Burma Update

BangkokPost: 29 may 2007

Hamburg (dpa) - Foreign ministers from Asia and Europe called Tuesday on Burma to release Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace laureate who was told last week she faced a further year under house arrest.

Diplomats said the final statement from the meeting in Hamburg, Germany of 16 Asian and 27 European Union ministers or their deputies would refer to "a frank exchange of views" on Burma.

Nyan Win, foreign minister of Burma, was among those at the conference table. The decision by Rangoon on Friday to extend Suu Kyi's arrest was seen by many European diplomats as an affront.

A draft final statement in Hamburg appealed for an "early lifting of restrictions placed on political parties and the early release of those under detention including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi."

The final statement was also expected to express "deep concern on the lack of tangible progress in the declared transition towards a civilian and democratic government" in Burma.

The ministers would encourage Burma "to make greater progress towards national reconciliation as well as to involve constructively all political parties and ethnic groups in an inclusive dialogue," the diplomats said.

Suu Kyi, 61, has spent almost 12 of the past 17 years under house arrest at her family compound in Rangoon. Sunday marked the fourth anniversary of her most recent term of detention.

BangkokPost: 28 may 2007
ACHARA ASHAYAGACHAT and AFP

The government yesterday said it was ''disappointed'' with Burma's decision to extend the house arrest of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Foreign ministry deputy spokesman Piriya Khempon said Thailand had called on military-ruled Burma to lift restrictions on Mrs Suu Kyi, who has spent most of the last 17 years in detention.

"Thailand was disappointed with the decision of the Burma government to extend Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest," he said.

The foreign ministry said in its statement that the release of the democracy icon would have ensured ''inclusiveness in the national reconciliation process and democratisation of Burma''.

The Nobel peace laureate must spend another year under house arrest at her Rangoon lakeside home after police sources confirmed on Friday that military rulers had ordered the move.

Diplomatic sources said United Nations special envoy Ibrahim Gambari will visit Thailand and Burma next month in a bid to improve the situation in Burma.

Mr Gambari, re-assigned by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon as his special adviser, will visit Burma and Bangkok before July, when Asean foreign ministers will hold their annual meeting and talks with dialogue partners including the US and the European Union. Mr Gambari has made two visits to Burma to talk with government officials, opposition leaders including Mrs Suu Kyi and ethnic groups.

But Sann Aung, an exiled member of the National League for Democracy (NLD), told the Bangkok Post that he did not expect tangible results from Mr Gambari's visit and felt Bangkok could play a more constructive role in helping to solve problems in Burma.

BangkokPost: 27 May 2007

Rangoon (dpa) - Pro-junta toughs on Sunday harassed members of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party who gathered to commemorate the 17th anniversary of their victory at the polls and to call for the release of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Sunday marked two anniversaries for the country's stifled struggle for democracy. On May 27, 1990, Burma held a general election which Suu Kyi's NLD party won by a landslide. The ruling military has blocked them from power ever since.

Sunday also commemorated Suu Kyi's fourth year under house arrest at her family-owned compound in Rangoon. On Friday the military extended her detention by another year, brushing off international appeals that she be released.

Braving pro-government toughs who attempted to block their way, NLD executives and followers met at their headquarters in Rangoon Sunday afternoon to commemorate the two anniversaries.

NLD Secretary Lwin called on the junta to recognize the 1990 polls results and "implement the wish of the people."

He also called for the immediate release of Suu Kyi and Tin Oo, vice chairman of the NLD who has also been under house arrest for the past four years, as well as other political prisoners.

The State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as the junta has styled itself, no longer recognizes the results of the 1990 election and does not allow the NLD victors MP status.

The NLD ceremony was attended by about 600 people, including NLD members, support groups such as the 88 Generation Students, and diplomats from the US, French, Australian, German and British embassies.

Pro-government toughs attempted to stop attendees from joining the event and then shouted insults at the NLD supporters when they left the meeting.

TheNation: 27 May 2007



RANGOON - Some 200 pro-democracy activists gathered in Rangoon on Sunday to mark the 1990 election victory in Burma of Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition party, as outrage grew over the extention of her house arrest.

Members of the National League for Democracy (NLD), some wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the face of the Nobel peace laureate, gathered at party headquarters, not far from the lakeside home of the democracy icon.

Aung San Suu Kyi was on Friday informed that she would spend yet another year confined to her house, which police barricaded with barbed wire late Saturday, witnesses said.

On May 27, 1990, the NLD won elections here by a huge majority, but the country's military rulers never allowed them to take power, and Aung San Suu Kyi has since spent most of the last 17 years in detention.

One activist, Htay Kywt, told AFP that Aung San Suu Kyi's supporters would hold a ceremony marking the election victory at midday (0530 GMT), before heading to a Rangoon temple to pray for their leader's release.

"We will go to Shwedagon pagoda to pray for Daw Suu's (Aung San Suu Kyi's) freedom," Htay Kywt said.

"We will pass through any barrier," he added.

About 50 plainclothes police stood guard at NLD headquarters, many taking photographs and videos of the activists, witnesses told AFP.

At least 60 pro-democracy activists have been arrested in the past two weeks as they went to pagodas to pray for Aung San Suu Kyi's release, with 51 people still in custody.

Britain said Saturday it was deeply saddened by the extension of Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest, joining the chorus of condemnation from the United States, the European Union and the United Nations.

Neighbouring Thailand said Sunday it was "disappointed" by the extension.

Agence France-Presse

TheNation EDITORIAL: 27 MaY 2007


Burmese junta's satest extension of the detention of Nobel Peace laureate could prove very damaging to Asean

Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has now been spent nearly 12 years in incarceration under Burma's military. Ahead of the expiry of her latest one-year period of detention on Saturday nearly 60 current and former leaders around the world joined hands to press for her release from house arrest. But, as expected, the military junta in Burma decided to extend her detention for another year out of fear that her freedom would threaten the survival of their dictatorial rule.

Asean has become more vocal on the issue lately and has repeatedly urged its member state to set her free. It was rather unusual that the Philippines, speaking on behalf of Asean, was so blunt this time around. In more ways than one, Asean seems to have learnt the lesson that it can no longer remain polite in its dealings with Burma's military leadership without risking the future of the organisation and its reputation.

This year is an auspicious one for Asean as it is celebrates its 40th anniversary in Singapore. The host country has already made efforts to make this occasion special. It has sought the participation of US President George W Bush for an inaugural Asean Plus One summit. If Burma continues to behave intransigently, it is possible that a way out must be found to ensure that the summit with the US will be realised. Burma's level of representation might have to be downgraded.

So far, Rangoon has not shown any interest in the matter - an attitude that does not go well with the spirit of Asean. The wish of the founding fathers of Asean to have all Southeast Asian countries come together under one umbrella has materialised. But the inclusion of Burma has only been problematic in the 10 years since it was admitted unconditionally in 1997.

As long as one the world's most famous political figures remains imprisoned by one its member states, it will be hard for Asean to stand proudly in the international community, especially at the United Nations, where the grouping was made an observer last year. Asean members need to further unify their position and use whatever peer pressure is necessary for positive changes in Burma. Asean members should not wait until the completion of its charter to deal with the Burmese quagmire. Asean leaders must press Burma at the Singapore summit to free Suu Kyi and help open up the country.

At the same time, it is paramount that Asean convince China to exert its influence on Burma. In recent months China has used its considerable diplomatic power in Sudan to ease tension in Darfur. China has political clout that can be used to great advantage for Asean, especially on Burma. Rangoon and Beijing have close relations since the former is dependent on the latter's goodwill. And for decades Beijing has benefited from Burma's strategic location and rich natural resources, much to the chagrin of the international community.

China has said time and time again that it supports Asean's position on Burma. Now, when Asean is urging the junta to free Suu Kyi, Beijing has kept mum. The time has come for both Asean and China to coordinate their efforts to help resolve the impasse in Burma. Now that China has shown international responsibility in Darfur, it should also play the Good Samaritan in Burma.

At the moment, a group of charter drafters is working on the content of an Asean constitution. They are aiming for a charter that will oblige members to follow rules and regulations and thus improve the grouping's efficiency. The Asean charter drafters are mindful of the situation inside Burma and have called for further changes. Indeed, Asean nations want to assist their fellow member to overcome deadlock. The problem is, Rangoon does not trust its peers. Asean knows full well that without a good charter, compliance with the grouping's rules and regulations will follow exactly the same pattern as has been seen in the past four decades of its existence. But then, questions remain about whether even a good charter will be of any use if a member state continues to behave as though it doesn't really belong.

TheNation: 27 May 2007

Thailand's army-installed government on Sunday said it was "disappointed" with neighbouring Burma's decision to extend the house arrest of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Foreign ministry deputy spokesman Piriya Khempon said Thailand had called on military-ruled Burma to lift restrictions on Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent most of the last 17 years in detention.

"Thailand was disappointed with the decision of the Myanmar government to extend Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest," he said.

The foreign ministry said in its statement that the release of the democracy icon would have ensured "inclusiveness in the national reconciliation process and democratization of Myanmar."

The Nobel peace laureate must spend another year under house arrest at her Rangoon lakeside home after police sources confirmed Friday that military rulers had ordered the move.

The extension drew a sharp rebuke from around the world, particularly from the European Union and the United States, Burma's fiercest critics and which currently have economic sanctions against the regime.

But the impact of the sanctions has been weakened as Burma's energy-hungry neighbours such as Thailand, China and India spend billions of dollars for a share of its vast natural resources, which include oil and gas.

Thailand currently imports about 20 per cent of its gas from Burma, and maintains close ties with its neighbour to the west.

Since overthrowing the elected government of Thaksin Shinawatra last September, Thailand's junta has also faced uncomfortable comparisons with the military leaders next door.

But they insist that, unlike in Burma, the country will return swiftly and peacefully to democracy, with elections promised by the end of the year.

Agence France-Presse

The Nation: 26 May 2007
Subhatra Bhumiprabhas

Today marks the fourth anniversary of Aung San Suu Kyi's detention since she was placed under house arrest after her supporters and those of the government clashed at Depayin township in northern Burma.

Ignoring the global call for her release, the Burmese junta continues to hide "The Lady" from the eyes of the world for another year.

"This is a crime, a crime against humanity. I am really concerned for her safety. I hope that there will be some 'brave soldiers' in the Burmese army to stop such crimes and protect her," Hseng Noung of the Shan Women's Action Network said yesterday.

These "brave soldiers", Hseng Noung said, should also engage in a dialogue with the democratic opposition that includes ethnic nationalities to work out a political solution.

The longer the State Peace and Development Council holds absolute power, the cycle of suffering in Burma will continue. It is also about time for the international community to find coordinated approaches to deal with military dictatorship in Burma, she said.

Hseng Noung was speaking from the Thai-Burma border, where many other women from Burma are struggling for peace and democracy to be seen in Burma as well.

"The extension of her detention is unlawful. She shouldn't even be under house arrest in the first place. She is defending human rights, not committing a crime," Nang Yain, secretary-general of the Women's League of Burma, said from the border.

As news of the extension of Suu Kyi's house arrest arrived at the border, Charm Tong also felt she and other women might have to work longer to build peace and open a road to democracy in Burma.

"The Burmese military regime's decision to extend the detention of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi shows their contempt for the rule of law and their unwillingness to end all forms of systematic human-rights violations and oppression of the people and their fear to engage in genuine dialogue with the political opposition, including the ethnic nationalities, to bring about peace and democracy in Burma," said the young Shan activist, who has joined the struggle against the Burmese military regime.

The National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma also warned the junta that its decision to keep the opposition leader under house arrest would give birth to more national heroes and heroines like Suu Kyi, who are dedicated to realising democracy through peaceful means.

In her nearly two decades of fighting for democracy, she has spent more than 11 years sacrificing her personal freedom, but with freedom from fear.

While hundreds of thousands of people fled the military regime to fight from outside the country, Suu Kyi chose to trade off her personal freedom in order to remind the world of the ongoing suffering of people under the Burmese junta.

"I'm not the only woman detainee in Burma; there have been - and there still remain - many other women imprisoned for their political beliefs," she has said.

In her address to the Hague Peace Conference in May 1999, she said a battlefield is not necessarily a place where people are shooting each other.

"In a civil society, where basic human rights are ignored, where the rights of the people are violated every day, it is like a battlefield where lives are lost and people are crippled, because people can lose their lives. And the development of their lives can be crippled by a lack of basic human rights.

"So when we talk about peace, we cannot avoid talking about basic human rights, especially in a country like Burma where people are troubled constantly by a lack of human rights and a lack of justice and a lack of peace."

Suu Kyi has devoted her life to peaceful struggle against the Burmese junta that ignored her landslide victory in the general election of May 1990.

She was first placed under house arrest in 1989 and confined without charges for six years. Her second house arrest began in September 2000 and lasted for 18 months.

Although her freedom is long overdue and no one knows how she leads her life in confinement, she firmly believes that prison walls in Burma cannot prevent political prisoners like her from fading out of the concern of the world, as she wrote in "Letters from Burma" several years ago.

"Prison walls affect those on the outside, too."

BangkokPost EDITORIAL: 26 May 2007

Suu Kyi towers above her jailers
A very special lady will observe her 62nd birthday on June 19. She and the hundreds of thousands who hold her in high regard had hoped it would be a real celebration, but the Burmese military dictatorship last night dashed all hope of that. Instead they decreed that democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi must be imprisoned for a further year in the Rangoon home in which she has already spent most of the past 17 years.

This callous disregard for her rights has not come as a surprise. Over the past few days the authorities have been rounding up people believed to be supporters of the National League for Democracy (NLD), the party she led to a landslide election victory in 1990 but which the military rulers never allowed to take office, jailing her along with hundreds of members of her party.

The renewed crackdown came in the wake of prayers and vigils organised by wellwishers and appeals by world leaders, past and present, to free the 1991 Nobel laureate tomorrow which is the anniversary of her most recent arrest in 2003 and the day set by the junta to review her detention. The round-up was a bad omen and clearly a tightening of the screw by state security enforcers aimed at heading off any unrest or protest, neither of which would have followed a fair and positive decision. Once the first arrest was made, her fate was sealed.

Prolonging Suu Kyi's detention is selfish, unfair and illogical. Surely, the military rulers must realise that by continually courting international condemnation and inflaming public opinion, they are taking a greater risk than that entailed in freeing this courageous lady. Such repressive behaviour has already led to the country being ostracised by much of the world, condemned to economic sanctions by the United States, branded as a serial human rights violator, castigated over its escalating drug trade and regarded as Asean's biggest embarrassment. When a country is publicly derided as a pariah state held hostage to the paranoid delusions of a leadership which has lost contact with reality, it is time to pay urgent attention to mending fences.

If one nation could help persuade the Burmese leadership to be more pragmatic and amenable to reason, it is that country's biggest investor, China. Unlike Asean, which has failed spectacularly with its attempts at constructive engagement and faith in road maps, China does have the attitude, influence and ability necessary to rein in its patron's worst abuses, if it considered doing so to be in its own best interest.

China has achieved this clout by supplying the junta with arms, buying its gas and timber and providing outlets for businesses. While it has no ideological interest in encouraging democracy, it is concerned about stability in its client states. Any instability poses a threat to Chinese commerce. And China needs Burmese natural gas over the next 30 years to meet its needs and fuel growth. Ensuring this requires a stable government. The xenophobic and superstitious policies of Burma's paramount leader Gen Than Shwe _ who abruptly moved the administrative capital 320km inland to Naypyidaw reportedly on the advice of an astrologer _ have little in common with the desirable model of stability sought by Beijing.

Were the Burmese leadership to be coaxed into looking for an area of common ground with the NLD, it would do much to help restore needed stability. Speeding up the process of reform would do even more, and the release from house arrest of Suu Kyi would send out a positive signal that the country was prepared to acknowledge the impracticality of living a hermit-like existence in an increasingly globalised world.

It is a shame that our government has not publicly spoken out or done more to secure Suu Kyi's release. Other Thais have long held her in great respect for her courage, humanitarian ideals, dedication and dignity. The world's most famous political prisoner is not known and revered as ''The Lady'' for nothing.

Like Nelson Mandela in South Africa before her, Aung San Suu Kyi's jailers will never crush her spirit or what she stands for, however much they may try.

BangkokPost Exclusive: 26 May 2007
By Larry Jagan

"Aung San Suu Kyi is irrelevant," Burma's information minister General Kyaw Hsan says. But if that was the case, the regime would have little to fear from freeing her.

Burma's detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is preparing to start another year under house arrest in her lakeside residence in Rangoon, amid an increasing international outcry against her imprisonment.

The detention order, which the regime uses to keep her confined to her home, has been renewed for a further year. And there is no indication from the junta that they are prepared to release her any time soon.

"I don't see any sign that she will be released," said Win Min, an independent Burmese analyst who lives in Chiang Mai.

"The generals really fear her, and her popularity, and are unlikely to risk provoking public support for her by freeing her. If they were going to free her, they would certainly avoid this time of year," he said.

Coincidentally, May 27, when the current order officially expires, is also the anniversary of the 1990 elections which Aung San Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), convincingly won. The anniversary of the brutal attack on her, which resulted in her current incarceration, occurs three days later.

This will be her fifth year in detention, this time around. For the last three years she has been held in virtual solitary confinement, with only her doctor being allowed to make very occasional visits. The only other person she has seen in that time is the UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari, who was permitted to visit her twice last year, in May and again in November. He told the world that contrary to growing fears about her health, she was physically fine and in good spirits.

Aung San Suu Kyi has been locked up on three separate occasions now, since her initial arrest in 1989. She was first released in 1995. She was arrested again in late 2000 trying to travel out of Rangoon to Mandalay, and then released in May 2002, after international pressure and the negotiating efforts of the then UN special envoy, Razali Ismail.

A year later, the opposition leader was again arrested after pro-government thugs attacked her car and her entourage as she travelled in the north of the country. Many senior members of the opposition believe that the incident at Depayin on May 30, 2003 was, in fact, an assassination attempt which failed. Others believe it was simply a concerted campaign of harassment which got badly out of hand.

The truth may never really be established, but Aung San Suu Kyi's party recently renewed their appeal to the UN human rights council to investigate the incident. Nearly a hundred people were killed or injured in the fray that night.

This charismatic leader, often dubbed the Nelson Mandela of Asia, has spent 12 of the last 18 years in detention. Every year at this time the international community renews its efforts to convince the Burmese military regime that they should free her. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has appealed to the regime to see reason and release Aung San Suu Kyi as soon as possible. The US and the EU have both reiterated their annual appeal to the military regime to immediately free the pro-democracy leader. Even Asean, the regional body of which Burma is a member, has appealed to the generals to end her house arrest.

This year, though, new voices have joined the growing chorus around the world. Fifty-nine former world leaders have signed a letter calling for the Nobel laureate's freedom. "Suu Kyi is not calling for a revolution in Burma, but rather peaceful, non-violent dialogue between the military, the National League for Democracy, and Burma's ethnic groups," they said.

Three former US presidents including Bill Clinton, former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, two former Indian prime ministers, V P Singh and Chandra Shekar, former Philippine president Fidel Ramos, former South Korean president Kim Dae-Jung, former Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid, former Japanese premier Junichiro Koizumi and former prime minister Chuan Leekpai were among those who signed the letter.

The regime continues to insist that Aung San Suu Kyi has no role to play in Burma's political future. "The Lady is popular abroad but no longer has much support within the country," Burma's top military leader General Than Shwe told Mr Gambari last November, according to sources who accompanied the UN envoy.

"Aung San Suu Kyi is irrelevant," Burma's information minister General Kyaw Hsan has frequently told visiting government leaders, foreign politicians and journalists over the last two years.

But if that was the case, the regime would have little to fear from freeing her.

Aung San Suu Kyi remains a potent force in the country, despite the junta's efforts to sideline her.

"I believe she is still very much relevant - the junta obviously does too, or they would let her out," a Rangoon-based diplomat said.

"She is the only person who could pull together a broad array of forces, and the only person who in the long term could broker a deal with the military, which would see the generals able to bow out with the level of security they would need," he said.

At present Burma's road map to democracy - announced by former prime minister General Khin Nyunt in August 2003 - is completely stalled. Under the proposed plan the National Convention would draw up a new constitution, put it to a referendum, and then fresh, free and fair elections would be held to elect a new civilian government.

The National Convention, though, which has been intermittently meeting to draw up the new constitution for more than 14 years, is in a prolonged recess, and unlikely to reconvene before November, according to Burmese government sources.

"So far step one on the road map - drawing up the constitution - has been dragged out, giving the distinct impression that the generals are simply playing for time, with no intention of introducing a genuine multi-party democracy," said Win Min.

The National Convention was originally expected to reconvene this month, but the next session was postponed when the country's top leaders began to have second thoughts about the road map, according to senior military sources in the new capital, Naypidaw.

The invitations to the thousand or so delegates for May 8 were never distributed. They are still sitting in the foreign ministry, according to reliable Burmese government sources in Rangoon.

But in recent months there have been increased rumours in Rangoon that the regime may be about to try to restart talks with Aung San Suu Kyi and her party as they explore ways of reducing the country's international isolation and secure their power.

Gen Than Shwe told a senior visiting Chinese official in February that because he and Aung San Suu Kyi could not talk together they had been communicating by letter, according to a Chinese government official.

But this assertion by the senior general could not be confirmed.

Western diplomats in Rangoon remain extremely sceptical. "There does not seem to be any percentage in it for the junta, since I believe the regime is quite content with where things stand as they are - they have China, Russia and India in their corner, massive amounts of money are about to flow in from gas, and they have the opposition on their knees," said one diplomat.

In fact the evidence is that Burma's military leaders may be about to abandon the road map altogether.

"Nothing is moving on the political front, and the top two generals, Than Shwe and Maung Aye, now fear the road map is really Khin Nyunt's and not necessarily in the interests of the army as a whole," said a Western diplomat who closely follows Burmese affairs from Bangkok.

Certainly the regime has begun to realise that the process of drawing up the new constitution is not without its fair share of problems. Already there is growing friction with the ethnic groups, who have cease-fire agreements with Rangoon and are attending the National Convention.

"We've been told that if we do not agree to the constitution they want, that is with very limited autonomy for the ethnic minorities, they will simply push it through anyway," a representative of the Kachin ethnic group told the Bangkok Post.

As part of preparations for the planned referendum and elections, those cease-fire groups would also be expected to surrender their weapons. Initial attempts recently to get the Kachin and the largest ethnic rebel group, the Wa, to lay down arms were rejected out of hand, according to ethnic sources.

"It's not clear where things are going on the road map now - having pushed it forward with renewed vigour, the regime now appears to have cold feet about moving on to potentially trickier phases," a Western diplomat based in Rangoon said. "They seem paralysed. They are facing a number of important challenges, but lack the will or capacity to do anything about them."

While most observers agree that the road map is currently stalled, some feel that this may be the prelude to a new era of political activity.

"It's all at an impasse as they look for new strategies. Nothing has been decided and I believe all options are still open," the diplomat added. "The regime is now preoccupied with other issues and nothing is likely to happen soon."

General Than Shwe is scheduled to return to Singapore soon for further medical treatment. He is expected to be there for more than two weeks. Until he returns to Burma, there will be no movement on any front - let alone the road map.

But even when the regime decides it's going to move forward, it is unlikely that Aung San Suu Kyi will be released. Most seasoned observers believe she will continue to be detained until after the referendum and even the elections. It is certain, at least, that she will spending all of the next year under house arrest.

AsiaTimes Online: 25 May 2007
By Dylan C Williams

YANGON - It's monsoon season in Myanmar's forgotten capital of Yangon, a time when flooding overwhelms sewage canals, infectious disease festers, and the already impoverished population's misery intensifies.

The slow commuter train that circles Yangon's outlying townships passes through a vast landscape of clapboard shanties situated in and around trash-strewn pools of untreated black sewage.

Public-health experts say infectious diseases run rife in these



areas, including high rates of tuberculosis, malaria and chronic diarrhea. Recent independent assessments indicate that malnourishment among children over the age of one runs as high as 35%. [1]

Ill-health is readily apparent in the inordinate number of young commuters with distended bellies and unsightly untreated growths hanging from their faces and appendages. While this correspondent took the three-hour journey, a woman holding a rash-covered infant spontaneously broke down in tears.

She and the train's other riders represent some of the most disadvantaged people in what is one of the world's most mismanaged and poorest countries. And recent political and economic developments indicate that their plight is likely to get worse before it gets better.

Over the past four decades, Myanmar's uninterrupted line of military-run regimes created these decrepit townships, forcibly relocating masses to relieve population pressure on the green and leafy capital city, where senior generals and their family members maintain posh spacious residences behind razor-wire-strewn high walls.

With the ruling State Peace and Development Council's sudden move in 2005 to a newly built capital at Naypyidaw - 400 kilometers north of Yangon and replete with plans for four new golf courses - the reclusive junta has apparently abandoned its responsibility for maintaining Yangon's declining townships.

There is a palpable sense in traveling through these semi-urban areas that the old capital is teetering on the brink of social collapse. In 2005, Myanmar ranked among the bottom 10 countries for health spending, earmarking less than 0.5% of gross domestic product. Now, Yangon-based expatriates say that the sanitation situation in the townships has deteriorated markedly since the junta pulled up roots and moved north that same year.

Yangon-based World Health Organization representatives declined to comment on the current public-health situation in the city's outlying townships; a WHO representative based outside of the country who recently visited Yangon would only say that local health workers are doing the best they can with "close to zero resources".

When the WHO presented its global list of health-care performances recently, Myanmar ranked 190 out of 191 countries surveyed. Local WHO-affiliated doctors receive the kyat equivalent of about US$7 per month and are required to pay their own travel expenses when called to combat outbreaks of disease, according to one Myanmar medical professional.

Senior junta members, meanwhile, frequently fly to Singapore for their personal medical treatments.

Misery, woe and corruption
Endemic corruption [2] has long hobbled social-service delivery, and there are indications the situation has worsened since the junta moved north. A Yangon-based expatriate researcher contends that municipal workers frequently sell off a proportion of the gasoline they are rationed to run garbage trucks and that refuse is now seldom if ever collected in the poorest townships.

One local woman working with a multilateral aid agency told Asia Times Online that municipal officials had turned off the furnaces of the crematorium halfway through the incineration of her deceased grandmother. She said they only agreed to reignite the flames when her family agreed to pay a bribe. A free funeral service run on public donations had emerged to fill the social-service gap, but municipal authorities recently refused to renew the body-collecting outfit's operating license.

To be sure, misery, woe and corruption are nothing new to Myanmar's township residents. Their lot worsened in 2003 and 2004, a two-year period over which the national economy contracted and inflation hovered around 20%, according to independent assessments. [3] Yet the present deterioration in the townships' already abysmal standard of living is taking place amid an economic mini-boom that the junta has monopolized for its own benefit.

The Commerce Ministry this week reported that Myanmar's trade volume had jumped 40% to $7.9 billion on the just-ended fiscal year. That growth entailed a record trade surplus of $2.1 billion, led by substantially higher natural-gas exports, according to the ministry. It said it expects foreign trade to exceed $8 billion in the fiscal year that ends in March 2008.

A large proportion of those energy resources are being sent to China to fuel that once-poor country's extraordinary economic growth. There are bigger plans in the works for building a massive new pipeline to pump Myanmar's natural-gas resources directly into southern China's Yunnan province - overtly bypassing dire local energy needs.

It's an irony not lost on even Yangon's downtown residents, who consistently suffer from rolling power blackouts. Nor is it lost on China, whose Foreign Ministry this week released an uncharacteristically critical report expressing dismay over how such a "poor" country could afford such an "expensive" move to its newly built capital Naypyidaw.

How much of the country's billion-dollar energy bonanza is being diverted to build new ministry facilities, military installations, golf courses and private residences at Naypyidaw is altogether unclear. The reclusive regime has not publicly released financial figures related to the new capital's construction costs - though officials have been quoted in the state-controlled media saying the massive project would not dent the national coffers.

There has been much debate inside and outside Myanmar concerning what really motivated the junta abruptly to move the national capital from Yangon to Naypyidaw. Some have speculated that fears of a preemptive US invasion, similar to its armed intervention in Iraq, drove the junta to its inland, mountain-covered redoubt.

But the slow train that snakes through Yangon's hangdog townships suggests another possibility: the junta's more legitimate fears of a social revolt among the once nearby, now distant, old capital's woe-begotten citizens.

Notes
1. See Christopher Len's and Johan Alvin's "Burma/Myanmar's Ailments: Searching for the Right Remedy" published by the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute Silk Road Studies Program, March 2007.
2. Global corruption watchdog Transparency International in its 2006 global survey ranked Myanmar as the second-most-corrupt country in the world, lagging only Haiti.
3. Official statistics indicate an average GDP (gross domestic product) growth rate of 12.6% over the six-year period from 1999-2005, which if accurate means Myanmar would have been the fastest-growing economy in the world.

Dylan C Williams is a Bangkok-based correspondent

AsiaTimes Online: 23 May 2007
By Larry Jagan

BANGKOK - Myanmar's military leaders have never made a secret of their interest in developing a domestic nuclear-energy industry. Plans to buy a nuclear reactor from Russia have been in the pipeline for years, and this month in Moscow the two sides formally resurrected those controversial plans.

Myanmar's move notably comes at a time when both Iran and North Korea have raised US hackles through their nuclear programs. Washington in recent years has referred to Myanmar as an "outpost of tyranny" and maintains trade and investment sanctions against the military regime. Some political analysts are already speculating whether Myanmar might try to use the threat of re-gearing its nuclear test reactor to reproduce weapons as a way to counteract US-led pressure for political change.

Under the new agreement, Russia's atomic energy agency Rosatom will build a nuclear-research center, including a 10-megawatt light-water nuclear reactor with low-enriched uranium consisting of less than 20% uranium-235, an activation analysis laboratory, a medical isotope production laboratory, a silicon doping system, and nuclear-waste treatment and burial facilities, according to a statement released by Rosatom.

The project is initially slated to focus on medical and agricultural research in support of Myanmar's languishing and highly underdeveloped economy, a Western diplomat acquainted with the nuclear plans told Asia Times Online on condition of anonymity. As part of the agreement, Russian universities would also be tasked with training an additional 350 Myanmar-national specialists to work at the planned nuclear center.

Over the past six years, more than 1,000 Myanmar scientists, technicians and military personnel have received nuclear training in Russia, according to Myanmar government officials. Under a 2002 agreement, Russia was set to build a nuclear reactor in Myanmar but later scrapped the plan over the junta's lack of funds. Nonetheless, Moscow informed the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in mid-2003 that it planned to provide training in nuclear science to some 300 Myanmar citizens each year.

According to Russian officials, the construction and supervision of the planned research center will come under the control of the IAEA. Myanmar is currently a member of the IAEA and already reportedly has a so-called "safeguards agreement" in place. Under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), states in compliance with their safeguards' obligations and other provisions are allowed to pursue nuclear energy or technology solely for peaceful purposes.

In practice, however, verifying the fulfillment of those obligations has proved difficult, most recently witnessed in the case of Iran's secretive nuclear-energy program, which it insists is for peaceful purposes and within its NPT rights, while others, such as US, suspect it is geared for a weapons program. Russia is also involved in developing a nuclear facility for Iran.

There are already concerns in some diplomatic quarters that Myanmar's notoriously reclusive regime could throw up similar challenges to IAEA inspectors. No timetable has yet been set for the implementation of this one-off safeguards agreement, nor have any provisions been set for procuring supplies beyond what is required initially to establish the nuclear-research center, diplomats note.

Moreover, the junta's stated motivation for establishing a nuclear-research reactor has vacillated over time. In January 2002, then-foreign minister Win Aung told this correspondent that Myanmar was committed to developing a nuclear-research facility for medical purposes and also possibly to generate nuclear power. Myanmar "is keen to explore the use of nuclear energy", he said at the time. "After all, many other countries in the world are using nuclear power."

At that time, Win Aung said no deal had been signed, but that initial research had been undertaken. Apparently the initial plans to develop a nuclear-energy industry emerged a year or two earlier. Win Aung told the IAEA in September 2001 of the country's plans to acquire a nuclear-research reactor and requested the agency's help in securing one, according to IAEA officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Two months later, the IAEA sent an inspection team to Myanmar to assess the country's preparedness to use and maintain a nuclear reactor safely. The team concluded that the safety standards in place were well below the minimum the body would regard as acceptable, according to the IAEA officials. At the time, Myanmar failed to respond to the IAEA report and prompted UN nuclear officials in Vienna to fear that Myanmar planned to proceed with its nuclear ambitions without the necessary safety requirements.

Groundbreaking had reportedly commenced, but construction was halted when Moscow realized the junta didn't have the financial resources to pay for the facility. Yet the junta never fully abandoned its nuclear ambitions.

On the nuclear prowl
In recent years, Myanmar has sent emissaries abroad to explore different options for developing a nuclear reactor and avenues for acquiring nuclear technology, according to Western diplomats tracking the junta's nuclear plans. They contend that this year Deputy Foreign Minister Kyaw Too made a low-profile visit to Iran in the regime's search for nuclear technology and materials.

Myanmar's close contacts with Pakistan have also recently come under diplomatic scrutiny. Western diplomats based in Islamabad say they are convinced that the junta's desire to acquire nuclear know-how has been a central focus of the budding bilateral relationship. Pakistani officials have fervently denied that they are in any way abetting Myanmar's nuclear ambitions. But widespread rumors that two Pakistani nuclear scientists accused of nuclear proliferation were given sanctuary in Myanmar in 2003 still linger.

More ominous have been the growing contacts between Myanmar and North Korea - last month the countries formally re-established diplomatic relations. According to a US State Department official involved in monitoring nuclear-proliferation issues, several suspicious shipments have arrived from North Korea over the past six months. "We have been tracking North Korean ships and several docked in Yangon late last month originated from the port where we believe nuclear materials may be shipped," he said.

After one North Korean ship docked at Yangon's port last November, the official said, Washington reminded the junta that it was obliged to search the ship under the UN sanction measures adopted the previous month after Pyongyang staged its controversial nuclear test. Myanmar authorities reported back three days later, according to US sources, saying that the vessel in question contained nothing illicit or suspicious.

Last year's shipments from North Korea also reportedly upset China - as neither Pyongyang nor Yangon informed Beijing of the two countries' increasing military-to-military contacts. For their part, Chinese authorities are convinced that Myanmar has recently received military hardware, including missiles, from North Korea, but not nuclear weapons or materials, according to a senior government source in Beijing.

The latest North Korean shipment arrived in Yangon this week and its cargo is being unloaded amid exceptionally tight security, according to Yangon residents who have passed by the port facilities.

There is still no confirmed site for the planned nuclear reactor, though reliable sources believe it will be built somewhere in the country's central Mandalay division. North Korean technicians reportedly visited the site last year, according to a Myanmar military source who spoke with Asia Times Online.

At the same time as the junta presses ahead with its plans for a nuclear reactor, the government has stepped up its exploration for uranium in the country. Surveys and test mining are taking place at four sites, including in the ethnic Kachin and Shan states, a government official told Asia Times Online on condition of anonymity. At the time the original plans for a nuclear reactor were mooted, the government had reportedly discovered uranium deposits in five areas in central and northern Myanmar, according to official government statistics.

The nuclear reactor that the regime now plans to build is reportedly not capable of producing enriched uranium or potentially of any military use, according to senior nuclear specialists who monitor these matters closely. Nonetheless, there are still concerns both in the West and in the region that Myanmar's military rulers over the long term could harbor nuclear-weapon ambitions.

"The generals cannot be trusted," said a Bangkok-based Western diplomat who follows Myanmar affairs. "While they say they will let the IAEA in at the moment, the history of rogue regimes like the one in Yangon is that they never keep their promises."

Larry Jagan previously covered Myanmar politics for the British Broadcasting Corp. He is currently a freelance journalist based in Bangkok.

TheNation: 22 May 2007

Delegates from the Burmese junta will meet with Shan rebels tomorrow - one of the two major rebel groups - over a ceasefire plan, Yawd Serk, leader of the Shan State Army (SSA) said yesterday.

The talks would take place at a secret location in Shan State near the Thai border, he said.

Only authorised members of the Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS) would represent the Shan minorities in the negotiations. He said other Shan forces had been instructed to stay away in order to avoid confusion during the negotiations.

Yawd Serk said it was necessary to keep minority rebel groups away as he was worried the military's divisive tactics may antagonise them.

The junta was able to get a faction of the Karen National Union (KNU) to surrender after a truce - a gentleman's agreement made during the time of the late leader Bo Mya - was broken. By getting them to surrender instead of re-establishing the truce, the Karen armed forces were weakened.

Yawd Serk would not reveal the conditions for setting up the talks, saying only that the Shan group had set a prerequisite that the junta must help the minorities to suppress narcotics in Shan State.

The SSA and KNU are the two major insurgent groups remaining on the Thai border, and the junta has put a lot of effort in to defeat them over the past few years.

Yawd Serk formed the SSA after he broke away from Khun Sa's Mong Tai Army, which surrendered to the junta in early 1996. He changed the name of the Shan armed group several times and ended up with the SSA, a legendary name in the Shan struggle 50 years ago. The RCSS is a political wing of the Shan.

Yawd Serk has made alliances with other rebel ethnic minorities. A recent RCSS resolution invited many ethnic minorities such as the Wa, Musur, Palaung and Kokang to unite under the RCSS to have more bargaining power when dealing with the junta, he said.

"There is a strong possibility of getting many minority groups to unite as they are all under Burmese suppression," he said.

Wiwatchai Somkham
The Nation
Doi Tailaeng

BangkokPost: 21 May 2007
By Peter Janssen

Bangkok/Rangoon (dpa) - With the fourth anniversary of Daw (Mrs) Aung San Suu Kyi's current term of house arrest coming up on May 27, the international community and her supporters in Burma are going out of their way to prove she is not forgotten.

Last week, in an unprecedented gesture, 59 former world leaders, including three US past-presidents and 15 Asian ex-presidents and premiers, signed a letter to Burmese junta leader Senior General Than Shwe appealing for Suu Kyi's immediate release.

The United Nations has also done its part. On January 8 the UN Secretary-General called for Suu Kyi's release along with all other political prisoners and on May 10, the call was reiterated by 14 UN human rights mandate holders.

Protests outside Burma embassies can be expected this week in countries around the world and some non-violent demonstrations such as mass prayers are likely to mark the anniversary inside the country. Anything too demonstrative gets one arrested in Burma.

There is something inherently sad about all these expressions of outrage over the ongoing incarceration of a delicate 61-year-old Nobel peace prize laureate, who has spent 12 out of the past 17 years in prison, in that they are unlikely to achieve their aim.

Although a miracle is always possible, most long-time Burma-watchers believe that the likelihood of Burma's military leaders releasing Suu Kyi this month or any time soon is close to nil.

It doesn't help her case that May 27 also happens to mark the anniversary of the 1990 general election which Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) won by a landslide. The NLD has been barred from assuming political power ever since.

"If the government released her now is would seem like a late victory for Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD, and the SPDC certainly doesn't want that," said one Rangoon-based western diplomat.

More likely would be for the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as the Burmese junta styles itself, to release Suu Kyi on a more arbitrary date, to make it obvious that they have not bowed to international pressure.

Likelier still is that they will just keep her under house arrest until they've finished drafting a new constitution, held a referendum on it and staged a new election, a process that could take up to five years.

But the regime's need to keep Suu Kyi under lock and key indefinitely is the greatest testament to her ongoing political clout as Burma's foremost symbol of its struggle for democracy.

"I am sure that the great majority of people still trust her and follow her, partly because she is Aung San's daughter but also because she represents the very idea of hope in this otherwise demoralized country," said one diplomat.

Suu Kyi, the only daughter of Burmese independence hero Aung San, who was assassinated by political rivals in 1948 when she was two years old, returned to Burma on April 2, 1988, to care for her ailing mother Khin Kyi.

After spending much of her adult life in the United Kingdom, where she attended Oxford and married British don Michael Aris with who she had two sons, Suu Kyi's role as the torch bearer for Burma's pro-democracy movement was largely coincidental.

As the recently published "warts and all" biography Perfect Hostage, by Justin Wintle, details, when student demonstrations started to rock the capital that year and Suu Kyi's first impulse was to offer her services, as Aung San's daughter, as a mediator between the protestors and the military.

Instead she became the leader of the opposition, and over the years, the embodiment of everything the junta fears, starting with her status as the offspring of Aung San, the founding father of Burma's military.

Although it was Aung San who arguably won Burma, it's independence from Great Britain in 1948, it was General Ne Win who won the military political power with a coup d'etat in 1962.

Some argue that it was Suu Kyi's public criticisms of Ne Win and his disastrous 26-year rule that won her her first taste of house arrest on July 20, 1989. She was only released in 1995.

"Now there have been nearly 20 years of acrimonious relations between Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the army leadership and rolling back so much history is a huge task which would require one side or the other to give way," said Robert Taylor, a former Oxford professor who has been described as sympathetic to the regime.

Taylor faults Suu Kyi for expecting too much, too soon, and for having been "imprecise" in her demands from the junta. Others say the junta had no intention to listen to her no matter what her demands were.

In Burma, while there is growing criticism of Suu Kyi's NLD for having done so little for the past four years, the criticism tends to stop there.

"The NLD with Suu Kyi and without Suu Kyi are two different things," said Win Naing, a self-described "independent politician."

"The present NLD leadership are very reluctant to take on the kind of leadership role that Aung San Suu Kyi has taken before, and I believe she will do the same again once she has been released," he said.

That, apparently, is what Burmese military leaders believe as well.

TheNation: 16 May 2007

Some 59 former heads of state called on Burma yesterday to release jailed Opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.

Former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik, who is founder and president of the Oslo Centre for Peace and Human Rights, released a letter signed by the former leaders urging the Burmese junta to free Suu Kyi.

Suu Kyi, 61, has been under house arrest at her home in Rangoon for 11 of the past 17 years without charge or trial.

In a letter dated May 14 and addressed to the head of the Burmese junta, General Than Shwe, the 59 signatories called "for the immediate release of the world's only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi".

Her latest period in detention began after a May 2003 attack on her convoy by a junta-backed militia.

Her detention comes up for review on May 27 - an "excellent opportunity" for her release, the letter said - though the junta has on several past occasions extended her house arrest.

Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, but was not allowed to make the trip to Oslo to receive the award. It was presented to her two sons, Alexander and Kim, who live in Britain.

"Aung San Suu Kyi is not calling for revolution in Burma, but rather peaceful, non-violent dialogue, between the military, National League for Democracy (Suu Kyi's party), and Burma's ethnic groups," the letter said.

The signatures come from former leaders in Asia, Africa, Europe, North America and South America. In a highly unusual move, this large group of leaders across the political spectrum joined together, showing the unanimity of world opinion on the matter.

From Southeast Asia, leaders included former prime minister Chuan Leekpai, Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamed, Cambodian prime minister Ung Huot, former Indonesian presidents Abdurrahman Wahid and Megawati Sukarnoputri, Filipino former presidents Corazon Aquino and Fidel Ramos.

The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon publicly called for her release in January but received no response.

Monday May 07, 2007

(BangkokPost.com from reports) - Burma has committed to building more hydropower plants in an effort to increase electricity production, according to a report from Rangoon by the Chinese news agency Xinhua.

In early April, Burma began implementation of a 7,110- megawatt (mw) Tar-hsan hydropower project worth $6 billion. The contract of the major Burma-Thailand joint venture project on the Thanlwin River in eastern Shan state is one of the two signed with Thai companies during the past two years.

The Tar-hsan project, which can produce 35.446 billion kilowatt- hours (kwh) a year, is implemented by the Myanmar Hydropower Implementation Department of the Ministry of Electric Power and the MDX Group Co Ltd of Thailand. The project also involves shares of Ratchaburi Co and Ch Karnchang Co of Thailand and China Gezhouba Water and Power Group Co Ltd, according to the Xinhua report.

The other joint venture project is a 600-mw Hutgyi on the same river in eastern Kayin state signed with the EGAT Public Company of Thailand. The plant consists of a 600-mw turbine that can produce 3.82 billion kwh yearly.

Electricity generated from the two plants will be mainly sold to Thailand with the rest reserved for domestic use, according to the project officials.

Of the two projects, the $6 billion Thai investment in the Tar-hsan has sharply raised Burma's contracted foreign investment to $13.84 billion, a record high in 2006 since 1988.

Not long after the Tar-hsan project started, Burma speeded up implementation of some six other hydropower projects in Shan and Kachin states.

According to the ministry, the six hydropower projects are Shweli-1 (600 mw) , Shweli-2 (460 mw), Shweli-3 (360 mw), Tarpein- 1 (240 mw), Tarpein-2 (168 mw) and Upper Thanlwin (2,400 mw).

Of the projects, the Shweli-1, which lies on the Shweli River in Namhkam, northern Shan state, has been reportedly half- completed.

The Shweli-2 and Shweli-3 are located in Momeik, Shan state while the Tarpein-1 and Tarpein-2 in Momauk, Kachin state and the Upper Thanlwin in Kunlong, northern Shan state.

The Upper Thanlwin hydropower project is the one on which a memorandum of understanding on the implementation was signed in early April between Burma and the Farsighted Investment Group Co Ltd and Gold Water Resources Ltd of China.

Besides, the China Power Investment Corporation (CPI) is also reportedly to build seven hydropower projects for Burma on the confluence of Ayeyawaddy river and Maykha and Malikha rivers in Kachin state with a combined capacity of 13,360 mw.

The seven hydropower projects are those respectively on Ayeyawaddy confluence ( 3,600 mw), in Chibwe (2,000 mw), in Pashe (1,600 mw), in Lakin (1,400 mw), in Phizaw (1,500 mw), in Khaunglanphu (1,700 mw) and in Laiza (1,560 mw).

Burma is currently building over a dozen other hydropower projects in its Mandalay, Bago, Shan, Kayin and Rakhine divisions and states. They include Yeywa (790 mw), Kunchaung (60 mw), Pyuchaung (40 mw), Khabaung (30 mw), Shwegyin (75 mw), Kengtawng ( 54 mw) and Thahtay (102 mw), according to the ministry.

Plans are underway to build more hydropower plants which include Kawgata (160 mw), Bilin (280 mw), Hatkyi (600 mw), Shwesayay (660 mw), Manipura (380 mw), Tanintharyi (600 mw) and Maykha (800 mw).

According to official statistics, Burma had a total of over 1, 775 mw of installed generating capacity of electric power as of September 2006, up from 706.82 mw in 1988 when there were only 24 power plants in the country, of which 14 were hydropower ones.

After 1988, Burma has so far built 39 new power plants, of which 30 are hydropower ones.

The statistics also show that Burma's electric power generation was registered at 6.014 billion kilowatt-hours (kwh) in 2005-06, up from 2.2 billion units in 1988-89. The power generation for the first half (April-September) of 2006-07 was 3. 153 billion kwh.