BurmaNet News, September 10-12, 2005

[Editor]

September 10-12, 2005 Issue # 2800

INSIDE BURMA
Irrawaddy: German TV broadcaster signs deal in Rangoon
AFP: Myanmar opposition appeals to Supreme Court over mystery death IPS:
Burma: Pro-democracy leader appeals for international aid
AFP: Myanmar expects slight increase in tourism

ON THE BORDER
News Media Group via SHAN: New Shweli river-crossing bridge opens

DRUGS
Reuters: U.N. says amphetamine-type abuse rising in Asia

BUSINESS / FINANCE
AP: Foreign investment in Myanmar increases more than 34 percent in 2004
Xinhua: Myanmar to expand internet services
Asia Pulse: Bangladeshi businesspeople now looking to invest in Myanmar

INTERNATIONAL
Reuters via AlertNet: U.N. Summit: Barriers to Schooling Undermine Goals
Mizzima: Burmese help for Katrina survivors

OPINION / OTHER
Outlook India: And who cares for democracy?

____________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

September 12, Irrawaddy
German TV Broadcaster Signs Deal in Rangoon- Clive Parker

German public television broadcaster Deutsche Welle has signed an
agreement offering Burma’s state-owned MRTV retransmission rights on its
programs, representatives of the Berlin-based network have confirmed.

Deutsche Welle’s Deputy Director-General Dr Reinhard Hartstein signed the
agreement with Deputy Minister for Information Brig-Gen Aung Thein in
Rangoon on Friday, The New Light of Myanmar reported over the weekend.

Claims by the state-run publication that the deal would see an exchange of
programming between both parties was denied by the German Embassy in
Rangoon, which said the relationship would be strictly “one-way.”

Hartstein was traveling back to Bonn, Germany on Monday and was therefore
unavailable for comment.

The deal means that Burma’s flagship channel can use Deutsche Welle
programs at no charge and subject to a maximum 24-hour retransmission
delay.

Concerned that the junta might manipulate its coverage, the German network
included in the agreement a clause terminating the rights if transmissions
are deemed to be “manipulated.” The German Charge d’Affaires in Rangoon,
Dirk Augustin, said Deutsche Welle has asked the embassy “to keep an eye”
on MRTV’s usage of its service.

“In general, though, I don’t see a problem at the moment just with
providing the [Burmese] people with some credible information,” Augustin
said.

The German broadcaster has a policy of providing its coverage at no cost
to countries “where it is known that the local TV programs do not satisfy
the information needs of the population,” Augustin said.

Deutsche Welle’s service is already available in Burma but only by
satellite, which, at a cost of up to US $300, is prohibitively expensive
for most Burmese. MRTV, however, is available to anyone with a television
set at no extra charge.

Friday’s signing ceremony ends months of negotiations, which began in
February, by Deutsche Welle and its representative agents in the region.
An agent that made the initial trip to Rangoon for discussions with the
Ministry of Information, Susanne Merz, said Minister Kyaw Hsan was
supportive from the very beginning but that the cabinet took months to
approve the decision.

Merz and Augustin confirmed there have also been preliminary discussions
between Deutsche Welle and MRTV on the possibility of journalism training,
although no agreement has been reached yet.

____________________________________

September 12, Agence France Presse
Myanmar opposition appeals to Supreme Court over mystery death

Myanmar's opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) will ask the
nation's highest court to review the death of a party member it believes
was killed during police interrogation, a party spokesman said Sunday.

Aung Hlaing Win, a 30-year-old NLD youth member, was arrested on May 1.

His family was informed his death 10 days later, but officials never
revealed the cause of death and said his body had already been cremated.

His family members filed a complaint against police, but in June a
township court ruled that he had died of a chronic liver illness while in
police custody and not during interrogation.

A doctor had told the court Aung Hlaing Win's body showed 24 injuries
including bruises, the NLD said, but appellate courts have refused to
reconsider the case.

In the latest rejection, the Yangon divisional court declined to hear the
case Friday, NLD spokesman Nyan Win told AFP, adding that Aung Hlaing
Win's wife had decided to appeal to the Supreme Court.

"So his wife will continue to apply to the Supreme Court. Our NLD legal
advisory committee will help her," Nyan Win said.

"We will try to find out what happened in this case whether the Supreme
Court accepts it or not," he added.

Anti-Yangon exile groups have maintained Aung Hlaing Win died in custody
after unknown agents abducted him from a food stall in downtown Yangon.

The Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma said 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.

____________________________________

September 11, Inter Press Service News Agency
Burma: Pro-democracy leader appeals for international aid - Marwaan
Macan-Markar

Bangkok: His name does not carry the same aura as Burma's pro-democracy
leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Yet, to his fellow citizens, the 42-year-old Min
Ko Naing is just as significant as 'The Lady'.

''After Aung San Suu Kyi, Min Ko Naing is the most respected leader inside
Burma,'' says Zin Lin of the National Coalition Government of the Union of
Burma, the military-ruled, South-east Asian country's government-in-exile.

Min Ko Naing, a former Rangoon University student, gained stature by
standing up to his country's oppressive military regime. In August 1988,
he led students in a pro-democracy uprising that resulted in a harsh
crackdown, with hundreds shot dead by government troops.

He was arrested in March 1989 for his political activity and thrown into
jail for 20 years, but his release in November last year, after over 15
years of solitary confinement, triggered hope among some Burmese political
activists that he would, once again, rise to becoming a catalyst for
change.

Min Ko Naing may have done just that with a statement released this week,
which has created ripples among a broad swathe of Burmese political
exiles. He appealed to the international donor community to return to the
military-ruled country, rather than forsake it.

His statement, delivered with the backing of other former Burmese student
leaders like him, has brought to the open a contentious issue that critics
of Rangoon's oppressive rulers have been grappling with for years with
little outcome.

These critics, who form a large part of Burma's political exiles, have
favoured the harsh sanctions imposed on Rangoon by the United States
government and the European Union. They have also rebuked any
international humanitarian initiatives they felt would benefit the
military regime.

A run-up to a meeting, at the beginning of this month, in Britain mirrored
such sentiments. Burmese political exiles expressed disapproval of the
Sep. 4-6 gathering, organised by the British government, stating that the
event, due to bring together sympathisers of Burma's opposition parties
and defenders of Rangoon's junta for a discussion, would only benefit the
latter.

The exiles expressed similar criticism over a previous meeting held in
April in Brussels, since that gathering, they argued, was an attempt to
get the E.U. to engage with Rangoon rather than condemn the junta for its
atrocities and to boycott Burma until there was political reform.

Yet, Min Ko Naing received support when, he and other student leaders,
made a statement Wednesday on the need for humanitarian assistance to
Burma. For that, cooperation was necessary among the military regime, the
country's opposition groups, U.N. agencies and international donors,
declared the statement delivered by the 'Student Generations Since 1988'.

Reaction by the Forum for Democracy in Burma (FDB), one of the groups
championing the views of Burmese political exiles, illustrates this.
''(The FDB) ensures that those student leaders reflect the voices of the
needy Burmese citizens since, they, are well aware of the real lives of
their own people'', read a statement released Friday.

''Min Ko Naing's statements carry weight because he is living with the
reality inside Burma,'' Aung Zaw, editor of ‘The Irrawaddy', a news
magazine on Burmese affairs published by exiles in Thailand, said in IPS
interview. ''It is also very brave, what he said to the international
community--we need aid.''

Yet, by entering the controversy about humanitarian aid to Burma, the
former student leaders demonstrate that ''they have matured,'' adds Aung
Zaw. ''They are trying to create a new political space for all the parties
involved in Burma, including the military government, to cooperate on aid
and assistance''.

The appeal, made by so important a political figure, comes at a time when
the junta is facing a mounting humanitarian crisis at home. In August, the
Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria quit the country in
protest because of government interference with its nearly 100 million US
dollars worth of health prevention programmes.

Burma has between 170,000 to 620,000 people living with HIV and, according
to U.N. agencies, it has the second highest incidence rates of the killer
disease in South-east Asia after Cambodia. Another deadly disease,
tuberculosis (TB), is also widespread, with international health agencies
saying that Burma has some 97,000 new TB cases every year.

Child malnutrition is as rampant, the World Food Programme reported in
early August. Nearly a third of the country's children are malnourished
due to lack of food and extreme poverty, the U.N. food agency said.

So, too, acute cases of anaemia among mothers and children, the United
Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) announced this week. Parasitic infections
remain a major cause of anaemia in Burma, said the U.N. agency, which has
begun distributing nearly 70 million iron foliate tablets to 350,000
pregnant women across the country.

Burma's steady decent into misery has been attributed largely to the
policies of the junta. It has been compounded by the international donor
community being averse to helping Burma due to the country's gross human
rights violations.

Since 1988, Burma has received little assistance from the International
Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

The consequences to the people appear to have moved Min Ko Naing. Burma
needs aid desperately, not more arguments about the political significance
of such aid, his group said in this week's statement.

Cooperation with the military regime and the opposition parties were
necessary to save Burma from a mounting humanitarian crisis, they added.

In doing so -- and possibly prodding Burma down a new road of hope --the
former student leaders are also living up to a role others like them have
performed in Burma's political history.

''There are three groups that have played a major role in shaping Burma's
politics,'' Aung Naing Oo, a researcher at the Burma Fund, a Washington
-based think tank, told IPS. ''They are Buddhist monks, the army and
students.''

''Their reputations are untainted,'' he added, referring to Min Ko Naing
and the other members of the Students Generations Since 1988 group. ''They
command a lot of respect from the army, the opposition parties and the
people.''

____________________________________

September 12, Agence France Presse
Myanmar expects slight increase in tourism

Myanmar tourism officials expect a slight increase in the number of
visitors to the military-ruled country when the peak season begins next
month despite a boycott call by pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, a
semi-official weekly reported Monday.

"In my opinion, this high season will have slightly more tourists than
last year but it won't be much different, about five percent more than
last year," Su Su Tin, managing director of Exotissimo Travel told the
Myanmar Times.

Tourists have visited Myanmar in growing numbers in recent years despite
calls for a tourism boycott by detained Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu
Kyi.

Nearly 657,000 visited the country last year, up from nearly 600,000 in
2003, according to tourism authorities.

Maarten Groeneveld, managing director of Diethelm Travel, Myanmar, told
the newspaper that tourism to Southeast Asia generally had yet to recover
from the December 26 tsunami, which spared Myanmar but killed nearly 5,400
people in neighboring Thailand.

"I do not see an immediate increase as Asia and in particular Thailand, is
still much affected by the after-effects of the tsunami," he said.

"This always has an effect on the surrounding countries as the spin-off
from tourists travelling to Thailand will be less."

Groeneveld said more tourists were visiting from South America, South
Africa and Eastern Europe, but that travellers from other Asian countries
were Myanmar's main target for growth.

"It is important to keep working on increased flights to the region and
beyond, to make Myanmar more accessible," he told the weekly.

Tourists have been attracted by Myanmar's isolation, which has left its
beaches undeveloped and its air unpolluted, as well as by the
centuries-old ruins of temples at palaces at Bagan.

Pro-democracy leaders believe that in a country under strict military
control for decades, tourist dollars help prop up the military regime.

____________________________________
ON THE BORDER

September 12, News Media Group via SHAN
New Shweli river-crossing bridge opens

A new bridge, standing parallel to the old one that crosses the Shweli-Mao
River, between Ruili and Jegao, near Sino-Burma border, under construction
since 2002, was opened on 9 September, 2005.

The two bridges, which are on the main Burma-China trading highway, were
built to promote trades between the two countries.

"There used to be only one bridge and traffic jams often caused delays,"
said a local resident.

“The Chinese authorities are giving notice that starting from 12
September, bridge tolls will be collected. Therefore, the taxi fare will
probably be rising up from three Yuan to four for each passenger
(Jegao-Ruili),” said the resident.

The trade between China and Burma (Kunming-Ruili-Jegao-Muse-Mandalay) is
the largest among the Burma’s neighboring trades.

Last year, the Chinese bordering trade’s worth was 1.15 billion US$ and
the two countries aim to increase it to $ 1.5 US$ billion this year.

____________________________________
DRUGS

September 12, Reuters
U.N. says amphetamine-type abuse rising in Asia

Manila: Traffickers have been shifting to the manufacture of
amphetamine-type drugs in Asia as cultivation and production of heroin
drops sharply, a senior
United Nations official said on Monday.

Akira Fujino, head of the Bangkok-based U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime,
said there had been an alarming increase in abuse of "shabu" and ecstasy
in Southeast Asia over the last few years, as shown by a rise in the
number of narcotics laboratories found.

"There's an increasingly serious problem in amphetamines in Southeast Asia
because they do not require any agricultural production," Fujino told
Manila-based foreign correspondents.

"All you need to do is get the starting materials and then any urban
laboratory can be established anywhere in the world, small or otherwise
big factories."

He said China and Myanmar were the world's top makers of amphetamine-type
stimulants.

Of the estimated 400 metric tons they make in total each year, three
quarters was the methamphetamine known as "shabu" or ice and one quarter
was ecstasy pills.

But Fujino said increased law enforcement and other counter-measures had
forced traffickers to move laboratories to countries such as the
Philippines and Fiji.

In the Philippines, at least 11 clandestine laboratories making "shabu"
have been dismantled in the last two years, netting about 3.1 metric tons
in 2003 or 10 percent of the total worldwide seizures of the drug.

Fujino said the value of the global illicit drug market in 2003 was
estimated at $13 billion at the production level, $94 billion at the
wholesale level and $322 billion at the retail level -- after taking
seizures and other losses into account.

Marijuana remained the largest market with an estimated retail size of
$113 billion, followed by cocaine at $71 billion and amphetamines at $44
billion.

Fujino said there had been anecdotal reports from several areas that money
from the sale of opium and cocaine was used in past terror attacks.

Although cultivation and production of opium in Afghanistan declined in
early 2005, the United Nations said in a recent report narcotics from that
country still found their way to Europe, a clear sign that there was
sufficient and rising supply.

While coca cultivation has risen in Bolivia and Peru, production of opium
in Southeast Asia, particularly in the so-called "Golden Triangle" region,
has declined by as much as 78 percent from its peak in 1996, the U.N.
report said.

____________________________________
BUSINESS / FINANCE

September 12, Associated Press
Foreign investment in Myanmar increases more than 34 percent in 2004

Foreign investment in Burma increased by more than 34 percent in 2004,
despite US and European sanctions imposed on the military-ruled country,
according to government statistics published at the end of last week.

Investment rose to US $128.09 million last year from $95.32 million in
2003, said the Ministry of National Planning and Development in its annual
report. South Korea, China and Thailand invested $112.25 million as part
of seven oil and gas contracts, with the remainder going to manufacturing,
mining, transport and the hotel sector, the report said. China alone
invested more than $66 million in oil and gas, mining and manufacturing in
2004.

Since Burma introduced a more open market system in late 1988, the country
has drawn more than $7 billion in foreign investment, more than half of
which has come from Asean.

The US and the EU have imposed economic sanctions on Burma in recent years
to pressure the military government to improve human rights and release
detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

There was, however, bad news for business in Burma in what is usually a
highly optimistic outlook by the junta, with statistics in the same report
showing natural gas sales slipped 9 percent to $578 million in the same
period. The figure was down from $636 million in 2003.

Gas constituted 23 percent of Burma’s total commodities export revenue in
2004, with neighboring Thailand being the primary market.

Burma has exported natural gas since 1998, when it began exports to
Thailand from its two major offshore gas fields in the Gulf of Martaban.

Thailand receives gas from Burma through the Yadana pipeline, whose
primary investors are Total of France and Unocal, now owned by Chevron.

Both parties received substantial criticism over their investments after
locals and rights groups made allegations of forced labor and other human
rights abuses by the Burmese military during the pipeline’s construction.
Total and Unocal have denied the charges, although the latter reached an
out-of-court settlement—thought to be around $20 million—this year with
the plaintiffs.

____________________________________

September 12, Xinhua
Myanmar to expand internet services

A Myanmar and a Canadian information and communication technology (ICT)
company have reached a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to run an
internet service provider (ISP) in Myanmar as part of the country's bid to
expand such services, a local news journal reported Monday.

The ISP to be established by the Ahaed Co. of Myanmar and the Teleglobe of
Canada, will become another ISP in the country and the internet-based
telephone system will be extensively used after the establishment, the
Myanmar company was quoted by the Voice as saying.

The current private ISP in Myanmar went to the Bagan Cybertech Co. which
had initiated the internet and the internet-based telephone system in 2001
in cooperation with the Shin Satellite Co. of Thailand.

According to official statistics, the number of internet users in Myanmar
has stood over 70,000 since it was introduced. The number of subscribers
rose 133 percent within a year from 2003 when it was only 30,000.

Meanwhile, Myanmar has launched some e-government systems including
e-visa, e-passport, and e-procurement to effect management of government
bodies.

Myanmar introduced e-education system in early 2001. Being a signatory to
the e-ASEAN Framework Agreement initiated at the regional summit in
Singapore in 2000, Myanmar has also formed the e-National Task Force to
support the IT development.

The country has also signed a series of MoUs with companies from Malaysia,
Thailand and an ASEAN organization on ICT development.

____________________________________

September 12, Asia Pulse
Bangladeshi businesspeople now looking to invest in Myanmar

Dhaka: Bangladeshi entrepreneurs are now looking to invest in Myanmar in
some sectors they have expertise in, as the two neighbouring countries
have made easy trading arrangements.

An NBR official also said that Myanmar could be an alternative source of
Bangladesh for importing various essential goods like onions, rice and
ginger at times of crisis, as there has been a dearth of those food and
spice items.

According to him, it is now high time Bangladesh transferred expert people
to Myanmar for grabbing its market by using their know-how.

Bangladesh has account-trade arrangement with the natural resource-rich
but cash-strapped country, which is a trading system without needing
foreign currency as hard cash for business transaction.

"We are now looking to invest in Myanmar in some sectors like ceramics,
garments, melamine, pharmaceuticals, timber and gas," AS Jahir Muhammad,
member of the National Board of Revenue (NBR) told UNB correspondent Fahad
Ferdous.

He also mentioned that within this year Bangladesh and Myanmar would sign
an agreement withdrawing double taxation that will make things ease for
the Bangladeshi investors to invest over there.

"We have more expertise than Myanmar and we would be much benefited after
signing the agreement," he said, adding that Myanmar is very much
potential for Bangladeshi investors.

The reclusive nation has a huge reserve of natural gas and the investors
from here could invest in that sector to produce LPG fuel for Bangladesh,
besides doing other downstream business with the hydrocarbons.

Bangladesh and Myanmar have agreed on a 30-point deal for withdrawing the
double-tax system aiming to start formal business in a bigger way and also
enhance cooperation in other fields between the two neighbouring
countries.

The two sides signed agreed minutes on the umbrella agreement here on
August 24 in the second phase of negotiations. In the first phase of the
negotiations, held September 15-17, 2003 in Yangon, the two sides had
agreed on 10 articles of the deal. The remaining 20 articles were
finalized in the Dhaka meet.

AJ Jahir Mohammad, the NBR member, and U aye Ko, Myanmar Internal Revenue
Department (IRD) Deputy Director General, signed the agreed minutes for
the two sides.

According to NBR sources, it was the 25th agreement on withdrawal of
dual-tax arrangement of Bangladesh with other individual countries.

The major ones of the 30 articles are on shipping and air communications,
dividend, interest, royalty, capital profit and student-trainees.

In the minutes it is stated that the native air authority would pay the
tax in the respective country. The tax would be paid for ship plying at
half the applicable rate.

The dividend-recipient person will pay his tax in his native country while
the income from the interest will be payable in the country wherein the
money earned. For royalty the rule will be the same as of interest.

Students and trainees would be exempt from paying tax on earnings up to
$2,000.

Jahir Mohammad said that the agreement would now go to the Law Ministry
for further verification and then it would be placed with the cabinet for
final approval.

"Then the last agreement at the highest level of government would be
struck either in Bangladesh or in Myanmar within a possible quick time,"
he said.

Prime Minister, Foreign Minister or Finance Minister or Secretary would
sign the broad-based agreement, he said.

"To facilitate business and formal trade between the two countries this
agreement is very much essential-with this agreement we will construct a
solid ground for our investors in Myanmar," the NBR member said.

Myanmar IRD Director Zaw U told UNB after the meet here that both
Bangladesh and his country would be "benefited through this agreement".

____________________________________
REGIONAL


_____________________________________
INTERNATIONAL

September 12, Reuters via AlertNet
U.N. Summit: barriers to schooling undermine goals

New York: Children around the world face systematic barriers to schooling
that are undermining global progress towards universal primary education,
Human Rights Watch said today in a report released ahead of the U.N. World
Summit. Human Rights Watch investigations in more than 20 countries found
that school fees and related education costs, the global HIV/AIDS
epidemic, discrimination, violence and other obstacles keep an estimated
100 million children out of school, the majority of whom are girls. The
60-page report, "Failing Our Children: Barriers to the Right to
Education," is based on interviews with hundreds of children in all
regions of the world.

On September 14, an estimated 170 world leaders will gather at the United
Nations in New York, in part to assess progress on the Millennium
Development Goals adopted in 2000. One of the eight goals is to ensure
that by 2015, every child attends and completes primary school.

"Schooling is a fundamental human right for every child, and it's also
essential for global development," said Jo Becker, advocacy director for
the Children's Rights Division at Human Rights Watch. "Education breaks
generational cycles of poverty, protects children from exploitation and
improves their very chances of survival."

In more than a dozen countries, Human Rights Watch found that school fees
and related costs such as books, uniforms and transportation cause many
children to drop out of school, start late or never attend at all. In El
Salvador, the annual cost of schooling for one child is nearly four times
the minimum monthly wage for an agricultural worker. Human Rights Watch
found that prohibitive school fees are often linked to children's entry
into the worst forms of child labor, including sex work in Papua New
Guinea, domestic labor in Indonesia, hazardous work on banana plantations
in Ecuador, and child soldiering in Burma.

"Under international human rights law, countries have a clear obligation
to provide free primary education to all children," said Becker.

Human Rights Watch also documented the devastating effect of the global
HIV/AIDS pandemic on children's right to education, particularly for the
estimated 14 million children worldwide who have lost one or both parents
to HIV/AIDS. Both in sub-Saharan Africa, where the crisis is most acute,
as well as countries like India and Russia, Human Rights Watch found that
children affected by HIV/AIDS may be denied access to school or mistreated
by teachers because of the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS. Many children,
particularly girls, are pulled out of school to care for sick family
members, or are forced to work to supplement their family's income when a
parent falls ill or dies.

Another of the eight Millennium Development Goals set in 2000 include
halting and beginning to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS.

"As AIDS impoverishes more families and produces new generations of
orphans, its negative impact on children's right to education will only
intensify," said Becker. "Governments need to adopt focused strategies to
keep children affected by HIV/AIDS in school, particularly since education
is one of the most effective means of reducing the risk of HIV infection."

The first target set for the Millennium Development Goals, which called
for getting an equal number of girls into school as boys by 2005, has
already been missed. Girls make up an estimated 60 percent of children who
are out of school. Traditional biases against educating girls often
influence parents to give priority to their sons over their daughters for
schooling, particularly when school fees or poverty make it difficult for
parents to send all of their children to school.

Girls are preferred for certain kinds of child labor, particularly
domestic work, which typically involves isolation and long hours that are
incompatible with schooling. Girls are also particularly vulnerable to
sexual violence by classmates and teachers and are less likely to travel
long or dangerous routes to get to school.

"In some parts of the world, gender disparities in education are in fact
growing wider," said Becker. "Governments need to make stronger efforts to
get girls into school, and to address the barriers to education that
disproportionately affect girls."

Measures to increase girls' education include educating families and
communities about the benefits of girls' education, improving security in
and around schools, addressing sexual violence in the schools, and
providing incentives for girls to attend and remain in school, such as
free meals or stipends conditional on school attendance.

Human Rights Watch also urged governments to:

• ensure that children are not denied their right to education because of
school fees or associated costs of education;

• enact and enforce bans prohibiting discrimination in education against
children because of their race, ethnicity, gender, social, HIV or other
status, and identify and include populations of children underserved by
the education system;

• address the interrelationship between education and child labor by
providing incentives to keep children in school, expanding educational
opportunities for working children and making stronger efforts to remove
children from the worst forms of child labor.

Countries investigated as part of Human Rights Watch's report included
Brazil, Burma, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, India, Indonesia, Iraq,
Israel, Kenya, Liberia, Morocco, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Russia,
Spain, South Africa, Togo, Uganda, United States and Zambia.

_____________________________________

September 10, Mizzima News
Burmese help for Katrina survivors

Burmese democracy campaigners based in the United States are joining hands
with local relief organizations to help the survivors of Hurricane
Katrina, which hit much of the Gulf Coast region.

An activist of the US-based Burma campaign group along with colleagues
traveled to Mississippi and other hurricane-hit areas together with a
volunteer group from Chicago to bring humanitarian aid donated by
well-wishers in  Chicago to the survivors of the hurricane. The aid
included medicines and household items.

Nay Min Tar, a Burmese activist who came to the United States a few months
ago, plans to work in cleaning and reconstructing areas destroyed by the
storm, according to the US Campaign for Burma (USB).

“On behalf of the people of Burma who are struggling for democracy, and on
behalf of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, we wanted to show our solidarity with the
hurricane victims. We wanted to reciprocate their help to us”, said Nay
Min Tar in an interview to BBC Burmese Service.

“The storm was a huge disaster--the magnitude of the damage is almost
unimaginable. Many Burmese people feel a special debt to the United States
and the American people, who have offered refuge to many who had to leave
Burma because of our country's brutal military regime
We hope that in our
own small way we can help to repay the enormous debt we owe to the people
and leaders of the United States”, said a press release of the USB.

Millions of people suffered due to Hurricane Katrina's devastation. The
Unites States Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff described the aftermath
of the Hurricane as “probably the worst catastrophe, or set of
catastrophes” in the country’s history. Thousands of families have been
left homeless or with homes that are severely damaged.

_____________________________________
OPINION / OTHER

September 9, Outlook India
And who cares for democracy? -  Amitav Acharya

When it comes to Burma, that is. ASEAN wants to push the issue under the
carpet, while the West is content with grandstanding

Singapore: A July 2005 agreement among the members of the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that Burma would relinquish its turn at
the chairmanship has averted a major diplomatic crisis for the
organization. Western nations, including the United States and the
European Union, who attend the annual ASEAN meetings as "dialogue
partners," had threatened to boycott the 2006 meeting if Burma was in the
chair.

Founded in 1967, ASEAN now includes 10 countries of Southeast Asia. Under
its rotational leadership, Burma, which joined the group in 1997, was due
to assume the chairmanship of its Standing Committee in 2006.

The Western dialogue partners of ASEAN are protesting against continued
political repression and human rights abuses by the Burmese regime, which
has ruled the country since 1962. The regime has refused to accept the
result of the 1990 national election, which was won by the opposition
National League for Democracy (NLD). The party leader, Aung San Suu Kyi,
has since spent most of her time under detention.

By giving up its claim to lead ASEAN in 2006, the junta managed to take
the heat off the question of domestic reform. And ASEAN avoided a Western
boycott of its 2006 meeting. But without more focused action by ASEAN and
the international community to move Burma towards democracy, the move will
be little more than ASEAN's traditional practice of sweeping problems
under the carpet.

The discussion in Laos was not about how to improve the political
situation in the country. The issue was Burma's leadership, rather than
membership in ASEAN. ASEAN has not made Burma's continued membership of
the association subject to political reform.

ASEAN has been reluctant to push Burma towards political reform out of
deference to its doctrine of non-interference. The Burmese junta has
started drafting a new constitution, due to be completed in 2007, which it
says would lead to political liberalization. Presumably, this would make
Burma eligible to assume the leadership in ASEAN.

ASEAN members agree and hope that this will be the case. But its Western
partners dismiss the constitution-drafting process. Suu Kyi and her party
have boycotted the National Convention drafting the constitution, whose
delegates were hand-picked and tightly controlled by the junta. The Bush
administration in May 2004 stated that because "Rangoon's constitutional
convention has not allowed for substantive dialogue and the full
participation of all political groups, including the NLD, it lacks
legitimacy." If approved by a popular majority in the electorate in a free
and fair referendum – which is by no means guaranteed – the constitution
would still accord the military a privileged position in the political
system, including sole claim to the presidency.

ASEAN's role in Burma has been very different from its role in the
Cambodia conflict during the 1980s, when it led efforts to find a peaceful
settlement to the dispute, which resulted in the Paris Peace Agreement in
1991. That conflict was originally a civil war, although it had been
internationalized by Vietnamese intervention and occupation of Cambodia.
There has been no outside intervention in Burma, which is one
justification for ASEAN's hands-off policy. But Burma has proven to be a
major embarrassment for ASEAN.

ASEAN's diplomatic options in dealing with Burma are limited by
intra-mural differences within the grouping over how to deal with the
junta. Some members – Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, and Singapore –
are increasingly concerned about the group's relationship with Western
nations, if not its international public reputation per se. Thus, these
ASEAN countries want to see the association play a role in nudging the
junta to reform. Other’s, like Vietnam, stick to the principle of
non-interference, and are worried about setting a precedent of allowing
regionalist pressure for domestic political reform – a precedent that
would likely come back to haunt them.

ASEAN's capacity for inducing political reform in Burma is also
constrained by the fact that the junta has secured backing from both China
and India, its two most powerful neighbors, playing them against one
other. Hence, the junta can ignore any demand for political change that
ASEAN may bring to bear on it.

China and India are critical to any intervention by the international
community in Burma. But is the West really interested in advancing
political change in Burma? There is no serious diplomatic effort ongoing
today – of the kind one finds in Sri Lanka or Aceh – that might help bring
about political reconciliation in Burma. The Bush administration snubbed
ASEAN by canceling Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's attendance at the
Vientiane meeting. But this posturing was almost entirely cost-free,
thanks to good bilateral relations with key Asian nations, as indicated by
a separate Rice stopover in Bangkok before the Vientiane meeting.
Diplomatic snubs and economic sanctions are no substitute for a policy of
seeking a solution to Burma's political woes.

Burma's strategic location or economic potential may be apparent to India
and China, but not to the US. Burma is not regarded by the Bush
administration as a terrorist haven, although it claims to side with the
US on the war on terror, supposedly against extremist elements among its
Rohingya muslim minority. When asked by the author as to why the US is not
actively seeking a role in the Burma problem, a senior official in the
first Bush administration replied that because there is no significant
domestic interest or constituency in the United States pushing for such a
role. The administration's democracy-promotion agenda does not extend to
Burma, despite the fact that Secretary Rice named Burma as one of six
"outposts of tyranny" during her Senate confirmation hearing in January.

Yet, a diplomatic effort backed by the US and involving Burma's giant
Asian neighbors would be necessary and timely. Denying Burma the
chairmanship of ASEAN is good posturing, but it does not advance the cause
of democratic transformation in the country. If the US could engage in
six-party negotiations involving China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea to
deal with the North Korea problem, why should it not encourage a similar
move involving China, India, and ASEAN to deal with the Burma issue?

The international community needs to prove that while taking a moral high
ground on Burma's crisis it must also offer concrete ideas and approaches
to advance the democratization and national reconciliation process beyond
the current policy of sanctions and boycott. A necessary step in that
direction would be a new diplomatic initiative to persuade the Rangoon
regime to broaden the constitution-drafting process – with the
participation of freed opposition leaders and a firm time-table for
internationally-supervised elections. Such an initiative could be
spearheaded jointly by ASEAN, China and India, with the backing of the US
and the EU and other members of the international community.

Ultimately, ASEAN must come out of its non-interference closet and address
the issue head-on. Otherwise, its hands-off approach will continue to
cloud its legitimacy and credibility as a regional organization with a
mandate for seeking "regional solutions to regional problems."

Amitav Acharya is Deputy Director and Head of Research at the Institute of
Defence and Strategic Studies, Nanyang Technological University. This
article appeared in YaleGlobal Online, a publication of the Yale Center
for the Study of Globalization, and is reprinted by permission.