960s came to celebrate the official reestablishment of the ABFSU, with Min Ko Naing as its leader.

Prominent leaders, including Aung San Suu Kyi, sent congratulatory messages. At the students’ conference, Min Ko Naing read one of his poems, entitled “Faith,” in which he promised that he would be faithful and committed to the people’s struggle, which he regarded as a fight for the truth.

He took an oath that out of respect for those who had died before him, he would continue the fight until democracy and human rights were restored. When he finished, the crowd applauded ecstatically.

At that time, transportation and communication had come to a complete halt, and the MIS was trying to create anarchy by releasing criminals from the prisons.

The various pro-democracy groups that had begun to form organizing centers around government buildings such as police stations, schools, and universities dealt with this situation in a very orderly manner. They distributed rice to those in need and provided small amounts of money to the poor and to released prisoners to prevent looting.

When mobs gathered to attack looters or suspected informers, members of the ABFSU always arrived to calm down and disperse the crowd. The ABFSU also reorganized communications and transportation and encouraged people to form local security teams together with monks and other respectable people.

Min Ko Naing met with US congressman Stephen J. Solarz, who was visiting Burma to meet with top political leaders in order to assess the situation.

Min Ko Naing told Solarz that the military had not responded to the people’s demand for an interim government, and that whether the situation became explosive or not depended on the military. On September 18, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) was formed following another bloody crackdown.

A curfew was imposed and gatherings of more than five people were declared illegal. However, the junta promised that it would only stay in power until multi-party elections could be held. Min Ko Naing did not dare show himself in public for several months.

Then, in December 1988, Daw Khin Kyi, the mother of Aung San Suu Kyi, passed away and about 200,000 people gathered to pay their last respects.

Despite the dignified solemnity of the occasion, military trucks appeared on the Prome Road to block the procession following Daw Khin Kyi’s coffin. Min Ko Naing suddenly appeared in the middle of the crowd, and appealed to the troops to let the people pass. Finally, the troops withdrew.

Min Ko Naing’s last public speech was given exactly one year after his first, on March 16, 1989. Thousands had gathered in the compound of Aung San Suu Kyi’s house to mark the first anniversary of the student massacre that ignited nationwide protests.

Min Ko Naing’s speech criticized Ne Win and the junta for that massacre and all the others that were to follow in 1988. On March 23, 1989, Min Ko Naing was arrested, amidst tightened security throughout Rangoon in anticipation of protests to mark Armed Forces Day on March 27. It was an important signal to other leaders that nobody was safe from
arrest and imprisonment.

Within days, Aung San Suu Kyi and several others were also arrested. Min Ko Naing was charged under section 5 (j) of the 1950 Emergency Provisions Act for having delivered anti-government speeches and agitating unrest. For this, he was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in solitary confinement.

While other political prisoners have received amnesties and are allowed to stay in group cells and receive regular family visits, Min Ko Naing has been kept isolated and without any reduction of his sentence.

There are doubts about how well Min Ko Naing has been holding up in prison. There have been confirmed reports of torture, but according to former UN Human Rights Investigator Yozo Yokota, who was permitted to meet Min Ko Naing in 1995 after repeated requests, the student leader was nervous and thin but otherwise in good health.

An earlier visit by US congressman Bill Richardson, in February 1994, was also encouraging. Through the congressman, he conveyed a simple message to his friends: “Don’t give up.”

A year later, fellow prisoner Win Htein, Aung San Suu Kyi’s personal assistant, reported when he was released that Min Ko Naing’s fighting spirit was still strong. Reports in the past have stated that he is suffering from a gastric ulcer.

His friends were also concerned that his incredibly long period of solitary confinement must be taking a toll on his state of mind. While Min Ko Naing’s fate is uncertain, and his destiny as a “conqueror of kings” remains unfulfilled, his importance as an inspiration to others who continue the fight to bring democracy to Burma is beyond doubt.

In a rare interview with Asiaweek magazine in 1988, Min Ko Naing said: “I’ll never die. Physically I might be dead, but many more min ko naing will appear to take my place. As you
know, Min Ko Naing can only conquer a bad king. If the ruler is good, we will carry him on our shoulders.”

The Irrawaddy – When a Multi-ethnic Nation Ignores Ethnic Rights
By SAW YAN NAING Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Tuesday that Burmese government forces have committed serious abuses against ethnic Kachin civilians since renewed fighting broke out in the northern state in June.

The international rights group estimated that some 30,000 civilians in Kachin State have been displaced by the conflict.

The Burmese government armed forces have been responsible for killings and attacks on civilians, using forced labor, and pillaging villages, said the HRW statement.

“Renewed fighting in Kachin State has meant renewed abuses by the Burmese army against Kachin villagers,” said Elaine Pearson, the deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Tens of thousands of people have fled through the mountains and jungle at the height of the rainy season, driven away by fear of army attacks.”

The HRW statement backs up a claim made by the US special envoy to Burma, Derek Mitchell, who on Monday stated that the Burmese government has not made comparable progress in its relations with ethnic minorities in the north and east of Burma as it has with the democratic opposition—in particular noting that Naypyidaw had held high-level talks with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Mitchell also noted what he referred to as credible reports of continued human rights abuses, including violence against minority women and children.

“We made it very clear that we [the US] could not have a transformed relationship as long as these abuses and credible reports of abuses occur,” said Mitchell.

The criticisms come at a time when Naypyidaw has enjoyed much high acclaim following a series of moves viewed by Burmese and the international community at large as being progressive reforms, most notably the easing of censorship on the Burmese media, the suspension of the controversial Myitsone Dam project, and the release of 200 political prisoners.

The statements by Mitchell and by the HRW highlight growing concern that although reforms have been enacted in Rangoon and Naypyidaw, many observers see the government as being unable or unwilling to tackle issues in the ethnic areas.

Between 35 and 40 percent of Burma’s 55-million population is non-Burman, and although many of the country’s ethnic minorities have integrated into Burmese society over the years, many millions continue to live in the mountainous jungle that forms a natural horseshoe around the Burmese plains.

Ethnic minority groups include the Karen, the Shan, the Karenni, the Kachin, the Mon, the Chin and the Arakan, almost all of which have fought against the central government for independence or autonomy for decades.

Over the past 20 years, many ethnic armies have signed ceasefire agreements with the Burmese government, but conflicts have continued, exacerbated by overland deals with Burma’s neighbors, especially China and Thailand, and a flurry of investment in natural resources within ethnic minority areas.

Over the years, the Burmese army has repeatedly been accused of human rights abuses in ethnic areas, with several reports indicating that the abuses may be systemic, and indicative of war crimes or crimes against humanity.

In a letter to the editor of The New York Times on Oct. 6, Myra Dahgaypaw, an ethnic Karen woman wrote: “Burmese soldiers killed my parents, my brother and sister, and my uncle after they forced him to watch them rape his wife.

“If soldiers are able to use forced labor, sexual violence, forced relocation and other abuses as mechanisms of domination, why should [US] President Obama reward President Thein Sein?”

Her comment was written in response to an article titled, “In Myanmar, Seize the Moment,” written by a well-known Burmese historian, Thant Myint-U.

In his article, the author urged the US president to publicly support the “reforms” that are taking place in Burma.

He also wrote that Thein Sein has spoken forcefully of combating poverty, fighting corruption, ending the country’s multiple armed conflicts, and working for political reconciliation.

But despite the government’s recent approval of a “peacemaking committee” in parliament to deal with the issues surrounding the ongoing ethnic conflicts, observers say no tangible
progress has been made—in fact, hostilities have escalated in some areas.

Brig-Gen Johnny, the commander of the rebel Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) Brigade 7, told The Irrawaddy that fighting—whether simple exchanges of gunfire or intense hostilities resulting in many casualties—break out almost every day in Karen State even though the government has declared its intention to seek a peace deal with armed ethnic groups.

“The release of more than 200 political prisoners, the suspension of the Myitsone dam, the establishment of a peacemaking committee—these steps are all good news,” said Johnny.

“But these developments will not help our people and our soldiers in their daily fight for survival while government troops move into frontier areas.”

With the exception of two ethnic rebel armies—the 20,000-strong United Wa State Army and its ally, the National Democratic Alliance Army, which are currently observing a ceasefire—no tangible results have come from negotiations with the other ethnic groups.

The New Mon State Party met government representatives recently in Ye Township, but the meeting concluded without an agreement.

Last Thursday, government troops began an assault on Kachin Independence Army (KIA) positions in Kachin and Shan states. The KIA leaders said they believe that the attacks are aimed at seizing KIA strongholds and military bases.

KIA spokesman La Nan said that at least 82 armed clashes have broken out since June, when fighting took place near hydropower plants in Bhamo Township in Kachin State. Seventeen of the clashes have broken out this month alone, he said.

Aye Thar Aung, a prominent Arakanese politician based in Rangoon, said that although he welcomed the steps taken by the new government, he was still concerned with the ethnic conflict issues.

“We are very concerned when we hear the government authorities saying they are making peace with the Wa, but then increase their military efforts against the Kachin,” he said.

“To build a developed country, peace is needed. The civil war needs to come to an end.

“There can be no peace in a multi-ethnic nation that ignores the fundamental rights of its ethnic minorities,” he added.

London’s ‘dancing activist’ smashes world record to help Burma
Tuesday, 18 October 2011 15:49 Thea Forbes

Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – British schoolteacher Ben Hammond has broken the Guinness world record for dancing continuously to raise funds for Burma.

Hammond broke the world record by dancing for 136 hours, or five consecutive days, beside the Tower Bridge in London last week. He was able to rest for 20 minutes every four hours, giving him enough time to change his dancing attire and disco on.

He started his five-day dance marathon at 2 a.m. on October 11, and was joined by various dance groups and solo performers who came to show their support for his campaign throughout the five days. He finished on Sunday with hundreds of supporters who gathered to dance him to victory.

The popular European song, “The Final Countdown,” played as he broke the record, London24 reported.

After breaking the world record, Hammond told London24, “I am a bit knackered, but it’s all been worth it. The crowds and my wonderful team helped me through it. I’ve been told that people were watching our live Internet stream all over the world, including in a Burmese refugee camp, which makes it all the more worthwhile.”

The breaking of the dancing world record was Hammond’s grand finale to his Free to Dance campaign. Throughout the campaign the 33-year-old has been dancing at various events throughout the year in a bid to raise awareness and money to fund his charity, LearnBurma.

LearnBurma is a project he developed that aims to educate people about the situation in Burma, and to link schools in the UK and Burma.

By striving to build awareness and skills among young people in the UK, and eventually around the world, Hammond said he hopes LearnBurma will help promote change and freedom in Burma.

Throughout the year, he has led a silent disco through London, and became the first person to dance the London marathon, and he danced for 72 hours through the Glastonbury Festival.

“My dancing has shown the world that together we can be Free to Dance!” Hammond said.

LearnBurma is due to be in UK schools in 2012.

India and Burma argue over border insurgent issues
Monday, 17 October 2011 21:26 Ko Pauk

New Delhi (Mizzima) – The Burmese government has asked India to provide satellite imagery of anti-Indian insurgent military camps in order to wage military operations, and India has said that it had no truck with the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), an anti-Burmese government ethnic armed group.

During the four-day visit of a Burmese delegation led by President Thein Sein to India recently, Lieutenant General Hla Htay Win of the office of the commander-in-chief met with the Indian national security advisor Shiv Shanker Menon in New Delhi, the Hindustan Times reported on Sunday.

During the visit, which ended on Saturday, border security affairs was a main topic.

Indian officials denied that it had dropped food supplies to the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) via helicopters, and that KIA troops were based in the Tirap-Changlang area in India.

Recently, Indian media reported that Indian Maoist rebels, popularly known as Naxalites, had a plan to open training camps inside Burmese territory, according to documents and maps seized by Indian police. Although Burma claims that it has taken actions against the anti-Indian insurgents, India has asked for proof.

At the end of the state visit, the Indian government announced a US$ 500 million credit line to Burma for developmental projects including irrigation projects in the border area.

Recently, Indian media reported that ULFA Commander-in-Chief Paresh Baruah, who heads an insurgent group, had been injured in a military operation launched by the Burmese army in early September.

On the other hand, a source close to Indian national security said that the Burmese army may have prearranged agreements with anti-India insurgents, because the insurgents usually evade Burmese army military operations, and the army usually attacks the insurgent’s empty bases. According to the source, the Burmese army frequently launches fake offensives against anti-Indian insurgents before quarterly border meetings between India and Burma.

According to Indian government sources, the northeast insurgent group NSCN-(K) is located in Taga, PLA and ULFA rebel camps spread over 20 to 30 kilometres, and PLA and UNLA rebels are based across the north and south of the Moreh border in Manipur.

Presently, Indian border post commanders meet their Burmese counterparts monthly; sector or division commanders meet four times a year; and Home Affairs Ministry officials meet once every six months.

India has proposed the enhancement of inter-army contacts on the Indo-Burmese border, and it wants commanders of both sides to meet twice a year.

When former junta Senior-General Than Shwe visited India last year, Burmese and Indian leaders agreed to promote joint military operations along the Indo-Burmese border. The recent discussions between the two countries are based on the previous agreement between the former Burmese junta and India.

Kachin NGO questions Myitsone Dam suspension
Monday, 17 October 2011 19:54 Thea Forbes

Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – There is “no evidence on the ground that the [Myitsone] dam project has indeed been suspended,” the Kachin Development Networking Group (KDNG) said in a statement released on Friday.

“Despite the announcement from Burma’s president, there has been no confirmation from the project manager, China Power Investment Corporation (CPI),” said the press statement.

The KDNG said that until the CPI confirms the announcement of the suspension of the Myitsone Dam project and six other planned hydropower projects, the projects could “go ahead at any time.”

The statement followed President Thein Sein’s announcement of the suspension of construction on the Myitsone Dam Project at the confluence of the Irrawaddy River. Villagers, who have been removed from the area, are still “living in a state of uncertainty and fear,” the statement said.

According to the KDNG, villagers who have been forced to move from the construction areas and are living in relocation camps have reported that they have seen workers continuing to operate at the site. There are two relocation camps where about 1,000 people are situated, Ah Nan, a KDNG spokesperson, told Mizzima.

On other environmental issues, destructive mining activities still continue in the area, the KDNG reported. “Gold mining and logging that are also destroying the Myitsone and the Irrawaddy rivers are actively going on at the Myitsone and upstream of Myitsone. If the dams are really stopped, all these destructive activities should stop immediately,” a villager at the dam site told KDNG.

Land confiscation and forced eviction for construction projects is rife in Burma. Ah Nan told Mizzima on Monday that KDNG had obtained a letter written on October 5 that had been sent to villagers living around the gold mining site, ordering them to vacate the area by October 10.

The letter, sent by Nyein Tun Kyaw, a government official in Myitkyina Township, said that all persons except personnel from the Hka Ka Bo Mining Co. Ltd in Tan Pha Ye village had to leave. It said that any mining performed by persons other than from the Hka Ka Bo company was illegal, and “violators will be punished in accordance with existing laws.” The KDNG said that traditional gold mining has taken place in the area for years.

After the dam plans were announced, mining and logging concessions were granted in order to clear out the dam site. Large-scale gold mining at the site began in 2010, leaving toxic mercury and cyanide that are used in the mining process to be dumped without regulation into the rivers, the KDNG said. An Nan told Mizzima that the Hka Ka Bo Mining Company Limited and the government’s mining ministry no.2 had been given joint venture rights to mine concessions at the dam site.

On September 30, in response to President Thein Sein’s announcement of a moratorium on construction, the activist group Burma Rivers Network said, “Until the Chinese project holders publicly declare their cancellation of the Myitsone Dam and pull out from the dam site, we must assume the project is going ahead.”

The KDNG report released on Friday features photographs taken since the announcement of work continuing in progress on the Myitsone Dam project. One photo taken on Friday, shows Chinese workers downstream from the dam site taking land surveys between Lahpye and Tawngban villages. They have also documented active construction using heavy machinery since September 30.

Most Chinese workers had already left the site before September 30, but this did not reflect a genuine halt on construction, but was “most likely due to the rainy season conditions.” A promotional video produced by Sinohydro (a Chinese state-owned hydroelectric power and construction company hired by CPI to build the dam) stated that workers around the dam site could only work for seven months in a year.

“The CPI staff told us they would work with the Burmese government and not to worry for our jobs. He told us, please wait at the project site; after rainy season, we will continue the project, so don’t take back the trucks and equipment,” an Asia World employee told KDNG.

Asia World is a Burmese conglomerate that partnered with Burma’s state power utility Myanma Electric Power Enterprise (MEPE) and Chinese state-owned electrical company China Power Investment Corporation (CPI) on the dam project.

Thein Sein’s move to suspend the project until 2016 shocked China. CPI chairman Lu Qizhou called the move “bewildering.” Lu Qizhou told Xinhua, a Chinese news agency, on October 3, “In February this year, Burma’s prime minister urged us to accelerate the construction when he inspected the project site, so the sudden proposal of suspension now is very bewildering. If suspension means a construction halt, then it will lead to a series of legal issues.”

He also remarked that, “I am totally astonished to hear the news of suspending this project. Under the announcement of halting this project, we must stop all of our construction work there.”

Rebounding from the decision to suspend the project, Naypyitaw then moved to presumably secure ties and quell China’s concerns, by sending Burmese Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin to visit Beijing on October 10. It was reported that he went to discuss Naypyitaw’s decision to suspend the project and come to an agreeable arrangement for both parties. According to Xinhua, Wunna Maung Lwin met with Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping and Chinese Foreign Minister Yan Jiechi during his visit, and “pledged to work towards the mutual benefit of the two countries.”

AFP quoted the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Liu Weiman, who said the meeting had been arranged “to handle this project in the proper way and continue to move forward with bilateral relations, which are very important to us.”

It was reported that Naypyitaw would compensate China for the halt of the Myitsone project. In an interview with the Irrawaddy, presidential advisor Dr Nay Zin Latt told the news group that Burma might have to compensate China in the form of granting economic concessions. “I don’t think we have to pay them back in the form of billions of dollars…Using revenues from other sources, not only from Myitsone, we can repay the loan. For example, we can pay back using revenues from the gas pipeline to China.”

The sale of gas from the Shwe gas pipeline project is set to be operational in 2013, and is estimated will earn Naypyitaw US$ 29 billion in revenues over the next 30 years.

In the Friday statement, KDNG reported that construction on the main dam has not yet begun, but that several diversion tunnels and containment walls surrounding the sites have been completed. A supply road, railway, and a 600 metre long suspension bridge south of the dam site that will link the project supply headquarters in Tengchong, China, to the construction site, are nearly completed.

KDNG and other environmental and campaign groups have been urging the cancellation of all seven hydropower dams planned by China.
“All of these dams will export electricity to China and will have the same negative impacts as the Myitsone dam. Building these mega dams will cause irreparable environmental destruction, unpredictable water surges and shortages, and inflict social and economic damage to the millions who depend on the Irrawaddy. Thousands of Kachin villagers will also be forced to relocate,” said the KDNG statement.

DVB News – India flexes diplomatic, military muscle
By JOSEPH ALLCHIN
Published: 18 October 2011

India has made serious moves to upgrade its strategic and economic positions in Burma and in the troubled tri-border area between Burma, India and China following President Thein Sein’s visit to the world’s largest democracy.

While the most public declarations to come out of the meeting surrounded the extension of $US500 million worth of credit to Burma from the Indians, Thein Sein also made deals with New Delhi on agricultural cooperation, taking the opportunity to pose next to a tractor.

Not all is calm in that relationship, however. Both sides have alleged one another of doing little to clear their territory of respective anti-government groups, with the Burmese going so far as to accuse the Indians of aiding the rebel Kachin Independence Army (KIA), whom Naypyidaw is currently fighting.

Moreover, alarm at recent reports that India is to deploy Brahmos cruise missiles to Arunachal Pradesh will do little to quell wider regional tensions. The far northestern state is claimed by China, and shares a border with Burma’s northern Kachin state where Indian rebels are believed to be sheltering.

The alleged deployment of missiles is, according to regional expert Bertil Lintner, part of a broader Indian arming of the area, with the addition of landing strips and radar. The Bhramos’ 290 kilometre range would put the Indian’s within striking distance of Lhasa in Tibet, where the Chinese are said to have a considerable arsenal.

Landing capabilities would enable the swifter mobilisation of troops to the troubled northeastern region, while better signal capabilities would improve surveillance in the remote region. This was part of what the Indian Express newspaper heralded as one of the largest single increases in Indian military spending, and would be the first missile battalion on the China border. An additional 89,000 troops would also be deployed because of “urgency showed by the army,” said the Express.

The issue of Indian rebels taking shelter in Burma was inevitably on the agenda, with more evidence that India is supplying artillery to the Burmese military in order to fight groups like United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) who are sheltering along the Kachin border.

Lintner says he was specifically told that this sale of weapons to Burma had taken place by Indian army personnel. Following Thein Sein’s visit, the Hindustan Times reported that India had “kept options open to supply arms and gunboats” to the Burmese.

This adds to plans by the Indians to hold more regular meetings with their Burmese counterparts. While the Burmese have been more than happy to balance out their dependence on China as a foreign patron, commentators have questioned the government’s commitment to fighting Indian insurgents, with Lintner describing alleged recent Burmese offensives against these rebels as “phantom operations.”

Perhaps in a retaliatory gesture aimed at fending off Indian accusations of Burmese inaction over rebel groups, the Burmese allegedly accused the Indians of supplying the KIA with
food drops from helicopters. James Lung Dao, of the KIA’s political wing, the Kachin Independence Organisation, said he could not “verify” the reports but added that the group had no diplomatic ties with India and had no affiliations to any other armed groups.

As a result, the Burmese allegedly asked for satellite imagery of the bases within its border during Thein Sein’s trip. Both the ULFA and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) from Manipur are believed to have a presence in Burma, with the latter furthermore rumoured to have been trained by the Chinese in Lhasa. The PLA are on their part are alleged to have trained Indian Maoist rebels in Burma.

Both outfits were mentioned in a similar leaked Indian memo that claimed they have been visited by Chinese and Pakistani agents.

Sensational releases such as this were viewed with suspicion, given their timing just prior to Thein Sein’s visit. Some observers saw the leaks as an attempt to put pressure on the Burmese president.

India for its part has also been trying to mimic China’s tactic of establishing strategic presences in key countries ringing their adversary. This has specifically included Vietnam who posses their own grievances and fears regarding China, particularly over disputed maritime boundaries in the South China Sea. The growing relationship between India and Vietnam will likely include joint navy patrols and potentially the transfer of Bhramos missiles to Vietnam. India has further been working on relations with Indonesia and Mongolia, both key nations surrounding China.

The tri-border region sees Burma in a strategic position, although questions are asked of its inability to fully appease either of its giant neighbours.

DVB News – Escalating Kachin war carries heavy toll
Published: 18 October 2011

After a brief lull in fighting in Kachin state, battles have intensified in the past few weeks and the number of clashes breaking out between Kachin rebels and the Burmese army has gone up nearly two-fold.

The spokesperson for the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), La Nan, told DVB that fighting is “getting more common now – according to our statistics, there were 86 clashes in September and we have already had 84 clashes so far between 1 and 16 October”.

One area that has seen intense fighting in recent days is the region outside of Waingmaw township where the KIA’s Soe Moe Hill base is located. La Nan said fighting close to the strategically important base, which the Burmese are attempting to capture, has raged for four days.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch released a statement today warning that the human cost of the fighting in Kachin state since June has been heavy: “Burmese armed forces have been responsible for killings and attacks on civilians, using forced labor, and pillaging villages, which has resulted in the displacement of an estimated 30,000 Kachin civilians,” it said.

La Nan said that thousands of refugees were unable to return to their homes due to the lingering presence of Burmese troops in villages that have been ransacked and emptied. Yesterday morning a number of houses in Namsamyang village were razed.

One of the focal points of the fighting has been Momauk township in southern Kachin state, close to the Taping dam project. A Burmese assault on a KIA base near Taping dam broke a 17-year ceasefire between the two sides and triggered the current conflict.

Reports received by DVB yesterday claim around 600 civilians, including students, were stranded in Lawtdan village near to Momauk after gun battles erupted close to the village.

A resident of Lweje town east of Momauk warned that those trapped could be “in deep trouble” if either side starts firing artillery. He said the civilians could not return to Lweje because a nearby Burmese checkpoint was refusing to let them pass.

DVB cannot however confirm those reports.

The exoduses that followed the outbreak of fighting pushed thousands over the border into China, and many more to the KIA headquarters in Laiza. Human Rights Watch said that several thousand of those forced to flee their homes hid in the jungle, sometimes up to a month. Others fell into the hands of the Burmese:

“Some described being held by Burmese soldiers, who interrogated them harshly for information about the KIA, including by threatening to kill them. Interrogations were particularly menacing for villagers who spoke Kachin dialects and very little Burmese.”

Various attempts between the government and KIA to begin negotiations towards an end to the fighting have failed. The seemingly intractable nature of the conflict “[highlights] the importance of establishing a United Nations commission of inquiry into alleged violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law in Burma,” HRW said.

The group’s deputy Asia director Elaine Pearson added: “Pronouncements of political reform in Burma do not seem to have reached the army in Kachin state. Ongoing abuses starkly demonstrate that until real steps are taken towards accountability, including an international commission of inquiry, minorities such as the Kachin will be [at] grave risk.”