BurmaNet News May 17, 2005

[Editor]

May 17, 2005 Issue # 2720

"It is crystal clear that the terrorists . . . and the time bombs
originated from training conducted with foreign experts . . . in a
neighbouring country by a world famous organisation of a certain
superpower nation,"
- Brigadier-General Kyaw Hsan, the Burmese junta’s information minister,
on the bombing in Rangoon last week as quoted in the Financial Times, May
17, 2005


INSIDE BURMA
AFP: Myanmar opposition party to file complaint over NLD member's mystery
death
FT: Burma accuses foreigners of bomb attacks
Xinhua: Myanmar tightens security on hotels after series of bomb attacks

HEALTH / AIDS
AP: Myanmar launches U.N.-sponsored program to prevent mother-to-child
HIV-AIDS transmission

REGIONAL
Xinhua: ADB to hold environment ministerial meeting of Greater Mekong
Subregion in Shanghai

INTERNATIONAL
Financial Times: Activists to step up Total Burma protest
AFP: Protests planned against France, for EU policy on Myanmar
Guardian: Burmese reach UK in refugee scheme: Arrival of 51 fleeing junta
is rare success for UN protection plan
LA Times: Activists inspire young students with their tales

OPINION / OTHER
Wall Street Journal: Fifteen years of living dangerously

______________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

May 17, Agence France Presse
Myanmar opposition party to file complaint over NLD member's mystery death

Yangon: Military-ruled Myanmar's main opposition party plans to file a
complaint with police over the mysterious death last week of one of its
members, the National League for Democracy (NLD) said Tuesday.

NLD youth member Aung Hlaing Win, who was believed to be about 30 years
old, disappeared on May 1 and died under unknown circumstances the
following week, a party source said.

Junta officials have not provided a plausible explanation for his death,
according to sources in the party that is headed by detained pro-democracy
leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

Anti-Yangon exile groups say Aung Hlaing Win died in the regime's custody
after unknown agents abducted him from a food stall in downtown Yangon.

"We received no knowledge or information about whether police or military
men took him," NLD spokesman U Lwin told AFP. "So the NLD legal advisory
committee said they will complain to the police and launch a legal
complaint with the judiciary."

Aung Hlaing Win's family was told of the death on May 10 by junta
officials, who said the body had already been cremated, U Lwin said.

The Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma reported that the commander of
an interrogation centre had notified relatives that Aung Hlaing Win died
of a heart attack during interrogation on May 7 and was buried two days
later.

The NLD, which won a landslide victory in 1990 elections the regime
refused to recognise, has suffered a crackdown since Aung San Suu Kyi was
detained in May 2003 during a clash between her supporters and a
junta-backed mob.

She has been under house arrest since, and the party's offices have been
shuttered around the country, even as the junta proclaims it is on a
"roadmap" to democracy.

______________________________________

May 17, Financial Times (London, England)
Burma accuses foreigners of bomb attacks: Speculation over the
perpetrators of three explosions in Rangoon has reached fever pitch - Amy
Kazmin

Burma's military juntahas claimed that a global"superpower" was behind the
three near-simultaneous bomb explosions that killed at least 19 people,
and wounded some 160 others, in the Burmese capital, Rangoon, this month.

The Burmese generals initially had accused three ethnic rebel groups and
exiled pro-democracy campaigners of planting the powerful bombs that
rocked two crowded shopping malls and a Thai trade fair on May 7.

But in the first briefing since the unprecedented attacks,
Brigadier-General Kyaw Hsan, the information minister, at the weekend
pointed to a foreign hand, citing as evidence the discovery at the bomb
sites of the high explosive RDX - which he claimed was not available in
Burma.

"It is crystal clear that the terrorists . . . and the time bombs
originated from training conducted with foreign experts . . . in a
neighbouring country by a world famous organisation of a certain
superpower nation," the minister told journalists in Rangoon.

While he did not specify a country, the junta frequently accuses
Washington, a fierce critic of its oppressive regime, of meddling in
Burma's internal affairs.

But the general's assertions are unlikely to quell feverish speculation
inside and outside Burma about the real forces behind the sophisticated
attacks, especially the heated debate over whether they stemmed from
rising tensions within the military itself.

"It is convenient for the military to blame the usual suspects but I don't
know who is going to buy it," said Aung Naing Oo, a researcher with the
Burma Fund. "A lot of people in Burma say, 'Oh it is the military'. This
reflects how much they distrust the military. They say, 'who has the
intention, who has the resources, and who has the ability?' "

Rivalries within the junta's highest echelons - and the lower ranks -
burst into public view in October when Gen Khin Nyunt, a former prime
minister and then head of the feared military intelligence, was put under
house arrest in a palace coup orchestrated by Senior General Than Shwe and
Gen Maung Aye, the two other top leaders.

After the coup the entire military intelligence apparatus, which had
branched out from spying to building a vast business empire, was
dismantled, with hundreds of senior officers sentenced to long prison
terms.

Gen Khin Nyunt's two businessmen sons, one of whom started Burma's only
internet service provider, are also now in Insein prison where their trial
for economic crimes is reported to have begun last week.

Still, doubts remain about military intelligence's involvement.

"They have got the motive, and they've got the capacity," said a western
diplomat. "But why would they target shopping malls?"

After the bombing the US government, now waging a "war on terror", offered
Rangoon immediate technical assistance to investigate but the offer was
refused.

With the perpetrators still unknown, analysts predict further infighting
amid the increasingly nervous regime.

______________________________________

May 17, Xinhua General News Service
Myanmar tightens security on hotels after series of bomb attacks

Yangon: The Myanmar authorities have tightened security measures on hotels
across the country in the wake of recent series of violent bomb attacks on
a trade exhibition center and two major shopping centers which killed 19
people and injured 162 others.

According to hotels sources Tuesday, computerized data of hotel visitors
are being kept and personal goods of them including gift parcels carefully
checked.

Such measures on other guests calling on the hotel visitors is also being
taken, the sources said.

On March 19, a minor bomb explosion occurred in the Panorama Hotel in
downtown Yangon without causing casualties. However, May 7's deadly
bombing incidents within 10 minutes in the three locations have forced
hotels along with shopping centers throughout the country to keep high
alert.

Myanmar has charged an unidentified superpower nation with being behind
the May 7 bomb blasts in Yangon by using well-trained bombers of
anti-government armed groups trained out in an unnamed neighboring country
under the cover of an international organization engaged in refugee relief
work.

The Myanmar police force is offering a cash reward of 5 million Myanmar
Kyats ( about 5,500 US dollars) for providing information about the
bombers.

______________________________________
HEALTH / AIDS

May 17, Associated Press
Myanmar launches U.N.-sponsored program to prevent mother-to-child
HIV-AIDS transmission

Yangon: The United Nations and the Myanmar government have launched a
program to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV-AIDS, UNICEF said
Tuesday.

The program began Monday at Myanmar's 10 largest hospitals and will
gradually be extended throughout the country to make prevention and
treatment more widely available to mothers and their newborn children, the
U.N. children's agency said.

The number of infections by HIV - the virus that causes AIDS - keeps
rising in Myanmar. At least 10,000 HIV-positive women become pregnant
every year, giving birth to at least 3,000 to 4,000 children with HIV,
UNICEF representative Carroll Long said in a statement.

Myanmar's government says more than 300,000 of the country's 54 million
people have HIV-AIDS, but health experts believe the actual figure is
higher.

UNAIDS, the U.N. body coordinating the fight against the disease,
estimates that more than 600,000 people in Myanmar aged 15 to 49 are
infected with HIV.

UNICEF spends an average of US$2 million ([euro]1.6 million) each year to
support HIV-AIDS prevention and care programs in Myanmar, the statement
said.

_____________________________________
REGIONAL

May 17, Xinhua Economic News Service
ADB to hold environment ministerial meeting of Greater Mekong Subregion in
Shanghai

Manila: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will hold an inaugural meeting of
Mekong Environment Ministers in Shanghai, China on May 25, said ADB in a
news release on May 17.

The meeting, which will be chaired by ADB vice-president Jin Liqun, will
bring together about 80 senior environment officials from the Greater
Mekong Subregion (GMS) countries -- Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar,
Thailand and Vietnam -- to discuss and evaluate achievements in
environmental cooperation and discuss future directions in environment and
natural resource management.

The meeting is expected to finalize and endorse the implementation of the
GMS Core Environment Program, a systematic and integrated program to
sustain shared natural resources in the GMS, as well as the establishment
of an Environment Operations Center, which will act as the secretariat for
the program.

It will also discuss the implementation of the GMS Biodiversity
Conservation Corridors Initiative (BCI) to protect high value terrestrial
biodiversity conservation landscapes.

The BCI aims to help establish sustainable management regimes and restore
ecological (habitat) connectivity and integrity within a selected set of
important biodiversity areas.

The meeting is expected to issue a joint statement by the ministers in
support of sustainable management of natural resources and the
environment.

"The rapid economic growth being experienced by the Mekong countries will
have implications on the environment, and we need to take collective
action to manage the externalities in an effective manner," said Urooj
Malik, a Director in ADB's Mekong Department.

"ADB believes that with strong partnerships and political will, the GMS
countries, together with other stakeholders, can meet the challenge of
addressing the pressures on ecosystems, achieving sustainable use and
conservation of natural resources," he added.

Jin Liqun, Xie Zhenhua, chief of the State Environmental Protection Agency
of China, and Shafquat Kakahel, deputy executive director of the United
Nations Environment Program (UNEP), will give keynote addresses during the
meeting.

The GMS Program began in 1992 as an ADB initiative to promote closer
economic ties and cooperation among the countries sharing the Mekong
River.

Covering 2.3 million square kilometers, or the size of western Europe, the
GMS is home to more than 250 million people. Its wealth of human and
natural resources makes it a new frontier for economic growth in Asia,
said ADB.

_____________________________________
INTERNATIONAL

May 17, Financial Times (London, England)
Activists to step up Total Burma protest - Martin Arnold

Paris: Human rights activists will today step up their campaign to force
Total, the French oil group, to reconsider its natural gas operations in
Burma, which they claim makes it the biggest western supporter of the
country's military junta.

At Total's annual meeting in Paris today, human rights activists will
distribute letters to its shareholders and ask its management questions
about its investment in Burma and the impact this has on France's policy
towards the country.

In the US, activists will demonstrate outside French diplomatic buildings
in five US cities, to protest over Total's presence in Burma and France's
resistance to greater sanctions against the country.

The protests are part of a global campaign by more than 50 human rights
groups, launched in February, targeting the French group's investment in
Burma.

The French group faces lawsuits in France and Belgium, filed by villagers
abused by Burmese soldiers. A similar suit in the US against Unocal, the
junior partner on the Yadana gas project operated by Total, was settled
out of court in December for an undisclosed amount.

The issue could become a serious problem for Total, which has in recent
years made greater efforts to clean up its image in the wake of the 1999
Erika oil tanker disaster off Brittany and the AZF chemicals factory
explosion in Toulouse in 2001. Total declined to comment yesterday.

Mark Farmaner, media and campaigns manager for Burma Campaign UK, said the
next step would be to target institutional investors in Total.

The US Campaign for Burma, a group that has already forced Pepsi and
ChevronTexaco to pull out of the country, will demonstrate outside the
French embassy in Washington and French consulates in New York, Boston,
Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Aung Din, a former Burmese political prisoner and co-founder of US
Campaign for Burma, said: "It is time for France to change its Burma
policy, which is nothing short of blood for gas."

_____________________________________

May 17, Agence France Presse
Protests planned against France, for EU policy on Myanmar - P. Parameswaran

Washington: A global group fighting for democracy in Myanmar plans to
protest in the United States against reported French opposition to blanket
EU investment sanctions on the military-ruled Southeast Asia state.

The EU had imposed investment sanctions against Myanmar in October last
year but the oil and gas industry was exempted from the ban following
French government pressure, said the US Campaign for Burma (USCB), which
plans to hold protests Tuesday in front of the French embassy in
Washington and consulates in five other US cities.

The protests are to coincide with a shareholders meeting in Paris of
French energy giant Total, which has vast investments in Myanmar.

USCB charged that the French government "went out of the way to entirely
omit oil and gas investments" in EU sanctions against Myanmar, allegedly
to protect Total.

"France has repeatedly fought, diluted and otherwise tried in every
possible way to undermine support for human rights in Burma (Myanmar)
solely to protect the interests of Total Oil's operations in the country,"
said Aung Din, a former political prisoner and USCB co-founder.

"It is time for France to change its Burma policy, which is nothing short
of blood for gas," he said.

USCB is a member of the newly-formed Total Oil coalition, a group of 53
organizations based in 18 countries pressuring the company to cut ties to
Myanmar's military junta.

Total launched in 1992 a project to build and develop a natural gas
pipeline from Myanmar's Andaman Sea across the country and into
neighboring Thailand, in partnership with the military junta, which
provided security for the pipeline region.

According to a recent report from the Burma Campaign United Kingdom,
USCB's sister group in Britain, the Total project provided as much as 450
million dollars annually to the junta, which has been condemned worldwide
for alleged human rights abuses and suppression of democracy.

"It is clear that the company is one of the regime's main pillars of
financial support," the report said.

"The French government's going out of the way to protect Total is highly
hypocritical of what they had been saying all along about other
countries," said Jeremy Woodrum, the founder of the USCB, citing
persistent French opposition to the US-led war on Iraq, as an example.

The French embassy in Washington said it was not aware of USCB's plans to
hold protests in front of the embassy and French consulates in New York,
San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Boston on Tuesday.

Total holds a 31.24 percent stake in the Yadana gas field project, whose
other stakeholders include American energy giant Unocal (28.26 percent)
and Thailand's PTTEP (25.5 percent).

Both companies entered into the venture before sanctions were imposed by
their governments. Unocal is barred from pumping any new investment into
Myanmar, on which the United States had imposed a trade and investment
ban.

"While Unocal's position in Burma did not weaken the US government's
policy against Burma, Total's close relations with French President
Jacques Chirac has led to the French government virtually wielding veto
power over EU policy on Myanmar," Woodrum said.

_____________________________________

May 17, The Guardian (London)
Burmese reach UK in refugee scheme: Arrival of 51 fleeing junta is rare
success for UN protection plan - Alan Travis

A group of 51 Burmese refugees nominated by the United Nations started
arriving in Sheffield yesterday under a groundbreaking scheme to give some
of the world's most persecuted people a haven in Britain.

They have all fled from the military junta in Burma, but have been among
thousands sheltering in appalling conditions in detention camps on the
Thai-Burmese border where they are not allowed to work nor given access to
health services or education.

They arrive as the Home Office prepares to publish asylum statistics today
showing a further fall in asylum applications to Britain this year.

A Home Office spokesman said that the Burmese refugees would arrive in
small groups in Sheffield over the next few weeks and be resettled with
the help of the Refugee Council under the UN high commissioner for
refugees' "gateway" protection programme.

This is designed to provide a legal route into Britain to stop refugees
being driven into the hands of people traffickers.

Their arrival means that just over 200 people have come to Britain under
the scheme since it was launched last March. At the time the then home
secretary, David Blunkett, hoped that it would expand into an important
legal route into Britain, with 500 arriving in the first year of its
operation and 1,000 and more in subsequent years.

But the hostile political climate over immigration and asylum has meant
that only two councils - Sheffield and Bolton - have so far agreed to take
part. Those who have come so far include survivors of civil wars in
Liberia, Sudan and Congo.

A Home Office spokesman said officials were in talks with three more local
authorities and were confident of expanding the UN gateway scheme.

He said: "We need to balance our responsibilities to arrivals with our
responsibilities to communities. Home Office officials are working with
local authorities throughout Britain, as well as the voluntary and private
sectors, to find solutions whereby local authorities feel able to commit
to the gateway scheme, balancing this with the other needs of their
areas."

Among those arriving in Sheffield are a man who was jailed for five months
and tortured as a teenager in Burma for his involvement in a student union
campaign for basic education rights.

The refugees also include a man whose land was confiscated by the Burmese
regime and who fled to Thailand after his father was arrested and beaten.
He has become an active part of the democratic opposition, working as an
illustrator on various publications.

The new immigration minister, Tony McNulty, said: "The people being
resettled in the UK through this special UNHCR scheme are extremely
vulnerable, having survived some horrific experiences. Sheffield has a
proud record of providing sanctuary to those in need of protection and I
am sure the local community will give a warm welcome to these refugees."

The new arrivals will be housed by private landlords in various parts of
Sheffield with some short-term accommodation provided by the council, but
the programme will not affect local housing needs.

_____________________________________

May 17, Los Angeles Times
Activists inspire young students with their tales;
Four recipients of the Reebok Human Rights Award urge youths at Carson
High to speak out against injustice - Ann M. Simmons

They came from four different continents, but when the young human rights
activists stood before students at Carson High School, they carried a
common message:

Regardless of social background and ethnicity, any determined individual
can make a difference.

"The main enemy of justice is silence," Carlos Rojas, 29, a Mixe Indian
from Mexico, told students gathered this month in Carson's auditorium. "We
must all learn to speak out and make our voices heard."

Oddly enough, Rojas' call to arms had the exact opposite effect. But this
was a good thing. Rather than raise their voices, the 400 students were
silent, visibly captivated. This was no ordinary school assembly.

Rojas has dedicated his life to monitoring and documenting human rights
abuses against indigenous and peasant communities in southern Mexico. He
was joined by three other activists -- Aloysius Toe, 28, of Liberia,
Zarema Mukusheva, 30, of Chechnya and 24-year-old Charm Tong of Myanmar.

All four have embraced a similar life's mission, and they've been chosen
to receive this year's Reebok Human Rights Award. The prize, a $50,000
grant to each recipient, recognizes young activists who have made
significant contributions to defending the rights of their fellow citizens
and have spread awareness about the cause through nonviolent means.

The four had come to Los Angeles as honorees of the Reebok Human Rights
Foundation awards presentation, attended by about 1,400 guests at UCLA's
Royce Hall. Among the guests were actors Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu and Don
Cheadle and singer Peter Gabriel.

The human rights activists were each presented with a glass trophy
featuring an embossed figure of a running man breaking through shackles
and overcoming obstacles. Liu presented Tong's award. Rojas received his
from Diaz.

It's likely that few people at Royce Hall had to be told where to find
Chechnya on a map. But at Carson, some students had never heard of the
place.

In anticipation of playing host to their overseas guests, 10th- and
11th-graders from Merri Weir's U.S. and world history class designed
colorful posters highlighting the attributes of the young activists,
giving details about their home countries and posing questions for them.

Not that Carson doesn't have an international feel of sorts. Many of
Carson's 3,600-plus students -- about 42% -- are Latino, with African
Americans and Filipinos comprising the next-largest groups, about 23%
each.

But until the four human rights champions showed up on their campus, some
students had no idea of some of the horrors and suffering found around the
globe. Before the award winners spoke, they showed short documentaries
spotlighting the brutality in their homelands.

Many students appeared stunned by the explicit scenes of violence -- boy
soldiers beating civilians in Liberia, artillery shells exploding over
apartment buildings in Chechnya, bloodied corpses strewn in the streets --
images the activists know all too well.

"I never knew that such things really happened," Nina Morente, 15, said
after the speech. "I didn't think it was possible people could be that
evil."

"It makes me feel really lucky to be living in America," said George
Obispo, 17.

Some students gasped as violent images played out on screen. Some cheered
when the activists recounted how they stood up to authority. But, as
happened when Rojas spoke, most students listened quietly, rapt, as the
activists told their stories.

When civil war engulfed Liberia, Toe didn't run and hide, he said. He was
outraged by the political killings, illegal detentions and growing poverty
sweeping his country. Protest typically resulted in arrest -- and often
death. That didn't silence Toe.

He organized human rights clubs to raise awareness of government abuses
and promote human rights education in Liberian schools. His efforts landed
him in jail for eight months.

"One of the worst tragedies in existence in human history is the
unwillingness to confront evil," said Toe, who now promotes programs aimed
at tackling Liberia's poverty. "I will not give up."

Mukusheva shares Toe's passion for exposing the horrors of war.

Her efforts to document civilian casualties in the ongoing conflict
between Russia and her homeland of Chechnya -- a breakaway region in
southern Russia that has been struggling for independence -- started one
winter day in 1999 as she picked through corpses in a warehouse searching
for a missing cousin.

She never found her relative, but she furtively videotaped the carnage. A
career documenting the Chechen conflict took root from there.

"Yes, I was very afraid," she said, an interpreter translating her
comments from Russian. "But at that exact moment, there was no one else to
do this."

What's more, she added: "I feel satisfied ... and grateful when people
come up to me and thank me. It is their actions that encourage me to
continue."

Tong also savors the sensation of doing good. Since age 17, she has
focused on bringing attention to the abuses committed by the Myanmar
military against her native Shan people, an ethnic minority in Myanmar,
formerly Burma.

More than 300,000 Shan have been forced from their homes, according to
human rights groups. Hundreds struggle to survive as illegal migrant
workers in neighboring Thailand.

As a teenager, Tong helped found the Shan Women's Action Network, a group
dedicated to stopping the abuse and exploitation of women.

"The Burmese military is using rape as a weapon of war against ethnic Shan
women," said Tong, recounting the story of a pregnant Shan woman who was
gang-raped.

"Would you allow this to happen to your family members?" she asked the
students.

"No!" they shouted in unison.

The speakers certainly captivated their audience. Through the cheers, the
applause, the gasps and that notable silence, there was a feeling of
intense concentration, of young minds listening.

"It really inspires you to want to do something," said Ty Doung, 16. "It
shows any ordinary person can make a difference."

"And they don't even feel like heroes," chimed in Anthony Echeverria, 15.

_____________________________________
OPINION / OTHER

May 16, The Wall Street Journal
Fifteen years of living dangerously - Michael Judge

Not long after the September 11 attacks, I hosted a meeting with a handful
of generals and higher-ups in the junta that runs Burma, the Southeast
Asian country of some 50 million souls that the military renamed Myanmar
after nullifying the results of free and fair elections 15 years ago.

What stands out most about that meeting -- besides the stark contrast
between the leathery Burmese strongmen and their suave, Armani-clad
handler -- was a comparison made by one of the military attendees. "Now
that you have suffered your own terrorist attack," the official explained
without a trace of irony, "you can better understand what we have had to
put up with in our attempts to make Myanmar a secure and prosperous
state."

The inference that Osama bin Laden and Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace
Prize winner and leader of Burma's democracy movement -- or the leaders of
Burma's ethnic minorities, for that matter, who are struggling for their
very survival -- are even remotely equivalent was revolting but revealing.
Burma's military rulers see any form of opposition, including peaceable
assembly and free speech, as an act of terrorism, and will use any means
necessary to root it out.

Thus the wholesale slaughter of ethnic minorities, most notably the Karen,
tens of thousands of whom, including women and children, have been killed
since the junta took power. Thus the continued repression of Ms. Suu Kyi's
National League for Democracy, which won a majority in 1990 parliamentary
elections (only to be abrogated by the junta), and the brutal attempt on
Ms. Suu Kyi's life by government-backed thugs in May 2003.

All this comes to mind in the wake of the deadly May 7 bombings in Burma's
capital city of Rangoon, bombings the junta claims were attacks by rebel
forces within the Karen National Union (KNU) or other opposition groups;
the junta's military spokesmen have even implied that Ms. Suu Kyi's
democratic opposition movement may have been involved.

The three blasts, which killed at least 11 and injured more than 160, tore
through two modern supermarkets and a convention center on a busy Saturday
afternoon. The bombings came just weeks after a similar attack in the
northern city of Mandalay, which killed two women and wounded more than a
dozen others.

The KNU and other opposition groups have denied any involvement in the
bombings, and have pointed the finger back at the generals. "They are the
ones who did it," Col. Ner Dah Mya, commander of the KNU's military wing,
told the Associated Press last week. "They want to blame the KNU and blame
ethnic groups. They want to categorize us as terrorist groups so that the
international community will not support us." U Lwin, spokesman for Ms.
Suu Kyi's NLD, told the AP he strongly condemned "this cowardly attack on
innocent people," saying it was the work of "professionals."

Why would Myanmar's military government, which calls itself the State
Peace and Development Council (SPDC), blow up innocent people in crowded
supermarkets? It's a good question, especially since the SPDC has gone on
a PR blitz of late to convince the West and its Asean neighbors that it is
on the road to reform. Indeed, the generals and their flacks have traveled
the globe pushing their "Roadmap to Democracy," which has proven little
more than a diversionary tactic while the military clamps down on the NLD
and continues its assault on ethnic minorities.
The fact is, the junta -- like any military regime not subject to civilian
checks and balances -- is riven by factional infighting. Last October,
Gen. Khin Nyunt, top brass and former prime minister, was purged from the
SPDC along with scores of his closest officers. "Everyone watching closely
is convinced the bombs are revenge for the huge prison sentences just
handed down in the recent purge of Gen. Khin Nyunt and his circle," said
Maureen Aung-Thwin, director of the New York-based Burma Project, in a
recent email to me from the region. "This is the junta's ultimate
nightmare -- after 43 years of ruling behind a facade of unity they're
starting at each other's throats."

Fissures in the junta's unified front are partly due to increased pressure
from Asean member-states, which see the prospect of an unreformed Burma
assuming the rotating chair of the regional organization next year as an
embarrassment. But the main cause is likely something closer to home, a
turf war over dwindling funds. Strict sanctions by the U.S. and others
have resulted in fewer spoils for the junta's leaders. Sadly, the Burmese
people could be caught in the middle of this low intensity civil war for
years to come.

If there is any good news in any of this, it is that the bombings have
drawn more attention to the brutal nature of Burma's military leadership.
Last Tuesday, Sen. Mitch McConnell introduced a bill that would extend
U.S. sanctions against Burma for a third year, and denounced the junta for
its "heinous crimes -- from the production and trafficking of illicit
drugs, to the use of rape as a weapon of war against ethnic minority women
and girls and the forced conscription of children into military service."

Two days later, responding to my questions to his office about the
bombings, Sen. McConnell said it was "entirely plausible" that junta
forces were behind the attacks. "Further, the junta's own military and
security forces -- particularly those loyal to ousted Gen. Khin Nyunt --
have the motivation, means and methods to carry out a triple bombing in
Rangoon," he said.

Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick has warned that if Burma's
military government assumes the chairmanship of Asean, it would harm the
organization's ties with the U.S. But is this too little too late? Ms. Suu
Kyi, the Nobel laureate, still languishes under house arrest, silenced yet
again by the military rulers who denied her -- and the Burmese people -- a
democratically elected government.

Many in Burma, understandably, have grown cynical. Ms. Aung-Thwin says
there's a joke making the rounds about why last year's deadly tsunami
killed relatively few in Burma. A request by three fish (named after the
junta's top generals), the joke goes, convinced the giant wave that there
was no need to hit their country -- as they had already done a fine job of
devastating it themselves.

Mr. Judge is the Journal's deputy editorial features editor.