BurmaNet News, May 13, 2004

[Editor]

May 13, 2004, Issue # 2475

INSIDE BURMA
AFP: Myanmar opposition meets again as convention sign-up begins
Xinhua: Myanmar to launch new TV channel
S.H.A.N.: UN agency defends Burma program
S.H.A.N.: Non-Burmans hold last-ditch meetings
Irrawaddy: Oil Tanker Ambushed in Eastern Shan State

DRUGS
Xinhua: 254 drug-related cases reported in Myanmar in March

GUNS
Irrawaddy: The Kiev Connection

REGIONAL
AFP: Indonesia seeks common ASEAN stance on human rights

INTERNATIONAL
RSF: Military junta shuts door on free coverage of National Convention

OPINION/OTHER
Spectator: Burma jungle
Baltimore-Sun: Window dressing


INSIDE BURMA
_____________________________________

May 13, Agence France Presse
Myanmar opposition meets again as convention sign-up begins

Yangon: Top leaders of Myanmar's opposition including Aung San Suu Kyi
have met again ahead of next week's national convention but kept quiet
Thursday on whether they will attend, as other delegates began
registering, officials and delegates said.

The "routine" meeting late Wednesday included Aung San Suu Kyi, National
League for Democracy (NLD) chairman Aung Shwe, deputy Tin Oo and party
secretary U Lwin, and was the group's fifth in less than three weeks, U
Lwin said.

But the NLD has since refused to say if it would attend Monday's opening
of the forum, which is billed as the first step in the military junta's
"roadmap to democracy", as its proposed changes to procedures under which
the forum will be run have so far been ignored by the ruling generals.

"Up to now, we have had no official response (to the proposals), but we
are still hoping," U Lwin told reporters at the NLD's Yangon headquarters.


"If it is not there, we have to proceed accordingly," he added, declining
to elaborate.

Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace laureate, and Tin Oo both remain under
house arrest. Analysts and senior NLD officials have expressed hope they
could be freed before the convention that was expected to draw some 1,000
delegates including opposition groups.

Analysts have said the convention, which aims to draft a constitution
which the country currently does not have, would have no credibility
without the input of the detained pro-democracy icon and her party.

But a statement by the NLD that was expected Wednesday did not
materialise, and diplomats and observers have expressed concern that the
party may not attend the convention.

The junta has ordered all participants in the convention, to which the NLD
has been invited, to register May 13 and 14.

Several representatives of the 17 ethnic groups which have signed
ceasefire agreements with the junta were seen arriving at a government
guest house for a courtesy call on officials before travelling to the
convention venue, some 45 kilometres (28 miles) outside the capital.

"They already left for the venue this morning," a source close to the
groups told AFP.

Several delegates were also gathering at a holding point in Yangon, where
transportation will be provided to the remote site, according to Simon
Tha, a surgeon and mediator for the Karen National Union, the country's
largest rebel group, which has been invited to the convention as special
guests.

"We will be leaving for the venue tomorrow," he said. "I hope that the
national convention will turn out to be of benefit to the nation and its
people."

Late last month the NLD said it was almost certain to attend, as it
expected the junta to accept its proposed changes to the procedures,
including a call for free and open discussion.

But a cloud of confusion has descended over Yangon in the past week, with
the junta failing to respond to the NLD, no sign of Aung San Suu Kyi's
impending freedom, and diplomats and observers expressing concern that the
process risked collapse if the NLD did not attend.

U Lwin and other NLD officials met Wednesday with Sweden's Bangkok-based
ambassador to Yangon, Jan Axel Nordlander, who said the forum would be
regarded as a "failure" if the NLD did not attend.

Some key opposition groups including the Shan Nationalities League for
Democracy (SNLD) have stated that their own attendance at the forum hinged
on the decision by the NLD.

The convention is expected to assemble government, political parties and
ethnic representatives in a forum that would essentially mirror a previous
convention which collapsed in 1995 when the NLD walked out, claiming the
forum was being used as a "rubber stamp" for the regime's policies.

_____________________________________

May 13, Xinhua News Agency
Myanmar to launch new TV channel

Yangon: The state-run Myanma Radio and Television (MRTV) is due to launch
a new channel the MRTV-4 on Saturday to increase telecasting of news,
education and entertainment programs.

Foreign video films and TV series, music programs, Karaoke songs, daily
newspapers, weekly journals and monthly magazines as well as excerpts from
other local TV stations such as Myawaddy TV will be aired round the clock
through MMbox, according to the MRTV.

In addition, the programs of Radio Myanmar and Yangon City FM featuring
music and advertisements can also be enjoyed through the MMBox.

TV was introduced in Myanmar in 1980 and the country has two TV stations
--the state-operated MRTV and the military-run Myawaddy TV.

The MRTV Myanmar language programs and the MRTV-3 English language
programs are being telecast through Thai Com-3 satellite.

Meanwhile, the country is also making efforts to enhance its radio and TV
services in conformity with global changes and development, arranging to
upgrade its radio and TV machine and equipment by changing its present TV
system to digital one.

The MRTV is now making satellite news available with the cooperation of
the China Central Television (CCTV), Cable Networks News (CNN), the Japan
Broadcasting Corporation (NHK).

_____________________________________

May 13, Shan Herald Agency for News
UN agency defends Burma program

Activists remain unconvinced

Its ongoing one-year program to provide food assistance to 180,000
ex-poppy farmers in Burma's Shan State was "hundred percent" humanitarian,
assured the United Nations World Food Programme's regional representatives
yesterday during a 3-hour meeting in Chiangmai with advocacy groups from
Shan State.

"We are not naive," said Anthony Banbury, Director, Regional Bureau for
Asia, that runs food relief programs in 12 countries including North
Korea, where it has been feeding 6.5 million people since 1995. "We know
we are working in a political environment. We know how aid, however
humanitarian, can have either positive or negative political impact. We
want to do the right thing. That's why we're here."

Mr Banbury and his deputy, Kenro Oshidari, explained the $ 3.7 million
emergency food assistance was the result of the WFP's visit to Kokang,
known officially as Shan State Special Region #1, with Jica (Japan
International Cooperation Agency) in mid 2003, when they ran into
thousands of farmers, who, forced to give up poppy cultivation by the
authorities, were facing "an average of six months of rice deficits,"
according to a copy of the project paper.

An official request for food assistance was later provided by the Ministry
for Development of Border Areas and National races, known by its Burmese
acronym as Natala. "Our conditions, namely: Access to every household,
Distribution through NGOs and Use of mobile and static communication
equipment in the field, were accepted by the Ministry. Besides, our
country director, Bhim Udas, met one of the "uncles" of the National
League for Democracy, who said the party had no objection to our operation
as long as we're working with the NGOs."

Kenro Oshidari summed the agency's program that began in October as a
break, not a cure. "Food aid doesn't solve the problem," he allowed.

The WFP Emergency Operation's beneficiaries would be 60,000 people in
Kokang (out of the total rural population of 11,000); 90,000 people in Wa
region (out of the total rural population of 250,000) and 30,000 people in
Kutkhai, Muse and other areas in Shan State, according to a handout
received by S.H.A.N..

To which a number of concerns were raised by the representatives from Shan
Democratic Union, Shan State Organization, Shan Women's Action Network,
Lahu National Development Organization and Shan Human Rights Foundation at
the session:

One pointed out the WFP's claim that it was non-political rang hollow
taking into consideration Tokyo's press release on 28 April: "The
provision of the assistance to WFP will support further improvement of the
political situation (in Myanmar)."

Many of them, particularly Daniel Aung, M.P. of Mongpiang, a township 75
miles west of Kengtung, stated that it was not enough that the WFP
consulted only the NLD, because Shan State had its own indigenous
political parties that had won the general elections, particularly the
Shan Nationalities League for Democracy that captured the largest seats
state-wide, and the Lahu National Democratic Party, to which he belonged.

Daniel Aung also questioned why poppy growers were also targeted as
beneficiaries when the title of the project itself said it was for
ex-poppy farmers. "Because Wa townships named in the project, Ai Cheung,
Yin Pang and Ling Haw all grew opium during the last season," he said. "As
for Pangyan(g), its output had been said to have doubled, because the
people were not only allowed to grow poppies but were encouraged to do so
by the Wa authorities."

Other participants aired the following concerns, among others:

The fact that poppy farmers are now starving means that Burma's drug
policies are failing and should be re-evaluated

As farmers who are being forced to grow the highly unpopular Hsin Shweli
strain, imported from China, are actually rice farmers and not poppy
farmers, the military government has "ironically" turned some of them into
poppy farmers

As the UN agencies and the International NGOs working in Burma are liable
to charges of legitimizing the military government, there is a greater
need for them to be more open, transparent and to voice their concerns
publicly (Some have spoken privately that governments often turned out to
be the biggest obstacles when they should be the ones who were working the
hardest for their own people)

"Couldn't we tell the generals to stop forcing the people to give up
(poppy cultivation)?" asked a participant pointedly.

The meeting concluded at 12:30.

The WFP has so far received $ 1,736,000: Australia, $ 615,000; Japan, $
300,000; Germany $ 487,000; and Sweden, $ 334,000.

_____________________________________

May 13, Shan Herald Agency for News
Non-Burmans hold last-ditch meetings - Hkun Htun Oo

A joint statement due sometime today

S.H.A.N.'s source from Rangoon forewarned this morning to look forward to
a joint declaration made by Burma's main ceasefire groups sometime today.

"It is expected to be released after their meeting with Gen Khin Nyunt
that has been scheduled for today," he said.

The 7 point draft statement includes, among others, the call for the
annulment of the 104 constitutional principles, which, if re-adopted,
would legitimize the military's supremacy over the people, and the repeal
of the law No. 5/96 which provides for the imprisonment of any person up
to 20 years or the banning of an organization that makes statements "to
undermine, belittle and make people misunderstand the functions being
carried out by the National Convention," according to the critics.

The Shan Nationalities League for Democracy of Hkun Htun Oo has also been
busy holding last-minute meetings since 7 May, he said.

7 May - with NLD head office, where U Aung Shwe, its chairman, reassured
Sai Nyunt Lwin, the SNLD's Secretary, that no decision would be taken
without first consulting the ethnic nationalities.
9 May - with foreign diplomats
11 May - with the United Nationalities Alliance member parties

No details for the latter two meetings were provided. Another meeting had
been scheduled for today, he added.

According to sources, tomorrow, 14 May, has been designated by military
authorities as the final day to notify the decision of the political
parties and elected representatives whether or not they would participate
in the National Convention, due to begin on Monday, 17 May.

_____________________________________

May 13, Irrawaddy
Oil Tanker Ambushed in Eastern Shan State - Naw Seng

Several people died and others were wounded when a convoy that included
two Burmese government-owned oil tankers was ambushed on Tuesday by
unknown assailants in eastern Shan State, Burma, near the Thai border,
local sources say. There is, as yet, no official casualty count.

A convoy comprising two oil tankers and three trucks was ambushed near Ta
Lerh village, 30 miles north of Tachilek, a Burmese border town abutting
the Thai town of Mae Sai, according to the Shan Herald Agency for News, or
SHAN.

There are many armed organizations roaming around the area. —SSA-S
spokeswoman Nam Khur Hsen

A Tachilek resident, who asked not to be named, said that most of the dead
and wounded were passengers in a bus that crashed during the attack. The
injured were hospitalized in Tachilek, she added.

Nam Khur Hsen, spokeswoman of the Shan State Army-South, or SSA-S, said
she had not received any reports from the area and denied that the SSA-S
was responsible. “There are many armed organizations roaming around the
area,” she said.

The SSA-S, led by Col Yord Serk, is made up of soldiers who deserted from
the Mong Tai Army when its leader Khun Sa (aka Chang Shi-fu) surrendered
to Rangoon in 1996. The organization has been fighting a low-level
insurgency against the Burmese government ever since.

Meanwhile, the SSA-S is launching operations in five townships in eastern
Shan State—Kengtong, Mong Hpayak, Mong Hsat, Mong Yawn and
Tachilek—according to SHAN.

Another resident in Tachilek said that the funeral of one of the dead from
the tanker attack, La De from Ta Lerh village, was held on Thursday.

On May 22, 2003, a Burmese government convoy was ambushed near Tachilek
after a series of explosions damaged government buildings and a statue of
King Bayinnaung, a 16th century monarch revered by ethnic-Burmans, in the
border town. The SSA-S was blamed for the blasts by both Thailand and
Burma.

The official opening of the new Thailand-Myanmar Friendship Bridge that
links Mae Sai with Tachilek, which was scheduled for April 30 this year
and was to be attended by Burmese Prime Minister Khin Nyunt and his Thai
counterpart Thaksin Shinawatra, was cancelled for undisclosed reasons.


DRUGS
_____________________________________

May 13, Xinhua News Agency
254 drug-related cases reported in Myanmar in March

Yangon: Myanmar registered 254 narcotic-drug-related cases in March this
year, bringing the total number of such cases exposed since January to
703, according to a report of the state-run newspaper The New Light of
Myanmar Thursday.

During March, the army, police and the customs seized 4.7 kilos of heroin,
14.34 kilos of opium and 17.7 kilos of marijuana as well as 43,225
stimulant tablets, punishing 320 people, including 256 men and 64 women,
the report said.

According to official statistics, Myanmar saw a total of over 2, 760
drug-related cases in 2003 and 3,848 people were arrested. Drug haul
during the year included 568 kilos heroin, 1,481 kilos opium, 156
morphine, 85 kilos marijuana and 308 kilos ephedrine as well as 4 million
tablets of stimulants with seven opium refineries being destroyed.

Meanwhile, during the 2003-04 poppy cultivation season up to March, the
authorities spoiled a total of 2,835 hectares of illegally-grown opium
poppy plantations in four states and divisions including Shan state, the
figures indicate.

According to a latest release of Myanmar-United States joint opium yield
survey, the country's poppy cultivation and opium production dropped 39
percent to 47,130 hectares and 484 tons in 2003 respectively from the
previous year.


GUNS
_____________________________________

May 12, Irrawaddy
The Kiev Connection - William Ashton

The former Soviet republic of the Ukraine is helping to satisfy the
Rangoon regime’s apparently insatiable demand for modern weapon systems.

In May 2003 the Malyshev HMB plant in Kharkov reportedly signed a contract
with Rangoon to provide the Burma Army with 1,000 new BTR-3U light armored
personnel carriers, or APCs. The APCs will be supplied in component form
over the next 10 years, and assembled in Burma.

The size of the deal is estimated to be in excess of US $500 million. It
is not known if it will be paid in hard currency, or whether an element of
barter trade is involved. Some of Burma’s other arms suppliers—for example
Russia and North Korea—have accepted part payment in rice, teak and marine
products.

The BTR-3U was jointly developed by the Karkiv Morozov Machine-building
Design Bureau, or KMVD, a Ukraine state company, and Adcom Manufacturing
Co, an Abu Dhabi-based munitions maker. Although it resembles a Soviet
BTR-80, KMVD claims that the BTR-3U represents “an all-new production
vehicle rather than [an] upgrade of the existing in-service vehicle.”

The APC features a German-built Deutz engine and an American-made General
Motors Allison automatic transmission. The sale of the BTR-3U to Rangoon
may breach US law, which explicitly bans the export of American-made
military and dual-use products to Burma’s military.

Before the 1980s, the Burma Army’s APC fleet consisted of obsolete Ferret,
Humber and Daimler armored cars provided by the United Kingdom in the
1950s and 1960s. During the 1980s and early 1990s, the regime developed a
range of locally designed armored vehicles, built by army engineers using
Japanese components. Since the armed forces took back direct political
power in 1988, they have purchased about 250 Type-85 and around 55 Type-90
tracked APCs from China.

While designed mainly for counter-insurgency operations, wheeled APCs have
been used to help intimidate protesters and counter civil unrest in
Burma’s population centers.

The BTR-3U order follows hard on the heels of a shipment of tanks, also
from the Ukraine. According to expatriate sources, more than 50 T-72S main
battle tanks arrived in Rangoon by ship in mid-2003. They were
subsequently transported by road to the Bahtoo military cantonment. The
story is corroborated by the fact that in September 2002, the Ukrainian
state arms dealer UkrSpetsExport advertised in the Kiev press for
Ukrainian-to-English translators to work on a “Myanmar-Ukrainian tank
Project” that involved “combat usage, operation and maintenance of tank
T-72S.”

The Ukrainian T-72s join a large number of relatively modern tanks now in
Burma’s order of battle. Before 1988, the only tanks in the army’s
inventory were about 20 obsolete Comet medium tanks, provided by the UK in
1954. Since then, the regime has reportedly purchased hundreds of Type-85,
Type-80, Type-69 and Type-59 main battle tanks from China. It has also
acquired about 105 Type-63 light amphibious tanks, also from China.

In a related development, on February 26 this year a Ukrainian-flagged
freighter arrived at Rangoon port carrying military equipment. Strict
security measures were implemented to hide the nature of the cargo. The
unloading of the ship was reportedly supervised by Deputy Minister of
Defense Maj-Gen Aung Hlaing, and Col Aye Myint, the army’s Director of Air
Defense. The presence of these two officers at the docks prompted
speculation that the cargo consisted of anti-aircraft weapons manufactured
in the Ukraine.

In addition, there was a story in the local press in late 2002 that the
Ukraine had contracted to provide Burma with some 36D6 radar systems. The
terms of the contract and the number of items to be supplied have not yet
been revealed.

The Ukraine established diplomatic relations with Burma in January 1999.
It has no embassy there, but UkrSpetsExport maintains an
expatriate-staffed representative office on the ninth floor of the Royal
Nikko Hotel in Rangoon.

The weapons sales seen over the past year are the result of a concerted
export drive by the Ukraine, but they are also made possible by Rangoon’s
continuing military expansion and modernization program, begun in 1989.
Given the close relationship established between Rangoon and Kiev, further
arms sales seem likely.

William Ashton writes regularly about security issues in Asia.


REGIONAL
_____________________________________

May 13, Agence France Presse
Indonesia seeks common ASEAN stance on human rights

Yogyakarta, Indonesia: Indonesia is seeking to forge a common stance on
human rights among Southeast Asian countries to guard against outside
intervention, an Indonesian official said Thursday.

The establishment of an ASEAN human rights commission is one element of
"the ASEAN Security Community" proposed by Indonesia.

But some members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations oppose the
idea, foreign ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa said on the sidelines of
a meeting of ASEAN senior officials.

Natalegawa said ASEAN needs a regional mechanism on human rights otherwise
it will become "more irrelevant and vulnerable to extra-regional
intervention."

"Our view is that we need to strengthen regional capacity in this field.
By strengthening our capacity we can shield the region from outside
intervention in human rights.

"If we don't have a common stance there will be a vacuum of opinion on
human rights and this will pave the way for intervention," Natalegawa
said.

But one unspecified country argues that ASEAN is not in the position to
have a human rights commission, he said.

Natalegawa said Indonesia's proposals were in line with United Nations
standards and should not be a cause for concern.

"The more you discuss the details the more people can be convinced that
what we are doing is not something extraordinary or something
revolutionary," he said.

Five ASEAN countries -- Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Indonesia --
featured in the United States annual report on worldwide human rights
abuses issued in February.

The ASEAN Security Community was one of three "pillars" included in the
Bali Concord II which was endorsed last October at the grouping's summit
in Bali.

The proposals will be submitted for endorsement at the ASEAN summit in
Laos this year.

Together with the creation of similar economic and socio-cultural
communities, the concord lays the foundation for the creation of a
European-style ASEAN Community by 2020.

Another Indonesian official, Makarim Wibisono, said discussion on the
proposals will resume at an ASEAN senior officials' meeting Saturday and
Sunday in Singapore and a similar meeting in Cambodia next month.

Wibisono said Thursday's meeting discussed elements in the proposed ASEAN
Security Community which had not been debated previously.

He described the discussion as encouraging but refused say if there were
any objections to Indonesia's proposals.

Jakarta's proposals also call for the formation of an ASEAN peacekeeping
force that might one day help settle disputes like those in Indonesia's
Aceh province and the southern Philippines.

But Singapore has expressed reservations, arguing that ASEAN is not a
security or defense organization. Vietnam is also reportedly cool to the
idea.


INTERNATIONAL
_____________________________________

May 13, Reporters Without Border (RSF)
Military junta shuts door on free coverage of National Convention

Journalists under pressure after former BBC correspondent jailed for 15 years

Burma¹s military government has moved to block effective coverage of the
National Convention that opens on 17 May. The authorities have refused
journalists visas, subjected them to intimidation, slapped on advance
censorship and secured the convention centre.

With four days to go, the government appears incapable of allowing
discussion of a draft constitution to take place in the necessary calm and
openness.

Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières) and the Burma Media
Association urged Prime Minister, Gen. Khin Nyunt, to grant visas to all
Burmese and foreign journalist who applied, to stop advance censorship, to
set up a press centre with international communications and to free
imprisoned journalists.

The two organisations also called on the head of the military government
to release Ne Min, former BBC stringer who has been sentenced to 15 years
in prison.

His arrest and sentence only add to the pressure on Burmese journalists
doing their best to provide news for foreign media,² said Reporters
Without Borders and the Burma Media Association.

Lawyer Ne Min, aged around 55, who worked for the BBC in the 1980s, was
re-arrested in February 2004. He was sentenced on 7 May at a special court
within the walls of Insein prison. He had already spent eight years in
prison for ³spreading false rumours².
The journalist is respected by many of his Burmese colleagues as a very
experienced professional. The military secret services accused him of
sending information to foreign-based organisations, including media.

Four others, including Nyan Htun Linn, a student activist and former
office manager of a Thailand-based news website www.amyinthit.com, were
also given long prison sentences. Nyan Htun Linn was sentenced to 22 years
in prison for having released, particularly to journalists, a statement
criticising National Convention procedures.

Dozens of foreign journalists, including Agence France-Presse, Voice of
America, and the Burmese and English services of the BBC World Service,
who applied for visas to cover the convention, received no reply from the
Burmese authorities. However a Bangkok-based foreign journalist was given
permission to travel to Rangoon.

The National Convention is being held at Nyaunghnapin around 40 kms north
of Rangoon. Several sources confirmed that there is no mobile phone
network coverage for the building, which is close to a military camp. The
journalists will have great trouble meeting the hundreds of delegates.

The delegates risk jail sentences of five to 20 years if they
³disseminate² a speech or statement not authorised by the convention¹s
working committee that is controlled by the authorities.

A delegate for the National League for Democracy (NLD) was in 1996,
sentenced to 20 years in prison for giving journalists a document that had
not been passed by the committee.

Moreover advance censorship is always applied to privately-owned
publications in Rangoon, which are banned from freely reporting on
preparations for the Convention and the position of the party of Aung San
Suu Kyi, who is still under house arrest.

To ease international pressure, the military junta announced the opening
of a National Convention on 17 May 2004 to write a new constitution.
Neither the main democratic party, the NLD, nor the majority of ethnic
minority parties have confirmed their participation. The government
imposes the rules of the Convention, which was interrupted in 1996 after
the withdrawal of the NLD.


OPINION/OTHER
_____________________________________

May 15, The Spectator
Burma jungle - John Bercow and Caroline Cox

John Bercow and Caroline Cox urge strong international action to bring
justice to a land where murder, rape and torture are commonplace

The scars said it all. The 31 year-old Karenni man fled to Thailand in
February this year, leaving his wife and four children behind in his
village in Burma. He was escaping a life of forced labour and frequent
torture. Almost a year ago, Burmese army soldiers knocked on his door, and
ten days of hell began. He did not know why they took him away. For seven
hours, soldiers rolled logs up and down his legs, sometimes standing on
them with their boots, until the skin wore down to the bone. At night, the
soldiers forced large quantities of water down his throat until his
stomach swelled, and then stamped on his stomach until he vomited. He was
unable to walk for five months as a result. ‘I thought I was going to
die,’ he told us.

This is just one of the many examples of the Burmese junta’s neo-Nazi
tactics which we heard about on our visit to the Thai-Burmese border last
month, facilitated by Christian Solidarity Worldwide. We held meetings in
Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Mae Hong Son and Mae Sot, visited Karen and Karenni
people living in camps in the Thai-Burmese borderlands, and crossed the
border to meet Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in Burma whose village
had been destroyed by the Burmese army not long ago. The message was
consistent and unmistakable. The ‘Tatmadaw’ - the army - is guilty of
wanton savagery against its own people. Moreover, the State Peace and
Development Council (SPDC), the illegal government which seized power
through a military coup in 1962 and ignored the overwhelming victory of
the National League for Democracy in the 1990 elections, has no intention
of embracing democracy.

Military offensives are regularly waged against Karen, Karenni, Shan and
other ethnic national groups. Equally commonplace are extrajudicial
killings of unarmed civilians, as well as rape, torture, forced labour,
forced relocation and the use of child soldiers. Since 1996, more than
2,500 villages in eastern Burma have been destroyed, at least a million
people displaced, 365,000 moved to relocation sites and 268,000 hiding in
the jungle. Allegations of systematic rape by soldiers against ethnic
nationals have been documented in several human-rights reports and
verified by the US State Department. The most recent case was reported
less than a fortnight ago, a mere ten kilometres from the Thai border.

For more than 13 years, the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and the
Federation of Trade Unions of Burma have reported the use of forced labour
in Burma, with thousands of people made to work as porters, carrying heavy
loads, allowed little food, water or rest, and frequently losing limbs or
lives through being used as human mine-sweepers. It is estimated that at
least 70,000 child soldiers are conscripted into the SPDC military.
Typically, children are grabbed from bus stations, trains, cars or the
street and instructed, on pain of death, to do the army’s dirty work.

We met and heard of people who had suffered water torture; people who had
lost limbs from army shootings; people who had been severely beaten;
people who had seen their parents murdered in front of their own eyes and,
in reverse, people compelled to watch as their children were assassinated
by the unconscionable thugs of the army.

If the plight of the refugees from Burma in Thailand is grievous, the
situation of internally displaced persons in Karen, Karenni and Shan
states is even worse. The SPDC invests less than 1 per cent of the annual
budget in healthcare, or less than $1 per person per year, compared with
approximately 50 per cent devoted to military expenditure. Unsurprisingly,
therefore, community health facilities are non-existent in many areas and
there is no supporting infrastructure. Hospitals and health centres have
insufficient staff, equipment and medicines to deliver even the most basic
healthcare. Malnutrition is rife and villagers’ food stocks can be
habitually stolen by soldiers. Diet is inadequate and clothing minimal.
Both malaria and anaemia are frequent causes of death.

The SPDC is due to restart its national convention on 17 May, and is
working overtime to hoodwink the international community into believing
that this is the launch of its road map to democracy. Yet the unanimous
view of pro-democracy and ethnic groups whom we met is that this is
nothing but a cynical ploy to create the impression of democratic reform
for the international media, while offering nothing substantive of the
sort.

Speculation is rife about the imminent release of Aung San Suu Kyi, the
democracy leader and Nobel laureate now under house arrest. She may well
be released in time for the national convention, but her release alone
should not satisfy the international community. As long as the estimated
1,500 other political prisoners remain behind bars and the ethnic groups
continue to be oppressed, the junta will continue to be condemned.

The convention is fundamentally flawed. It will consist only of delegates
handpicked by the regime, is rumoured to be taking place in a military
camp outside Rangoon, will be closed to independent monitors and the
world’s media, and will stipulate that speeches be censored in advance by
the SPDC. Representatives of some of the ethnic national groups such as
the Karenni and Chin have not been invited, and the Karen National Union
told us, ‘The convention is unacceptable. We cannot participate. We need
tripartite dialogue instead.’

For all the rhetoric about change, the ethnic cleansing and the ritual
torture remain facts of life. It is obvious that the junta is hell-bent on
keeping power at all costs and bludgeoning its opponents into submission.
These tactics cannot be appeased. They must be confronted head on by the
international community. Too many people have suffered for too long with
too little attention from the free world.

What is to be done? The UN Security Council must impose an arms embargo on
Burma. The European Union should strengthen its pitifully weak sanctions
policy by following the example of the United States and imposing targeted
investment and trade sanctions, especially banning capital investment,
trade in timber and marine products and investment in oil. The Foreign
Office should urge the Thai, Indian and Bangladeshi governments to desist
from repatriating displaced Burmese civilians until there are credible
security guarantees in place for them. The SPDC should release all
political prisoners, allow independent monitors to assess charges of
maltreatment against them, and open all of Burma to international
humanitarian organisations. The junta must be told that a nationwide
ceasefire is needed now and that talks on constitutional change must take
place with both the National League for Democracy and the ethnic national
groups.

The Department for International Development should follow the lead of
those governments which provide cross-border humanitarian aid to IDPs in
Burma who lack healthcare, food supplies, shelter and education. Unless
the SPDC stops playing games with the international community and accepts
a clear timetable for transition to representative democracy, the
governments of the free world should unite to change the regime. A trade
boycott on the one hand and the start of proceedings against the SPDC on
the other could be an exemplary means to concentrate minds.

John Bercow is the shadow Secretary of State for International
Development, and Conservative MP for Buckingham. Caroline Cox is a member
of the House of Lords, and Honorary President of Christian Solidarity
Worldwide.

_____________________________________

May 12, The Baltimore Sun
Window dressing

On Monday, 14 years after a pack of generals stole control of Myanmar from
a legally elected democracy party, the still-ruling military junta will
convene a national constitutional convention to which it has invited its
long-suppressed opponents. In advance, the National League for Democracy,
which won those last parliamentary elections in 1990, has been allowed to
reopen an office. And there's mounting anticipation that its leader, Nobel
laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, will be released from house arrest to
participate in the national political conference.

If this sounds all too familiar, it should. Those concerned with the
brutal suppression of freedom in the nation once known as Burma have been
down this road before - in 1996 and, more recently, last year, when the
indomitable Ms. Suu Kyi and her supporters, briefly free to speak out,
came under violent ambush leading to her last rearrest. Her release now -
it would be her third since her first arrest in 1989 - would be welcome,
but it also would impart credibility to a political process that Sen.
Mitch McConnell has aptly denounced as "window dressing."

All but a few of the more than 1,000 convention delegates are said to be
hand-picked supporters of the generals. Even as the illegal regime talks
of a new road map to resolving this long standoff with the NLD, 1,300
political prisoners remain jailed, and in recent weeks more dissidents
reportedly have been receiving long sentences. Ms. Suu Kyi's party is in a
tough spot: It can boycott the convention as a sham and be accused by the
regime of being noncooperative, or it can legitimize a sham. Either way,
the Yangon generals again seem to be stringing along the world.

All this speaks to the need for the U.S. Senate to act quickly to renew
import sanctions placed on Myanmarese goods after Ms. Suu Kyi was
rearrested last year. And this time, sanctions must be followed by a U.S.
diplomatic campaign - with the generals, their Southeast Asian apologists
and the U.N. Security Council - that will be more strongly focused on
forcing the junta to begin sharing power.

Ms. Suu Kyi has deservedly gained world renown as a symbol of the Burmese
quest for freedom, but she also is just one of 50 million people who
remain under this regime's lock and key.