BurmaNet News, February 24, 2006

[Editor]

February 24, 2006 Issue # 2907


INSIDE BURMA
Irrawaddy: Junta claims substantial economic growth in 2005

ON THE BORDER
AP: Ex-political prisoners in exile unite to expose Myanmar's gulag
AP: Myanmar's junta said stepping up campaign against minorities

REGIONAL
Asia Pulse: Asean parliamentarians urge release of Myanmar's Suu Kyi
South China Morning Post: Indian president's Yangon trip seen as important
gesture
DVB: Indonesian president's visit to Burma and human rights

INTERNATIONAL
AFP: 'Cacophony' of criticism not working with Myanmar: UN
Harvard University Gazette: U.S. pushes for regime change in Burma

OPINION / OTHER
New Era Journal: Leadership vacuum in Burma/Myanmar - Amyotheryei U Win Naing

___________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

February 24, Irrawaddy
Junta claims substantial economic growth in 2005 - Shah Paung

Burma’s military government claimed last week that the country’s economy
has grown 12.2 percent in 2005, according to a local media report.

“In 2004, the Burmese economic expanded 12 percent, but in 2005 it has
expanded to 12.2 percent,” Burma’s Minister of National Planning and
Economic Development Soe Tha was quoted as saying by the semi-official
newspaper The Myanmar Times.

The government figure is higher than that of China, whose economy grew by
some 8.5 percent—the highest growth rate according to the Asia Development
Bank’s report “Asian Development Outlook 2005.”

In April 2005, ADB said that actual growth rates could be much lower than
predicted because of high inflation, lagging income levels and declines in
power consumption and fertilizer us in the agricultural sector—the
country’s main economic motor.

Soe Tha further stated that last year’s export trade policies secured for
Burma a record trade surplus of more than US $1 billion. According to his
figures, the country exported $2.77 billion in goods in 2005, while the
value of imported goods stood at $1.6 billion.

Sein Htay, a Burmese economic analyst, suggested that the high government
figures could be inflated because of two methods of calculating growth.
One uses the “constant price” of goods and services, while the other uses
the “current price.” The latter is the more accurate method, as it
reflects the daily reality of prevailing economic conditions.

“The government figure is high because they calculate at constant price
instead of current or market price,” said Sein Htay.

According to ADB, a “dual exchange rate system,” like the one employed in
Burma, can produce a wide gap between official prices and black market
prices. Currently, the official exchange rate in Burma is 6 kyat to the US
dollar. Black market rates are considerably higher, at 1,163 kyat to the
US dollar.

Sein Htay suggested that the military government refuses to acknowledge
the reality of economic development in Burma, and so it remains difficult
for economists to accurately assess growth from year to year.

“It is impossible to know the actual figures,” he said. “They [the
government] only want to show how much development has improved under
their control.”

Independent economic analysts in Rangoon suggest that the actual growth
rate for 2005 is closer to 1.5 percent.

___________________________________
ON THE BORDER

February 24, Associated Press
Ex-political prisoners in exile unite to expose Myanmar's gulag - Denis D.
Gray

Mae Sot: As Myo Myint tells it, his torturers opened the door to a large
room heaving with naked prisoners, some moaning, others unconscious, all
lying soaked in their own blood and feces, and screamed at him: "If you
don't tell us everything, you will be joining them."

That, he says, was his shattering entry into Myanmar's gulag, a network of
some 40 interrogation centers, 43 prisons and more than 60 labor camps
through which thousands have passed, often for the mildest dissent against
the country's military rulers.

"He's gone to Moscow," is the term people here use for someone hauled off
to Insein Prison in Yangon, the capital.

The junta began filling the camps and prisons shortly after crushing a
nationwide anti-military uprising 18 years ago. The first large batch of
arrivals were the pro-democracy winners of the 1990 general election.

Myo Myint, now 43, says he endured 14 years, 10 months and 16 days in
these brutal confines. The ex-soldier fled to Thailand after his release,
joining a band of freed prisoners who are documenting their ordeal on
paper and in a small museum in the northwest border town of Mae Sot.

"I experienced such hardship in prison that as long as there are political
prisoners I will work for them," he says. He survived, he thinks, "by
believing in democracy."

Founded in 2000, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners now
numbers more than 100 men and women along the Thai-Myanmar border as well
as in the United States, Norway and elsewhere. All say they were tortured.

Supported by the Dutch government and the U.S.-based National Endowment
for Democracy, the group helps with mental and physical rehabilitation and
financial aid for the neediest former prisoners, delivered clandestinely
through a chain of couriers. This year schooling for 200 children of
jailed mothers and fathers will also be funded.

In grisly detail, the group reports on the regime's array of torture and
degradation techniques. Survivors tell of homosexual rape, electric shock
to the genitals, partial suffocation by water, burning of flesh with hot
wax and being made to stand for hours in tubs of urine and feces.

In what survivors describe as a grotesque perversion of Myanmar culture,
prisoners are ordered to perform the traditional Semigwa dance, and are
mercilessly beaten if they fail to execute its intricate postures or to
please the torturers with their singing.

Victims describe the searing mental impact of seeing others being
tortured, or of being escorted to the prison gate and then, within sight
of welcoming relatives, rearrested to serve more time.

Such accounts, including lists of jailers and torturers by name and
location, are passed on to international human rights organizations in
hopes they will one day serve as evidence in court.

Regime spokesmen were not available for immediate comment on the
allegations, but the government has repeatedly denied using torture or
inflicting other abuses on prisoners. Last July, 249 prisoners were
released, 118 of them from Insein, and the Red Cross has visited prisons
and labor camps across Myanmar. The committee never details its findings,
so independent corroboration of the prisoners' accounts is not available.

Foreign monitoring groups report some improvement in conditions since the
Red Cross visits began in 1999. But Brad Adams of U.S.-based Human Rights
Watch says: "We are very, very confident that torture continues. It's an
instrument of policy. This is not a country where it happens by chance,
committed by a few rotten apples."

"They try to kill our beliefs," said John Glenn as he guided visitors
through the prisoners' association museum. The 36-year-old former biology
student, who is named for the American astronaut, said he spent two years
in Insein for handing out a mildly critical pamphlet.

Purposely stark and windowless like a prison cell, the exhibition begins
with photographs of the demonstrators gunned down by troops in the 1988
uprising led by Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace
Prize laureate who is under house arrest in Yangon.

Another wall is blanketed with snapshots of more than 150 of the 1,151 men
and women the group says are known to be in prison for political
activities. Human Rights Watch also estimates more than 1,100 are in
detention, though Glenn says the number is higher.

Also on display are items which help prisoners get by chess pieces carved
out of soap bars; sharpened bamboo used to scratch English vocabulary onto
strips of plastic; newspaper clippings, often years old, disguised as
cigarette papers.

Aye Aye Moe, 31, came to Thailand after two years' incarceration for
"contact with illegal opposition groups." She said she spent eight months
alone in a cell so airless that she had to lie on her stomach to breathe
through a slit at the base of a wall.

"I suffered and I fear the new generation will also face the same
suffering," said the former economics student.

Myo Myint is a strikingly handsome man despite having lost a leg, an arm
and an eye as a loyal soldier in the Myanmar government's long war with
ethnic insurgents. He says that like many other ex-soldiers, he was driven
by the ethnic strife and the military's atrocities to become a passionate
supporter of Suu Kyi and a member of her National League for Democracy.

During 4 1/2 years alone in a cell ("except for some butterflies and
ants") he meditated, learned English from a teacher in an adjacent cell
and wrote poems on the wall with shards of brick.

He recalls one, titled "Returning Home":

"In the house of locks, dawn will never come...

We have been robbed of our tomorrows."

____________________________________

February 21, Associated Press
Myanmar's junta said stepping up campaign against minorities - Denis D. Gray

Na Soi: Lu Khu Paw says soldiers shot her father as he gathered bamboo in
the forest, laid waste to the rice fields and burned down their home three
different times. The 16-year-old vividly remembers her village in flames,
survivors fleeing and her mother dying of disease in a jungle hide-out.

Nang Poung, a 33-year-old farmer, recounts how troops dragged 30 males,
three of them relatives, to an execution ground and herded everyone else
out of her village. What finally impelled her to escape from Myanmar just
days ago, she says, was working as a conscripted laborer six days a week,
and then having to hand over half the harvest, plus taxes, from family
fields.

Such stories are commonplace among refugees fleeing a decades-long
campaign by Myanmar's ruling military to suppress rebellious ethnic
minorities. Under the present junta, which has aborted an opposition
election victory, gunned down demonstrators and kept opposition leader
Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest, the campaign against the rebels
appears to be escalating in scope and ferocity.

The violence has spawned an estimated one million internal refugees, many
cowering in bleak hovels deep inside malarial jungles or on bitterly cold
mountainsides. It has also sparked an accelerating exodus to neighboring
countries, including more than 400,000 to Thailand, where thousands arrive
each month, according to the Burma Border Consortium, the main refugee aid
group.

It says the conflict wracking eastern Myanmar has destroyed some 3,000
villages and displaced 80,000 people a year in most recent times.

Occasional international protests have failed to stop what dozens of
refugees describe in interviews: mass relocations of civilians, girls as
young as 5 raped, people shanghaied into acting as human mine detectors,
villagers nailed to doors or burned inside their houses, livestock shot,
cooking pots smashed.

Such charges are described by the junta as fabrications by Westerners and
"internal destructive elements" plotting to dismember Myanmar. Like
previous governments in the country formerly called Burma, the generals
believe they have a sacred obligation to hold the nation of 43 million
together and stamp out separatist rebellions among its 135 officially
recognized races.

"I have suffered for many years and it's only getting more desperate now,"
says Sai Teng, who fled recently from Myanmar's Shan State, fearing yet
more forced labor and a worse fate for his wife. Late last year, he says,
a patrol near his village tied a 35-year-old woman to a tree and
gang-raped her to death after catching her "illegally" feeding her cows
and buffaloes.

Fears of worsening conditions are echoed by outside advocates.

The 2004 ouster of Gen. Khin Nyunt, who negotiated cease-fires with 17
insurgent groups, reinforced hard-liners within the junta and "resulted in
increasing hostility directed at ethnic minority groups," U.S.-based Human
Rights Watch says in its 2006 report.

Some cease-fire agreements, notably with the Shan State National Army,
have broken down and others are expected to fracture, inevitably leading
to an upsurge in fighting and reprisals against civilians suspected of
sympathizing with the rebels.

The conflict is waged in the rugged mountains ringing the populous plain.
In the latest military operations, at least four government battalions
since Dec. 23 have been shelling and attacking villages and internal
refugee hide-outs in southern Karenni State and areas of neighboring Karen
State, forcing some 3,000 people to flee their homes, according to reports
from the Free Burma Rangers ethnic and Western relief workers who trek
into the war zones to aid the homeless.

Under international sanctions and faced with a bankrupt economy, the
generals are also expanding road networks into once remote ethnic areas to
exploit forests, minerals and farmland. Those fleeing marauding troops,
refugee workers say, will soon be hemmed in.

All hope for change seems dead and "almost all new refugees tell us that
life is unsustainable in Burma," said Jack Dunford, the British head of
the Burma Border Consortium. "They either live under junta control where
they are subjected to incessant forced labor and other human rights
abuses, or they have to be constantly on the move, trying to avoid the
Burmese Army. But in the end there is no place left for them to run."

British human rights researcher Guy Horton claims the specific targeting
of ethnic people goes well beyond the bounds of counterinsurgency
campaigns and should expose the government to a U.N. charge of genocide.
Dunford doesn't go that far, preferring to speak of "a systematic effort
to physically control their area and if someone is in their way they just
shoot them."

Such debates are lost on the victims, many of them illiterate farmers who
have never even heard of Aung San Suu Kyi and who say the military never
explains its actions to them.

"It's like meeting a tiger in the jungle: you never know if it will attack
you or not. Having some official permit is no guarantee of safety. Every
unit does what it likes. Living with Burmese soldiers is like a
never-ending nightmare," said Sai Teng, the Shan farmer who fled with his
wife and 4-year-old son.

Among refugees in this northwestern Thailand village, the mood of
hopelessness is expressed in a song performed by 50 Karen orphans: "Mummy
is in heaven, Daddy is in heaven. When shall I see my home again? When
shall I see my native land?"

The conflict dates back to 1948, when Britain gave the country
independence and promised a degree of autonomy to the ethnic groups, which
make up about a third of the population. When the new government failed to
deliver some groups rose up in arms, fighting to preserve their culture
and way of life, not to mention their smuggling routes and drug crops.

The insurgents include the Karen, Karenni and Shan groups in eastern Burma
and others along the borders with India and Bangladesh.

In more recent times, the demand for autonomy has been modified to seeking
a federal, democratic system, but the 500,000-strong army continues to
seek victory through what it calls a "Four Cuts" campaign cutting off
guerrillas from the civilian population which provides them with recruits,
information, funds and supplies.

Knowledgeable sources such as the Free Burma Rangers say many civilians
are clearly sympathetic to the rebels' cause and sometimes support it.
However, a number of the refugees interviewed insisted they took no sides,
yet were still accused of wrongdoing and beaten or worse.

Charm Tong, a young Shan human rights worker, says the military uses rape
"to control, humiliate and demoralize the community" an allegation she
relayed to President Bush when they met at the White House last year.

Colleagues at the Shan Relief and Development Committee say that harsh
policies have slashed rice production in Mong Nai township, the rice bowl
of Shan State, by 56 percent since 1994 and sparked the flight of a third
of the population to Thailand.

They say more than half the cultivated area has been abandoned as the
regime relocates villages, conscripts farmers for state agricultural
projects and confiscates land. It then rents the acreage back to farmers
and forces them to sell a percentage of their rice harvest to the military
at four times less than the market price.

Human rights groups call it "agro-cide." Nang Poung, who says she was
forced to work on a vast fruit plantation until she fled in desperation to
Thailand, defines it tersely: "They're destroying the very agriculture on
which our lives depend."

____________________________________
REGIONAL

February 24, Asia Pulse
Asean parliamentarians urge release of Myanmar's Suu Kyi

Bangkok: Southeast Asian parliamentarians have urged governments of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to expel Myanmar from the
regional grouping unless it frees opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and
other political prisoners, Thai Senator Kraisak Choonhavan, Chairman of
the Thai Senate's Foreign Affairs Commission, said here on Thursday.

The resolution was announced at a recent joint session between Thai
parliamentarians and their counterparts from other ASEAN countries,
Senator Kraisak, who is also Deputy Speaker of the ASEAN Parliament for
Democracy in Myanmar, told journalists.

The ASEAN Parliament called on the military junta to keep its promises
made four years ago to free the leader of the National League for
Democracy (NLD) from confinement in her house in Myanmar's capital of
Yangon.

"We are asking the governments of the ASEAN nations to make a commitment
that it will expel Myanmar from the group if its military junta refuses to
release all political prisoners and to give its people freedom and
rights," he said.

The ASEAN Parliament was formed by the 'core' ASEAN member countries,
including Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.

Despite international pressure, Myanmar has shown no sign of freeing Ms.
Suu Kyi and other political prisoners.

Senator Kraisak also attacked Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, alleging
that Mr. Thaksin's administration has caused some frustration among many
nations since he took office as Thailand's prime minister, as he has
changed the country's policy from protecting refugees to suppressing them,
in particularly those from Myanmar who were put in refugee camps even
though the United Nations has given them the status of displaced persons.

"The prime minister did that just to please the then leader of the
military junta, Gen. Khin Nyunt," said the senator.

"Even though Gen. Khin Nyunt is no longer in office," Sen. Kraisak said,
"Thailand's image in the eye of international community has not improved,"
he said.

____________________________________

February 24, South China Morning Post
Indian president's Yangon trip seen as important gesture

New Delhi's decade-old "look east" policy is poised to take another
significant step with the first visit by an Indian head of state to
military-ruled Myanmar next month.

During his three-day "goodwill visit" to India's eastern neighbour
beginning on March 8, President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam will hold talks in
Yangon with Myanmar's military strongman, General Than Shwe, chairman of
the State Peace and Development Council, and tour the city of Mandalay and
Bagan's famed Buddhist temples.

In India's power structure, Mr Kalam is only a figurehead, so the visit
will not result in the signing of any major agreement with the military
junta.

But it is seen as an important political gesture from New Delhi towards
its once-estranged neighbour, reciprocating Than Shwe's path-breaking
visit to India in October 2004.

"The goodwill visit is expected to contribute significantly to the further
strengthening of bilateral relations," a spokesman of the India's External
Affairs Ministry said.

Relations between India and Myanmar have not always been so cordial.

After the military crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in 1988, India
became a vocal supporter of Aung San Suu Kyi, the popular leader now under
house arrest in Yangon.

Ms Suu Kyi lived and studied in New Delhi as a teenager and counted among
her friends the late Indian president K.R. Narayanan, who was married to a
Burmese. But thanks to concern about China's expanding influence in
Myanmar, New Delhi did a U-turn in the mid-1990s.

It became equivocal about its support to Ms Suu Kyi, began mending fences
with the generals and actively sought better economic and military ties
with Yangon.

"Chinese domination increased every day in Myanmar, while India sat on the
sidelines," said Preet Malik, former ambassador to Yangon. "But since 1995
there has been a complete acceptance in New Delhi of the need to establish
close relations with Myanmar no matter who is in power. President Kalam's
visit will only underscore this approach."

But supporters of Ms Suu Kyi and the pro-democracy movement are unhappy,
and have demanded the Indian president postpone his visit.

"Mr Kalam's timing cannot be more inopportune," said Suhas Chakma,
director of the New Delhi-based Asian Centre for Human Rights. "While the
United Nations appears to be taking Beijing's help to persuade the
military junta to undertake political reforms, we are afraid to even take
the name of the lady."

Besides counteracting the growing Chinese presence, India sees other
compelling reasons for upgrading its links with Myanmar.

Military co-operation with Yangon is considered critical in reining in
separatist groups in its remote northeastern states and based across the
border in Myanmar, and putting a lid on the drugs trade.

____________________________________

February 23, Democratic Voice of Burma
Indonesian president's visit to Burma and human rights

UN special human rights envoy for Burma, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro urged
Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to press Burma’s military
junta, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) for democratic
transition as promised by the junta, when he visits Burma in March.

The call was made during a recent meeting between Pinheiro and Indonesian
Foreign Department officials. He insisted that it is important to raise
the issue of transition to democracy and added that it is also vital for
the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders to keep on
reminding the junta. Moreover, Pinheiro added that the United Nations is
also hoping that ASEAN, China and India will engage in lively talks with
the SPDC.

Yudhoyono is due to arrive in Burma for a two-day visit from March 1. "The
president will meet with Senior General Than Shwe (SPDC chairman) and the
emphasis of the talks will be on bilateral issues" covering diplomatic and
economic topics, spokesman Dino Patti Jalal told reporters. He added that
Indonesia would "assist, if we are asked by Myanmar (Burma), to implement
their road map to democracy."

Indonesia's foreign minister said in January that Yudhoyono or a special
envoy was planning to visit Burma in order to recount to the junta how
Indonesia underwent its own transition from authoritarianism.

Yudhoyono's visit comes as Malaysia's Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar is
trying to finalize a date to go to Burma as an envoy of the ASEAN to check
on its progress towards democracy, according to a report by Jakarta Post.

____________________________________
INTERNATIONAL

February 24, Agence France Presse
'Cacophony' of criticism not working with Myanmar: UN

Bangkok: The "cacophony" of criticism against Myanmar is not forcing the
military-ruled state to reform, an outgoing UN rights envoy said Friday,
urging the international community to be more diplomatic.

Paolo Sergio Pinheiro, who is stepping down after six years as the UN's
rights envoy to Myanmar, said "there was a lack of coordination among and
inside the international community" in its approach to Myanmar.

"There is a cacophony, and people are accusing others of not being
sufficiently tough," he said at a press conference in Bangkok.

"It's not a boxing championship."

In November, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice chided ASEAN members
for not being tough enough on Myanmar for human rights, calling the
impoverished Southeast Asian nation an "outpost of tyranny".

"You call the leadership of Myanmar certain names, this doesn't help."
Pinheiro said.

"I think that some countries have forgotten that diplomacy exists."

The United States and the European Union have both imposed sanctions on
the country for its detention of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi,
demanding the junta release her and other political prisoners.

US legislators earlier this month pressed Washington, current president of
the Security Council, to formally put Myanmar on the agenda of the
powerful UN panel, a move that could lead to resolutions of condemnation
and raise pressure on the ruling generals.

But the move has been opposed by China, Russia and India, as well as some
ASEAN members.

Pinheiro met with Aung San Suu Kyi at her lakeside residence in Yangon in
November 2003 but has since been denied entry to Myanmar by the military
government, which has ruled since 1962.

In his latest report to the UN, Pinheiro said Myanmar had made no
transition towards democracy during his six-year mandate and that the
humanitarian situation there was worsening.

____________________________________

February 23, Harvard University Gazette
U.S. pushes for regime change in Burma - Alvin Powell

Johns calls for release of political prisoners, beginning of democratic
process

A U.S. State Department official reiterated the Bush administration's
support for continued economic sanctions on Burma Friday (Feb. 17) as part
of a multipronged effort to convince the repressive military regime to
embrace democratic reforms.

In addition to sanctions, the United States is working with Burma's
neighbors and nations that have close ties with the country in hopes that
international pressure will bear results that have so far been elusive.

Eric Johns, deputy assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of East
Asian and Pacific Affairs, described the United States' Burma policy
during a lunchtime talk at the Center for Government and International
Studies. The talk, part of the Asia Center's Modern Asia Series, was
moderated by Thomas Vallely, director of the Vietnam Program at the John
F. Kennedy School of Government's Center for Business and Government.

Johns said that U.S. concerns about Burma have been heightened recently
with the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between Burma and North
Korea. The authoritarian regimes have isolated themselves to the point
where they were almost driven into each other's arms, Johns said. The
potential transfer of technology from North Korea, which has developed
nuclear weapons, to Burma heightens the administration's concern.
A serious Johns
Eric Johns: 'All of us have an interest in seeing change in Burma.'

"As they isolated themselves from the rest of Asia and the world," Johns
said, "they were almost pointed to each other."

Burma, which the current military regime renamed Myanmar in 1989, was once
one of the most promising nations in Southeast Asia, Johns said. After
World War II, it was the world's leading rice exporter, with a strong
economy, high enrollment in primary and secondary schools, and an elected
government. U Thant, a Burmese official, served as United Nations
secretary-general from 1961 to 1972.

In recent decades, however, military rulers have isolated the nation under
harsh rule.

"The current regime has taken the country in a tragically different
direction," Johns said.

Burma's current leaders have presided over an enormous economic decline
and steadily worsening human rights situation, Johns said. The government
has promoted a political process within which the opposition is banned.
The nation has an estimated 1,100 political prisoners, including
opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who has
been under house arrest since 2003.

Among the United States' concerns are internal Burmese ills that overflow
into neighboring countries, such as drug trafficking, refugees, and forced
labor.

The United Nations has adopted 28 resolutions concerning Burma, all of
which have been rejected by the nation.

Johns said there seems to have been a recent shift in international
opinion in the direction of increasing pressure on Burma to move toward
free elections, such as those that took place in 1990 but whose results
were never implemented.

The Bush administration's approach seeks to maintain economic pressure
through sanctions, though Johns admitted the sanctions' biggest effect may
be a moral one for the internal Burmese opposition. He said the United
States is also working with India, Japan, China, and other Southeast Asian
nations to emphasize that they can have a constructive role.

"All of us have an interest in seeing change in Burma," Johns said.

The administration is calling for a release of all political prisoners,
the beginning of a credible, democratic political process, access to the
country by United Nation's representatives, and permission for assistance
organizations to help Burma's needy.

Though there is the possibility of an abrupt collapse of the Burmese
government, Johns said he didn't think that was likely, or even
preferable, since it would throw the nation into turmoil. Rather, a more
gradual transition, perhaps even with the current military government
staying in place during the transition, would be preferable.

The administration is contributing financially to help the Burmese people
by sending aid to nongovernment organizations working within Burma on AIDS
and other relief.

"The road ahead is not short," Johns said. "As President Bush said, 'The
Burmese people want their liberty and one day they will have it.'"

____________________________________
OPINION / OTHER

February 18-21, New Era Journal
Leadership vacuum in Burma/Myanmar - Amyotheryei U Win Naing, National
Politicians Group, Myanmar

Three months ago, on November 27 2005 Myanmar authorities extended a
serving order that has kept NLD, National League for Democracy party
leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest by six months. This month
on Feb 13 06, detention order on U Tin Oo second man in NLD party was
extended by another year. U Khun Htoon Oo and Shan NLD party leaders are
now in jails, sentenced to unbelieveable prison terms of half a century
and more. The Burmese people are deprived of their political leaders and
the fight for democracy is now like a ship without a captain to steer it
in the right course.
Aung San Suu Kyi has being kept in her own house on University Avenue,
Yangon for the past two consecutive years. She had led the nation since
1988 Democracy uprising in Myanmar, as the leader of the strongest
political party and in the process she became the icon of democracy in our
country. Majority of the people supported her and her party in 1990
general election and the world nations gave their strong backing
especially United States and Britain. She became rivalless in Myanmar
political scene ever since two other top political contenders, former
Prime Minister U Nu and Brigadier General Aung Gyi, the instigator of 1988
Democracy movement dropped out of the race. U Nu was old in age and failed
to set up a strong political party with new generation of qualified
politicians. He died in 1995. U Aung Gyi made numerous mistakes in his
attempts to gain the number one position. (He is now 87 years old and in a
very fragile health condition). Both were not supported by the western
powers. So Aung San Suu Kyi was pushed up to lead the nation.

Having one and only leader in a movement has both good and bad effects. On
the good side, strong leadership and unity among the members, on the bad
side the movement becomes much vulnerable. Once that leader becomes
immobile or forced to be inactive by the oppressive forces the whole
movement collapsed. That is what has happened to NLD, National League for
Democracy party. No one was groomed or prepared to take over the
leadership role and the party becomes a rudderless ship, marooned or
floating with out a set course.

De-facto government in Myanmar, the Military, realized this vulnerable
point in NLD party and detained Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, keeps her locked up
indefinitely in her own residence away from her supporters and NLD becomes
a limbo.

Myanmar tolerated the political leadership vacuum with great patience
waiting and watching the International response to the situation. Every
time when the world known figures, such as the ones, Desmond Tu Tu, former
Check president Vaclave ?, US senators, British Members of Parliament
asked for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's release, the people cheered with delight
in private and waited for the results silently. Day after day, month after
month and even year after year they waited. When the viable results did
not come, they slump into subdue mood and became demoralized.

In the mean time economic down trend pushed the people to concentrate more
and more on family survival struggles. When the Burmese have to take in
both Political and the Economic dilemma plus leadership vacuum, it becomes
too much for them and decided to give in to the oppressors.

How are we going to solve this political leadership vacuum problem in
Myanmar?
It is not easy but it is possible.

Under present circumstances it is not possible to fill the leadership
vacuum left by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's absence from active politics by
another single individual. No one is nationally recognized as a leader
strong enough to do the job. It does not necessarily mean that there are
no able leaders in Myanmar to lead the nation. It only means that many of
the able leaders do not get opportunities to present themselves to the
people and the world. Access to the media, access to the public have been
affectively blocked by the de facto government for the past fifteen years
that politicians could do nothing to win the people's confidence and
respect. The people also lost the opportunity to make their choice.

There are less than a dozen nationally known able and exposed democracy
leaders in Myanmar to day.

This handful of leaders must pool together and form a collective
leadership to lead the country in the absence of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
These surviving politicians will not take away the national leadership
from Daw Su but they would just fill the vacant position as it is
necessary to do so. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's supporters must realize this
practical aspect of the Myanmar political situation and should try to have
understandings and cooperate on this. They could not afford to be stubborn
to insist on single leadership in Burma any longer.

World leaders who have so far strongly supported Daw Su and the NLD,
National League for Democracy party most exclusively must reconsider their
positions. To me it is the time that they distribute their support to
Myanmar democratic forces equally and indiscriminately if they are
genuinely interested in promoting Democracy and Human rights in our
country. No more grooming of individual leadership, no more support to
selected group out of many democratic ones. These kinds of political
preferential treatments would break up the unity among us and make us weak
for sure. That is exactly what is happening to Myanmar political forces
now and the international community should realize this.

Ironically, many locals as well as expatriates and aliens across the
borders had argued that indiscriminate support to all democratic forces
would weaken the movement. They had hanged on to that assumption for the
past fifteen years to undesirable consequences. Now many admit it is
wrong. We must support NLD as well as other democratic parties and groups.
All should unite under one common flag to confront the common foe other
wise we won't have a chance.

The Burmese people had witnessed the negative results of the different
strategies tried by the local political leaders and the International
supporters in the past fifteen years.

Enough is enough.

We can not afford to make more mistakes for the sake of the suffering people.

We can not afford to have blocking stones on the path to democracy any
longer.

We will have to be more generous in our sacrifices and we will have to
throw away our egos.

Let us build up a new strong unity among the democratic forces first and
then pool our resources together to come up with the strongest political
plan to win back our freedom.