BurmaNet News: December 10 2002

[editor at burmanet.org]

December 10 2002 Issue #2137

INSIDE BURMA

Time (Asia): Soldiers of Fortune
AFP: Myanmar’s Suu Kyi confident political change on the way: report
AFP: Myanmar’s feared Wa fighters resent “narco-army” reputation
Narinjara News: Forced labor in road construction
Narinjara News: Leasing rivers and creeks

DRUGS

Xinhua: Myanmar’s Wa leader vows to achieve drug-free goal by 2005

GUNS

DVB: Burma to open two new artillery battalions in coastal command

INTERNATIONAL

AFP: Myanmar polishes charm offensive in US

STATEMENTS/OTHER

DCI Group: Government of Myanmar announces major drug burn and destruction
of narcotics in Shan state
WAN: WAN calls for release of ailing Burmese journalist
BBC: Aung San Suu Kyi [radio program announcement]
FCO: Foreign Office Minister Mike O’Brien spoke to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi on
9 December about the current situation in Burma
Amnesty/FBC: Protest to mark Human Rights Day 2002

INSIDE BURMA

Time Asia December 16 2002

Soldiers of Fortune
By Andrew Marshall and Anthony Davis

We reach Gawng Lang village at dusk. At first, the only signs of life are
the smoke of cooking fires seeping through thatched roofs and the muffled
clatter of food being prepared. Then we notice the children. Half-naked,
their bellies bloated by malnutrition, they watch from beneath the stilt
houses with dumbstruck curiosity. Soon the women emerge, dressed in
handwoven black smocks and gripping slender, silver pipes between their
teeth. They stare and giggle at us, waiting for their husbands, uncles and
brothers to arrive. Wearing ragged military fatigues, the men, when they
finally materialize, seem without exception to be among the oldest members
of the hamlet. Only later do we discover where all the young men have
gone.
Gawng Lang sits on a lonely hilltop in northeast Burma, sheltered by
gently swaying bamboo. None of its 400 inhabitants has seen a white man
before. But then, very few white men have ever seen a Wa, the most
fascinating, seldom met and impoverished of Burma's myriad tribes. Until
the 1970s, many Wa strayed from their hilltop redoubts only to chop off
human heads, which they believed to be powerful totems against disease and
bad harvests. Neighboring tribes have long loathed and feared them. Among
the Shan, Burma's largest ethnic minority, a mother anxious to hush her
restless child might still whisper, "Shhh! A Wa is coming!"
From the nearest Chinese border town, it takes five hours of hiking over
hauntingly beautiful mountains to reach the village. Five hours, that is,
for a city-softened journalist. Even elderly Wa can cover the distance in
less than two. The Wa are so accustomed to climbing steep terrain that
they complain of sore feet when walking on level ground. Gawng Lang's
inhabitants don't receive many visitors, but after recovering from their
initial surprise, they are both hospitable and curious. "Tell me," says Ai
Sin, a wiry 42-year-old who serves us rice and vegetables by guttering
lamplight. "I have heard that when it is day in the Wa hills, it is dark
in America. Can this be true?"
The Wa no longer chop heads, yet their ferocious and demonic image remains
intact. Dawn reveals why: the sloping fields surrounding Gawng Lang are
planted with thousands of opium poppies, their fresh green shoots pushing
up through the mist-dampened earth. We also learn in the morning why there
are no young men around. They have all been conscripted into the
20,000-strong United Wa State Army (UWSA)—a formidable force of tribal
soldiers dubbed by the U.S. State Department as the world's "most heavily
armed narco-traffickers." Burma in 2001 was the largest producer of opium
in the world (Afghanistan ranked second), and the UWSA dominates the
country's opium and heroin business. It also controls some 80% of Burma's
equally lucrative trade in methamphetamine pills, a cheap and highly
addictive drug better known in Asia by its Thai name yaba, or crazy
medicine. Together, these businesses earn the UWSA's Elite commanders and
their associates up to $550 million a year, according to TIME's research.
It's an incomprehensible sum for the people of Gawng Lang, who see little
of the spoils and go about their medieval existence much as their
ancestors did.
In Thailand, a tidal wave of yaba has ripped through schools, slums and
nightclubs, leaving a quarter of a million addicts in its wake. With
narcotics experts and Thai army officials expecting a billion pills to
pour in next year, many Thais regard the UWSA as the gravest threat to
their society and national security since the 1970s communist
insurgencies. Sending an aggressive message to Rangoon and its
drug-dealing Wa allies, the Thai army last spring staged a troop buildup
along the kingdom's border on a scale not seen since World War II. Yet the
scourge is anything but contained. The UWSA is now diversifying into
gunrunning while also expanding operations geographically into Laos, the
Chinese province of Yunnan and the turbulent states of northeast India.
Shipments of yaba are turning up in Europe, Australia and America. And in
an ominous extension of its military reach, the UWSA has broken out of its
traditional territory by forcibly relocating tens of thousands of Wa
villagers to strategic swatches of land along the Thai-Burmese border—a
Stalinesque forced exodus little noticed by the outside world.
How did a once isolated hill tribe grow so powerful, so quickly,
transforming itself into an international crime syndicate to rival
Colombia's drug cartels? The man we hoped might answer this question is
the UWSA's commander, Bao Youxiang. Little is known about "Chairman Bao,"
as he prefers to be called, and few Westerners have ever met him. But his
reputation, fueled by rumor, is gaudy, befitting the lord of a
narco-fiefdom. Bao is reputedly so rich that he would need two trucks to
carry around all his money. He is rumored to have once had four of his own
men pistol-whipped to death for conspiring against him. Also, he likes
bowling.
To meet Bao, we plunged into the lawless hills of northeast Burma—to the
heart of an empire built on guns, drugs and blood.
Even in the old days, not every Wa chopped heads; 19th century Chinese
merchants made the potentially lifesaving distinction between the
nonhostile "tame Wa" and their bloodthirsty cousins, the "wild Wa." But
all Wa cherished the de facto independence their hilltop seclusion granted
them and were quick to trade on their unsavory image if threatened. A Wa
chief once declared to approaching British troops, "We are a wild people,
who eat rats and squirrels raw."
Undaunted, a British colonial administrator named George Scott launched
the first expedition into wild Wa territory in 1893. Scott demolished many
myths about the hill tribe. They were not, as outsiders had insisted,
"habitual cannibals" with a predilection for roasted babies. Nor were they
backward, he said. "They are an exceedingly well-behaved, industrious, and
estimable race," wrote Scott, "were it not for the one foible of cutting
strangers' heads off and neglecting ever to wash themselves."
Despite brutal military campaigns by Scott's men—one in retaliation for
the decapitation of two British officers—the Wa were never brought fully
under colonial control. But later, greater historical forces shattered Wa
isolation forever and propelled their homeland into the international
narcotics trade. The Wa had always grown poppies. Scott himself had
marveled at the "enormous amount of opium" they produced even in the
1890s. But the retreat of China's nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) divisions
into northeast Burma after the 1949 communist revolution kicked
cultivation into high gear. The KMT persuaded farmers to grow more opium,
transporting it on long mule caravans into northern Thailand. By the late
1960s, the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) had arrived. Bent on
overthrowing the Rangoon government through its jungle bases along the
Sino-Burmese border, the Beijing-backed CPB quickly formed pacts with Wa
guerrilla bands. One was led by a pugnacious 21-year-old named Bao
Youxiang.
Born to a chieftain in Kunma, a northern Wa village near Gawng Lang, Bao
was the sixth of eight brothers and a natural-born fighter. He rose
steadily through the CPB ranks, from battalion commander in Kunma to
leader of a crack brigade operating near the Thai border. For Bao and
thousands of fellow Wa tribesmen, the CPB provided modern weaponry, combat
experience and—a first for a people historically made up of squabbling
clans—a loose political unity. In return, the communists got a pool of
tough tribal warriors to fight a bloody 20-year conflict against the
Burmese government. The Wa proved fearless in battle and willing to accept
appallingly high casualties. As one saying went, "The Wa are good at
dying."
At rebelling, too. In 1989 a key brigade mutinied against the aging CPB
leadership. On April 17 of that year—a date the Wa still celebrate as
national day—Bao and other tribal commanders joined the rebellion. Burma's
Communist Party split into several heavily armed factions, all of which
signed cease-fire agreements with Rangoon. One of these factions, the
United Wa State Army, would be dominated by Bao. The cease-fire was a
turning point in Wa history. The embattled Burmese military, still reeling
from the 1988 democracy uprising, had no desire to fight the heavily armed
Wa militia. In return for keeping the peace, the UWSA was given full
autonomy over what the regime termed "Special Region No. 2," which Bao
christened "Wa state." The UWSA was also granted lucrative business
concessions, including tacit permission to deal in the only valuable
commodity it knew: narcotics.
By 1994 the wa state army was mass-producing yaba in addition to heroin.
Unlike fields of poppies, the tiny pills are immune to bad weather and
invisible to U.S. spy satellites. They are cheap to produce in makeshift
chemical factories and easier to smuggle than heroin. Thailand proved a
ready market: today, more Thais are addicted to yaba than to heroin. And
so the UWSA prospered. To defend its enterprises, it acquired a formidable
arsenal, largely provided by Chinese dealers in Yunnan. Today the UWSA's
weaponry includes heavy machine guns and Chinese-built, shoulder-fired,
surface-to-air missiles.
With Burma's domestic economy teetering on collapse, the military regime
needed Wa drug money and bribes. So Wa entrepreneurs were welcomed in
cities such as Rangoon and Mandalay, where they set up trading companies
and bought real estate. Today the UWSA reportedly controls such companies
as the Myanmar May Flower Group and, through it, a large private bank.
Inevitably the Wa leaders grabbed a hefty piece of the action for
themselves. Bao's family, for example, reportedly owns Yangon Airways, one
of the country's two domestic airlines.
Some money from the tribe's business ventures trickled down, changing the
landscape of the Wa hills. "In 1993 you could still meet guys carrying
spears," recalls a Christian missionary who toured the region. Since then,
a handful of larger Wa villages have morphed into towns, and with Chinese
technical help a new road has been built to link them. Villagers who live
along its winding route refer to it simply as "the road." There is no
other one in the Wa hills with which to confuse it. And so, by logical
necessity, all roads in the Wa hills lead to one place: Panghsang,
population 15,000, the headquarters of the UWSA's empire and the lair of
Chairman Bao.
"To get into any Wa village," an earlier visitor once wrote, "you must
either fight or be invited." Getting an invitation to meet Asia's most
powerful druglord was simpler than expected. A few calls to a Chinese
mobile-phone number, a letter of intent delivered through a Wa emissary
and then, suddenly, a message from Panghsang: Bao was willing to meet.
After that came a great deal of waiting near the Burmese border for this
rare audience.
There are worse places to kill time than the Ru Yi Commercial City
development in Menglian, a Chinese town only an hour's drive from
Panghsang. Locals say the lavish, Thai-designed complex is owned by Li
Ziru, a Chinese-born former Red Guard who nowadays acts as Bao's
right-hand man. The U.S. State Department claims Li is a leader in Burma's
drug trade. He is clearly a very wealthy man. The Ru Yi complex boasts a
four-star hotel, shops, a supermarket, karaoke bars and—in a country where
gambling is still outlawed as one of the "Five Evils"—a busy casino.
Evidently, Chinese officials are not squeamish about drug money fueling
the breakneck development of Menglian and other towns in Yunnan. The
Golden Phoenix Hotel in Simao is proudly described in a brochure as a
joint venture between "the Wa Federation of Myanmar (Burma)" and Yunnan's
Provincial Farming Bureau. And at the UWSA-owned Health and Happiness
Hotel in Cangyuan, senior county officials slurp tea in the lobby while Wa
prostitutes prowl the upper floors for clients.
The summons from Bao eventually comes. Getting to Panghsang involves a
short drive to the border, an immigration check and a trip across the
bridge spanning the turbid Namkha River. On the other side, flanked by
forbidding mountain ridges, lies Panghsang. Ten years ago it was little
more than a village with a rebel army base attached. Today it has hotels,
shops, karaoke bars and a 24-hour casino. There is also a bowling alley
where, say locals, a lane is permanently reserved for Bao.
In a conference room in one of the hotels, Bao makes his entrance orbited
by two of his own cameramen, one of them packing a side arm, both
recording the boss's meeting with the Western press. Bao, a squat man in
his early 50s with a bulldog face, is also armed. He carries a
small-caliber pistol clipped to the belt of his khaki pants, an ensemble
jarringly set off by his footwear: a pair of battered, pink Chinese
slippers. He listens to our questions with unnerving stillness, staring at
us intently, then answers in rapid-fire Yunnanese patois, gesticulating
wildly. "These drugs!" he cries, karate-chopping the air for emphasis,
revealing the diamond-encrusted gold Rolex he wears on his wrist. "I
detest them! You think drugs have been harmful to others? Let me tell you:
they have been a much greater disaster for the Wa! Our people are stuck in
such poverty they haven't even got clothes to put on their own backs."
Ask Bao who runs Burma's narcotics trade, and he grows intensely agitated.
"It's all done by businessmen!" he fumes. "Businessmen operating outside
the law are refining opium into heroin and manufacturing yaba." The Wa
people—and, by extension, their leader—are simply "victims," he says. This
is disingenuous, to say the least. Many of these unnamed businessmen are
Bao's own field commanders. His brother, senior UWSA commander Bao Youhua,
runs what an official with an international narcotics-monitoring agency
calls "industrial-scale" cultivation of opium poppies in the Nam Lwi
Valley southeast of Panghsang. Another notorious trafficker is the shadowy
leader of the UWSA's southern command, Wei Xuegang. Half Wa and half
Chinese, Wei was indicted in absentia on heroin-trafficking charges in
1993 by a New York federal court. The U.S. is offering a $2 million reward
for information leading to his arrest. Wei is also named by the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Thai army as the boss of the
booming methamphetamine trade into Thailand, where a court has already
sentenced him to death in absentia.
But Chairman Bao will not be drawn on this. He prefers to portray himself
as a heroic enemy of the narcotics racket, a man dedicated to the
banishment of opium from the Wa hills. "Our objective is to eliminate the
cultivation of opium poppies by 2005, and I intend to achieve that," he
declares. Only 40% of Wa farmers now cultivate opium, claims Bao, down
from 60% in recent years. "We've also developed a range of substitute
industries," he says, listing what he calls "decent, regular
businesses"—rubber and tea plantations, gem and zinc mines, liquor
distilleries and a brand of cigarettes called Golden Triangle. This is
just a start, promises Bao. "If the international community is willing to
support us," he offers, "we'll get this work done. But we need help." The
international community has shown little inclination to trust the UWSA
leader. But Bao cites what he believes is irrefutable proof of his good
intent: the great Wa migration.
In 1999, Bao launched a grandiose relocation scheme that he says is
intended to solve the intertwined problems of opium cultivation and the
chronic rice shortage in the northern Wa hills. "People in the north can
break their backs for a year to grow enough rice to last them just six
months," Bao says. "But those who have moved south can work for one year
and harvest enough rice to eat for two years." A sense of historic destiny
is also at work. By moving south, the Wa are reclaiming land they have
regarded as their own since the 12th century. The migration is Chairman
Bao's Long March.
Mass relocations from six northern Wa districts began in 1999. Some
villagers were given a month's notice, others only 24 hours. All were told
to leave their livestock and possessions behind and bring only what they
could carry. Lured by the promise of land, some Wa left willingly; many
did not. "Some people were happy to go, some people were crying," recalls
Sam Kap, 60, of Gawng Lang, where almost half the population was forced at
gunpoint to leave and head south. "Nobody had any choice."
Most villagers walked to the nearest Wa town, then continued south on
overcrowded trucks. Many had never seen motor vehicles before. Some
traveled the whole distance on foot, a three-month journey. Upon arrival
in the lowlands, the Wa were given 1,000 baht ($23) each, a monthly rice
ration and new military fatigues. Otherwise left to fend for themselves,
with little shelter and no medicines, the bewildered migrants soon fell
prey to epidemics of malaria, typhoid, dysentery and anthrax. Despite the
belated arrival of Chinese doctors, up to 8,000 people are thought to have
died during the first year of the relocations alone.
The influx also had a devastating impact on the region's original
inhabitants, mostly Shan and Lahu hill people. Wa settlers stole livestock
and drove hundreds—possibly thousands—of them from their fertile lands. In
some cases, according to a Thailand-based NGO, the UWSA forced locals into
slave-labor squads.
Chairman Bao is unmoved by such reports. As tea is served, he denies that
the Shan were driven out of their homes, insisting that the resettlement
area was "empty" before the Wa arrived. He also vows to continue the
relocations. "Altogether we're planning to move 100,000 people," he says
excitedly. "We ought to be able to finish this within two or three years."
Wa farmers who stay behind in the north and are still cultivating poppies
in 2005 will be stopped by what Bao terms "executive measures"—a chilling
phrase that doubtless spells further misery for his long-suffering people.
The Burmese government has heralded the relocations as a bold
opium-eradication measure. But old habits die hard, especially among
starving people who have no other source of income. Upon arrival in the
south, some Wa migrants began planting poppies again, allegedly with the
blessing of UWSA druglord Wei. Nor is there much evidence that the exodus
has caused a drastic decline in poppy cultivation back in northern Wa
state. At Gawng Lang, those ordered south usually owned the least land;
and this land, if used to grow poppies, was quickly taken over by
industrious relatives and resown with the same crop. "Poppy is still the
easiest thing to grow," says Sam Rung, a somber 45-year-old farmer working
the fields with his wife and daughter. "The earth's just not good enough
for corn."
Nevertheless, drug-monitoring agencies say it's undeniable that Burmese
opium production has dropped significantly of late. The U.N.'s estimate
for this year's harvest is 748 tons, down from more than 900 last year.
The U.S. government—which is currently mulling greater cooperation with
Burma's military regime in the war against heroin—cites an even lower
figure of 560 tons. Bao's relocation scheme and substitute industries may
well have contributed to the decrease, although Wa farmers say two years
of bad weather have also hurt crop yields.
Whatever the reasons for the reduction, Bao's chances of meeting his 2005
deadline for the eradication of poppies as a cash crop look increasingly
dicey. Opium will remain "the economic backbone of the villagers,"
predicts a bleak U.N. report on the Wa hills, so long as new economic
ventures in the area benefit only UWSA leaders and Chinese investors.
Meanwhile, Bao's bombastic declarations on opium reduction have drowned
out a more alarming development: since the relocations, the UWSA's
production of methamphetamine has skyrocketed. "Maybe the Wa have it in
their minds to scale back opium production," notes a senior Western
antinarcotics official. "But they're not making any pledges to get out of
methamphetamines." Bangkok police recently seized a record consignment of
3 million yaba pills. That's just a fraction of what is now streaming into
the country from the Wa hills. Indeed, experts monitoring Southeast Asia's
drug trade say Bao's Long March is not about eradicating opium production.
It's about expanding the sphere of Wa influence and gaining greater access
to the Thai border, which will facilitate methamphetamine distribution.
From Mong Yawn, the southern UWSA headquarters, the yaba trade is
spreading in all directions. To the southwest, the UWSA has set up several
factories around the Burmese border town of Myawaddy to pump pills into
central Thailand. To the east, where UWSA troops are now firmly encamped
on the Mekong River, drug running has surged across the poorly policed
waters into Laos—a perfect place for further Wa expansion, notes an
antinarcotics expert in the capital Vientiane. And hundreds of miles
north, at the hardscrabble Burmese frontier town of Tamu, the arrival of
Wa businessmen has coincided with a rising tide of yaba into the adjoining
Indian state of Manipur.
What's more, the UWSA's freedom of movement around Burma—a nation
bordering on five others—has also enabled it to launch a menacing new
trade: selling weapons to Asia's ethnic insurgents. According to
intelligence sources, the Wa army in the past two years completed deals
that sent rifles and other munitions to Naga rebels in northeast India.
"If we have any more opium here after 2005," Bao once declared, reaching
for a classic Wa metaphor, "you can come and chop my head off." But these
days, as the cash-rich UWSA continues to expand unchecked, Burma's
neighbors have much more than an opium problem. They have a Wa problem.
Darkness falls on Gawng Lang. There is no electricity in this tiny
village, but the sky is brilliant with stars. Suddenly, a bright light
arcs across the Milky Way. "A plane," declares village elder Ai Sin. No,
too fast for a plane—and too slow for a meteor. Perhaps it's one of the
satellites that the U.S. government routinely deploys to monitor the poppy
fields surrounding Gawng Lang and hundreds of Wa villages like it.
What satellites can't monitor is the misery of the poppy growers living
under the UWSA's unquestioned authority. In a typical year, Sam Rung, a
wounded veteran of Burma's now defunct Communist Party, produces about 1.6
kilograms of opium, which he then sells for about $12 to the UWSA. "We're
not allowed to keep any for ourselves," says Sam Rung. Nor are farmers
allowed to smoke it. Opium is too precious to be consumed at the source.
"If they catch you they put you in a pit for one or two years," says Ai
Sin. The pit is a traditional Wa punishment: a three-meter-deep,
two-meter-wide square hole in the ground where addicts go cold turkey in
their own waste.
The Wa army metes out similar punishment to soldiers found using yaba.
According to the New York City-based Human Rights Watch, repeat offenders
are shot. There is a ready supply of replacements. Every Wa family that
has two or three sons must send at least one of them to a UWSA training
camp; a family with four or five boys must send two. Some 2,000 troops are
under 18, and as many as 800 are under 15, claims Human Rights Watch. The
Wa are still good at dying. By one estimate, war has killed one in four Wa
men in recent decades. "These deaths have been devastating for the
villages," says Hideyuki Takano, a Japanese writer who spent six months in
1996 living with the Wa. "With so few young men around, the social fabric
of traditional Wa life is unraveling."
At first, the villagers shyly refuse to talk about their lives as serfs of
the army. But later, in the gloomy interior of one house, traditional Wa
rice wine begins to flow, and so does the anger. "They don't help us at
all!" shouts a villager. "They gave us money to pay for a teacher, but
that's it. Then some U.N. people came and handed out leaflets promising
food and clothing. We saw the leaflets but nothing else. The Wa army took
everything." Outside Panghsang and Mong Yawn, there are no hospitals. When
asked what happens to villagers who fall gravely ill, Ai Sin replies
flatly, "They die." Curable diseases killed five of his nine children in
infancy.
Though Wa peasants know little else but poverty, disease and war, their de
facto leader Bao is nevertheless revered. They call him uncle. "He's a
very good man," says Ai Sin. "If he says he'll do something, he does it."
Says another elder: "All the Wa love him." Unconvincing as they might
sound to outsiders, these sentiments seem genuine. Bao may have given
little else to his beleaguered people, but he has at least given them
pride, plus the apparent respect of an erstwhile enemy, Burma. The
otherwise spartan bamboo walls of many Wa huts bear a poster of Bao with
Burma's much feared military intelligence chief, Lieut. General Khin
Nyunt. They are shown walking side by side, like equals.
Khin Nyunt, who brokered the 1989 cease-fire that launched the UWSA, still
visits Panghsang annually—a sign that cozy relations with Rangoon will
continue. It is no mean feat for the Wa to have achieved this special
relationship, which affords them extraordinary autonomy in this despotic
nation.
Bao is lord of the Wa, but he is also a player in a larger, Asia-wide
game. For Burma's generals, the 10,000 UWSA troops now scattered along the
border with Thailand serve as a proxy army in their decades-long fight
against Shan rebels. The Wa army is also a self-financing frontier
security force—Rangoon's very own "600-pound gorilla on the border," as a
diplomat memorably put it. In May, the UWSA fought alongside Burmese
troops in clashes with the Thai army, which Burma accuses of aiding the
Shan. Just last week, Burmese troops were preparing for a fresh dry-season
offensive against the Shan in which Wa troops will again participate.
Burma has little incentive to check UWSA expansion, and Thailand seems
unable to. Raids by Thai police this year seized an estimated $7.9 million
worth of Thailand-based assets allegedly belonging to southern commander
Wei Xuegang. The haul included land, gold, mansions and luxury cars. But
the UWSA's activities poison relations between Rangoon and Bangkok. The Wa
issue has also created a dangerous rift between senior Thai military
officers, who urge stronger measures to fight the UWSA and its drugs, and
senior Thai politicians, who prefer to improve ties with Rangoon by
fostering legitimate business and trade.
China is the one power in Asia whose opinion counts both in Rangoon and
Panghsang. It has been suggested by Western diplomats that China backed
Bao's relocation scheme in the hope that narcotics smuggling into Yunnan
and beyond would decrease. There is evidence the gambit has failed. In
April, with help from the DEA, authorities in the mainland commercial city
of Shenzhen seized 357 kilograms of heroin that had originated in Wa
territory. No wonder a drug official for Yunnan has described Bao's
commitment to fighting drugs as "only lip service."
Indeed, Bao has more friends than enemies in China, including the numerous
officials who have aided his highly visible enterprises in Yunnan. His
interview with TIME ends because he has a business meeting to attend. A
feast is laid out on a nearby table, but the Chairman isn't eating.
However, he will join his foreign guests in a glass of fiery Wa State Rice
Wine, made in his own factory. "Ganbei!" cries Bao, and knocks it down in
one. Then he shakes hands and marches from the room—purposeful, confident,
a Wa tribesman with his head very firmly on his shoulders.
_________

Agence France-Presse December 10 2002

Myanmar's Suu Kyi confident political change on the way: report

Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi reportedly said Tuesday she was
confident political change would come to the military-ruled country, but
warned the process could be slow.

"We are confident change will come -- not as quickly as most of us would
wish, but it will come," she told the BBC in an interview posted on its
website.

The Nobel peace laureate's remarks will boost confidence in the
slow-moving national reconciliation process which observers in the Myanmar
capital Yangon had feared was on the verge of complete breakdown. United
Nations envoy Razali Ismail, who brokered historic contacts between the
ruling junta and Aung San Suu Kyi two years ago, has voice frustration
that the process has failed to move into a proper political dialogue.

But the leader of the opposition National League for Democracy told the
BBC that the contacts with the regime had made some headway since her
release in May from house arrest, although there was "some way to go".

For the first time she put a timeline on the prospects for political
reform, saying she was hopeful of progress by this time next year and that
it was not impossible that change could take place "within months".

Aung San Suu Kyi maintained the conciliatory stance towards the ruling
generals which she has adopted since her release from 19 months of
detention, saying she felt "no personal animosity" towards them.

"I get along with them well enough. After all it was my father who founded
the Burmese army and I do have a sense of warmth towards the Burmese
army," she said, using the country's former name.

In contrast to Aung San Suu Kyi's positive tone, Razali said after his
ninth mission to Myanmar in November that he was disappointed after making
little progress towards reinvigorating the reform process.

"There were discussions between the junta and the NLD at the lower levels
but this was not tantamount to a dialogue, he said at the time.

"I am always disappointed where there are no full results but that's the
nature of my mission."

And in late November the NLD commemorated National Day with a call for a
speedy beginning to a "meaningful political dialogue" with the junta.

The NLD won a landslide election victory in 1990 but it was prevented from
taking power by the military, which has ruled Myanmar in one form or
another for the past four decades.
_______

Agence France-Presse December 10 2002

Myanmar's feared Wa fighters resent "narco-army" reputation

Myanmar's ethnic Wa, former head hunters reviled by foreign governments as
a ruthless narco-army flooding the world with heroin, insist they have
abandoned drugs and bitterly resent their reputation.

"Give us a chance to prove ourselves," pleaded Pauk Yu Yi, one of four
brothers who control the region of half a million people and its United Wa
State Army, a 20,000-strong band of feared fighters known as the Red Wa.

In a rare visit to the heartland of Wa power, the group's leaders proudly
showed reporters around Pangsang, a thriving border town across from
China's Yunnan province which was notorious as a centre for opium poppy
cultivation.

The deadly crop which once bloomed red across the hillsides is now largely
gone, they say, under a drive to eradicate narcotics from the region by
2005. Pangsang, home to 60,000 people, has been transformed from a
ramshackle settlement wedged in nearly accessible mountain ranges into a
thriving town that at night resembles a miniature Las Vegas.

Wide metalled streets, grand hotels, casinos, massage parlours and an
imposing four-storey administrative building are lit up by a 24-hour
electricity supply that even the capital Yangon cannot boast.

But international anti-narcotics experts say this prosperity was founded
on the profits from vast amounts of opium which made Myanmar the world's
biggest producer before it was overtaken by Afghanistan.

Another Wa showpiece is the town of Mong Yawn, a bustling settlement near
the Thai border surrounded by orange groves, rubber plantations and paddy
fields.

On fertile territory gifted to the Wa as a reward for helping rout
notorious druglord Khun Sa in 1996, the town was created overnight when
some 60,000 former poppy farmers were resettled here, far from the
northern Wa region.

Despite the Wa's denials, Thai and US authorities have labelled Mong Yawn
a "drug city" that churns out hundreds of millions of speed pills
annually, causing a massive addiction crisis in Thailand.

"We now have food in abundance but no market to sell," Pauk Yu Yi
lamented, adding that they had hoped to send their produce to Thailand but
that mistrust over the drugs issue had barred commercial links.

"What are we going to do with all this if we cannot sell them... we might
as well go back to growing poppy," he said half-jokingly.

In 1989 the Red Wa signed a ceasefire deal with Myanmar's military
government, which gave the rebels wide-ranging autonomy in return for
ending decades of rebellion.

In recent years, the junta has been working hard to convince the world
that they and their Wa allies are serious about stamping out narcotics.

Even the US State Department -- the staunchest critic of the junta's
autocratic rule and appalling human rights record -- has admitted they
have made great strides in eradicating opium cultivation.

Now the US is poised to decide whether to remove Myanmar from the list of
the world's major drug producers, prompting an all-out public relations
blitz from the regime to ensure the decision goes its way.

On a recent visit to Pangsang and other towns in the infamous "Golden
Triangle" region, four cabinet ministers accompanied reporters and several
Yangon-based ambassadors on a whirlwind tour of the Wa and Kokang regions.

"This place could once be described as a veritible sea of opium poppy, but
now it can with real confidence be declared practically opium free thanks
to the concerted efforts of both the government and the ethnic Kokang and
Wa leaders," said Foreign Minister Win Aung.

Drugs money is a notoriously destabilising factor, so the ban on poppy
cultivation served a dual purpose -- deflecting international criticism
and helping secure peace in the once war-torn region.

"Knowing well that insurgency and poppy cultivation came hand in hand in
this region, our military leaders decided to get rid of the latter by
making peace with the former,'" said Labour Minister Tin Win, who carried
the first peace overture to the Kokang group in north-eastern Myanmar.

"After all, all we managed to do over decades of fighting against each
other was getting ourselves killed by the thousands on both sides and
getting nowhere," he said.

Win Aung, who as a young man was a front-line military officer at the
height of the troubles, said dozens of different armed groups fought
themselves and the government for control of the lucrative drug business.

"Every day the sound of artillery and gun-fire was heard in the Golden
Triangle region," he said.

Kokang leader Phone Kyar Shin, a 70-year-old veteran of the conflict, also
insists that the ethnic armies' drug-producing days are behind them.

"I have assured the government of Myanmar that we do not have any more
poppy plantations here," he told the diplomats.

"We all understand that opium and its derivative heroin pose a huge
problem not only for the Union of Myanmar but also for the rest of the
world. I appeal to your excellencies to help develop our region so we can
remain drug-free."
_______

Narinjara News December 10 2002

FORCED  LABOUR IN ROAD CONSTRUCTION

The dilapidated Sittwe - Rangoon Road connecting the western state of
Rakhine with the Burmese capital has been under repair since the 17th
November, according to our correspondent quoting a number of sources.
The repair work in three sections of the road have been undertaken
simultaneously on an urgent basis to make it motorable as many areas have
been badly broken and many bridges have become rundown as this year's
heavy rain washed away the bitumen surfaces.
The three sections are at Kyauktaw - Mrauk-u in the northern end of the
state, Mrebon Township in the middle, and Ann Township close to the Roma
Ranges - strategically placed close to the Burma proper.
Light Infantry Battalion 538 based in Rathedaung has been supervising the
work on the Kyauktaw - Mrauk-u section, while LIB 34 and 55 in Mrebon and
Ann.
In the Mrebon section about 1,700 people has been used as forced labour to
do the repair work till 1 December, in Ann about one hundred people have
been used everyday as forced labour, while the number in the Kyauktaw -
Mrauk-u section could not be established.
The Burmese junta officials have told the people off and on that the
"voluntary labour" as used in Burma is part and parcel of the culture and
tradition of the Burmese people which earns the doer merit for their
afterlife and a prosperous living in this life.  The junta officials have
not only denied the presence of "forced labour" in the country, but also
used the term "voluntary labour" to define the practice much hated at home
and abroad.
Our correspondent on his tour to a number of remote areas has seen large
scale use of forced labour by the Burmese military troops in recent days.
__________

Narinjara News December 9 2002

Leasing rivers and creeks

The Burmese junta officials in the western part of Burma are going to
lease the rivers and creeks of Arakan (Rakhine) State in sections to the
highest bidder, according to our correspondent quoting a top local
businessman.

As the present period of lease runs out in this month, the local state
junta officials are making preparations to lease the rivers and creeks to
the military and police forces' "welfare" trusts before the expiry of the
present lease period.

The trusts again would sub-lease the rivers and creeks to the highest
private bidders.

Afterwards the bidders who win the auction will be allowed to collect
tolls from fishing boats and fishing nets under their respective areas. 
Since Rakhine State is crisscrossed with rivers and creeks besides being a
coastal strip of land, almost all the households in its villages and towns
possess fishing nets or fishing boats and trawlers.

Under the present system of leasing out the water bodies, a leaseholder
collects   kyat 1,000 for small fishing nets, kyat 5,000 for a 2m net, and
kyat 10,000 for a 4m net, and it goes up to kyat 50,000 for a trawling net
for the permission to fish in the selected area for one year.   Again the
fishermen have to bring their catches for sale to the leaseholders under
the 'agreement' and that is too for a price determined by the owners of
the leased sections of the water bodies.  A large number of people who
cannot pay the demanded sum are disallowed from fishing in the natural
waters of Rakhine State unlike prior to 1990, when the Burmese junta
introduced the system, our correspondent said.

The system serves two purposes to the junta  firstly, it helps to earn
money for the upkeep of its troops and the police forces that are poorly
paid, far less than the subsistence limit.  Then secondly, the measure
restricts on the operation of private fishermen, indirectly wielding
control over the fishing community.   But for the general public it surely
means increase in fish price and less fish on the dining table, said a
businessman from the locality.  The burden so imposed by the price
increase is very heavy upon the 80% people who live on a low income, a
businessman said.

At Rathedaung Township on the Meyu River of northern Rakhine State in the
western part of Burma, the Meyu River is divided into three sections for
leasing.  At Maungdaw, close to the Bangladesh border, the Naaf River and
its estuaries and creeks are assigned to the local township military and
police 'welfare' trusts for leasing out to the highest bidders for toll
collection  but the payment has to be made in US dollars.    Last year the
Aukpuma Creek was leased for $4,669.00, Ngakhura Creek for $10,494.00, and
Sapay-baung-raung Creek for $7,337.00  all the creeks produce large
quantity of shrimps, according to official records.

In like manner all other rivers and creeks of the state including the
Kaladan and Lemro Rivers and their estuaries are leased every year in
December.  The leasing out is done and controlled by respective township
level military battalions.  The system has caused untold sufferings to the
general public of the state most of who are either farmers or fishermen in
a region of agricultural lands and fishing grounds.  Lack of
industrialization in the state has been a curse to the residents and the
rate of jobless population runs as high as 85%, said the source.

DRUGS

Xinhua News Agency December 10 2002

Myanmar's Wa leader vows to achieve drug-free goal by 2005

Bao Xu-xiang, leader of the United Wa State Army (UWSA), an armed Myanmar
ethnic minority group, said the area he controls will become drug-free by
2005.

Bao made the remarks during a recent interview with the Nation newspaper
in his headquarters in Panghsang, Myanmar, the Thai newspaper reported
Tuesday. The 20,000-strong UWSA reached a ceasefire deal with the Myanmar
government 13 years ago and was later granted the autonomy status.

It now controls an area near the Myanmar-Thai border and has been accused
by Thailand  of being a major drug production and trafficking source in
the Golden Triangle area.

The UN Drug Control Program (UNDCP) has launched a number of projects to
rid the UWSA-controled area of poppy growing, but Bao said much more
international support is needed to ensure his area to become opium-free.

He also dismissed allegations that the UWSA settlements along the
Thai-Myanmar border are a threat to Thailand's security.

Recently, the Thai military said they have evidence that the UWSA is
producing huge amount of drugs in its camps near the Thai border and is
expanding the production to other countries in the region.

GUNS

Democratic Voice of Burma December 9 2002

Burma to open two new artillery battalions in Coastal Command

It has been learned that the Rangoon Yangon military junta has decided to
establish two new artillery battalions under the Coastal Region Military
Command's Mergui-based No 505 Artillery Command at Palauk Village in Palaw
Township and Kyaukmedaung Village in Tavoy Township. They are No 308 and
No 307 Artillery Battalions and have been planned to be opened by the end
of this month. Over 300 acres of land for the military bases have been
forcibly confiscated from the local people who are also forced into
providing volunteer labour to clear the land and construct the buildings.
These new artillery battalions are the seventh and eight to be built while
the ninth will be opened shortly in Kyunsu Township of Tenasserim
Division.

The six artillery battalions already established are Artillery Battalion
No 301 at Kalwin Village in Mergui Township, No 302 at Phayataung Village
in Tavoy Township, No 303 at Khamungyi Village in Kawthaung Township, No
304 at Kyaukkanyar Village in Tavoy Township, No 305 at Hanthathan Village
in Bokpyin Township, and No 306 at Panlamawt Village in Tenasserim
Township. Similarly, various artillery battalions and artillery commands
have also been established in the other 11 military commands. According to
military observers based at the Thailand-Burma border six artillery
commands and more than 100 artillery battalions have been established so
far.

INTERNATIONAL

Agence France-Presse December 10 2002

Myanmar polishes charm offensive in US

Myanmar on Tuesday fired a new shot in its US charm offensive, with an
unprecedented reception for congressional aides at the residence of its
ambassador to Washington.

The event, open only to members of the Congressional Legislative Staff
Association (CLSA), is part of campaign to dilute US scorn towards the
military-ruled state -- which so far appears to have had little success.

An invitation to the heavily-controlled reception, obtained by AFP, offers
CLSA members two early evening hours in the company of Linn Myaing,
Yangon's ambassador here. A confirmation notice sent to members who signed
up, warned of the importance of showing up at the event, registering
apparent concern that any controversy about the event could deter guests.

"Remember, you are not only representing yourself, but your boss and the
Congress as well," it warned.

DCI Group, the Yangon junta's US-based lobbying firm was unavailable for
comment or to give details on the reception.

The United States is a fierce critic of Myanmar's military regime, and its
treatment of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), which won
an overwhelming 1990 election victory that was never recognized by the
junta.

Myanmar, treated as a pariah state by Washington and some of its Western
allies, has recently tried to improve its standing in the US capital,
hiring DCI Group and making major announcements to the media here, before
releasing information in Bangkok or Yangon.

In July, the junta claimed it was victim of a vicious "smear" campaign
designed to frustrate its goal of improving poisoned relations with the
United States.

The tirade followed allegations that Myanmar troops had systematically
raped women and girls in Shan state.

Last month, news reports here said that mid-level officials in the State
Department were considering removing Myanmar's name from the US list of
the world's major drugs producers.

Myanmar has made strenuous efforts in recent times to prove that it is
serious about eradicating opium production in the country, sending
anti-drugs czar Colonel Kyaw Thein to Washington to meet senior US
officials earlier this year.

Removal of its name from the list would be a major boon for Yangon, and
fulfill one of its primary goals in relations with the United States.

But it would likely be resisted by supporters of the embattled opposition
of Aung San Suu Kyi in the US Congress and the non-governmental
organisation community.

Campaigners fear that the junta would showcase its new status and portray
it as international acceptance of its rule.

STATEMENTS/OTHER

DCI Group December 10 2002

Government of Myanmar Announces Major Drug Burn and Destruction of
Narcotics in Shan State

Drugs worth a total of $468 million destroyed
Washington D. C., December 10 -   The Government of Myanmar announced
today a ceremony in which the government destroyed a huge volume of seized
narcotic drugs and poppy seeds voluntarily handed over by farmers in
exchange for other seeds.  This major drug burning was held on December 8
in the Namsham Township in the Southern, Shan State.  Presided over by
Secretary-1 of the State Peace and Development Council, General Khin
Nyunt, the ceremony included local and foreign NGOs, high ranking
government officials and the public.
This is the second drug destruction ceremony in the Shan State. 
Secretary-1 said, “Last year, Myanmar’s opium production was reduced to a
fourteen-year low, and now is at less than half the levels found in the
past decade.  We are committed to dramatic reductions in opium production
as well as all narcotic drugs including methamphetamines.”
The drugs destroyed are:
(1) Poppy Seed             8623.873 kilos (5282.25 Acres)
(2) Drug Poppy Bud     2.041 kilos
(3) Heroin                     6.925 kilos
(4) Opium                     139.458 kilos
(5) Marijuana                2.204 kilos
(6) Methamphetamine  135,472 tablets
(7) Phencodyl                78.5 liters
The 8,623 kilos of poppy seeds destroyed can be planted in 5,285 acres of
land under poppy cultivation.  If refined into 2.32 tons of heroin the
market value of $462 million USD can be obtained.  The 6.925 kilos of
heroin destroyed can value 1.4 million USD and the 139.46 kilos of opium
destroyed can value 2.8 million USD.  Altogether, narcotic drugs worth 468
million USD have been destroyed (excluding methamphetamine pills).  (1
kilo of heroin = 200,000 USD New York Street Price.)
________

World Association of Newspapers December 9 2002

WAN Calls for Release of Ailing Burmese Journalist

The World Association of Newspapers and the World Editors Forum have asked
the military junta of Burma to unconditionally release ailing journalist U
Win Tin following his transfer from prison to a hospital for treatment of
a heart ailment.

In a letter to Colonel Tin Hlaing, the Interior Minister of Myanmar, as
Burma is also known, WAN and the WEF said they were "gravely concerned"
about the deteriorating health of the 72-year-old U Win Tin, a founder of
the National League of Democracy who has been in prison for the past 13
years.

"It is our organisations' view that the continued imprisonment of U Win
Tin constitutes a deep blemish on the international standing of Myanmar
which can only be erased by his release. We believe that his continued
detention remains a barrier to peace in Myanmar and of great alarm to the
international community," they said.

U Win Tin is a laureate of the WAN Golden Pen of Freedom award.

The letter said:

"We are writing on behalf of the World Association of Newspapers and the
World Editors Forum, which represent 18,000 publications in 100 countries,
to call on you to release journalist U Win Tin from jail immediately.

"We are gravely concerned about the deteriorating health of the
72-year-old U Win Tin, who has been imprisoned for the past 13 years. U
Win Tin, former editor of the daily newspaper Hanthawati, vice-chair of
Myanmar's Writer's Association and founder of the National League for
Democracy, was arrested in July 1989, tried in a closed military court and
sentenced to 14 years in prison for allegedly being a member of the banned
Communist Party of Myanmar. This sentence has since been increased to 21
years in jail.
'According to reports, on 22 November U Win Tin underwent tests for a
heart ailment. The following day, on a doctor's advice, he was transferred
to Rangoon general hospital, near Insein prison. Since then, he has been
held in one of the rooms reserved for political prisoners in the
hospital's basement.
"U Win Tin has been hospitalised several times before and since his
incarceration has suffered two heart attacks, high blood pressure,
diabetes and spondylitis (an inflammation of the vertebrae). He has also
undergone an operation for a hernia.

"It is our organisations' view that the continued imprisonment of U Win
Tin constitutes a deep blemish on the international standing of Myanmar
which can only be erased by his release. We believe that his continued
detention remains a barrier to peace in Myanmar and of great alarm to the
international community.

"Furthermore, the detention of U Win Tin constitutes a clear breach of his
right to freedom of expression, which is guaranteed by numerous
international conventions. We remind you that the United Nations
Commission on Human Rights considers that 'detention, as punishment for
the peaceful expression of an opinion, is one of the most reprehensible
ways to enjoin silence and, as a consequence, a grave violation of human
rights'.

"We respectfully call on your government to demonstrate strength,
compassion and sincerity in the reconciliation process by releasing U Win
Tin without conditions."

WAN, the global organisation for the newspaper industry, defends and
promotes press freedom world-wide. It represents 18,000 newspapers; its
membership includes 71 national newspaper associations, individual
newspaper executives in 100 countries, 13 news agencies and nine regional
and world-wide press groups.

The WEF is the division of WAN that represents senior news executives.

Inquiries to: Larry Kilman, Director of Communications, WAN, 25 rue
d'Astorg, 75008 Paris France. Tel: +33 1 47 42 85 00. Fax: +33 1 47 42 49
48. Mobile: +33 6 10 28 97 36. E-mail: lkilman at wan.asso.fr
________

British Broadcasting Corporation December 14 2002

Aung San Suu Kyi [radio program announcement]
It is seven months since the Burmese government released the pro-democracy
leader, Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest.
There had been hope that progress could be made to restore her country to
democracy, but so far there has been little visible evidence.
The Nobel peace laureate's National League for Democracy (NLD) party
overwhelmingly won the country's 1990 elections but the military
government refused to hand over power.
Aung San Suu Kyi was our guest on Talking Point this week in our special
series to mark the 70th anniversary of the BBC World Service. An extract
from recording of this programme will be available soon on this page. The
full programme will be available on this page from this weekend and it
will be broadcast on the BBC World Service at 1400GMT on Sunday 15
December.


_____

Foreign and Commonwealth Office December 9 2002

Foreign Office Minister Mike O’Brien spoke to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi on 9
December about the current situation in Burma.

Following the call Mike O'Brien said:

"I spoke today with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the Burmese
democracy movement and Nobel Prize winner, as part of our ongoing
dialogue. I told her that while we welcomed the recent release of 115
political prisoners, wider political progress, in addition to prisoner
releases, must take place to sustain confidence in Burmese authorities’
stated desire to pursue a transition to civilian rule.

“I said we stand ready to support any genuine transition to national
reconciliation and civilian rule. But Senior General Than Shwe must
understand that relations with the UK can and will get worse unless the
authorities irreversibly commit to reform.

“I also raised with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi the increased concern that has
been expressed by the British Parliament about Burma. My discussions with
the Burma All Party Group and the debate in the House of Lords on 3
December have shown all party support for continued action to help bring
about respect for human rights, national reconciliation and democracy in
Burma.”

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi told Mike O’Brien about her recent visit to Shan
State. She was encouraged that understanding between the National League
for Democracy and the ethnic Burmese minority groups was growing. But the
economic situation in Shan State was poor. The people, especially the
young, were frustrated.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi thanked Mike O’Brien for the strong support of the
UK, including Parliamentarians, for the democratic movement in Burma. She
said that the military authorities didn’t yet understand that democracy
would benefit all sectors of Burmese society and that they underestimated
the underlying goodwill of the international community towards Burma.

Mike O’Brien and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi agreed to keep in regular contact.
_______

Amnesty International, Free Burma Coalition December 10 2002

Protest to mark Human Rights Day 2002

Amnesty International and the Free Burma Coalition New York call for the
release of Burmese political prisoner.

WHEN: Tuesday, December 10, at 4pm

WHERE: Burmese Mission, 10 East 77th Street, New York.

(New York) - Members of Amnesty International USA (group 280) and the Free
Burma Coalition New York are joining together for their first joint
action: a protest calling for the release of Burmese student, Myo Min Zaw.

Protesters will wear masks of his face, as well as plaques displaying
dates from 1998 to 2050 to emphasize the length of his sentence - 52
years. A petition of more than a thousand signatures will also be
delivered to the Burmese ambassador.

Now aged 26, Myo Min Zaw was one of hundreds of student activists arrested
in a government crackdown in 1998. He was sentenced to 38 years 'for
agitating unrest' - a sentence later increased to 52 years. He was a
member of the central organizing committee of the All-Burma Student Union
(ABSFU) and a founder of the Student and Youth Unity Front.

Recent developments in Burma suggest that increased international pressure
at this time could persuade the government to release Myo Min Zaw and
other political prisoners like him. In May of this year, the military
regime ended the house arrest of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the
opposition National League for Democracy (NLD). The government has also
released around three hundred and fifty political prisoners since December
2000 – including 60 prisoners this month (on Thursday 21st November).
However despite this latest release more than 1,000 political prisoners
still remain behind bars. Also discouraging is the fact that even while
the latest prisoners were being released, more students, Thet Naung Soe
and Khin Maung Win, were being sentenced to fourteen and seven years in
jail for distributing anti-government leaflets at Rangoon City Hall.
CONTACTS:
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