BurmaNet News, March 18, 2005

[Editor]

March 18, 2005 Issue # 2678


INSIDE BURMA
AFP: Freed Myanmar student activist concerned for those still behind bars
Reuters: Myanmar junta arrests two politicians
AFP: Myanmar civil servants set for sharp pay rise
Irrawaddy: Burma accused in report on displaced persons

DRUGS
Deutsche Presse-Agentur: China arrests 28 heroin traffickers at Myanmar
border checkpoint

REGIONAL
Nation: Burmese exiles ask govt for more time
Thai Press Reports: Refugee camp children sexually abused, says rights
committee

INTERNATIONAL
Economist: Soft on forced labour; Myanmar
Irrawaddy: Britain calls for release of Shan politicians

OPINION / OTHER
Washington Post: Funding scarce for export of democracy; outside Mideast,
U.S. effort lags

______________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

March 18, Agence France Presse
Freed Myanmar student activist concerned for those still behind bars

Yangon: Myanmar student activist Ko Ko Gyi, who helped lead 1988
pro-democracy demonstrations that were brutally suppressed by the
military, said Friday he was thrilled to be freed after 13 years in prison
but feared for his jailed comrades.

Ko Ko Gyi was deputy chairman of the outlawed All Burma Federation of
Student Unions and had been arrested several times before being sentenced
to 20 years in prison by Myanmar's ruling military junta in 1991.

The 1988 demonstrations were aimed at bringing an end to decades of
military rule but they resulted in a crackdown that left hundreds and
perhaps thousands dead. The junta remains in power.

He was freed without explanation Wednesday from Yangon's Insein prison
after being transferred there from Thayet jail in Mandalay division, where
he spent years in confinement with other student activists. He was the
third student activist freed since November.

"Although I am very glad for myself and my family to be free, I still feel
concern and sadness for those who remain behind bars," Ko Ko Gyi told AFP
in an interview at his home in eastern Yangon, where he was surrounded by
friends and comrades and monitored from outside by security personnel.

"The smell of prison -- and my thoughts for friends who are still there --
are still very fresh for me."

Ko Ko Gyi, who is in his early 40s and described his health as "good on
the whole," said he was not expecting his freedom and unsure as to why the
junta released him.

"Having been in jail for so long, many of us had lost hope of ever being
released."

Student democracy leader Min Ko Naing, who spent 16 years in detention,
was freed in November and visited Ko Ko Gyi at his home Friday. Student
activist Ko Saw Min was let go last month after 14 years in prison.

"But in Thayet jail, there are still almost 80 people," including 46 held
under Myanmar's state protection act.

Rights watchdog Amnesty International says 1,350 political prisoners are
still detained throughout Myanmar, despite the junta saying it released
19,906 prisoners between November and January.

Radio broadcasts including Radio Free Asia, which is funded by the US
government, and the Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma reported Ko Ko
Gyi's release.

He still held out hope for a peaceful transition to democracy in Myanmar,
Ko Ko Gyi said in an interview with DVB after returning home.

"I want a peaceful and smooth political transition. I have been trying to
make that possible throughout my life. I still believe in this," he said.

Myanmar's most famous political prisoner, pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu
Kyi, has been kept under house arrest since her detention in May 2003.

______________________________________

March 18, Reuters
Myanmar junta arrests two politicians

Yangon: Myanmar's military junta has arrested two politicians allied to
detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, party and family sources said on
Friday.

Kyaw Hsan of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) and Kyaw Min,
who sits on the Committee Representing the People's Parliament (CRPP), a
loose alliance that also includes Suu Kyi, were picked up from their
Yangon homes on Thursday.

"We just don't yet know the reason for his arrest," an NLD official, who
did not want to be named, said of Kyaw Hsan, a 73-year-old retired
Lieutenant-Colonel who has been detained several times since he was
elected in a 1990 poll.

Suu Kyi's party won that election by a landslide, but was denied power by
the military, which has run the former Burma in one form or another since
a 1962 coup.

Kyaw Min's relatives said they, too, did not know the whereabouts of the
politician, who is in his mid-50s, or the reason for his arrest.

In the wake of the purge of Prime Minister and military intelligence chief
Khin Nyunt in October last year, the junta has released more than 14,000
prisoners, although only around 80 of these have been political detainees.

However, the releases have also coincided with the arrest of several
prominent Shan ethnic minority leaders and democracy activists, dampening
hopes that Yangon's reclusive generals are considering relinquishing their
grip on power.

______________________________________

March 18, Agence France Presse
Myanmar civil servants set for sharp pay rise

Yangon: Civil servants in impoverished Myanmar will from April 1 get pay
rises of up to three times their salaries, an official said citing state
documents.

The lowest skilled state employee will now receive a wage of 17,700 kyat
(19.60 dollars) per month including basic salary and benefits, the
official who spoke on condition of anonymity said late Thursday.

The highest ranking state employee, a director-general, will receive
56,000 kyat (62.20 dollars), three times their former salary, he said.

"Military personnel are expected to earn a bit more due to the nature of
their job," the source said, without specifying the amount.

State employees are among the lowest paid workers in military-ruled
Myanmar and their meager wages are seen as a factor contributing to
widespread graft, according to analysts.

The reason behind the pay hike was not immediately clear but analysts said
a stable unofficial exchange rate, which has remained constant at about
900 kyat to the dollar, plus official claims of a single-digit inflation
rate over the past fiscal year, may have prompted the move.

The salary increase is likely to spark higher prices for food and consumer
goods.

"Lower income earners who are already suffering from high prices of basic
food-stuffs including rice can now expect more price hikes as soon as the
news becomes public," one analyst said.

Myanmar's economy is reeling under decades of mismanagement by the
military and international sanctions that have been tightened following
the detention of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in May 2003 are also
biting hard.

______________________________________

March 18, Irrawaddy
Burma accused in report on displaced persons - Aung Lwin Oo

Burma has one of the world’s highest number of internally displaced
people, according to a UN study released on Friday.

The study, undertaken for the UN by the Norwegian Refugee Council, says
Burma has at least 526,000 internally displaced people, or IDPs.

Burma is categorized in the report as a country where the authorities
react with indifference to the protection of displaced people and
provision for their basic needs. Displaced people in Burma were subject to
sexual violence and forced recruitment to the army, says the Council in
its 2004 Global IDP Project report.

“The Global IDP Project hopes to contribute to raising awareness of the
plight of one of the world’s most vulnerable groups,” said Elisabeth K.
Rasmusson, head of the project, which was set up in 1999 at the request of
the United Nations.

The report says that most governments of countries with large numbers of
IDPs failed to prevent displacement and protect the rights of displaced
people.

The Council estimated that 25 million people had been displaced in at
least 49 countries, forced from their homes by armed conflicts and human
rights violations,

Although the number of IDPs in the Asia-Pacific dropped last year to 3.3
million, Burma and Indonesia were singled out as countries where the
problem persisted.

The “root cause” of the problem in Burma was to be found in the attacks on
civilian populations by the Burma Army, said a member of the Free Burma
Rangers, a relief mission to assist displaced ethnic minorities in Burma,
on Friday.

The group has been working clandestinely in Burma since 1997. It estimates
that at least 700,000 members of ethnic minorities in Shan, Karen and
Karenni States have been displaced and more than 300,000 in Chin and
Arakan States. Since last November, 13,000 people alone have been
displaced by Burma Army actions in northern Karen State, according to the
Free Burma Rangers.

_____________________________________
DRUGS

March 18, Deutsche Presse-Agentur
China arrests 28 heroin traffickers at Myanmar border checkpoint

Beijing: Police arrested 28 foreigners who were caught attempting to
smuggle heroin into China from Myanmar (Burma) through a border checkpoint
earlier this month, state media said on Friday.

The 28 people were arrested at the Mukang checkpoint in southwestern
China's Yunnan province on March 1 and March 2 and were "suspected to be
from the same organization", the official Xinhua news agency said.

They were all carrying heroin concealed in their rectums, the agency said
without saying if they were citizens of Myanmar or another country.

"As so many smugglers came through the checkpoints in such a short time
span, and they used similar ways to hide the drug, police suspected that
they might be members of a drug trafficking ring," it said.

Five women, including a 16-year-old girl, were among the 28 people arrested.

Police recovered more than 2 kilograms of heroin from the 28 suspects, the
agency said.

Yunnan, which has porous borders with Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, has
China's highest rate of drug use and other drug-related crime.

Chinese police have launched dozens of cross-border operations with
Myanmar and Laos in Southeast Asia's "Golden Triangle" of drug production.

Last November, Chinese police seized 30 kilograms of heroin and shot dead
two armed traffickers of unidentified nationality during searches on two
roads close to Yunnan's borders with Myanmar and Vietnam.

_____________________________________
REGIONAL

March 18, The Nation
Burmese exiles ask govt for more time - Supalak Ganjanakhundee

Burmese exiles are appealing to the Thai government and the United Nations
to relax a deadline for relocating them forcibly from urban areas into
refugee camps along the border.

The Thai authorities, through an agreement with the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in July 2003, declared that all Burmese
people holding UN person-of-concern (POC) status must register for
transfer to a refugee camp by the end of this month.

Those who fail to register by the deadline will be considered illegal
immigrants without permission to remain here.

“As such, you may be subject to arrest, detention and deportation,” said a
UN notice to all Burmese exiles in Thailand.

If they failed to register in time, they would not receive the “exit
clearance” necessary for resettlement in a third country, said the notice.

One Burmese who holds POC status said groups of exiles planned to lodge
petitions with the government and the UN, because the instructions in the
UN notice were unclear about safety and living conditions at the camps.

“I myself have a problem with the instructions, because my Thai wife
cannot move into a refugee camp,” added the exile, speaking on condition
of anonymity.

“The Bangkok Special Detention Centre and Tak Immigration Office
registration sites also scare us, because these places are in fact prisons
for Burmese migrants,” he said.

“Who will guarantee that we’re not walking into prison?” he asked in a
telephone interview with The Nation.

Refugee camps in Kanchanaburi, Ratchaburi and Tak are available to them,
but no one really knows about the living conditions inside those camps, he
said.

However, Foreign Ministry spokesman Sihasak Phuangketkeow said the March
31 deadline is final, because it has already been extended from December
31 last year.

Some 1,000 Burmese POC status holders have been resettled in the United
States since 2003, said Sihasak.

The Burmese exile said technically, the instructions are difficult for the
UN to enforce, because the number of exiles remains unclear. The 2003
agreement recognises only 1,834 Burmese with POC status, but many of them
have extended families, which raises a question about whether they can
register.

The UN is negotiating with the government to relax the deadline, he said.

_____________________________________

March 21, Thai Press Reports
Refugee camp children sexually abused, says rights committee

Thailand's National Human Rights Committee Thursday expressed concern over
the sexual exploitation of children in refugee camps set up here for those
fleeing fighting in neighbouring Myanmar.

Members of the committee, led by chairwoman Khun Ying Chantanee Santabutr,
have been in the northwestern border province assessing conditions in the
local jail. The team has also visited Ban Mai Nai Soi and Ban Bang Tractor
Refugee Camps after a case of sexual abuse against a displaced person was
reported.

"We are not worried about conditions in the provincial jail as it is well
managed. Male and female inmates are jailed separately and quite a
distance from each other. There are also not many female convicts here,''
the national human rights committee chief said.

"However, we are more concerned about sexual abuse among children and
youths in the refugee camps, especially because they don't speak Thai and
it is unknown how long they will have to remain here. There are hundreds
of thousands of displaced people living in the camps and officials could
not keep an eye on everyone,'' she said.

Khun Ying Chantanee argued that if the children were able to learn Thai,
it would help prevent them from becoming victims of sexual abuse. She said
the committee would propose to the government that it set up schools
inside the camps to teach the children the Thai language.

Muang district chief Vachira Chotirosseranee said the province was ready
to respond to the request because it already had security volunteers
working in the camps who could teach Thai to the children.

He also said the ongoing sexual case abuse in the camp was being dealt
with legall." "Local government has joined hands with an international
non-governmental organization to register the population of the two camps.
The information would help authorities in control them,'' he said.

_____________________________________
INTERNATIONAL

March 19, The Economist
Soft on forced labour; Myanmar

The UN may impose sanctions; the junta doesn't care

Yangon: Next week, critics of Myanmar's military regime will declare a
great victory. Unless the junta has a sudden change of heart, the
International Labour Organisation, a branch of the United Nations, will
recommend that its member countries impose sanctions on Myanmar for
failing to stamp out forced labour. But the victory is a hollow one. The
fact that the regime has let its dispute with the ILO escalate this far
suggests that it is becoming less susceptible to outside pressure, not
more.

Most ILO members who are inclined to impose sanctions on Myanmar have
already done so. America has the toughest ones: a ban on all imports and
financial transactions. Any new measures, if forthcoming, are unlikely to
top that. But the junta might easily have avoided the whole episode. It
has been co-operating with the ILO on forced labour for the past three
years, albeit fitfully. It recently tried three officials for
press-ganging villagers into building roads—the first such prosecutions.
Yet when four high-powered delegates from the ILO showed up in Yangon last
month to try to jolly things along, Than Shwe, the top general, refused to
meet them. Instead, various ministers lectured the visitors about the
junta's many remarkable achievements. The envoys' reception was so offhand
that they decided to cut their trip short and returned home in a huff.

Other critics have met with similar dismissiveness of late. The generals
have not allowed Razali Ismail, the UN's special envoy, or Paulo Sérgio
Pinheiro, its point man on human rights in Myanmar, to visit for over a
year. Nor have they resumed talks on the restoration of democracy with
Aung San Suu Kyi, the country's leading dissident and winner of the Nobel
Peace Prize. Miss Suu Kyi remains under house arrest, while perhaps 1,200
more political prisoners languish in jail.

Instead, the regime is pressing ahead with the convention it initiated
last year to draft a new constitution. These proceedings were farcical
enough to begin with: the army handpicked the delegates and stipulated
certain key points of the draft, including a prominent role for its own
members in future parliaments and regional assemblies. Miss Suu Kyi's
party, the National League for Democracy, which won Myanmar's most recent
elections, in 1990, was not invited.

Now the generals are tightening the screws yet further. Just before the
convention resumed last month, the authorities arrested six prominent
politicians, all of them members of Myanmar's largest ethnic minority, the
Shan. They included the leader of a Shan rebel group that had signed a
ceasefire with the government, and the head of the Shan Nationalities
League for Democracy, the party that came second in the 1990 election.
Most observers interpreted the arrests as a warning to the only
independent voices in the convention, the representatives of former rebel
groups and ethnic minorities, not to rock the boat. One former rebel
outfit, the Shan State Army-North, dropped out of the convention in
protest.

In the meantime, a purge of officials loyal to Khin Nyunt, a senior member
of the junta ousted last year, continues apace. Many generals, ministers
and ambassadors have already been weeded out; lesser officials are now
under scrutiny. Rumours hint at disputes among the top brass over these
appointments. But the one thing that all the members of the junta appear
to have agreed on is firmly to ignore all external pressure.

_____________________________________

March 18, Irrawaddy
Britain calls for release of Shan politicians - Shah Paung

The British Foreign Office called on Friday for the immediate release of
arrested Shan politicians and challenged the Burmese regime to give “due
weight”: to proposals made by ethnic groups at the National Convention.

The demands came in a statement by Foreign Office Minister Douglas
Alexander. He said treason charges against the 10 Shan figures—including
Hkun Tun Oo chairman of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy, or
SNLD, and Maj-Gen Sao Hso Ten, President of the Shan State Peace Council,
or SSPC—were “unjustified and appear to be aimed at preventing politicians
from participating in the National Convention.”

The 10 were arrested in early February in the Shan State capital Taunggyi
after attending a meeting to mark Shan National Day. Trials began on March
1, but lawyers appointed by the National League for Democracy, or NLD,
have been denied access to the court proceedings in Rangoon’s Insein
prison.

In his statement, Alexander said the actions taken against the 10 Shan
politicians “underline our view that the (National) Convention, which was
only just recently reconvened, will not promote national reconciliation or
help to resolve the ethnic minority problems which have beset Burma for
decades and retarded its development.”

Alexander declared: “I call on the Burmese regime to release immediately
the ten Shans and to give due weight to the proposals made by the ethnic
groups in the National Convention.”

_____________________________________
OPINION / OTHER

March 18, The Washington Post
Funding Scarce for Export of Democracy; Outside Mideast, U.S. Effort Lags
- Peter Baker

In the weeks after a popular uprising toppled a corrupt government in
Ukraine, President Bush hailed the so-called Orange Revolution as proof
that democracy was on the march and promised $60 million to help secure it
in Kiev. But Republican congressional allies balked and slashed it this
week to $33.7 million.

The shrinking financial commitment to Ukrainian democracy highlights a
broader gap between rhetoric and resources among budget writers in the
Bush administration and on Capitol Hill as the president vows to devote
his second term to "ending tyranny in our world," according to budget
documents, congressional critics and democracy advocates.

The administration has pumped substantial new funds into promoting
democracy in Muslim countries but virtually nowhere else in the world. The
administration has cut budgets for groups struggling to build civil
society and democratic institutions in Russia, Eastern Europe and Asia,
even as Moscow has pulled back from democracy and governments in China,
Burma, Uzbekistan and elsewhere remain among the most repressive in the
world.

Funding for the National Endowment for Democracy has remained flat for the
past two years except in the Middle East, while separate
democracy-building programs have been slashed by 38 percent in Eastern
Europe and 46 percent in the former Soviet Union during Bush's presidency.
The venerable beacons of American-style democracy, Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty and Radio Free Asia, are receiving no sizable increases.

Lorne W. Craner, who until recently was assistant secretary of state for
democracy, human rights and labor, said the shifting priorities are a
logical byproduct of the post-Sept. 11 world, in which fostering democracy
in Muslim communities came to be seen as a means to combat terrorism.

"People in other regions for two or three years after 9/11 said, 'You're
not giving us as much attention as we deserve,' and I think that was a
fair critique and the reason was we were creating a whole new policy for
the Middle East," Craner said. "A lot of people's time was taken up by the
Middle East that, but for 9/11, would have gone to other areas. Is that a
bad thing? I don't think so. Certainly I would say we needed to pay more
attention to the Middle East."

The focus on Iraq, he added, will be critical to setting a role model for
other regions as well. "If Iraq doesn't work," he said, "a lot of people
are going to say, 'Is that what you mean by democracy?' "

But others took issue with the selective aid. "The president is not
putting his money where his mouth is," said Tom Malinowski, Washington
director of Human Rights Watch. While giving Bush credit for investing in
democracy in the Middle East, he added, "There are just big
country-by-country, region-by-region differences when it comes to the
administration's commitment to democracy promotion."

"There are a number of countries that aren't getting much democracy aid,"
said Thomas Carothers, director of the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace's project on democracy and the rule of law. Carothers
pointed to mass arrests of protesters seeking restoration of democracy in
Nepal this week. "There are places like that where we're losing because
they're on the edge of the world and people aren't paying attention."

Among groups that will lose out is the Asia Foundation, which works to
reform legal codes, foster civil society and promote women's rights in
places such as Indonesia, where it is credited with helping the transition
from decades of dictatorship. The Bush budget for the 2006 fiscal year
cuts the foundation's grant from $13 million to $10 million. "Any cut at
that level would be very difficult for our program," said Nancy Yuan, a
foundation vice president.

Also facing cuts is the Eurasia Foundation, which has been told that the
final installment of a $25 million grant to set up a U.S.-European-Russian
democracy program in Russia may be delayed despite President Vladimir
Putin's moves to clamp down on political opposition. "We can't give up,"
said Charles William Maynes, president of the Eurasia Foundation. "It
would be disastrous if we do."

The International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic
Institute for International Affairs (NDI), the main U.S. agencies that
teach political activists how to conduct fair elections, devote about half
of their budgets to Iraq and the Middle East, according Craner, who is now
IRI president.

Measuring how much Washington spends on democracy promotion is difficult
because the money is scattered among programs and much of it is embedded
in grants by the U.S. Agency for International Development. But recent
trends have been clear. USAID spending on democracy and governance
programs alone shot up from $671 million in 2002 to $1.2 billion in 2004,
but almost all of that increase was devoted to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Without those two countries, the USAID democracy spending in 2004 was $685
million, virtually unchanged from two years earlier.

Bush broadened his focus beyond the Middle East in his second inaugural
address when he issued a manifesto to promote democracy around the globe,
declaring it U.S. policy "to seek and support the growth of democratic
movements and institutions in every nation and culture."

The budget he submitted to Congress two weeks later, however, included no
huge new investment in such institutions beyond the Muslim world.

The National Endowment for Democracy, which funds the IRI, the NDI and
other programs, received $80 million, twice its budget of two years ago,
but the entire $40 million increase went to Bush's Middle East democracy
initiative, leaving everything else flat. Voice of America received an
extra $10 million, but it was devoted to expanding programs in Persian,
Dari, Urdu and Pashtu aimed at non-Arabic Muslim listeners. The only other
broadcasts to get major funding increases were those aimed at Cuba, which
went from $27 million to $37.9 million.

At the same time, funding for the Support for East European Democracy Act
was sliced by an additional $14 million, to $382 million. The largest part
of this program is aimed at Serbia, still in transition from the era of
Slobodan Milosevic. And funding for the Freedom Support Act focusing on
Russia and 11 other former Soviet republics was slashed by $78 million, to
$482 million, down from $894 million in 2002.

"The U.S. government is not well organized right now to realize the
administration's rhetoric on democracy," said Jennifer Windsor, executive
director of Freedom House, an organization that promotes democracy abroad.

The cuts to the Freedom Support Act have drawn criticism from Senate
Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.); his panel
this month adopted a statement urging the administration "to consider the
harm its proposed cuts in funding assistance could have on U.S. interests
in stability, democracy and market reform" in the region.

The funding reductions come at a time when such programs have enjoyed
successes in Georgia and Ukraine, where U.S.-trained activists helped push
out unpopular governments. To help consolidate the gains, Bush attached
$60 million for Ukraine to his supplemental appropriation bill funding the
war in Iraq, with money earmarked to promote judicial independence, youth
participation in politics, legal protections for press freedom and
preparations for parliamentary elections.

But even as Bush plans to host new Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko,
the House cut the funding request nearly in half.

Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on
foreign operations, said he focused on programs that will help Yushchenko
in the short term and promised to revisit Ukraine in upcoming budget
deliberations for fiscal 2006.

"There's finite resources," Kolbe said. "There's never enough to do what
you want to do, but I think we're making a good effort."