BurmaNet News, June 12, 2007

[Editor]

June 12, 2007 Issue # 3224

INSIDE BURMA
Irrawaddy: Russia, junta begin search for uranium in Northern Burma
DVB: NLD women pelted with slingshots
Irrawaddy: Massage parlors closed by junta-backed women's group

ON THE BORDER
Telegraph: Over 500 Indians seeking refuge in Burma from militant attacks
return to Manipur

BUSINESS / TRADE
Xinhua: Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand plan cargo liner to link port cities
Irrawaddy: Plans for Burma’s high tech city raises eyebrows
Narinjara News: Bangladesh looks to World Bank and ADB for Burmese
hydropower investments
DPA: Myanmar confirms plan to export natural gas to Yunnan, China

ASEAN
Irrawaddy: Burma opposition leaders dispute Asean official's comment

REGIONAL
Irrawaddy: Burmese in Malaysia protest at Russia, China embassies

INTERNATIONAL
Irrawaddy: ILO expels Burma workers delegate
Irrawaddy: Canadian writer wins major award for Burma book - Aye Lae

____________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

June 12, Irrawaddy
Russia, junta begin search for uranium in Northern Burma - Khun Sam

Burmese and Russian experts have begun exploring for uranium at a new site
in northern Burma’s jade mining area, according to an ethnic ceasefire
group and local sources.

A high ranking military intelligence official with the Kachin Independence
Organization said government officials in joint cooperation with a Russian
team, all together numbering about 30 people, are drilling in search of
uranium near Hawng Pa village of Hpakant Township, a famous jade mining
area, northwest of Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin State.

“They have been drilling for three months already in the Hawng Pa area. As
for us, we saw two heavy drilling machine vehicles and eight foreigners,”
the KIO intelligence officer told The Irrawaddy o­n Monday.

The eight foreigners are believed to be Russian experts or engineers.

He said it's unclear if they have already located uranium or what type of
uranium they may be searching for.

Uranium deposits, publicly confirmed by the Burmese government, have been
found in five areas: Magwe, Taungdwingyi, Kyaukphygon and Paongpyin in
Mogok, and Kyauksin.

Apart from those areas, residents of Thabeikkyin Township, 60 miles north
of Mandalay, and southern Tenasserim Division, also say searches are
underway in those areas.

Meanwhile groups of Burmese students who studied subjects such as nuclear
and computer technology in Moscow are reported to have returned to Burma,
while others are still studying in Russia.

Last month, Russia’s atomic energy agency and the Burmese regime signed an
agreement to build a nuclear research reactor in the military-ruled
country and to train about 350 Burmese specialists in nuclear technology.

The agency said the 10-megawatt nuclear reactor, fueled by less than 20
percent uranium-235, will contribute to Burma’s research in nuclear
physics, bio-technology and material science as well as medicine
production. Further discussions o­n the project are scheduled for the
second half of this year.

Military rulers in Burma have been criticized by the West for repressive
and undemocratic practices. In December 1995, the junta signed the Bangkok
Treaty, banning the development, manufacture, possession, control,
stationing, transport, testing or use of nuclear weapons under the terms
of the International Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Russia has become a major political supporter and supplier of arms to
Burma’s military regime since the US and EU imposed sanctions in response
to the country’s poor human rights record.

____________________________________

June 12, Democratic Voice of Burma
NLD women pelted with slingshots

Five women National League for Democracy members from Zee Gone township
were pelted with slingshot fire by three men on motorcycles yesterday
after holding a prayer vigil at the Mya Thein Tan pagoda.

Daw Khin Wine, a central committee member of the Zee Gone NLD, told DVB
she and the other women had been praying for the release of detained
democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi before the were targetted.

“Local special police Ko Zaw Linn Htun was at the scene on a motorbike
when the attack took place. There were three of them . . . They suddenly
took aim at us with their slingshots,” Daw Khin Wine said.

“One of us, Ma Thiri Zin, wounded her leg quite bad. Ma Hla Than took a
hit on her chest and was bruised while Ma Mar Mar Aye had her thigh hit
till it was black and blue.”

Daw Khin Wine said that a number of people were seen waiting outside the
pagoda while the women prayed. She said that local USDA committee members
and a police chief were also seen inside the pagoda compounds at the time.

“Police chief U Khin Nyo told us that we should not go to the pagoda
again. He advised us to just pray from our homes as the next attack would
be life threatening for us,” she said.

The NLD headquarters denounced the attack saying that it was the job of
policemen to protect civilians in Burma.

“We have heard that there was a special policeman at the scene . . . He is
responsible for stopping this like this from happening. If he lets attacks
happen in front of his eyes, he should be accused of encouraging a crime,”
NLD spokesman U Nyan Win said.

____________________________________

June 12, Irrawaddy
Massage parlors closed by junta-backed women's group - Shah Paung

Massage parlors at Three Pagoda Pass in Karen State have been forced to
close by the leader of a Burmese government-backed women's association who
quarreled with her husband for visiting a parlor.

Aye Aye Lwin, the head of the Myanmar Women Affairs Federation in the
township, allegedly found her husband Tin Win, the head of the township
Peace and Development Council of the junta, in a massage parlor in the
township o­n June 7, according to Three Pagoda Pass residents. She asked
Tin Win to immediately return home, but
her husband refused.

After that, the source said, Tin Win complained that his wife had put him
to shame in front of his government official friends, and they quarreled
at the massage parlor.

Soon after that, the wife went to the local police station and told
officers to close the massage parlors. Police refused her request, saying
it was a family's internal affair.

The next day, Aye Aye Lwin ordered the massage parlors to close in the
name of the Myanmar Women's Affairs Federation. She said the massage
parlors made husbands guilty of misconduct.

Most women in the Three Pagoda Pass area were said to be in favor of
closing the massage parlors.

“I am so happy with the order because I don't like my son and my husband
to go to those places,” said a woman resident of Three Pagoda Pass. “It is
not a real massage parlor because some girls at the parlors sell sex."

According to local residents, there are two massage parlors in Three
Pagoda Pass. They are run under the name of a Karen ceasefire group called
Nyain Chan Yaye. The parlors are visited mostly by men. Female workers are
under age 20. Many female workers are from Rangoon and Moulmein, who come
to the border to find work.

The source said a normal massage cost 120 baht (US $3.40). For sex, the
cost is 150 baht ($4.30) per hour or 650 baht ($18.70) for all night.

____________________________________
ON THE BORDER

June 11, Telegraph (India)
Over 500 Indians seeking refuge in Burma from militant attacks return to
Manipur

Imphal: More than 500 people who fled their homes into the safety of
Myanmar just across the border after violence erupted in Moreh last
Saturday were handed over to the town authorities today.

Eleven people were killed in a series of attacks by militants on Saturday,
following which an indefinite curfew was imposed in the area. Protesters
also torched a house and damaged several others.

Reports said 524 people, including women and children belonging to Meitei,
Kuki and Muslim communities, crossed over to Myanmar immediately after the
killings. Some Tamils were also among the people who took refuge in the
neighbouring country.

A joint action committee of Khurai, in Imphal East, has called a 24-hour
statewide bandh from 6 pm today in protest against the killings. Five of
the six Meiteis killed in Moreh on Saturday hailed from Khurai.

An official source said residents of the troubled town fled their homes
and grouped together in safer places, including hotels. Myanmarese
authorities provided shelter and food to the displaced people at a school
near Namphalong.

Myanmar informed the authorities in Moreh of the refugees last night and
told them to receive the displaced people this morning. Moreh
subdivisional police officer Md J. Husne and assistant deputy collector
Th. Chote received the refugees at border gate 1.

The refugees have been put up in a community hall as the situation in the
curfew-bound border town is still tense.

“Some cases of vandalism and looting of deserted homes have been
reported,” an official source said.

This morning, India Reserve Battalion personnel chased away a group of
vandals who were looting homes in the Meitei-dominated ward 9. However,
nobody was arrested.

In another incident today, residents damaged a vehicle that was trying to
leave Moreh for Imphal. The vehicle was ferrying traders stranded in the
area ever since curfew was enforced. Nobody was injured in the incident. A
resident told this correspondent that Meiteis living in Moreh did not want
traders to leave the town with security escorts. He said the residents
wanted the security personnel to be stationed in the town to keep violence
under control.

Chief minister Okram Ibobi Singh, who cut short his New Delhi trip and
rushed back last evening, sent a ministerial team, led by agriculture
minister Ph. Parijat Singh and information minister T.N. Haokip, also a
Kuki leader, to Moreh to defuse tension. The team will meet leaders of
different communities in Moreh and appeal to them to maintain peace.

Director-general of police Y. Joykumar Singh is camping in the area to
supervise security measures.

Ibobi Singh reassured residents of Khurai today that a magisterial inquiry
would be ordered into the killings. Yesterday, protesters blocked roads
and closed down shops in Khurai.

Post-mortem on the five bodies that arrived here last night was conducted
today. The bodies of the other victims were autopsied in Moreh itself.

____________________________________
BUSINESS / TRADE

June 12, Xinhua General News Service
Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand plan cargo liner to link port cities

Bangladesh, Myanmar and Thailand are coordinating to introduce a cargo
vessel liner to link their port cities in a bid to boost maritime trade
among the three countries, a local media reported Tuesday.

The planned route of the cargo liner is outlined as Chittagong
(Bangladesh)-Yangon (Myanmar)-Ranong (Thailand), the Voice Journal quoted
Bangladeshi Ministry of Commerce as saying.

With Yangon serving as a transit port, it will give rise to direct trade
link between Chittagong and Ranong, between Yangon and Chittagong, and
between Yangon and Ranong, the report said.

Once the liner is in place, Bangladesh-Thailand cargo transport could no
longer have to go via Singapore and could be done in three days,
Bangladeshi officials were quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, Myanmar and Bangladesh are negotiating to extend sale of
Myanmar marine products directly to Chittagong while a trade zone is being
set up in Myanmar's western border town of Maungtaw in Rakhine state
linking Bangladesh to mainly export the marine products to the neighbor,
according to fishery business circle.

Official statistics show that Myanmar exported 23,000 tons of marine
products to Bangladesh annually, standing as Bangladesh's fifth largest
marine products importing country out of 30.

Currently, Myanmar and Bangladesh are engaged more in border trade than
normal trade. Besides marine products, Myanmar's exports to Bangladesh
also cover beans and pulses and kitchen crops, while its imports from
Bangladesh include pharmaceuticals, ceramic, cotton fabric, raw jute,
kitchenware and cosmetic.

Myanmar and Bangladesh formally opened border trade in 1994 at two points
of Sittway and Maungtaw.

According to the figures of the Ministry of Commerce, bilateral trade
between Myanmar and Bangladesh reached over 60 million U.S. dollars in the
fiscal year 2005-06. Of the total, Myanmar's export to Bangladesh stood at
55 million dollars, favoring Myanmar in their balance of trade.

The two countries are striving to increase their bilateral trade to 100
million dollars, the sources said.

To enhance their bilateral trade, Myanmar and Bangladesh signed in Yangon
a technical protocol on coastal sea-borne trade between the two countries
in July 2004.

____________________________________

June 12, Irrawaddy
Plans for Burma’s high tech city raises eyebrows - William Boot

The renaming of the Burmese regime’s secretive “information city”
development as Yadanabon Naypyidaw may be intended to give it a high tech
image in keeping with the country’s new administrative capital, but
communications and electricity connections remain more 19th century.

Despite reported plans to invite high technology Internet companies to set
up shop in the dusty development project adjacent to the old town of
Maymyo, Burma remains a very unconnected society for most of its 52
million citizens, according to a recent report by Reporters Without
Borders.

“This project is a joke. A few companies will be maybe interested because
of low costs, but they all know the situation of the Internet [in Burma],”
Vincent Brossel, the Asia spokesman for the Paris-based freedom of speech
watchdog told The Irrawaddy. “Who will take the risk to go there to set up
business?”

Also known as Reporters Sans Frontiers, the group labeled Burma o­ne of
the world’s worst Internet “black holes.”

“The Burmese government’s Internet policies are even more repressive than
its Chinese and Vietnamese neighbors,” according to the 2007 report o­n
media freedom in Asia.

And given the problems that major US companies such as Google have in
China it seems highly unlikely many reputable foreign Internet developers
would want to be associated with Yadanabon Naypyidaw, Brossel said.

Burma watchers and analysts say the location of the development, in
central Burma, is commercially odd. Not o­nly is it 70 kilometers from the
nearest established city, Mandalay, it is 300 kilometers north of the new
capital Naypyidaw, after which it now takes its name, and 600 kilometers
from Burma’s chief commercial center, Rangoon.

“It all seems to have more to do with the regime’s pre-occupation with
maintaining control,” said a Western embassy commercial attaché in
Bangkok. “Isn’t there a major military training academy and an army
technical school in Maymyo?”

Ironically, Maymyo has associations with the colonial military era so
despised by the junta. It takes its name from a British army officer named
May who established a garrison there in the 19th century.

The new city has been variously called an “information city,” a “silicon
valley” and “technology city.”

The new official name, Yadanabon Naypyidaw— replacing Yadanabon
Myothit—was the original name given to Mandalay by King Mindon Min. It is
said to mean “Treasure Heap City.”

More than 5,000 acres of land has reportedly been seized from farmers for
the first-phase development of Yadanabon Naypyidaw.

Reporters Without Border’s Brossel said the tight Internet control in
Burma by the junta has two purposes: o­ne, to prevent access to or
distribution of information critical of the regime and, two, to maintain
the monopoly of Myanmar Teleport, formerly called Bagan CyberTech, which
monopolizes both telephone and e-mail links with the outside world.

No figures, official or otherwise, have been put o­n the cost of creating
Yadanabon Naypyidaw literally out of fields and forest.

The closest comparison to such a project is Malaysia’s much-hyped
Cyberjaya, which analysts have said could cost as much as US $15 billion,
although the Kuala Lumpur government has refuted this figure without
giving o­ne of its own.

Cyberjaya has been in the making for eight years and is still not
complete. Seven years after the ground stone was laid by former Prime
Minister Mahathir Mohamad, the Malaysian government in 2006 ordered a
review to “expedite the development of Cyberjaya.”

Unlike the remote location of Burma’s wannabe cyber city, Malaysia’s
Cyberjaya is in a relatively busy hub between the capital Kuala Lumpur and
a major sea port o­n the west coast. Some government ministries have been
relocated there to give the project impetus and gravitas. But even so,
critics of the project have cited poor communications and transport and a
lack of high-tech investment—problems Burma’s new capital Naypyidaw now
faces, let alone the “intelligent city” o­n the drawing board.

And while the regime is busy creating expensive new cities, the fate of
Rangoon languishes.

Just this month, the Minister for National Planning and Economic
Development, Soe Tha, established a committee to reconsider the “strategic
development plan” for the former capital.

Ironically, perhaps, redevelopment proposals for Rangoon were drawn up by
two Malaysian companies— including the state-owned Industry-Government
Group for High Technology which advised o­n Cyberjaya— several years ago.
These included revitalization of transport infrastructure, electricity,
water supply and port development.

But today, the planning ministry is just talking about an auction of some
of the grander buildings being vacated by government employees who have
been transferred 300 kilometers north to Naypyidaw, the new capital.

____________________________________

June 12, Narinjara News
Bangladesh looks to World Bank and ADB for Burmese hydropower investments

Bangladesh is currently organizing to look for funds from the World Bank
and Asian Development Bank to set up a hydropower plant in Burma, in order
to import power to Bangladesh through a cross-border transmission line,
report official sources.

A Bangladesh official made the announcement before a Bangladesh delegation
leaves for Burma to discuss the hydro-electricity plan.

An official source said a three-member Bangladesh delegation led by power
secretary AKM Zafor Ullah Khan, is likely to visit Burma soon to undertake
bilateral talks with the Burmese military government on the topic of the
potential for hydro-electricity in the country.

According to Power Division sources, the division had requested the
Economic Relations Division seek funds from donors for the power
generation project in Burma, where a large investment is required.

A senior ERD official said, "As per Power Division's request, we will send
letters shortly to some multilateral and bilateral donors including the
World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and Japan, requesting their financial
support for conducting feasibility studies as well as to install the power
plant in Myanmar."

According to sources, the Ministry of Electric Power in Burma has
identified about 200 potential sites for generating 38,000 megawatts of
electricity from some of the country's hundreds of rivers.

Earlier, an expert team of the Power Development Board prepared an
assessment report on the potential of hydroelectricity in Burma.

The assessment report concluded that detailed study to assess the
potential of hydro-electricity in Burma should be carried out by an expert
team from Dhaka.

The assessment report also noted that in Michaung and Lemro areas of
Arakan State in Burma, there is potential for 800 MW hydropower
generation. The importation of electricity to Bangladesh from those areas
is viable as they are situated close to Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar.

"Besides, some five sites near Naga Hills in Chin State in Myanmar have a
potentiality of 2200 MW power generation. But as these sites are far from
the Bangladesh border it would not be viable," the report read.

Meanwhile, Chinese news agency Xinhua quoted sources at the Burmese
Ministry of Electric Power on 4 June reporting that depending on the
agreement of Bangladesh, a dam could be built in Arakan State where many
rivers run close to the border.

If the move is agreed to by the two countries, a feasibility study will be
conducted on the Kaladan and Lemro Rivers, the Sai Tin Creek, and Dalet
Creek, which are all in Arakan State, the news agency stated in its
report.

Bangladesh, hard-hit by an electricity shortage for the last few years,
has been looking for options to import electricity from neighboring
countries. It is facing a shortfall against the demand for electricity of
about 2000 megawatts.

Bangladesh has also taken steps to import electricity from Bhutan and
India, but little progress has been made.

Bangladesh requires around 5000 MW of power, but its production capacity
staggers between 3000 MW and 3300 MW, depending on the condition of its
decades-old power plants.

____________________________________

June 12, Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Myanmar confirms plan to export natural gas to Yunnan, China

Myanmar Energy China Myanmar confirms plan to export natural gas to
Yunnan, China Yangon
Myanmar plans to build a road, a railway and a natural gas link to Yunnan,
China, to foster closed economic ties with its neighbour to the north,
state media reports said Tuesday.

Lieutenant General Thein Sein, first secretary of the State Peace and
Development Council (SPDC) - as Myanmar's junta styles itself - confirmed
during a recent visit to Kunming, Yunnan's capital, that the country
intends to export natural gas to Yunnan, said The New Light of Myanmar
newspaper.

Yunnan Communist Party chairman Bai Enpei met with Thein Sein on June 8 to
discuss economic relations, said the government mouthpiece.

"In his address, the Secretary-1 said that Myanmar and China have been
making arrangements to cooperate in mining and hydro electric power
sector," said the newspaper. "Arrangemens are also being made to export
natural gas from Myanmar," Thein Sein added.

He also said that a road from Yunnan Province to Myitkyina in Myanmar was
under construction and arrangements are also being made to build a
railroad.

Thein Sein's comments appeared to confirm news reports that China plans to
build a natural gas pipeline to link Yunnan to Myanmar's sizeable offshore
gas reserves.

The Chinese government in April approved construction of an oil pipeline
from Sittwe, a port in southern Myanmar, to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan
province.

China also reportedly plans to invest 8 billion yuan (1.04 billion
dollars) to build a 2,380-kilometre gas pipeline from Myanmar to Kunming.

The gas pipeline is designed to carry 170 billion cubic metres of natural
gas from the Middle East to south-western China in the next 30 years,
according to Chinese media reports.

China's three state-owned oil producers - Sinopec, CNPC and CNOOC - all
have major oil and gas exploitation projects in marine areas off Myanmar.

In return, China has promised to grant a loan of 650 million Hong Kong
dollars (83 million US dollars) to Myanmar for the development of its oil
industry.

____________________________________
ASEAN

June 12, Irrawaddy
Burma opposition leaders dispute Asean official's comment - Saw Yan Naing

Burmese opposition groups inside and outside the country have disputed
comments by a high ranking Asean official who criticized Western
sanctions, saying they do not work to enhance democratic reform in the
country.

“Asean’s comment is far away from reality," said Myint Thein, a spokesman
of the main opposition party, the National League for Democracy.

"Meanwhile their [Asean's] constructive engagement, their non-interference
in internal affairs policy, fails to move Burma towards democratic
reform,” Myint Thein said.

Ong Keng Yong, Asean secretary general, said the EU and the US need to
find other ways to engage Burma instead of just applying economic
sanctions against the Burmese military government.

“The sanctions do not work," he said. "Even if you pull out everybody, all
economic investors from Myanmar [Burma], they are not going to collapse
because their two large neighbors [China and India] will be ready to
maintain them,” o­ng told reporters Monday at the sidelines of the Asia
Oil and Gas Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The NLD spokesperson said, “It is not time to criticize each other. It is
time to cooperate and initiate different ways to enhance the
democratization of Burma.”

Mahn Sha, the general secretary of the ethnic rebel group, the Karen
National Union, said, “We think the sanctions are important and effective.
The thing that doesn’t work is Asean’s constructive engagement policy
because it means they have a good relationship in dealing with the Burmese
government. It means they encourage the junta.”

He added, “Due to this reason, the junta doesn’t care about any groups,
such as the ILO, the Global Fund, the United Nations and the public inside
Burma.”

Mya Aye, a leader of the 88 Generation Students, said, “We don’t see any
good and bad consequences following the economic sanctions. What we
believe is that to achieve democratic change in Burma, the roles of Asean
countries, China, Russia and the UN Security Council are very important.
So we want international communities to try for every suitable way for
democratic change.”

____________________________________
REGIONAL

June 12, Irrawaddy
Burmese in Malaysia protest at Russia, China embassies

More than 80 pro-democracy Burmese activists o­n Tuesday gathered in front
of the Russian and Chinese embassies in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur
to protest the two countries’ support of Burma’s ruling military regime
and to urge them to put pressure o­n the government to release detained
pro-democracy opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Aung Kyaw Moe, vice chairman of the Democratic Federation of Burma
(Malaysia) and o­ne of the protesters, said the group gathered for about
15 minutes and sent letters to the two embassies outlining their concerns.
Aung Kyaw Moe said Russia and China should stop their economic and
military support of Burma’s ruling generals and that the two nations
should stop looking o­nly at what benefits they can derive from Burma. In
December 2006, Russia and China joined in vetoing a US and
British-sponsored resolution o­n Burma at the UN Security Council.

____________________________________
INTERNATIONAL

June 12, Irrawaddy
ILO expels Burma workers delegate - Htet Aung

A Burmese workers’ delegate attending the 96th session of the
International Labor Conference in Geneva has been expelled from the
worker’s meeting, according to a labor activist attending the
International Labour Organization-sponsored event.

“He [Khin Maung Oo] was expelled from the workers’ group of the ILO
conference [because] there are no trade unions or worker associations in
Burma,” Maung Maung, general secretary of the exile group Federation of
Trade Unions-Burma who is attending the conference, told The Irrawaddy o­n
Tuesday.

Khin Maung Oo, a supervisor at the Myanmar Mayson Industrial Co Ltd in
Rangoon’s Hlaing Thayar Industrial Zone 4, was selected by Burmese
government officials to attend the conference, which runs from May 30 to
June 15 in the Swiss capital.

The delegate’s status as a supervisor, not a worker, was also noted by
Maung Maung as a factor in his dismissal.

“The Ministry of Labor sent us a letter of instruction and chose Ko Khin
Maung Oo to attend the meeting,” an employee of the company told The
Irrawaddy o­n condition of anonymity.

Myanmar Mayson Industrial, founded in 1996, produces breads, cakes, candy
and snacks under the brand names “Good Morning,” “Hi Hi” and “Garden Bun.”

It is not the first time the ILO has expelled a delegate from the
conference. Burma’s workers’ group delegate has been dismissed from the
previous conferences.

The difference this time, the labor activist noted, is that the expulsion
was made with the consent of the other delegates attending the meeting.
Past delegates were dismissed privately by the ILO.

Delegates representing the government, employers and workers of member
countries of the ILO are expected to attend the annual conference.

Burma’s government delegation is headed this year by Aung Kyi, the deputy
minister of labor.

In February 2007, the ILO negotiated an agreement with Burma’s ruling
junta after a tense standoff over the issue of forced labor. The agreement
created a mechanism whereby complainants can report forced labor without
the fear of government reprisal.

____________________________________

June 12, Irrawaddy
Canadian writer wins major award for Burma book - Aye Lae

Canadian writer Karen Connelly has won a major British literary award for
her book set in Burma, The Lizard Cage.

The 2007 Orange Broadband award is for new writers. The chairman of the
panel of judges, Jackie Kay, described Connelly’s book as “extraordinary,
lyrical, visionary and compelling, universal in its depiction of the way
the human spirit can survive the greatest brutality,” and said it would
“open the eyes of every reader and raise the spirits."

The Lizard Cage, Connelly’s first novel, tells the story of Teza, a
Burmese protest singer who served seven years in solitary confinement in
prison. She gathered her material during visits to the Thailand-Burma
border, where she met Burmese activists and former political prisoners.
The book took her 10 years to write.

Her success in winning the British award was hailed by the Ottawa-based
Canadian Friends of Burma. Anne Bayin, writer-photographer, and
granddaughter of the former politician Ba Yin, said: “We should celebrate
Karen’s literary voice and her contribution in making the wider world
aware of intolerable conditions in Burma.

“It is a brave and deeply moving book depicting the triumph of the human
spirit against the brutal reality of prison under the military regime.”
Connelly said in Toronto after traveling to Britain to receive the award:
“Telling the true stories of what happens under secretive regimes is an
important form of caring, sometimes even of justice. So many Burmese
people helped me to write this book; I am glad their stories have been
honored in this way.”
She said she would use some of the prize money to fund a translation of
The Lizard Cage into Burmese.

Connelly has written six other successful works of fiction, non-fiction
and poetry. Her first volume of poetry won the Pat Lowther Award for Best
Book of Poetry in 1991.

She is now working o­n a collection of essays about Burma and stories from
the border area and is preparing a new volume of poetry.