BurmaNet News, March 13, 2007

[Editor]

March 13, 2007 Issue # 3160


INSIDE BURMA
Irrawaddy: Government to keep tight rein on aid in Burma
AFP: UN urged to probe rights abuses in Myanmar
Mizzima: Burmese student martyr honoured on 19th death anniversary

ON THE BORDER
Bangkok Post: Army beefs up border security
Irrawaddy: Unhealthy haze hits Thailand-Burma area

INTERNATIONAL
The Ottawa Citizen: Karens learn to deal with freedom

OPINION / OTHER
Canadian Lawyer: The Burma boondoggle and human rights
South China Morning Post: Change of strategy needed on Myanmar

____________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

March 13, Irrawaddy
Government to keep tight rein on aid in Burma - Htet Aung

Burma’s ruling junta plans to tighten its control of international
humanitarian assistance through the creation of government-run
“coordination committees,” according to Rangoon-based NGO sources.

The move will directly affect all humanitarian programs run by UN agencies
and international and local NGOs across the country. A local NGO project
manager in the former capital said the new committees would specially
target the forthcoming implementation of the Three Diseases Fund, or 3D
Fund.

There are currently about 70 international and local NGOs operating in Burma.

Some of the coordinating committees, according to another NGO staffer,
have now formed at the township level, where many of the country’s
humanitarian projects are implemented. Such committees have previously
been initiated principally on division and state levels.

The committee plan was initiated after the 3D Fund signed a memorandum of
understanding with the UN Office for Project Services and Burma’s Ministry
of Health in October 2006, with the aim of combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and
tuberculosis.

Backed by the European Commission and selected EU countries, the fund
aimed to fill the gap created by the withdrawal of the Global Fund last
year over excessive restrictions by the government on staff that adversely
affected the implementation of their projects.

According to new NGO guidelines issued by the government in February 2006,
members of the new coordination committees would be drawn from
junta-backed social organizations such as the Union Solidarity and
Development Association, the Myanmar National Working Committee for Women
Affairs and, on the township level, the Auxiliary Fire Brigades and the
Veteran’s Association.

NGO officials in Rangoon have expressed concern for the viability of their
projects under tightening governmental controls.

The Burmese language version of the new NGO guidelines, which was not
distributed to UN agencies and INGOs, clearly states that one of the
duties of the township coordination committees is to monitor project teams
and insure that their activities do not go beyond the stated scope of
their mission.

The Rangoon-based Burmese language journal The Voice recently reported
that 3D Fund-assisted projects would start to implement in April, with the
participation of some 40 international and local NGOs.

While humanitarian workers in Rangoon say they do not want the government
to interfere in their activities, Burma’s main opposition party, the
National League for Democracy, has said that all humanitarian projects
should have some kind of independent oversight. “Assistance [in Burma]
needs to avoid budget substitutions and must reach needy beneficiaries at
the grassroots level,” NLD Spokesperson Myint Thein said.

____________________________________

March 13, Agence France Presse
UN urged to probe rights abuses in Myanmar

Pro-democracy activists in military-run Myanmar Tuesday called on the
United Nations to launch a fresh probe into alleged human rights abuses by
the junta.

"We want the United Nations to investigate the reality of Myanmar's human
rights situations," said Min Ko Naing, who was a key leader in a 1988
pro-democracy uprising against the military.

Min Ko Naing sent the appeal to the UN on behalf of the student movement
that led the uprising, to mark the day 19 years ago when the military
killed one of their fellow protesters.

Outrage over the death of Phone Maw sparked even larger protests, before
troops eventually opened fire on the demonstrators to crush the uprising.

Thousands of people were believed to have been killed. Most of the student
leaders were sent to prison for more than a decade and have only been
released in the past two years.

"We wanted to honour Phone Maw, who sacrificed his life for human rights.
Before 1988, our people in Myanmar hadn't even heard the word 'human
rights'," Min Ko Naing said.

The call for a fresh UN probe came on the heels of an annual US human
rights report that condemned the regime's rights abuses, including
extrajudicial killings, rape and torture.

The global body has yet to appoint a new rights envoy to Myanmar after
Paolo Sergio Pinheiro stepped down in 2006 following six years in the
post.

Pinheiro met with Myanmar's detained pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi
at her home in Yangon in November 2003, but the junta never allowed him to
return to the country.

The 61-year-old Nobel peace laureate has been under house arrest in Yangon
for most of the past 17 years. Her National League for Democracy party won
elections in 1990, but has never been allowed to govern.

____________________________________

March 13, Mizzima News
Burmese student martyr honoured on 19th death anniversary - Ko Dee & Than
Htike Oo
The 19th death anniversary of the first Burmese student activist, Phone
Maw was commemorated by Burmese democracy activists across the world today
with a call for unity to unseat the military junta that has ruled the
country for more than half a century.

While commemoration services honouring Phone Maw, who died on March 13,
1988, were held at different parts of the world today, activists in
Thailand began a three-day conference to honour the student martyr.

"It is to highlight that Burmese students had been suppressed both by the
Burmese socialist government and the military junta. And we want to
accelerate the movement that our fallen brothers have started," said Than
Doke, a former student of Rangoon Institute of Technology, where Phone Maw
had studied.

Meanwhile, activists in New Delhi held a mass rally reiterating the need
for a united front among the different sections of the Burmese democracy
movement to remove military dictatorship and to usher in democracy in
Burma.

Speaking to activists at the rally, Daw Molly of the Women's League of
Burma said, "It is the responsibility of each and every one of us to
regain our independence. Therefore, we need to be united and continue the
fight against the junta."

Phone Maw, a fourth year engineering student at RIT, was the first student
to die in 1988. Phone Maw's death was followed by students' unrest and the
nationwide pro-democracy uprising later in the same year.

Eventually, the one party Burmese socialist government led by coup leader
General Ne Win, was brought down. But, the current batch of Burmese
military generals assumed power through a coup in September 1988 and a
brutal crackdown on peaceful pro-democracy activists.

____________________________________
ON THE BORDER

March 13, Bangkok Post
Army beefs up border security - Subin Khuenkaew Theerawat Khamthita

The Third Army has mobilised troops in the North to guard the border with
Burma as thick smoke from bush fires and farm clearing has sparked concern
about possible border intrusions. Smoke from fires in Thailand and Burma
is causing a thick haze along the border, making it difficult for security
forces to monitor the movements of Burmese troops and ethnic rebels.

Third Army commander Maj-Gen Jiradet Khotcharat yesterday said troops have
been asked to help forest fire units fight fires along the border. Troops
have been instructed to guard border areas around the clock.

A special task force officer said bush fires have raged opposite Doi
Kuteng Nayong, a border area claimed by both Thailand and Burma. The fires
have destroyed large areas of forest cover, causing smoke to blanket Mae
Sai and Mae Chan districts in Chiang Rai province.

Soldiers have been instructed to prevent any Burmese combatants from
entering Thailand. Chiang Mai governor Vichai Srikhwan said he has asked
the military to send troops to combat bush fires on the border.

A source said the border situation opposite Chiang Rai's Mae Fa Luang
district was worrying because there have been movements of Muser troops
led by Lt-Col Yi Sae.

It is feared that Burmese troops could take advantage of the situation and
use the Muser group, which is engaged in drug smuggling, to attack Shan
State Army rebels led by Col Yod Suk.

____________________________________

March 13, Irrawaddy
Unhealthy haze hits Thailand-Burma area - Yeni

Smoke from forest fires and slash-and-burn farming has spread over the
border area of northern Thailand and the southern Shan State of Burma,
causing airlines to cancel flights and public health warnings.

The NASA MODIS Image shows a large area of smoke from agricultural fires
in Burma and neighboring Thailand and Laos, cutting visibility in almost
all of the towns and villages in the Thai northern provinces of Chiang
Mai, Lampang, Mae Hong Son and Chiang Rai. The Burmese town of Tachilek
opposite Mae Sai District of Chiang Rai Province has also been under heavy
haze.

During the region's dry season, intentionally set land management fires,
as well as accidental forest fires that expand from agricultural areas,
are common in the so-called Golden Triangle, once famed for its opium
poppy fields.

Environmental experts say that untimely cold weather has exacerbated the
haze by pushing the smoke down into valleys and other low-lying areas.
Thailand’s major tourist hub, Chiang Mai,—located in a valley—has been one
of the hardest hit areas.

The level of so-called PM-10 dust in Chiang Mai and nearby Lampang was
been at unacceptable levels for several days running. It was measured at
250.9 micrograms per cubic meter in Chiang Mai and 154.8 in Lampang,
against a health standard of 120, according to the Pollution Control
Department of Thailand.

As a result, pregnant women, elderly people and children living in Chiang
Mai are advised to wear face masks to protect against the choking haze,
Thailand’s Health Ministry announced Monday. People suffering from
allergies, asthma, lung and heart diseases were also urged to wear masks
and the health authority has plans to distribute 130,000 masks in the
area.

The haze has also disrupted airline flights. Thai Airways International
Tuesday confirmed cancellation of flights between Chiang Mai and Mae Hong
Son for the third day.

A smoky haze that routinely shrouds parts of Southeast Asia in the dry
season is one element of an air pollution problem in the region. Last
year, the haze was caused by uncontrolled burning in Indonesia and
complicated by an El Niño that affected several Southeast Asian countries,
including Malaysia, Singapore and southern Thailand. Air quality across
the region improved in late October as heavy rainfall doused fires.

Meanwhile, Royal Thai Air Force rainmakers have resumed artificial
rain-making operations over the hardest hit region between Chiang Mai and
Mae Hong Son provinces.

According to the state-run Thai News Agency, Pitiphong Phuengboon Na
Ayutthaya, permanent secretary for Natural Resources and the Environment
of Thailand, said that he would ask the Cabinet in its weekly meeting
Tuesday to find immediate measures to solve the air quality problems since
thick haze already has blanketed some northern provinces for two weeks.

“The state of emergency may be imposed to strictly control all burning
activities in the area, if the haze problem in Chiang Mai continues to
worsen over the next two days,” Pitiphong said. According to the
Environmental Quality Act, violators can be fined 2,000 baht.

Sources along the Thai-Burmese border said that forest fires have spread
along the border, especially in Mae Fa Luang and Mae Sai districts. Thai
officials and volunteers have been ordered to be on the alert for forest
fires in all areas near the border.

_____________________________________
INTERNATIONAL

The Ottawa Citizen
Karens learn to deal with freedom - Kate Heartfield

When I ask the Karen refugees what they like about living in Ottawa, they
say they like being free, that they like not having to deal with
harassment from soldiers.

It's an obvious answer, but it hits me in the gut anyway. I expect them to
say they like the stores or the washing machines or the snow. All that
stuff is incidental to them. They don't talk about the weather or shopping
unless I ask. Even then, they're unlikely to answer with much more than a
smile.

They've only been here a few months. Their old life is still fresh:
refugee camps in remote parts of Thailand, and before that, villages in
Burma (officially Myanmar). Burma is ruled by a junta that persecutes the
Karen people and other minorities.

The soldiers came and burned the villages; the refugees fled. There are
about 140,000 refugees in those camps near the border. Many of them have
been there almost 20 years.

The federal government recently resettled about 800 Karen refugees from
those camps across Canada, almost 100 of which came to Ottawa. The
government plans to bring about 1,850 more refugees from the camps to
Canada over the next two years, starting in May. Some of them will come to
Ottawa to join the little but rapidly growing Karen community.

Say Blue, a small woman with a sweet but serious face, spent 14 years in
the camps, before she came to Ottawa with her husband, her 17-year-old
daughter, Say Gay, and her nine-year-old son. In Burma, she had a farm.
There were pigs and chickens. She grew rice, cucumbers and beans. That was
before the soldiers came, burning the crops and putting holes in the
cooking pots.

Now, Say Blue is learning to cook with an electric rice cooker on a
countertop, instead of on a charcoal fire in a bamboo hut. Everything's
different in her life. She doesn't know much yet about workplaces in
Ottawa. She isn't sure what kind of a job she might have. She'd like to
have a place to grow vegetables. The first thing she says to me is that
she's very lucky because she isn't on the run.

She's finding English difficult to learn. All the recent Karen refugees
spoke with me through an interpreter, Nimrod Andrew, a young Karen man
who's lived in Ottawa for a few years.

"We believe that as long as we have rice we will survive," he jokes, as we
talk to Say Blue about cooking in her new home.

Way Thaw was a businessman in his village. He traded in cows and produce.
He tries not to think about the time when the soldiers burned his village.
During his 15 years in the camps, he felt guilty because he was getting
food without working for it. And he felt deeply the lack of freedom.
Thailand does not allow the refugees to leave the camps, unless they're
being resettled to another country such as Canada.

He found the Ottawa February difficult because he has asthma. But he's
still happy to be here because there's no war. There's freedom. His
children and grandchildren will have better lives and the chance to be
hard-working people.

Colleen Scott, an Ottawa woman who's spent time with the Karen in the
camps, is helping the fledgling Karen community here. She's been teaching
them about bank machines and buses and helping them get to appointments.
She says she learns as much from them as they do from her.

"It's a terrifying journey, and an unbelievably brave thing that they are
doing," she says.

One of the challenges they're facing, she says, is that many have never
had chances to make decisions for themselves. Autonomy is unfamiliar. The
young people, such as Say Gay, have known nothing but camps. They don't
even remember Burma.

Way Thaw's son, Htoo Htoo, is also 17. Like Say Gay, he's going to
Woodroffe High School, learning English and a few other subjects. He's
been skating, on an expedition led by Ms. Scott, but he still hasn't been
to a movie. He enjoys playing guitar, basketball and soccer. He would like
to be a doctor, although he's embarrassed to say so.

In January, I wrote a column about the obstacles these Karen refugees
might face in Ottawa. Ms. Scott says Ottawa's reception of the newcomers
hasn't been perfect. Few people here have even heard of the Karen people,
or know that they're a distinct ethnic group within Burma. It's still a
struggle for people such as Ms. Scott and Mr. Andrew to help the refugees
get around town and learn about their new home.

"It's an overload situation, with a group of people nobody knows anything
about," says Ms. Scott, her frustration evident.

Nonetheless, I'm impressed with what this little community has
accomplished so far. They've set up a school in the Karen language so the
children won't lose their heritage. The ability to understand English is
starting to come, especially for the youth. Some are able to speak a
little English, too.

I'm glad the pioneers, including Way Thaw and Say Blue and their families,
will be here for the next group.

But there's more the rest of us could do to make the transition easier for
the Karen refugees. For example, aboriginal people in the Ottawa area
might be able to talk with the Karen families about ways to maintain their
cultural values of self-sufficiency and respect for nature in an urbanized
society.

There are all kinds of possibilities. As the Karen people have reminded
me, all possibilities begin with freedom. Everything else is secondary.

Kate Heartfield is a member of the Citizen's editorial board.

_____________________________________
OPINION / OTHER

March 5, Canadian Lawyer
The Burma boondoggle and human rights - Ezra Levant

There are two ways for Canadian lawyers to visit dictatorships like China
and Burma. One is to meet with local dissidents and civil rights activists
and learn about their repression and bring international legal and
political pressure on the regimes. The other is the way chosen by the
Canadian and Ontario Bar Associations.

In March, the OBA sent a delegation to Burma, a country that brutally
represses its own citizens and where civil rights do not exist. It is a
regime that murders its political dissidents — or in the case of Aung San
Suu Kyi, the Nobel Prize-winning democracy activist who is too well known
to be murdered without international incident — holds them under
indefinite house arrest.

Suu Kyi has asked that foreign tourists boycott Burma, so as not to lend
economic or moral support to its regime. “To suggest that there’s anything
new that tourists can teach the people of Burma about their own situation
is not simply patronizing, it’s also racist,” she said in a 1999
interview.

Don’t tell that to the OBA. They’re sending a group of 60 Ontario lawyers
and their spouses, eager to see Burma’s tourist attractions and shop in
its markets. It’s a ghoulish tourism — rather like taking a
bargain-hunting trip to North Korea. To deodorize their grisly vacation,
the OBA has set aside a few evenings for “legal meetings.” However, anyone
other than government officials or their agents who dare to meet with
foreigners will be arrested by the Burmese government.

Don’t bother Morrisville, Ont., lawyer Doug Grenkie, the past president of
the OBA, with any of that. “There are lawyers practising there and people
who need our support,” he says. Of course, Grenkie doesn’t plan to
actually “support” anyone — he will be filing no lawsuits in Burma’s
kangaroo courts on behalf of Suu Kyi or other dissidents; he won’t be
delivering any petitions to government officials, and he won’t be taking
Burma’s plight to international human rights agencies at the United
Nations or elsewhere. No, according to the itinerary, his entourage will
buy some lovely Burmese lacquerware and rubies, and there’s even a
starlight cruise on the Ayeyarwaddy River. That’s the depth of the OBA’s
commitment to human rights: they’ll keep eating hors d’oeuvres until Suu
Kyi is free.

The OBA shouldn’t bear all the embarrassment, though their trip to Burma
is amongst the most crass. For years, the Canadian Bar Association has
engaged in farcical “exchanges” with their counterparts in China, too.
There is indeed an exchange that goes on, but it’s not Western lawyers
imparting our liberal legal traditions. In exchange for a luxurious
vacation for Canadian lawyers and their spouses, the CBA gives China moral
cover. That’s the exchange. Whenever groups like Amnesty International
highlight China’s appalling lack of human rights, Beijing can point to the
CBA’s eager apologists.

The CBA sends lawyers to “teach” Chinese lawyers, for example, about how
we run criminal defence trials in Canada. Nice, but China isn’t governed
by Canadian law; its conviction rate is over 95 per cent, appeals are
extremely rare, and the death penalty is ubiquitous. Of course, many of
these “crimes” are not what we would consider crimes — the crime of
political dissidence remains law in China, and even following illegal
faiths, from Falun Gong to non-sanctioned Christianity, is punishable by
imprisonment or death, including a forced human organ harvesting program
that would make Josef Mengele proud.

What is the point of “teaching” Chinese lawyers about constitutional
freedoms, procedural fairness and the rule of law when China’s legal
system has none of those traits and when it is just another arm of the
Communist Party? There is a word for such a sham that the Russian
Communists invented: the Potemkin Village. At least that was built by the
Communists themselves as a propaganda ploy. It’s a Chinese innovation to
get Western liberals to pay for a propaganda exercise to cover up China’s
appalling — and worsening — human rights record.

It is strange that the CBA and OBA are a party to fascist regimes like
China and Burma. In Canada, the bar associations are on the cutting edge
of human rights and civil rights, relentlessly badgering Canada’s
government on everything from gay marriage to racial quotas to outlawing
spanking. Canada may be one of the freest countries in the world, but
that’s never enough for the CBA. China — the world’s greatest executioner
— is the toast of the CBA. Perhaps all the Canadian government has to do
to defang the CBA is take some lawyers and their spouses on an exotic
shopping vacation.

____________________________________

March 13, South China Morning Post
Change of strategy needed on Myanmar

Myanmar went off the international agenda in January when China and Russia
exercised a joint veto in the UN Security Council to shoot down a landmark
resolution against the country's military rulers drafted by Britain and
the US. With the focus now gone, it is up to Asians to take up the call
for political and social reform - for the sake of the nation's
increasingly vulnerable people.

The people of Myanmar are, after all, fellow Asians. That their government
thinks so little of them - as evidenced by the fact that despite being in
a region with so much promise, they are among the worst off in the world -
beggars belief.

Humanitarian groups have long been pointing out the problems, which
because of disinterest has led to a near crisis on our doorstep. Only in
war-torn African nations such as Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo
and Sierra Leone is life worse for women and children. Rates of HIV/Aids,
malaria and tuberculosis in Myanmar are soaring. The junta's fighting with
ethnic groups in the country's east has made hundreds of thousands of
people homeless.

This should have spurred neighbouring countries into action. Instead, they
have adopted the tried-and-tested but failed approach of economic
engagement and political non-interference.

Thailand, which has long had refugee camps on its border with Myanmar, is
experiencing an upsurge in numbers. Malaysia fears a flood of refugees.
The mainland's neighbouring southern provinces are battling the effects of
the drugs being smuggled across the border.

Despite this, none of the governments is willing to directly confront the
military leaders. China and India, which exert the most influence, have
forgone taking a responsible stance in favour of developing ties to
further a perceived strategic advantage. The Association of Southeast
Asian Nations, which admitted Myanmar as a member a decade ago, has shown
only limited concern - when the obvious move should be direct engagement
and in the absence of co-operation, expulsion.

Myanmar's generals have promised reform, but none has been forthcoming.
Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and hundreds of her followers remain
either under house arrest or in prison. The basic rights and freedoms of
the country's people remain severely curtailed. Most worrying is the lack
of health care afforded them by the military and its limiting of the scope
of work by international humanitarian groups.

European Union and US sanctions have failed due to the flawed approach of
Myanmar's neighbours. The looming humanitarian crisis is the result of the
inaction. With refugees increasingly spilling across the region, it is
time that Asian governments changed their tack. They can no longer show
indifference to a regime that cares only about its longevity and not for
the people it claims to rule.