BurmaNet News, August 28-30, 2004

[Editor]

August 28-30 , 2004, Issue # 2548

INSIDE BURMA
Irrawaddy: Ethnic Karen celebrate Wrist tying Ceremony

ON THE BORDER
Mizzima: Migrant Workers Bask in Hope Offered by Key Verdict

HEALTH/AIDS
BBC: Burma warned of impact from entering TRIPS agreements on HIV-AIDS drugs

BUSINESS / MONEY
ST: Myanmar seeking foreign ships to fly its flag

REGIONAL
Irrawaddy: Indonesia rejects possible compromise in EU-Burma row
Reuters: Ex-Vietnam PM in Yangon to calm Europe-Asia summit row
TNS: Thailand to help Myanmar develop farming

INTERNATIONAL
Lloyd’s List: Top shipping firms on Burma ‘dirty list’

OPINION / OTHER
NYT: An Embrace for Myanmar (Excerpted from “Asia, Beijing's Star Is in
Ascendance”)
Bangkok Post: Why should it be kept a secret?

PRESS RELEASE
Long March and Hunger Strike for Freedom and Democracy in Burma

______________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

August 30, Irrawaddy
Ethnic Karen celebrate Wrist Tying Ceremony

More than 5,000 people attended the ethnic Karen’s annual wrist tying
ceremony at a Burmese temple in the Thai border town of Mae Sot on Monday,
said festival onlookers.

The ceremony, rooted in ancestral beliefs in spirits and known as lah ku
kee su in the Karen language, began at 7:00 this morning and was held at
Taw-ya Kyaun temple on the outskirts of town. Most of those in attendance
were migrant workers from Burma and Karen living along the Thai-Burma
border.

Traditionally the festival takes place at the time of the August full
moon, when Karen tie white threads around the wrists to ward off illness
and to contribute to the continuation of Karen culture. The festival has
no religious significance.

The yearly ritual gives Karen elders the chance to pass on the Karen
language, customs and traditions to the youth. Addressing onlookers this
morning, Paw Doh, a veteran commander of the Karen National Union
Battalion 101 and a delegate to the Karen committee which is negotiating a
ceasefire with Burma’s military government, urged the Karen people to be
united. Several observers speculate that a formal ceasefire between Karen
rebels and the junta—which is opposed by many Karen—could lead to a split
among the Karen people.

 Mahn Myo Myint, the former vice chairman of the Overseas Karen Refugees’
Social Organization, said this year’s ceremony received the largest
turnout ever. He added that the first wrist tying ceremony was held in
1992.

Onlookers were treated to a performance by a trio of popular Pwo Karen
singers and to an award presentation to the winners of the Karen singing
competition, held the previous day at the temple. Karen noodles and other
snacks were served.

S’eh Ner, a medic at the Mae Tao clinic in Mae Sot, said: “I am thrilled
to see so many of our Karen people come to the ceremony to show our unity,
love and tradition—even though we are living in a terrible situation.”

On Sunday thousands of Karen people marked the wrist tying ceremony in
Nakorn Pathom Province, adjacent to Bangkok, while Karen living on the
west coast of Canada celebrated the event in Vancouver on August 2.

____________________________________
ON THE BORDER

August 27, Mizzima
Migrant Workers Bask in Hope Offered by Key Verdict

A Thai labour court is offering hope to over a million migrant workers
that justice is possible in this South-east Asian country - even if the
struggle to secure a victory could last nearly two years.

In a judgement delivered this week in a landmark legal battle, a court in
Mae Sot, a town along the Thai-Burmese border, ordered the Thai owner of a
garment factory to pay 1.17 million baht (29,250 U.S. dollars) in
compensation to 18 Burmese migrant workers.

They were among 60 Burmese employees who had been fired from the Nut
Knitting factory in October 2002. The dismissed workers had also been
severely beaten by gangs linked to the company for protesting against the
unfair treatment meted out to them and 19 other colleagues.

‘'Thursday's verdict is unprecedented,'' Pranom Somwong of the Migrant
Action Programme (MAP), a labour rights group based in the northern city
of Chiang Mai, said in an interview.

Many migrant workers had little faith that a victory could come out of the
Thai legal system when these 18 men and women mounted this first-ever case
brought by Burmese workers in Thai courts, she added.

But now, Burmese labour rights activists are already expressing confidence
that this victory for migrant workers' rights will help usher a new era
for the thousands of Burmese who toil in sweatshop-like conditions to earn
a meagre wage.

‘'This case will encourage others whose rights have been violated to fight
for their rights in the Thai labour courts,'' Moe Swe, who heads Yaung Chi
Oo Workers Association, a Mae Sot-based group of Burmese migrants, said in
an interview.

It was not an easy battle, he admitted, since they were scared of being
arrested, knew little about their rights and court proceedings, and had to
survive on the limited money they had since the other factories in Mae Sot
had refused to employ them because they were - troublemakers”.

The relief was evident in the voice of Ma Wai, a 26-year-old from Burma's
Shan State, who was among the 18 workers savouring the taste of victory.

‘'The court's decision has helped me to realise that victory is possible
even for people like us. But we had to take risks and fight for it,'' she
said over the telephone from Mae Sot.

Ma Wai hopes to celebrate like most of her fellow labour rights pioneers -
using part of the compensation money to visit her family in Burma. ‘'It
will be a reunion after two years,'' she said.

This week's decision comes 18 months after the Labour Protection Office of
Tak province, where Mae Sot is located, weighed in favour of the dismissed
migrant workers when it ordered the Nut Knitting factory to compensate the
employees for lost earnings.

But the employers refused, prompting lawyers from the Law Society of
Thailand to sue the factory owner on behalf of the migrant workers.

A similar dispute is playing out in another garment factory in Mae Sot,
the Thai-owned Nasawat Apparel Co that has refused to comply with an order
by labour protection officials to compensate dismissed employees.

In this case, the employer has to pay 16 million baht (421,000 U.S.
dollars) to 257 migrant workers who walked out in protest for being
underpaid and overworked.

Thai labour law specifies a minimum wage of 133 baht (3.50 dollars) per
day for an eight-hour shift in Mae Sot. The overtime rate is 25 baht per
hour (about 70 cents).

But at Nasawat Apparel, the Burmese workers were being paid 50 baht per
day (1.30 dollars) for an eight-hour shift, and overtime earned them only
eight baht per hour ( about 20 cents).

The travails of Burmese labourers in Mae Sot have come to symbolise the
painful climate in which migrant workers toil in jobs that are dirty,
dangerous and back-breaking across Thailand.

Besides working in garment factories, migrant workers from Burma, Laos and
Cambodia are employed in the manufacturing sector, the construction
sector, in the fishing and agriculture industry and as domestic servants
in Thailand.

In July, in an effort to regulate the number of foreign workers pouring in
from neighbouring countries and also offer them more security and new
benefits, the Thai government conducted a successful migrant-labour
registration drive.

An estimated 1.2 million migrants registered, of which over 800,000 came
from Burma, nearly 173,000 from Laos and over 155,000 from Cambodia,
according to figures from the labour ministry.

Mae Sot alone has close to 100,000 Burmese migrants employed in the many
garment factories and farms in the vicinity. This labour flow began in the
mid-1990s, when the Thai government converted this remote border town into
a production centre.

During 12-month period between 2002-2003, the Federation of the Tak
Industrialists Chapter, a body that includes the factory owners in Mae
Sot, stated in a report that the region had raked in five billion baht
(125 million dollars).

But life for the migrant workers has been far from rosy, given the abuse
they are subject to besides working in unfavourable working conditions.
Some Burmese men have been beaten, some women have been raped and murdered
and labour rights activists like Moe Swe have been threatened.

‘'For too long, the migrant workers in places like Mae Sot have been
exploited and paid less,'' William Conklin, the Thai representative of the
American Centre for International Labour Solidarity, a Washington
D.C.-based non-governmental organisation, told IPS.

But this week's verdict to help migrant workers will amount to little
unless there is ‘'systematic change,'' he said. ‘'Most employers will
think they can still get away by exploiting their workers.''

_____________________________________
HEALTH/AIDS

August 30, BBC
Burma warned of impact from entering TRIPS agreements on HIV-AIDS drugs

Myanmar [Burma] needs to be prepared to minimize any negative pricing
effects involving pharmaceuticals when it implements international
agreements on trade related intellectual property rights (TRIPS), a
workshop in Yangon [Rangoon] has been told.

Mr Suchart Chongprasert, a consultant to a project assessing the impact of
TRIPS agreements on public health in ASEAN countries, was speaking at a
workshop held to discuss the issue at the Grand Plaza Parkroyal hotel on
12 August.

The workshop focused mainly on the impact of TRIPS agreements on drugs
used to treat HIV-AIDS. The regional project is being funded by the
US-based Rockefeller Foundation.

Mr Suchart said Myanmar would need to adopt measures necessary to protect
public health when TRIPS agreements were implemented under the country's
obligations to the World Trade Organization.

Myanmar's WTO membership obligations require it to upgrade laws and
regulations for patents on pharmaceutical products by the end of 2015.

"Beyond 2015, you will have a big problem if you cannot afford expensive
patented drugs owing to the monopoly of certain companies protected by the
laws," Mr Suchart said.

He said Myanmar would need to include provisions in trade agreements that
allowed it to import generic drugs from countries that produced them more
cheaply than patented products.

Compulsory licensing should also be exercised to allow the government to
grant third parties the right to produce drugs if negotiations failed with
companies holding patent rights.

The manager of the government's National AIDS Programme, Dr Min Thwe, said
a National Project Coordination Committee was formed on 5 August to
implement activities under the project. He said similar committees had
been established in other ASEAN countries.

Dr Min Thwe also said more anti-retroviral treatments would be made
available to AIDS patients.

The Ministry of Health provides anti-retroviral treatments free of charge
to 200 patients in collaboration with non-government organization Artsen
Zonder Grenzen (Medecins Sans Frontieres Holland) and is planning to
expand the programme to 1000 patients by the end of 2005.

Source: The Myanmar Times web site, Rangoon, in English 23 Aug 04

_____________________________________
BUSINESS / MONEY

August 27, The Straits Times
Myanmar seeking foreign ships to fly its flag

Myanmar is trying to attract more foreign shipping lines to fly its
national flag to egg on its maritime industry, sources in the Marine
Administration Department said yesterday.

Nineteen foreign vessels flying the Myanmar flag have earned the country
about US$100,000 (S$172,000) in revenue so far, the sources said.

As part of its efforts, Myanmar recently set up a promotional office in
Singapore.

The push for foreign shippers is also intended to create job opportunities
for local seafarers, sources added.

Official statistics show there are 60,000 registered seafarers in Myanmar,
of whom over 12,000 work for overseas shipping lines, up from only 9,000
in 1996.

To upgrade the skills of maritime engineers and seafarers, 400 of them are
being dispatched to five South Korean coastal shipping lines this month.

The government has also formed an Overseas Seafarers Association and
established the country's first maritime university in 2002.

Bilateral recognition of seafaring competency certificates from many
countries, including the Maritime and Coastguard Agency of Britain, has
been secured.

_____________________________________
REGIONAL

August 30, Irrawaddy
Indonesia rejects possible compromise in EU-Burma row

Indonesia today rejected any compromise solution to the row between
Southeast Asian countries and Europe over Burma that would result in
Rangoon regime leaders failing to attend an upcoming summit.

The European Union, or EU, has threatened to scuttle a meeting between
European and Asian leaders on October 8-9 in Vietnam if Burma attends,
citing Rangoon’s poor human rights record and the continued detention of
pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean, believes
that engaging with Burma is the best way to bring about change in the
country, and wants Rangoon to participate in the Asia-Europe Meeting, or
ASEM.

Some Western diplomats have privately suggested a summit-saving
compromise, whereby Burma would be represented by junior level officials,
not Prime Minister Gen Khin Nyunt.

“[It] is unacceptable to us if the level of a sovereign nation’s
participation in a summit is decided by other states,” Indonesian Foreign
Ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa told reporters.

“Myanmar [Burma] have to decide themselves whether they will be
represented by their state leaders or not,” he said. “This is [Asean’s]
basic position which is non-negotiable.”

His comments came during a visit to Jakarta by Dutch Foreign Minister Ben
Bot, whose government currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency. He met
officials to seek a solution to the row.

On Thursday, he said he was confident the summit would take place, but did
not indicate how a compromise would be reached. Bot was scheduled to
return to the Netherlands today [Friday].

Burma’s military government detained Suu Kyi in May 2003 and she remains
under house arrest. The EU has demanded her release.

In June the EU scrapped talks with Asian finance ministers because of
their insistence that Burma take part in the October meeting.

Asean comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Burma,
Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam.
_____________________________________

August 30, Reuters
Ex-Vietnam PM in Yangon to calm Europe-Asia summit row

Vietnam has dispatched a former premier to Yangon to discuss a
European-Asian summit Hanoi is hosting in October that has drawn fire from
some European nations over the participation of Myanmar's authoritarian
regime.

In a rare state visit by an ex-government official, Vo Van Kiet, who
stepped down as Vietnam's prime minister in 1997, met Myanmar Prime
Minister Khin Nyunt and Senior General Than Shwe last Thursday, Vietnamese
media reported on Monday.

At the meeting with Kiet, Khin Nyunt said Myanmar "would continue to
cooperate with Vietnam" to make the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) successful,
Vietnam News reported.

Vietnamese state media said the meeting was an effort to promote two-way
ties but diplomats in Hanoi said Kiet was sent as an envoy to help calm a
dispute sparked by the admission of Myanmar, along with two other new
members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) into ASEM.

"He (Kiet) has very good connections with the regime," said one diplomat.
"I'm sure he was sent to try to get them (Myanmar) to make the enlargement
issue less sensitive."

Some European nations, especially Myanmar's former colonial ruler, Great
Britain, are challenging its presence at the ASEM meeting.

The EU has already cancelled two ministerial-level ASEM meetings because
of the impasse over Myanmar and its repression of political opponents,
chiefly the house arrest of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.

ASEAN says all three new members must be admitted as a bloc, since 10 new
European Union states will join the summit in Hanoi on Oct. 8 and 9.

ASEM participants, including the Netherlands, which has attempted to
mediate a solution, say they expect the October summit to go ahead despite
the row over Myanmar.

Diplomats in Hanoi have said one face-saving solution could be for Myanmar
to send a more junior representative. "Getting Burma to send someone lower
down was seen as the only way to make it palatable to the EU," another
diplomat said.

Indonesia, which heads ASEAN, has been fielding options to end the
dispute. But it said no one should interfere in Myanmar's selection of a
representative to ASEM.

"That should be best left to the country concerned," Indonesian Department
of Foreign Affairs Spokesman Marty Natalegawa told Reuters on Monday. "In
other words it's not something that should be engineered or that should be
arranged by any other party." (Additional reporting by Jerry Norton from
JAKARTA).

_____________________________________
August 30, Thai News Service
Thailand to help Myanmar develop farming

The development project has been under a cooperation between Thailand,
Myanmar and the United Nation's World Food Programme, he said, adding that
the cooperation would be extended to Cambodia in a near future.

Therefore, Myanmar's migrant workers will stop crossing the border to
Thailand to search for work.

Mr. Amphon believes if Myanmar's agriculture sector is made strong, it
will create jobs to the countrymen.

''This project will help Myanmar sustainably increase its food production
which will lead to a food security in the country. It will, as well,
increase the regional farming capacity and produces in the world market,''
he said.

He said Myanmar has requested Thailand to help developing its water
resources and irrigation system, and building other basic infrastructure
for farming.

The ministry's Deputy Permanent Secretary Amphon Kittiamphon said the
ministry was still selecting experts to join the team.

_____________________________________
INTERNATIONAL

August 30, Lloyd’s List
Top shipping firms on Burma ‘dirty list’

Some of the world’s top shipping companies appear in the Burma Campaign’s
annual “dirty list” that seeks to shame companies its regards as helping
the country’s military regime.

Four well-known names from the shipping industry and insurers Lloyd’s of
London have been added to the latest revised list of 95 companies that
operate or invest in Myanma.

The list comprises British companies or foreign companies with a
significant presence in the UK that do business in Myanmar.

The Burma Campaign says that these companies are supporting a regime it
describes as one of the longest running and most brutal military
dictatorships in the world.

New to list this year are: Ben Line Agencies, Hapag Lloyd, AP MØller
Maersk, NYK, Lloyd’s of London and Ince & Co.

According to the pressure group Ben Line, Hapag Lloyd and NYK all have
offices in the country, Maersk and Lloyd’s London have agents there.

Hapag Lloyd, NYK and Maersk are all involved in the export of Burmese
goods, while both the German and Japanese companies have cruiseships that
call at Myanmar.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi and the Burmese democracy
movement have asked tourists not to visit Burma because they say it helps
fund the regime and gives it legitimacy.

According to the Burma Campaign forced and child labour was used to
develop many tourist facilities.

Maritime lawyers Ince & Co have also found there way onto the list.
“Through their Singapore office they have been active in facilitating
trade and investment in Burma,” the campaign said. Insurers Lloyd’s of
London has been added as some its members insure companies operating in
Myanmar, and also local companies such as Myanmar Airways.

The shipping companies have joined the likes of Hutchison Whampoa, which
operates a container terminal Myanmar’s capital Yangon.

“Companies investing in Burma are not doing so because of an altruistic
wish to help the people of Burma,” the Burma Campaign said.

“They are there to make a profit, and are attracted by salaries of less
than 25p (45¢) a day, a compliant workforce where unions are banned, and
limited health and safety laws which in any case are rarely enforced. The
minimum working age is 13.”

Recent years have seen many major multinational companies pull out of
Myanmar including Texaco and Premier Oil.

_____________________________________
OPINION / OTHER

August 30, New York Times
An Embrace for Myanmar
[Excerpted from: Across Asia, Beijing's Star Is in Ascendance by Jane
Perlez – Ed]

China's rapid gain in influence in the Asia Pacific region ranges so
broadly that it can be measured at the extremes, in countries as divergent
as rich and distant Australia and impoverished but strategically important
Myanmar.

The military government of Myanmar is no favorite of Washington. The Bush
administration has tried since last year to use trade sanctions to coerce
Myanmar's generals to share power and release the opposition leader, Aung
San Suu Kyi, from house arrest. But the logic of the sanctions did not
impress even a local Burmese restaurant owner on the road from Mandalay to
China.

With ceiling fans powered by scarce electricity whirring gently, he drew a
rough map of Myanmar on a bare wood table top for a recent visitor. India,
Thailand, Laos, China, he said pointing to the neighbors.

"As long as China remains friendly nothing will change," said the man, who
did not want to be named for fear of Myanmar's ruthless military
intelligence service. "China can provide everything the country needs from
a needle to a nuclear bomb."

China has in fact capsized Washington's policy with its own trade deals,
which far outweigh the value of the American penalties. The State
Department estimates that Myanmar lost about $200 million in the first
year of the ban on imports to the United States. At the same time, it
said, trade between China and Myanmar amounted to about $1 billion in
2003.

Here is where economic leverage translates into political preference. For
China, Myanmar provides is too important as a gateway to energy and other
natural resources to be thrown overboard. Not only has China offset the
American sanctions and kept Myanmar afloat with easy credit and trade, but
it has taken Myanmar's military leaders under its wing.

On a visit this spring to Myanmar's capital, Yangon, formerly Rangoon,
China's deputy prime minister, Wu Yi, pledged to expand trade to $1.5
billion in 2005. In July, Myanmar's new prime minister, Khin Nyunt, paid
an eight-day visit to China, where he was treated like an old friend.

He returned with a raft of accords on railways, a fertilizer factory and
mine exploration, as well as $150 million loan for telecommunications and
a $94 million rescheduling of debts - relatively small amounts that show
how easy it has become for China to serve as Myanmar's patron.

Chinese officials have also been willing to finance vital hydroelectric
dam projects in the absence of lenders from anywhere else. And they
recently proposed that a pipeline be built from Myanmar's west coast port
of Sittwe to Kunming, the capital of China's southwestern Yunnan Province,
allowing China more direct access to Middle East oil.

Closer to the border, the trade is in smuggled teak, a wood prized for its
beauty and durability by China's surging furniture manufacturers. The teak
trade is as illustrative as any of the symbiotic relationship between the
Chinese and Burmese authorities.

"China needs Burma's natural resources to fuel development on the border
and in Yunnan Province as a whole," Simon Phillips, the author of a report
on the trade published last year for Global Witness, a British
nongovernmental organization, said in an interview.

After China banned logging on its side of the border in 1998, Chinese
companies moved their workers - tens of thousands of them - into Myanmar,
he said. With the backing of political patrons in the Myanmar military,
and in separatist militias, the loggers carried on their work with
impunity.

The benefits flow both ways. The provincial government in Kunming depends
on the companies for revenue. On Myanmar's side, aside from the money
lavished on local Burmese political patrons, there was the added advantage
that the Chinese built roads.

One of the most important highways that China has helped improve is the
main artery from the border to Mandalay, the old royal capital. These
days, the traffic is varied. Huge trucks, many of them 40-year-old hulks
with exposed engines, still haul outsized teak logs to China. Smaller
vans, piled with crates of live crabs from Myanmar's Indian Ocean ports,
ply a profitable 48-hour journey delivering delicacies for Chinese
epicures.

>From China, a vast assortment of cheap consumer goods for local markets
comes down the road, particularly to Lashio. On a recent day, the city
market was packed with Chinese electronics, clothes and food.

But local people, like the restaurant owner, who have watched the traffic
flows, say they mostly go one way - into China.

"Myanmar is the resource pit of China," the restaurant owner lamented. "We
send our best wood to them, our best gems, our best fruit. What do we get?
Their worst fruit and their cheapest products."

Full article
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/28/international/asia/28asia.html?pagewanted=1&hp
(Registration required)

_____________________________________

August 29, The Bangkok Post
The Thai people have a right to be let in on details--Kamol Hengkietisak

The official document from Burma's Ministry of Communications, Post and
Telegraph (MCPT) to the Thai government requesting support for a
low-interest loan and grant for the development of Burma's
telecommunication infrastructure suddenly turned into a confidential
document when Matichon began an investigative report, said an editorial in
that daily newspaper.

The editorial questioned why the document should be kept confidential from
the Burmese people, as it would surely affect their daily activities in a
major way.

The same could be said of the Thai public, whose tax money would be used
to finance the loan and grant. They should be entitled to know the details
as well. Maybe the Thai government thinks that it is a small issue, and as
the matter has not been concluded yet there is no need to inform the Thai
people.

In the document, Burma's MCPT requests the assistance from the Thai
government on three projects: Satellite broadband communications,
installation of 1,500 kilometres of fibre optic cables and the development
of information and communications technology.

The three projects are worth a total of 1,216.8 million baht, 962 million
baht of which will come from a low-interest loan. The rest would be funded
by a grant made available from the Thai government.

The document states that Pagan Cybertech, a semi-state enterprise, will
undertake the project together with a major telecommunications supplier
from Thailand.

Cooperation between Thailand and other countries is normal in government
business, said Matichon. Thailand and Burma have a long common border.
Trade between two countries, as well as the movement of the people across
the borders, is common when neighbouring countries have friendly
relations.

The close economic ties between the two countries were formally sealed by
the so-called Pagan Declaration, a pact signed by Thailand, Laos, Burma,
and Cambodia at the Economic Cooperation Summit. The summit was held in
the Burmese city of Pagan on November 12 last year.

It is within reason that the Burmese government cites the pact as a
justification to seek funding from Thailand.

However, the editorial pointed out that both the Burmese and Thai
governments must enter into talks as to what sections of the pact apply to
these telecommunication projects.

It is also important that the people of the two countries have the right
to gain access to information and the deliberations of the two governments
on this issue.

Since the Thai government has yet to inform the Thai people about this
official request from the Burmese government, it is the duty of the media
to ask certain questions.

These include asking whether it is appropriate that such a huge loan be
made to Pagan Cybertech, whose shareholders include many junta members.
One is a son of Burmese Prime Minister Khin Nyunt.

The Matichon editorial also pointed out that the Thai telecommunications
supplier happens to be connected with the current Thai government leader.

The editorial did not question the principle of cooperation between
neighbouring countries, but said the methods and details must be
appropriate and that the Thai government must take into account
international opinions about Burma. The United Nations and the world
community are pressuring the junta to release Aung San Suu Ki and return
the country to the people.

It would not look good for Thailand to give the junta the loan and grant
at a time when the international community has cut off economic assistance
to Burma to pressure the junta.

As for the cooperation of Thailand's giant satellite firm to assist Pagan
Cybertech in carrying out the projects, the Thai government must give out
details and make all dealings transparent to the people to fend off
accusations of nepotism and conflicts of interests. Don't forget that this
government has been deeply mired in the issues of conflicts of interests
and policy corruption. It won't do to add one more issue to paint a dark
picture of the government, concluded the editorial.
_____________________________________

PRESS RELEASE
August 30
Long March and Hunger Strike for Freedom and Democracy in Burma

A group of democracy activists in exile from Burma are embarking on a
"Long March and Hunger Strike for Freedom and Democracy in Burma."  The
over 160-mile long march which will originate from "Grafton Peace Pagoda"
in Grafton, north of Albany, New York, will begin on 1 September 2004 and
end 16 days later before the United Nations in New York where heads of
states and foreign ministers will be gathering at the end of September.

In New York, the "freedom marchers" will be joined by other Burmese
activists who will be staging an "indefinite hunger strike" to express
their solidarity with the people of Burma and draw the world's attention
to the injustices being committed against the people who are being
brutalized, silenced, tortured, and persecuted by the military regime.

One of the organizers of the "Long March for Freedom and Democracy", Han
Lin said: "We need to keep the world's focus on the human rights
violations continuing unabated in Burma.  The party of the people -- the
National League for Democracy (NLD) -- which won the 1990 elections by an
overwhelming majority but ignored by the ruling generals, is being
targeted by the military for persecution.  The action we are taking is to
show our support for the NLD and prompt world nations into action.  It's
time for rhetoric to end and action to begin." He also adds, “The UN
should acknowledge that it has failed to prevent the brutal abuses of the
Burmese military regime against its own people.  The UN has failed to take
effective action against the inhuman acts of the Burmese military regime.”

The organizers of the Long March and the Hunger Strike say:

"(1) We support the appeal by the National League for Democracy to release
its Vice Chairman U Tin Oo, General Secretary Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and
all other political prisoners and to reopen all National League for
Democracy Offices,

"(2) We call on the United Nations General Assembly to raise the Burma
issue with the UN Secretary Council so that the United Nations can
effectively intervene and resolve the problem of Burma, take action to win
the release of the NLD leaders and other political prisoners, and reopen
NLD Offices, and

(3) We urge UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to implement the resolutions
on Burma passed by consecutive UNGA sessions and to organize an
international conference on Burma that will result in an internationally
agreed package of solutions to Burma's problems and to effectively pursue
the matter through the UN Security Council."