BurmaNet News, June 24, 2005

[Editor]

June 24, 2005 Issue # 2747


INSIDE BURMA
Irrawaddy: Student leaders seek change in Burma prisons

DRUGS
Irrawaddy: Wa to celebrate drug free status

ASEAN
AFP: Myanmar may give up ASEAN chair to uphold common interests: Singapore

REGIONAL
Mizzima: News drama in NLD-LA (WR): Dr. Tint Swe ousted

INTERNATIONAL
Independent: The man who uncovered the truth about Burma; for four years,
Guy Horton has travelled secretly in rural Burma

OPINION / OTHER
Independent: Burma: More damning evidence of oppression

PRESS RELEASE
Peter Gruber Foundation: 2005 International Women’s Rights Prize Honors
Work in Burma and Thailand

____________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

June 24, Irrawaddy
Student leaders seek change in Burma prisons - Kyaw Zwa Moe

Former student leaders have recently requested improved conditions for
political prisoners jailed by Burma’s military regime, said one prominent
member of the group on Friday.

“We have directly asked the Home Minister for proper treatment for all
political prisoners,” Pyone Cho said by phone from Rangoon. Pyone Cho was
a leader of the Rangoon University Student Union that played a key role in
the pro-democracy uprising in 1988.

The student leader, who spent more than 14 years in prison, said that
political prisoners in Burma are currently treated the same as criminals,
but that they should be classified on the basis of their political status
and differentiated from other types of prisoners.

Under British rule, prisons in Burma had three classes: A, B and C. Class
A designated foreigners or high-ranking officials, while Class B was
reserved for political activists, nationalists and civil servants. Class C
denoted criminals.

The British Class B allowed inmates with that designation access to books,
journals, newspapers and proper food rations such as milk, coffee, butter
etc. The late dictator Ne Win abolished the British prison classifications
in 1962 when he took control of the Burmese government.

Currently, there are more than 1,300 political prisoners incarcerated
under severe conditions in the junta’s jails across the country, according
to Thai-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma).

Pyone Cho said that a group of former student leaders, including Min Ko
Naing—the most prominent among them—requested improvements in the
conditions of political prisoners during a meeting with Home Minister
Maj-Gen Maung Oo.

The student leader quoted the minister as saying: “They [political
prisoners] are also citizens, so they also must have all rights of a
citizen.” The minister told the student leaders that he would submit their
request to his superiors.

The group of former student leaders also requested that political
prisoners be allowed to continue their education upon their release, Pyone
Cho added. The Burmese authorities have banned some former political
prisoners from continuing their education after serving their sentences in
prison.

Thet Win Aung, the younger brother of Phone Cho, has suffered severe
health problems in Mandalay prison. Phone Cho said that his brother could
not walk when his family recently visited him.

Thet Win Aung, who is serving a 59-year sentence for his political
activities, has been hospitalized in Mandalay prison for almost two years.
He was sentenced in 1998.

Amnesty International recently reported that many political prisoners are
elderly and suffering from severer illness after years of imprisonment and
ill-treatment. The rights group included Thet Win Aung in its list.

____________________________________
DRUGS

June 24, Irrawaddy
Wa to celebrate drug free status

The United Wa State Army, an ethnic ceasefire group in Burma, is to hold a
low-key ceremony to mark its opium production ban on International Day
Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking on Sunday. The total ban on the
production of opium in the Wa region takes effect from June 30. The
ceremony had originally been scheduled for today and was to include
members of the Burmese government, journalists, foreign diplomats and
United Nations representatives. However, Rangoon has postponed the event
until the end of the year. The UWSA said it changed the timing of the
event to Sunday to avoid offending the junta, which it claims reneged on
its promised plans for the event.

According to the UWSA, disagreement over the wording of the invitations
for the ceremony was responsible for the delay. The junta is thought to
have disliked the use of the term ‘Wa State’ as it considers the Wa region
to be part of Shan state and not a separate entity. The Burmese government
denies the claim, citing bad weather as the cause

____________________________________
ASEAN

June 24, Agence France Presse
Myanmar may give up ASEAN chair to uphold common interests: Singapore

Singapore: ASEAN members cannot force Myanmar to give up its turn as
chairman next year but the country might do so voluntarily to uphold the
group's interests, Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo said here Friday.

Yeo, speaking to the Foreign Correspondents Association of Singapore, said
further discussions on the issue were expected when foreign ministers of
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meet in Laos next
month.

Officials and parliamentarians from some ASEAN members are afraid that
military-ruled Myanmar will damage the group's image and international
links if it becomes chairman after Malaysia under an alphabetical rotation
system.

US and European leaders are expected to boycott any meetings held in
Myanmar between the grouping and its Western partners.

"Myanmar has told us, and Myanmar has told other countries in Southeast
Asia, that it will not be selfish and that it will take into account the
interests of ASEAN as a whole," Yeo said.

The other countries "took that to mean that Myanmar might withdraw on its
own from assuming the chair," he added.

Yeo also confirmed Friday that Singapore had misgivings about admitting
Myanmar into ASEAN in 1997, but Malaysia and other members pressed for it.

"At the time when Myanmar and Laos and Cambodia were admitted to ASEAN,
Singapore's position at the time was that it might be premature because
the economies were still not sufficiently opened up," he said.

But other members of ASEAN felt strongly that they should complete the
regional group's construction quickly so Singapore went along, he said.

Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad "was one of those who
supported it strongly" and "expressed some words of regret subsequently."

"But there's no point dwelling back on history. We work on the basis of
where we are today," he said.

Yeo reiterated that when ASEAN foreign ministers met in the Philippine
city of Cebu last April, "we took a very clear position that it would set
a very bad precedent for ASEAN ... to take away the chairmanship from any
member."

No ASEAN member has ever been pressured into relinquishing its leadership
but Myanmar's human rights record, particularly the treatment of
pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters, has embarrassed
its neighbors.

Holding the ASEAN chair means Myanmar will set the group's agenda and
direction as well as host a series of meetings, including a summit and a
high-level security forum involving the United States and EU.

Myanmar groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, the
Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The Philippines would take
over if Myanmar gave up its turn.

____________________________________
REGIONAL

June 24, Associated Press
Migrant workers from Myanmar, forgotten victims of tsunami, now rebuild
Thai resorts - Alisa Tang

Takua Pa, Thailand: Migrant workers from Myanmar were the cheap labor that
built Thai resorts where 2,000 foreign tourists died in the tsunami. Now,
they're rebuilding bungalows and hotels on this splendid beach to lure
back tourists.

Despite their economic role, they say they are the forgotten victims -
having received little or no aid from either Thailand or their own
government in the six months since the disaster.

As foreign governments helped Thailand in the search for tsunami victims,
nobody looked for the Myanmar workers, whose death toll is estimated
between 1,000 and 7,000.

The laborers say they watched from their shanties and cinderblock homes as
food and supplies were handed out to their Thai neighbors.

"When I come here to help do construction work for them (the Thais), I
make them happy, but when something happens to me, they don't help me,"
56-year-old Aung Than said, holding two photos of his son and nephew, who
were killed in the Dec. 26 tsunami along with his niece.

Only the body of his nephew was found, while the other two are still missing.

Of the approximately 5,400 people officially listed as dead along
Thailand's Andaman Sea coast, half were foreigners.

Some Thai officials estimate 1,000 of the migrants from Myanmar died, but
the Tsunami Action Group, a nonprofit organization that helps the workers,
puts the toll at 6,000 to 7,000.

The exact number is unlikely to ever be known because of the large number
of undocumented workers from Myanmar, which is also known as Burma. Many
Burmese workers refused to go to mortuaries to identify colleagues,
fearing police would arrest them for not having work permits.

Before the tsunami, there were more than 31,000 Burmese workers registered
in Phang Nga province, north of the resort island of Phuket. Afterward,
their numbers fell to 23,000, the Tsunami Action Group said, but added the
actual number might may be twice that.

The reconstruction boom in the Khao Lak resort area on Phang Nga's coast
makes the area look like a city being built from scratch. Earning about $3
to $6 for a day's labor, Burmese comprise a majority of the work force,
living in temporary shelters behind the luxury resorts they are building.

Aung Than and his co-workers described the inequality of tsunami aid on a
lunch break at their corrugated metal shanties. Among them was a small,
sinewy 13-year-old boy who earns $2.50 a day mixing and carrying cement. A
rash covered his shoulders, back and chest.

There was less bitterness in their voices than a sad acceptance of their
fate as the poorest of Thailand's poor.

"My life was very hard in Burma, so I had to come to Thailand. It felt
awful that no one came to help after my son, nephew and niece died," said
Aung Than. "Still, life is better here than at home."

While the Thai government handed out $500 to each Thai survivor, most of
the Burmese, who have contributed greatly to Thailand's economy, received
nothing and were afraid to ask for help for fear of being arrested or
harassed by authorities.

Thai police publicly accused Burmese workers of looting after the tsunami,
worsening discrimination against them.

Min Zaw, a 26-year-old construction worker who lost both his in-laws, said
he helped an injured Western tourist flee the waves, but then returned to
Myanmar, fearing a crackdown by Thai officials. He returned when he knew
he would be needed to rebuild.

"I came back, but of my former work crew of 20 guys, 16 are in Myanmar
because they were scared of the authorities," Min Zaw said.

Amnesty International said this month that Burmese migrants take jobs that
Thais consider too dirty, dangerous or demeaning. They "are routinely paid
well below the Thai minimum wage, work long hours in unhealthy conditions
and are at risk of arbitrary arrest and deportation," the report said.

Still, hundreds of thousands have fled Myanmar's repressive military
regime and high unemployment in search of jobs in far more prosperous
Thailand.

Sitting on the floor of a one-room cinderblock home in Phang Nga's Bang
Niang district, Myanmar rubber tappers told of being passed over by Thai
aid donors.

"They asked if we were Thai or Burmese. When we said Burmese, they told
us, 'Get out of here,"' said Yee Than, 32, who was born in Thailand but is
a Myanmar citizen. "We're migrant laborers, so they treat us badly."

How does that make her feel?

"We're poor people. We don't feel anything."

_____________________________________

June 24, Mizzima
News drama in NLD-LA (WR): Dr. Tint Swe ousted - Sein Win

Officials of an exiled pro-democracy group on Wednesday made a public
announcement on the dismissal of their party Chairman, Dr. Tint Swe,
charging him of violating central committee decisions and financial rules.

The Chairman of the National League for Democracy-Librated Area (Western
Region) was "dismissed after its members reviewed the party's financial
status" said Vice-Chairman U Ohn Maung to the New Delhi based Burmese
opposition groups, who attended the briefing held at the NLD-LA office in
Vikaspuri of west Delhi.

"The finance management system that we, the NLD (Liberated Area- western
region), have entails that Dr. Tint Swe keep all the money in his bank
account. He was meant to personally administer all the finances, and
record financial statements. This has been the practice since the time we
have been receiving aid from the IRI," U Ohn Maung said.

IRI or International Republican Institute is a funding agency, which has
been supporting the NLD-LA (Western Region).

"The finance of any organization or party should be under the control of
the committee. And should be under in the control of members. So, given
this we tried to make changes in the financial system of the party," U Ohn
Maung added.

The ousted Chairman, Dr. Tint Swe, is a peoples' representative elected in
the 1990 election from No. (2) Constituency of Pale Township in Sagaing
Division in Upper Burma, and is currently a Minister in the Prime
Minister's Office of the National Coalition Government of Union of Burma,
which is a Burmese government in exile.

The meeting explained that the party Chairman had been violating the
regional committee's decision asking him to hand over the finances to the
treasury committee, neglecting to open a joint bank account with two of
the committee members, and belittling the committee by walking out of the
committee meeting, and not willing to submit the letter that he has sent
to the Thailand based NLD-LA's central executive committee. He also called
a meeting without consulting committee members.

The other charges against Dr. Tint Swe were that as the Chairman, during
the past years he has given away over 400,000 Rupees as loan to others
without the approval of any of the committee members. He also spent
emergency funds to the tune of over 2,000,000 Rupees without prior
information to the committee. He also allegedly spent hundreds of
thousands of Rupees which are allotted to committee members for party
activities but is usually left unused.

"You will see nothing wrong in Dr. Tint Swe's financial records, But Dr.
Tint Swe can't cover up the feeling and records in the hearts of members"
U Ohn Maung said, who had a close relation for years with ousted Chairman.

In order to avoid misunderstanding and disintegration within the party,
the Vice-Chairman and another committee member had several times told the
Chairman to make changes in the financial system, he said.

When Mizzima News contacted Dr. Tint Swe on Wednesday, he denied the
charges and said "the central committee told me to keep in mind that it is
the internal affair of the party".

The statement of the NLD-LA (Western Region) released on June 15 states
that Dr. Tint Swe had time and again violated committee decisions, which
are made in a democratic manner, violated financial rules of the party and
was unable to lead the party and thus he was being impeached with a vote
of no confidence and has been ousted from the post of the Chairman.

The decision to oust him was signed by 8 committee members of a total of
11 and was done in accordance with the nearly two third of the party
members desire.

It is not "a split in the party, it is just a problem between the Chairman
and the committee members" said the NLD - LA (western Region) officials at
the briefing.  Only two of the committee members, party Secretary who has
migrated to USA and could not attend the meeting and another Member of
Parliament who was asked to be the negotiator by the rest of the committee
members, had not singed on the resolution.

Despite being aware that some problems did exist within the party, the
outcome has left the Burmese pro-democracy groups surprised.

Tension gripped the party began when the regional committee meeting on May
21, asked the Chairman to hand over the finances to the treasury
committee. Things worsened when the Chairman walked out of the meeting.

Although some mediated for normalcy, a split was the only answer.

"In all cases the Chairman had been taking decisions without consulting
anybody, and that is why we decided to take things in our hands and act,"
the joint secretary of the party U Aung Myint Kyaw said.

Reportedly, the Vice-Chairman will assume the post of the Chairman while
an emergency conference is scheduled to be held within the next six
months, where the post of Chairman and Secretary will be decided.

_____________________________________
INTERNATIONAL

June 24, The Independent
The man who uncovered the truth about Burma; for four years, Guy Horton
has travelled secretly in rural Burma - Peter Popham

It was the cooking pot that gave Guy Horton pause. It was upside- down on
the ground in the devastated village, and its bottom had been smashed in.

Horton, a university lecturer in English literature, reinvented himself in
his forties as a one-man research programme into what the Burmese army,
the Tatmadaw as it is known, was doing to the Burmese people.

In 2000 he undertook a four-month journey through the eastern marches of
Burma, heartland of the Karen, the Shan and the Karenni ethnic groups. It
was hair-raisingly dangerous: the strongholds of the ethnic groups have
all been destroyed, their populations forced into the jungle or across the
border into Thailand. The soldiers of the Tatmadaw can turn up anywhere at
any time and their treatment of those they consider their enemies is
brutal. One village survivor recounts how four villagers blamed by the
army for aiding insurgents were buried in the earth up to their necks,
then soldiers smashed their heads with shovels until they died.

On his first day in the Karen region, Horton himself managed to scramble
into a hut just as a party of soldiers approached. He heard them fixing
their bayonets outside " 'a terrible noise'. Somehow they passed his hut
by.

What Horton was filming and documenting was the bitter outcome of the
50-year war being waged between the modern forces of the Tatmadaw and the
rag-tag insurgent armies grouped around the border " an unequal war of
attrition which year by year the army of the lowland Burmans, who rule the
country through the military junta and who constitute about 60 per cent of
the population, was slowly winning.

But that cooking pot made him stop and think. Why destroy a cooking pot,
so thoroughly and methodically that it could not be used again? 'Why do
something so arbitrary and ludicrous?' he said. He looked around the
village of bamboo huts that the army had razed. He saw other mundane
implements given the same treatment as the pot: looms and rice pounders
smashed, for example. The domestic animals, all slaughtered. On all sides,
the things that make village life possible had been rendered useless.

'I thought, these people are not intended to live,' he said. Once the army
had departed, the villagers who had fled from them into the jungle might
creep back and rebuild their flimsy huts. But what would they eat? If they
found something to eat, how would they cook it, lacking pots?

Taking in the scene, the word 'genocide' came to his mind.

As defined in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the
Crime of Genocide by the United Nations, genocide is any attempt, whether
successful or not, 'to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic,
racial or religious group'.

Horton looked around and asked himself, is this what is happening here? Is
the Burmese junta seeking a final solution to the problem of its
troublesome minorities?

A rumpled, shambling man of 53, Guy Horton's obsession with Burma came
about by accident. He was born in India, in Nainital in the foothills of
the Himalayas where his parents were working, and lived there until he was
seven. In England, like many born and partly raised in the subcontinent,
he always felt something of an outsider. Burma is not India, but there is
a lot in common. 'When I first got to Burma,' he said, 'I felt as if I had
come home.'

In Oxford in the mid-1990s, where he was lecturing, Burma and its unending
tragedy hit him with a special force, for reasons he finds hard to
articulate. He proposed to the city that they make Aung San Suu Kyi,
leader of Burma's opposition, who has been under house arrest for years,
an honorary citizen. Suu Kyi's husband, Michael Aris, an expert in Tibet
at Oxford, got in touch to thank him. They found that they had been at
school together. 'Michael asked me to become a friend of the family, and I
became very close to them,' he said. 'It was Michael who urged me to go to
Burma in 1998.'

That was his first trip to the country, and he went in the front door like
a tourist. Like many first-time visitors, he was unprepared for the
viciousness of the regime. In Mandalay, Burma's second city, he got into
conversation with local people and diffidently raised the name of Aung San
Suu Kyi. 'Two ferocious undercover policemen immediately came up to me,
both over six foot and disguised as monks, and started pushing me around.
I managed to run back to the hotel, where the management said my life was
in danger and made me sleep on the roof of the hotel for my own safety. It
was a turning point in my understanding of the place,' he said.

Two years later he returned to Burma, but this time to the eastern border
with Thailand, the region which is home to three of the largest Burmese
minorities, the Karen, the Shan, and the Karenni. He was going to travel
incognito through the heartland of these three groups and document what he
found.

The Burmese regime defines the status of the villages in this region by
colour coding. Black zones are areas in which the insurgents remain
notionally in control and have villages that support them. Brown zones are
the areas in dispute between the two sides; white zones are where the
Tatamdaw exercise total control. Black zones constitute about 10 per cent
of the region inhabited by these three groups, and the area is rapidly
shrinking. 'The image the regime uses is of a lake that is drying out,'
Horton explained. 'When it is dry " when all the black zones have turned
white " you catch all the fish.'

Thirteen years ago, with the Canadian photographer Greg Girard, I entered
the Karen region from Thailand, when it was still firmly under the control
of the insurgents. It was a nerve-wrecking passage, first in the back of a
pick-up truck driven by Karen activists down remote logging roads, then
across the river that demarcates the Thai-Burma border in a boat powered
by a car engine; nerve-racking and extremely hot and humid, but with
hindsight we were relatively safe, because the Karen were still calling
the shots. Disembarking from the boat, it was a short scramble up the
muddy bank into Manerplaw, the military HQ of the Karen and an asylum for
hundreds of opposition supporters who had fled from the lowlands.

Manerplaw, however, was destroyed by the Tatmadaw in bombing raids in
1995, and survivors fled across to Thailand or into the bush. When Horton
made the same crossing five years ago, he was extremely lucky to survive
the first night.

'I was only 15 yards inside Burma,' he said, 'when I learnt that the Karen
guide I had arranged to meet had been shot dead. The hut was filled with
bullet holes, the thin rattan and bamboo walls ragged and transparent.
Just after nightfall we were approached, shouted at, and a powerful torch
was shone through the frayed walls. I lay face down on the earth and
prayed. I could hear the metallic sound of safety catches being released,
then the metallic sound of bayonets being fixed. God knows how they didn't
find me.'

He pressed on with his trip through the jungle. Walking along the
established footpaths was out of the question: everywhere the Tatmadaw had
visited they had left land-mines along the paths. Horton's local helpers
put him on the back of a 75-year-old elephant. Elephants never forget, as
he knew, and this one remembered long-vanished footpaths from village to
village which had reverted to bush years before, and which therefore had
not been mined. The elephant, and Horton, blundered through unscathed.

What he found everywhere was spectacular devastation. 'Typically,' he
said, 'the army will move into a village, confiscate anything of value,
slaughter the animals and destroy the cooking pots and looms. The village
is burnt and usually mined. The inhabitants are relocated to a new site,
usually with inadequate food and water, where they are forced into labour
schemes such as road-building. In the long run, many just can't survive.'

Indeed Horton now believes " it is the thrust of the case he makes in his
600-page report, Dying Alive, which he intends to present to the United
Nations " that it is the intention of the regime that they should not
survive.

It is a rare totalitarian regime which commits its murderous schemes to
paper. Burma's is no exception. There have been the occasional loose
remarks that have caught the attention of observers. In 1989, one year
before the election won by Aung San Suu Kyi (but which the regime then
ignored), the chairman of the junta acknowledged that the death toll in
Burma's ethnic wars 'would reach as high as millions'. Three years later,
in 1992, the Health Minister, Ket Sein, reportedly boasted to a large
meeting in Rangoon: 'In 10 years, all Karen will be dead. If you want to
see a Karen, you will have to go to a museum in Rangoon.'

But proof of genocide is not to be found in official documents, Horton
believes, but in the evidence of his eyes and his video camera and tape
recorder; assembled during the long trip of 2000, and several shorter ones
during the following four years.

Taking statements from victims in Thailand, using photographs, maps and
films, the atrocities he has documented include slave labour, systematic
rape, the conscription of child soldiers, massacres, and the deliberate
destruction of food sources and medical supplies. The people of the Karen,
the Shan and the Karenni were being killed, and when they weren't killed
outright they were killed by inches: by being forced to labour so hard
that they would drop dead from exhaustion, or contract small injuries from
which, there being no medical supplies, they would die as a result of
infection.

Women were systematically raped by soldiers. 'Burma defines ethnicity
through the father,' writes Nicholas Thompson in an article on Horton in
the American magazine Legal Affairs, 'so a child born as a result of rape
means one less minority and one more Burman.'

Horton, who admits that his trips into Burma 'were incredibly arduous " it
nearly destroyed me physically,' is now in a unique position to argue that
the ethnic wars in Burma now be viewed in a much different and far sterner
light. 'What I could bring,' he said, 'was a contribution of systematic
thought.'

He now plans to persuade the United Nations that the violence committed by
Burma, which ratified the Geneva convention on genocide in 1956, amounts
to genocide.

'I would go through the jungle,' Horton said, 'and I would come across
traumatised groups of extremely weak people, huddled together under
makeshift shelters. They gave off a strange sense of numbness and
weakness. They had very little food: they foraged what they could in the
jungle, but it was not enough. As they told me, they were 'dying alive.' '

_____________________________________
OPINION / OTHER

June 24, The Independent
Burma: More damning evidence of oppression

In its dealings with the military junta that controls Burma, the outside
world tends to focus on the disgraceful suppression of that country's
democratic movement. This is understandable, since Burmese democracy has a
powerful figurehead in Aung San Suu Kyi, whose National League for
Democracy won 80 per cent of the vote in the country's last democratic
election. Ms Suu Kyi, held under house arrest by Burma's generals since
2003, is enormously respected around the world. Burma will be free, it is
widely assumed, only when she is free.

But there is a danger that, in focusing so heavily on the plight of Ms Suu
Kyi and her followers, other crimes by the Burmese regime are being
neglected. And the most egregious of these is the systematic persecution
of Burma's ethnic minority tribes. Yesterday, Guy Horton, a human rights
researcher, held a meeting with British MPs to discuss how to begin legal
proceedings against Burma's leaders for the crime of genocide.

Over the past seven years, Mr Horton has made numerous clandestine trips
into the Burmese jungle to collect evidence of attacks on ethnic
minorities. He has video footage of villages being burned down and the
mass slaughter of farm animals. He has collected testimony of murder and
rape. It is a compelling body of evidence of the crimes that the regime
has committed in Burma's most inaccessible regions.

Some argue that it would be counterproductive for the international
community to accuse the Burmese regime of full-blown genocide, and stress
that the best way to undermine the regime is to support domestic
democrats. But it would be inexcusable if a blind eye was turned to the
evidence Mr Horton has collected, which strongly suggests that the Burmese
regime is implementing a policy of 'Burmanisation' against the Karen, Shan
and Karenni minorities. It should be noted that such a policy would be
consistent with the widespread allegations of rape.

There is scope under the 1948 UN Convention on genocide to bring a case
against the Burmese regime. Of course, the chances of such a prosecution
toppling the Burmese junta on its own are remote. But such a charge can
exert real pressure " as witnessed by the experience of the former
Republic of Yugoslavia and Rwanda. And it has the potential to destabilise
Burma's generals in other ways. It could make the country's neighbours
such as India and Thailand think twice before doing business with the
regime. It could also provide the impetus for the European Union to
tighten up its own flimsy sanctions. Any initiative that turns up the heat
on the murderous Burmese junta is to be seized upon without delay.


_____________________________________
PRESS RELEASE

June 23, The Peter Gruber Foundation
2005 International Women’s Rights Prize Honors Work in Burma and Thailand

The Peter Gruber Foundation Celebrates Two Groups’
Courageous Efforts to Help Women and Children

St. Thomas, U.S.V.I., June 23, 2005 – The Shan Women’s Action Network
(SWAN), which runs community-based programs for refugee women and children
who have fled the civil war in Burma’s Shan State, and the Women’s League
of Burma, an association of eleven women’s groups that SWAN helped to
establish, have been selected by an international panel of experts to
receive the 2005 Women’s Rights Prize of the Peter Gruber Foundation.

Each year the Foundation presents a gold medal and a $200,000 unrestricted
cash award to individuals and/or groups that have made significant
contributions, often at great risk, to furthering the rights of women and
girls and advancing public awareness of the necessity of these rights in
achieving a just world. This year’s prize, which will be shared by SWAN
and the Women’s League of Burma, will be presented in New York City in
September.

Burma is ruled by a repressive military junta, a regime that for many
years has kept the charismatic Nobel Peace Prize laureate and democracy
advocate Aung San Suu Kyi in detention. Over half of Burma’s population of
43 million consists of diverse ethnic groups, with many members of those
groups living beyond its borders. The Shan state, on the border of
Thailand, makes up 9% of the population, and, since 1996, hundreds of
thousands of its villagers have been forcibly relocated from their homes.

SWAN is a non-governmental organization established in 1999 by a group of
Shan refugee women in Thailand. In an effort to stop the junta’s brutality
against women, SWAN published a report called License to Rape in 2002,
detailing incidents of rape and other forms of sexual violence committed
by the Burmese army and used as a “weapon of war” in Shan State between
1996 and 2001. The report shocked the world and moved many sympathizers,
including those in the U.S. Congress, State Department, and the United
Nations, to action. In response the Burmese regime pressured Thai
authorities to shut down the SWAN office. Undeterred, SWAN has continued
to operate discreetly ever since and supports and encourages the growth of
similar organizations.

The Women’s League of Burma is an umbrella organization comprising eleven
women’s groups representing different Burmese ethnic backgrounds. Formed
in 1999 in response to human rights abuses, including sexual violence
against ethnic women committed by the Burmese military regime, it
advocates for economic gender equity, peace and reconciliation, and
women’s participation in decision-making processes and the pro-democracy
movement. It also works to oppose violence against women through its
“State Violence against Women in Burma” campaign.

The official prize citation reads:

“The Women’s Rights Prize of the Peter Gruber Foundation is hereby proudly
presented to SWAN, the Shan Women’s Action Network, and the Women’s League
of Burma, an association of eleven women’s groups, which SWAN helped to
establish in 1999. In awarding this prize, the Foundation celebrates the
unique accomplishments of a group of young women leaders who, at great
personal risk, are challenging human rights violations under a repressive
military dictatorship. Their groundbreaking report, License to Rape,
brought to world attention the systematic sexual abuse of Shan women, an
ethnic minority in Burma. SWAN works with refugee women, many of who are
trafficked into Thailand and remain vulnerable to violence, disease, and
continued assaults upon their human dignity. The Women’s Rights Prize also
honors the Women’s League of Burma, an umbrella group that provides a
forum and the resources for small grassroots women’s organizations that
work tirelessly to assist and educate Burmese refugees, regardless of
their ethnicity.”

Peter Gruber, Chairman of the foundation that bears his name, said:

"It is a great disadvantage that women, who represent half the world's
population, are restricted by laws, or customs, that hinder not only their
basic human rights, but their contributions to the welfare of all. The
work of SWAN and the Women’s League of Burma gives new life and hope to
the women of Burma and to thousands of refugees. We are pleased to honor
their outstanding efforts to achieve freedom and human dignity.”

The Foundation’s Women’s Rights Advisory Board, a group of eminent
individuals known for their expertise and commitment to women’s rights,
selects the annual winner or winners of the prize. Current members are:
Dr. Linda Basch, Executive Director, National Council for Research on
Women, New York City; The Honorable Bernice Bouie Donald, U.S. District
Court, Western District of Tennessee; The Honorable Claire L’Heureux Dubé,
retired Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada; Professor Shadrack Gutto,
Director, Centre for African Renaissance Studies, University of South
Africa; The Honorable Navanethem Pillay, Judge, International Criminal
Court, The Hague, and Women’s Rights Prize laureate 2003; Kavita Ramdas,
President, Global Fund for Women; and Zainab Salbi, President, Women for
Women International.

The Women’s Rights Prize was established in 2003 and is recognized as the
leading international prize in the field. The co-recipients in 2004 were
visionary educator Sakena Yacoobi and the Afghan Institute of Learning,
which annually serves more than 350,000 Afghan women and children; in 2003
the co-recipients were The Honorable Navanethem Pillay, the South African
judge noted for her leadership of the United Nations’ International
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and Pro-Femmes Twese Hamwe (Women Together
for Women), an umbrella organization of Rwandan grassroots women’s groups.

The Peter Gruber Foundation
The Peter Gruber Foundation was founded in 1993 and established a record
of charitable giving principally in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where it is
located. In 2000 the Foundation expanded its focus to a series of
international awards recognizing discoveries and achievements that produce
fundamental shifts in human knowledge and culture. In addition to the
Women’s Rights Prize, the Foundation presents awards in the fields of
Cosmology, Genetics, Neuroscience, and Justice.