BurmaNet News, March 28, 2007

[Editor]

March 28, 2007 Issue # 3171


INSIDE BURMA
Deutsche Presse-Agentur: International Red Cross closing two field offices
in Myanmar
The Independent: Milton Keynes? No, Burma's new capital
The Observer: Shackles, torture, executions: inside Burma's jungle gulags

ON THE BORDER
Mizzima News: India to fence border with Burma
Thai Press Reports: Mae Hong Son vows legal action against fire setters
Thai Press Reports: Thailand opens Three Pagodas Pass after the release of
border patrol police officers

DRUGS
Deutsche Presse-Agentur: Three Chinese anti-drugs police shot dead on
Myanmar border

REGIONAL
Irrawaddy: Rohingya in Bangladesh mistreated, says rights group
Singapore Today: Your tax or your passport ...

____________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

March 28, Deutsche Presse-Agentur
International Red Cross closing two field offices in Myanmar

Yangon: The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) will close two
field offices in Myanmar this week, after failing to reach an
understanding with the ruling junta about its mandate to visit prisoners,
its Yangon office confirmed Wednesday.

"We will close the two offices at the end of this month," said
Pierre-Andre Conod, head of the ICRC delegation in Myanmar.

"Unfortunately, the bulk of our national collaborators will have to be
laid off."

ICRC's headquarters in Geneva announced decision March 15 to close its
field offices in the Mon State and East Shan State of Myanmar because of
constrictions placed on their "humanitarian action in assisting vulnerable
people" in the country.

Brigadier General Khin Yi, director general of the Myanmar Police Force,
faulted the ICRC Monday for only visiting political prisoners in Myanmar
jails and denounced the threat to close down its two offices as a form of
blackmail.

"At the beginning the ICRC was conducting its activities normally, but
later it started to meet only with these prisoners who have harmed
national security," Kyin Yi told a press conference in Naypyitaw,
Myanmar's new capital situated about 350 kilometres north of Yangon.

Between 1995 to 2005, ICRC was permitted to visit political prisoners in
Myanmar jails and conflict areas along the country's borders, in a rare
example of the regime's acknowledgement of international concerns about
the country's poor human rights record.

The junta's stance towards the ICRC began to change after the 2005 ouster
of former Prime Minister Khin Nyunt, who had agreed to the enhanced ICRC
role in Myanmar, according to diplomatic sources.

After his demise the Ministry of Interior changed its tune on the
international organization, requiring it to be accompanied by a local
non-governmental organization when visiting prisoners.

Such a requirement runs counter to the ICRC mandate which requires that
all interviews with political prisoners be carried out in private,
including repeat visits.

ICRC responded to the stricter controls by ending its programme of
providing medical supplies to Myanmar prisons at the end of 2006. That
assistance had accounted for nearly half of all medical supplies that
Myanmar prisoners received.

_____________________________________

March 28, The Independent
Milton Keynes? No, Burma's new capital - Justin Huggler

The outside world has got its first glimpse of the secret capital Burma is
building deep in the jungle.

In 2005, the ruling military junta abruptly announced that the capital was
moving from the leafy colonial city of Rangoon on the coast, to an area of
malaria-infested jungle 250 miles inland. At the time it was still served
by steam trains.

One of the world's most secretive countries - arguably only North Korea is
more closed off - was moving its government to a closed city that was
off-limits to outsiders. Since then, the reason for moving has remained a
mystery. But yesterday foreign journalists were finally allowed to see the
new city, Naypyidaw, at the annual Armed Forces Day parade. And they also
got a rare glimpse of the junta's elusive chief, General Than Shwe, the
man who rules the destiny of millions of Burmese.

What they found was a planned city on a large scale. The parade ground
where General Than Shwe addressed the troops is huge, and overlooked by
three 33-foot high statues of the country's most famous kings. According
to reports, the city is spread out so that buildings are divided by huge
empty spaces.

All the hotels are grouped together in a single area called the "hotel
zone". Across an expanse of empty land, apartment blocks are being built
for bureaucrats who are being forced to move to the new city, painted in
incongruous pastel shades that evoke nothing so much as a Milton Keynes
uprooted and transplanted to the jungle.

In the "government zone", ministries are several miles apart from each
other. Most bizarre of all is the "military zone", said by reporters who
were in the city yesterday to be a fortress. The roads have been made
extra wide so they can double as military runways. There are antiaircraft
guns and missile silos. It is in the midst of this security that General
Than Shwe lives, now cut off from the rest of the country, as well as the
outside world.

"I urge you to exert efforts, hand in hand with the people, to build a
peaceful, modern, developed and disciplined democratic nation," the junta
leader urged soldiers yesterday in his army day address, insisting that
the country is following a "roadmap to democracy", despite all appearances
to the contrary.

Nobody really knows why General Than Shwe decided to move the capital to
Naypyidaw. The official version is that Rangoon had become too crowded and
congested, but nobody believes that.

Some in Burma say the move was prompted by the advice of the general's
favourite astrologer. Bur-ma's leader is notoriously superstitious, like
the former dictator Ne Win, who had banknotes printed in absurd
denominations because he insisted that they all be divisible by his lucky
number, nine.

But others have suggested it may have had more to do with a burst of
rhetoric against the junta from the US at the time. With the US Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice sounding threatening, the junta may have looked
west towards Iraq and decided to plan for the worst. Naypyidaw appears to
be purpose-built to be easily defended - and is far harder to attack than
coastal Rangoon. An Indian journalist who managed to get inside Naypyidaw
ahead of other foreigners last month, Siddharth Varadarajan, has another
theory.

The city, he wrote in Himal South Asian magazine, "will not fall to an
urban upheaval easily. It has no city centre, no confined public space
where even a crowd of several thousand people could make a visual - let
alone political - impression. "Naypyidaw is the ultimate insurance against
regime change, a masterpiece of urban planning designed to defeat any
putative 'colour revolution' - not by tanks and water cannons, but by
geometry and cartography."

Changing names

Burma's ruling military junta has imposed a number of name changes since
it first took power in 1988

It has reinforced the use of the name 'Myanmar' rather than the British
colonial name Burma
In 1997, it changed its own name from the State Law and Order Restoration
Council to the more pleasant State Peace and Development Council

When plans for the new capital were unveiled in 2005, the name Yan Lon,
meaning 'secure from strife', was used

The decision to rename the site Naypyidaw, meaning 'seat of kings', is
thought to have been influenced by fortune tellers, on whom the junta rely
heavily

Some in Rangoon prefer to dub the new capital 'Escape City'. The move to
the isolated capital - 250 miles away from the Nobel Peace Laureate Aung
San Suu Kyi, under house arrest in Rangoon - will allow the junta to
thrive.

____________________________________

March 25, The Observer
Shackles, torture, executions: inside Burma's jungle gulags - Dan McDougall

Grim labour camps are propping up the regime. Dan McDougall braved the
junta's sadistic police to hear the testimony of those who broke free

Splashing holy water over commuters, the Buddhist monks clutch their
saffron robes around their knees and squeeze on to the crowded decks of
ferries lined up in the transluscent dusk on the Hlaing river.

Above the estuary, the glow from thousands of imported Chinese candles
fills the windows of the old quarters of Rangoon. In the private back room
of a smoky riverside tea house, dock workers gloomily slurp flat grey
noodles from porcelain bowls and curse the power cuts that have left
Burma's capital a virtual ghost town after dark.

In a corner, Ko Min Shah looks furtively towards the door, half-expecting
the 'Em-Eye', Burma's sadistic military intelligence service. He scribbles
in frustration as his Biro runs out. 'I want to write a message for you
with my wife's details, to take out for me. You can carry it to the Thai
border; she may be there. There are charities there who can help me, no?'
he says hopefully. 'I'm not politically motivated. I'm just trying to find
my wife. There is no real dissent here in Rangoon. People are too scared
to be members of any democratic movement. We are all just victims, people
like me who are trying to get their lives back.' Ko Min, 47, his wife and
two sons were swept up with hundreds of others in a military raid on their
village close to the city of Bagan in 2005. The family were put to work,
clearing jungle, digging latrines and an irrigation system for a military
camp outside Mandalay.

'My youngest son and I only managed to escape last November,' he says. 'It
was the rainy season and we were swept down a ravine and managed to escape
the camp. I still don't know if my wife and eldest are there. I see her
every night breaking rocks at the roadside. She is in my nightmares, not
my dreams.'

'Porterage', a colonial euphemism meaning forced menial labour, sits at
the heart of the humanitarian crisis enveloping Burma, whose dreams of
democracy were shattered in 1962 when Ne Win, commander of the armed
forces, embarked on an ill-fated push toward socialist totalitarianism
that brought the army to the centre of society. Under Ne Win and his
successors, the Burmese military rulers - the State Peace and Development
Council (SPDC) - have become convinced that foreigners are trying to
destroy them, a view that shapes international relations and their
persecution of democracy campaigners, including Aung San Suu Kyi, who is
still under house arrest in Rangoon.

Over the past decade, up to a million people such as Ko Min Shah have been
exiled to 'satellite zones' and 'labour camps', building bridges, military
camps, irrigation systems and oil and gas pipelines. Forever denying the
extent of the slave camps, Burma's junta last week announced a 'historic
deal' with the International Labour Organisation, allowing victims of the
camps over the past 40 years to seek compensation without fear of
retaliation. The ILO claims the junta will establish a 'complaint
mechanism', but so far not one victim has so much as contacted the ILO.

In Burma today, there is no free speech. The universities, historically a
source of political activism, have been virtually dismantled by the
regime. Owning a computer modem or a fax is illegal, and anyone talking to
a foreign journalist is at risk of torture and jail.

Working here is risky and unpredictable. Obtaining entry as a journalist
is practically unheard of, forcing reporters, including myself, to enter
as a tourist. The state - and in particular the Director of Defence
Services Intelligence (DDSI) - conducts surveillance of 'suspicious
foreigners' and one can expect e-mails, phones and contact with locals to
be intensely monitored. Hire cars are bugged; internet cafe owners take
periodic 'snapshots' of customers' monitors.

Last week, I was stopped outside a Rangoon bar and questioned by three
men, inevitably DDSI. After confiscating my passport, they took me to a
police station and questioned me for several hours about my family,
education and movements in India, where I live. It was clear they had been
following me for at least 24 hours. I was finally thrown out in the early
hours of the morning on to an empty street miles from my hotel.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has just been ordered to
close its offices, ending its humanitarian work in border areas, where
500,000 tribespeople live in fear of the military, and around the new
capital, Naypyitaw, where gulag-style camps exist.

The road there can be fatal, warn the few aid workers left in the dismal
bars of Rangoon. No one knows what prompted the junta to relocate Burma's
capital to this isolated, dusty place 200 miles from Rangoon. The first
brick was laid in November 2005, a date apparently chosen by an
astrologer. The first to move, last year, were elements of the military,
who forcibly recruited thousands of local people to build garrisons and a
major dam to generate electricity; 100,000 slaves are thought to be
building it.

Mway Khaing, one of some 20,000 Mon villagers forced to work on the roads
to Naypyitaw, said: 'Soldiers came at night to my village last January.
Young and old, women and men, older children, we were treated alike, like
animals and slaves. Those who ran were shot in the back. A mother-of-four,
my neighbour, was tied to a pole and raped. They tied a huge stone around
her neck and left her to be eaten alive by the ants.'

Rangoon has seen its first protests since 1987. At the heart of the
protests has been the country's staggering inflation. Across the country,
electronic goods are endlessly repaired and recycled, for want of
replacements: all over Rangoon, tradesmen can be seen gluing books back
together, soldering ancient transistors or respooling the tape on old
audio-cassettes. The generals claim the economy is growing at 10 per cent
a year.

With the average salary about 1,300 kyats ($1) a day and the price of a
small bag of rice at least 400 kyats, life under the twin blights of
military rule and international sanctions is becoming increasingly
intolerable. 'Why do human rights abuses like forced labour camps continue
to grow in Burma,' asks David Mathieson, from New York-based Human Rights
Watch in Thailand. 'Well, you could start by asking its neighbours. The
junta has deftly played them off one another, notably China and India, as
they compete for regional influence and natural resources, including
natural gas.

'Generals have become masters at turning energy deals into protection
money and where do you think that the money is going to go? It's not going
to education or health programmes - it's going to the military to build a
better command centre in the mountains to repress the population.'

Last year, Russia, also a major arms supplier to the regime, voted against
putting Burma on the UN Security Council agenda. The very same day,
Russia's state-owned Zarubezhneft oil company was awarded Moscow's first
contract to explore Burma's offshore oil and gas reserves.

_____________________________________
ON THE BORDER

March 28, Mizzima News
India to fence border with Burma - Subhaschandra M

India is gearing up to fence the Indo-Burma international boundary to curb
the movement of insurgent outfits and smugglers along the porous border.

Nobert Disinang, Deputy Commissioner of Chandel District, who has been
urging New Delhi for immediate measures to fence the Manipur border in
Moreh said, "Firstly, our porous border needs to be fenced properly to
curb anti-social activities as well as to improve declining border trade."

While northeastern states of the country share about 1,643 kilometres of
its border with Burma, Manipur alone accounts for 398 kilometres.

The 25 battalion of Border Roads Tasks Force under the Border Road
Organisation stationed in Imphal would take up the task of fencing the
international boundary shared by Chandel, Churachandpur and Ukhrul
districts of the state.

Since the two countries have not conducted a proper survey of the boundary
owing to protracted dispute, the task force is yet to take up the fencing
exercise. Recently India and Burma signed an agreement to conduct a joint
survey and constant interaction is on in this connection.

Following a two-day deliberation on the matter, representatives of the
Survey of India and Surveyor of international Boundary along with their
Burmese counterparts resolved to conduct joint inspection, restore,
repair, reconstruct and maintain boundary pillars.

The Commanding Officer of 25 BRTF MA Raza said the Ministry of Home
Affairs (MHA) has sanctioned Indian Rupees 10 lakhs for the survey work
along the international border.

If authorities of the two countries complete the survey work, the fencing
would start from Border Pillar (BP) 79 to BP 81 stretching to about 10
kilometres in Chandel district, he said, adding that the area would be
extended after completion of the same boundary survey work.

Similar fencing structure erected along the Indo-Bangladesh border with
rolled barb-wires would come up on the Indo-Burma border, the officer
said. Large quantity of narcotics drugs is reportedly being smuggled into
Indian territory from the infamous golden triangle through the porous
international border.

____________________________________

March 28, Thai Press Reports
Mae Hong Son vows legal action against fire setters

The Mae Hong Son Governor vows to take legal actions against those who set
fires in forest, while a negotiation with Myanmar on the smog situation
still cannot be initiated due to the ongoing protest of Thai people
against Myanmar.

Mae Hong Son Governor Direk Konkleeb says the smog situation in the Muang
and Khun Yuam districts still posed a threat to local residents' health.
However, the severity of local air pollution has decreased significantly.
Mr. Direk has instructed officials to patrol forest areas in the province
to make sure residents do not set fires there.

The province also erected signs prohibiting the residents from entering
forest areas to do agriculture. Those who violate the ban will face
immediate legal charges. If the violators are in the authority's list of
arable land holders, their name will be erased from the list, he adds.

As for a negotiation with Myanmar on the smog situation, the governor said
it is inappropriate to take place during this period due to a protest
against Myanmar. A group of Thai people have staged a rally against
Myanmar whose tribal soldiers attacked the Thai border, causing Thai
rangers dead. Some of them were taken hostage.

The governor says he believes that the smog situation will be improved
within the next few weeks. Face masks have been thoroughly distributed to
the residents. No critical patient affected by the smog has been reported.
There are only patients with irritation in the respiratory system.

____________________________________

March 28, Thai Press Reports
Thailand opens Three Pagodas Pass after the release of border patrol
police officers

Commander of the Surasee Force opens the Three Pagodas Pass after the
Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) soldiers have released two Thai
border patrol police officers.

The two officers are Pol.Sub.Lt.Chawalit Rattanaphan and Pol.L.Prayongyut
Phanthang. They are stationed at 134th Regiment of the Border Patrol
Police in Sangkhlaburi District which shares a border with Myanmar. The
Three Pagodas Pass had been temporary closed as the two officers were
taken hostage by the DKBA soldiers.

After the pass has been open, both Myanmar and Thai people can use the
pass as usual. As for the two officers, they now stay at the Border Patrol
Police Region 13th in Phra Buddha Yodfa Military Camp, Kanchanaburi
Province. They are waiting to be questioned by commanders of the Border
Patrol Police.

____________________________________
DRUGS

March 28, Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Three Chinese anti-drugs police shot dead on Myanmar border

Beijing: Three Chinese police officers died and three were injured in a
shootout with suspected drug traffickers on the Myanmar border, state
media said Wednesday.

The officers were mounting a surveillance operation when they were
attacked Sunday in the border county of Yijiang in the south-western
province of Yunnan, the government's Xinhua News Agency quoted local
officials as saying.

The agency said the drug traffickers used automatic rifles and grenades in
the gunfight but gave few other details of the incident in South-East
Asia's "Golden Triangle" of drug production and trafficking.

The three injured officers were in stable condition but would require
surgery.

Yunnan police were hunting for the suspected drug traffickers, who escaped
after the gunfight, the agency said.

Yunnan has porous borders with Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam and has China's
highest rate of drug use and drug-related crime.

Chinese police have launched dozens of cross-border operations with
Myanmar and Laos in the Golden Triangle in recent years.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao last year pressed his Myanmar counterpart, Soe
Win, to take tougher action against cross- border drug trafficking, saying
it brought "great harm to the local society and people's health."

Soe Win reportedly said Myanmar wanted to learn more from Yunnan and other
areas of China about growing alternative crops to opium poppies.

_____________________________________
REGIONAL

March 28, Irrawaddy
Rohingya in Bangladesh mistreated, says rights group - Shah Paung

Rohingya refugees from western Burma’s Arakan State living in neighboring
Bangladesh face abuse and the denial of essential humanitarian assistance,
leading many to seek refuge in neighboring countries, a human rights group
said in a statement issued on Tuesday.

“The Bangladeshi government is ignoring its obligations to protect
Rohingya refugees and permit international relief agencies to assist with
the humanitarian needs of Rohingya refugees,” Brad Adams, Asia director
for New York-based Human Rights Watch, said in the statement.

HRW also cites abuses by Bangladeshi law enforcement officers, including
reports of sexual violence against women and corruption within the two
official refugee camps of Nayapara and Kutupalong, where residents are
denied permanent housing and access to international aid, education and
employment are severely limited.

“The Bangladeshi government should be helping needy refugees instead of
making life difficult for them,” said Adams. “It should work with
international humanitarian agencies to create safe spaces and basic
services for people fleeing persecution in Burma. This is just basic
decency.”

Conditions in Bangladesh have led an increasing number of Rohingya to make
the difficult and dangerous journey to other countries in the region,
including Thailand and Malaysia.

According to the statement, more than 2,000 Rohingyas from Bangladesh and
Burma have landed in southern Thailand by way of nearly 40 dilapidated
fishing vessels, many of them reportedly destined for Malaysia.

Thai authorities have sent many of them north to Tak Province, where they
suffer similar abuse or face deportment to Burma. More than 100 Rohingyas
were forcibly repatriated to Burma in March to an area controlled by the
Democratic Karen Buddhist Army—a pro-junta armed ethnic group that broke
away from the Karen National Union in 1995.

Repatriation under these conditions, the statement says, violates the 1951
Refugees Convention and its prohibition against “refoulement,” or the
return of refugees to a territory where they are likely to be persecuted
and which constitutes a threat to their lives or freedom.

Malaysia currently has an estimated 10,000 Rohingya refugees registered
with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, while thousands live as
unregistered migrant workers. Illegal immigration to Malaysia, the
statement notes, is increasingly facilitated by organized criminal
networks.

The number of Rohingyas in Bangladesh is much higher. An estimated 26,000
live in Nayapara and Kutupalong camps in Cox’s Bazaar, with nearly 100,000
more living illegally near the border with Burma.

More than a quarter million Rohingyas fled Burma in 1992 in the face of a
brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Arakan State by the
Burmese military. Since then, thousands have been detained in temporary
camps in Bangladesh, while tens of thousands more have been sent back to
Burma.

_____________________________________

March 21, Singapore Today
Your tax or your passport ... - Jasmine Yin

Myanmar nationals here say embassy is double-taxing them

One is a domestic worker earning just $300 a month — too little for the
Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (Iras) to bother her with taxes.
Another is a private student here, with no income against her name. The
third is a Singapore Permanent Resident (PR) who files his returns and
pays his taxes here.

Each of them holds a Myanmar passport, which must be renewed from time to
time. But when they visit their embassy, they find there is an extra price
to be paid.

The embassy of Myanmar slaps them with its own taxes — irrespective of the
fact that their income is being earned and taxed in Singapore, and
sometimes even when they are not earning anything at all.

A group of Myanmar nationals have now banded together, claiming that this
practice is unfair, especially since their country has signed an agreement
with Singapore to ensure that the same income is not taxed twice.

But even as they protest, they know that their hands are tied.

Take 47-year-old Aye (not her real name), a mother of four who arrived
here in 2003.

She earns $300 a month, of which she scrimps to save $180. This money
supports her family back home and pays for her twins' school fees.

The Myanmar authorities charge her $30 a month by way of income tax. "For
her that is a lot of money," said her employer, also a Myanmar national,
who wanted to be known as Mr Wynn.

If Aye does not pay, her passport may not be renewed, he said.

Lin Let Kyal Sin, 18, is a full-time private student. When she visited her
embassy, she too was asked to pay the $30 monthly tax. She protested and
showed the officials her student documents. She says that they told her:
"First, you are Singapore PR and second, you are 18. That means you can
work here."

It seems that only Myanmar nationals who are on a student pass are
tax-exempt.

On the other end of the spectrum is businessman Naing Moe Aung, who, like
Mr Wynn, holds Singapore PR status. Mr Aung, 37, has lived and worked here
for the past seven years and pays his taxes to Iras. But because his
income is deemed by the Myanmar embassy as being of a higher scale, he has
to pay them additional taxes of $150 a month.

He is leading a group of more than 300 Myanmar nationals here who are
seeking recourse for what they see as a breach of a double taxation
agreement (DTA) between Myanmar and Singapore which came into force in
March 2000.

No statistics are available on how many Myanmar nationals are subjected to
such taxation — which ranges from $30 to $150 a month — but the group
estimated the number at between 20,000 and 30,000.

Mr Aung argued that, based on the terms of the DTA and a non-resident
citizen provision in Myanmar tax law, only the Iras has the right to tax
them on the income that they derive from working in Singapore.

"We therefore find it inappropriate for the Myanmar embassy to tax us again."

But if they don't pay they risk losing access to their embassy's consular
services.

While they have written to the Myanmar embassy to waive the tax, it has
not responded to their request.

Meanwhile, Iras has told them to file a tax with the Myanmar taxman.

The Myanmar embassy did not revert to Today by press time.

An Iras spokesperson clarified that the length of stay in Singapore is not
the only criterion for determining one's tax residency status under a DTA.
There is a "valid basis" for the Iras to take up their case only after the
Myanmar taxman confirming that they are non-residents of Myanmar.

Tax experts said that the crux lies in whether the group can prove that
its members are residents of Singapore under the DTA. This goes deeper
than how long someone has physically been in a given country, as it
extends to where one's personal and economic ties are closer.

But Mr Aung retorted that, especially for people like himself who hold
Singapore PR status, "we know clearly where the centre of our vital
personal and economic interests is — and that is here".

Director for human capital at Ernst and Young (Singapore) Grahame Wright
pointed out that it is "not uncommon" for people to be taxed in more than
one jurisdiction when working overseas, although most countries allow for
a foreign tax credit or some level of foreign income exemption to avoid
double taxation.

Singaporeans working overseas will generally be exempt by the Iras on
their income sourced abroad, he added.

Nine people from the group have come forward and concluded that, between,
them, they have paid the Myanmar embassy $31,000 by way of taxes since
April 2000. Considering that there are tens of thousands of Myanmar
residents here, the total could be much larger.

"We do not want to be offensive," said Mr Aung. "We are simply asking for
our rights as granted under the DTA."