BurmaNet News, October 3, 2007

[Editor]

October 3, 2007 Issue # 3310

INSIDE BURMA
AP: U.S. diplomat: Burma's junta hunting protesters
Irrawaddy: Suu Kyi’s unhappy face
Mizzima News: Security forces search for protesters photographs in hand
DVB: Arakan protests continue despite threats from authorities
Irrawaddy: Junta leader's family still out of Burma—says diplomat
DVB: Burmese authorities target citizen journalists

ON THE BORDER
Mizzima News: Famous Burmese actor Kyaw Thu sheltered in Thailand
Kaladan News: BDR arrests 11 monks entering Bangladesh
Washington Post: Marking time in Thailand; millions of Burmese who fled
violence at home languish in limbo near the Border

BUSINESS / TRADE
Asia Times: Thailand a key to new Myanmar sanctions

REGIONAL
USA TODAY: China not likely to rebuke Burma after crackdown;
Top ally's political influence limited, Asia analysts say
Mizzima News: India asks Burma to probe crackdown, opposes sanctions

INTERNATIONAL
Mizzima News: UN Rights body wants Burmese junta to allow investigation
AFP: US or EU must lead new effort to end Myanmar crisis: experts
DPA: EU members agree on tougher sanctions on Myanmar
AP: No word on progress from UN envoy's Burma mission
ITUC: Burma: No clean hands for foreign businesses: "Leave Burma Now":
ITUC Tells Multinationals

OPINION / OTHER
Irrawaddy” Generals extend blood-stained hands to Gambari - Kyaw Zwa Moe
The Weekly Standard: The Saffron Revolution; Bloody but hopeful days in
Burma - Stephen Schwartz
The Times (London): Boycotting Burma makes things worse - Carl Mortished

PRESS RELEASE
FIDH and Forum Asia: Special Session of the UN Human Rights Council
The UN Special Rapporteur must have access to Burma

ANNOUNCEMENT
AHRC: Burma: Bloggers declare international day for Burma
AS and OSI: Monks, Media and the Military: The Saffron Revolution

OBITUARY
The Nation: Ailing Burmese Prime Minister dies

____________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

October 3, Associated Press
U.S. diplomat: Burma's junta hunting protesters

Rangoon, Burma - Soldiers announced they were hunting pro-democracy
protesters in Burma's largest city Wednesday and the top U.S. diplomat in
the country said she heard that military police were pulling people out of
their homes during the night.

Military vehicles patrolled the streets before dawn with loudspeakers
blaring, "We have photographs. We are going to make arrests!"

Shari Villarosa, the acting U.S. ambassador in Burma, said in a telephone
interview that people in Rangoon were terrified.

"From what we understand, military police ... are traveling around the
city in the middle of the night, going into homes and picking up people,"
she said.

The U.N.'s special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, declined to comment on his
four-day mission to Burma, where the military junta last month crushed
mass pro-democracy demonstrations led by the nation's revered Buddhist
monks.

Hundreds of monks and civilians were carted off to detention camps during
protests last week. The government says 10 people were killed in the
violence, but dissident groups put the death toll at up to 200. They say
6,000 people were detained.

Villarosa said embassy staff had gone to some monasteries in recent days
and found them completely empty. Others were barricaded by the military
and declared off-limits to outsiders.

"There is a significantly reduced number of monks on the streets. Where
are the monks? What has happened to them?" she said. The Democratic Voice
of Burma, a dissident radio station based in Norway, said authorities have
released 90 of 400 monks detained in Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin
state, during a midnight raid on monasteries on Sept. 25.

A semblance of normality returned to Rangoon after daybreak, with some
shops opening and light traffic on roads.

However, "people are terrified, and the underlying forces of discontent
have not been addressed," Villarosa said. "People have been unhappy for a
long time ... Since the events of last week, there's now the unhappiness
combined with anger, and fear."

Some people remained hopeful that democracy would come.

"I don't believe the protests have been totally crushed," said Kin, a
29-year-old language teacher in Rangoon, whose father and brother had
joined a 1988 pro-democracy movement that ended in a crackdown in which at
least 3,000 people were killed.

"There is hope, but we fear to hope," she said. "We still dream of rearing
our children in a country where everybody would have equal chances at
opportunities."

The military has ruled Burma since 1962, and the current junta came to
power after snuffing out the 1988 pro-democracy movement. The generals
called elections in 1990 but refused to give up power when Suu Kyi's party
won.

Simmering hatred for the military's 45-year rule exploded in mid-August
after the regime hiked fuel prices by as much as 500% — a crushing burden
in this impoverished nation.

The marches soon ballooned into mass pro-democracy demonstrations led by
the nation's revered Buddhist monks.

The military smashed the protests on Sept. 26 and 27 with live ammunition
and tear gas, and by beating up demonstrators.

Among those killed when troops opened fire on unarmed protesters in
Rangoon last week was Japanese television cameraman Kenji Nagai of the APF
news agency.

Nagai's body was flown out of Burma on Wednesday to Tokyo.

Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura said Japan, which is Burma's biggest aid
donor, was considering cutting back donations to protest Nagai's death.
Video broadcasts appeared to show a soldier shooting Nagai at point-blank
range.

Gambari went to Burma on Saturday to convey the international community's
outrage at the junta's actions. He also hoped to persuade the junta to
take the people's aspirations seriously.

He met junta leader Senior Gen. Than Shwe and his deputies and talked to
detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi twice.

Gambari avoided the media in Singapore, where he arrived Tuesday night en
route to New York. He was not expected to issue any statement before
briefing U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday.

The junta has not commented on Gambari's visit and the United Nations has
only released photos of Gambari and a somber, haggard-looking Suu Kyi —
who has spent nearly 12 of the last 18 years under house arrest — shaking
hands during their meeting in a state guest house in Rangoon.

In Singapore, Gambari met with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, the
chairman of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations bloc of which Burma
is a member.

A Singapore government statement said Lee told Gambari that ASEAN "is
fully behind his mission" to bring about "a political solution for
national reconciliation and a peaceful transition to democracy."

____________________________________

October 3, Irrawaddy
Suu Kyi’s unhappy face - Htet Aung

UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari’s four-day shuttle diplomacy between
Burma’s top generals and the country’s detained democracy icon Aung San
Suu Kyi concluded on Tuesday.

Several of the photographs of the special envoy’s meeting with Suu Kyi
appeared in the international media. In some of the photographs, her face
expressed grave unhappiness and sent a clear message to the world
community: the generals' crack down on the Buddhist monks’ peaceful
demonstrations prove UN action on Burma is urgently needed.

In one photograph, Suu Kyi wore a yellow, traditional style blouse—the
color represents Buddha’s Sasana (the Order of Buddha). She shrewdly
showed her support of the Buddhist monks’ efforts to bring about peace and
national reconciliation in the country.

Detained since May 2003, she had recently appeared in public wearing the
same yellow dress when she paid homage to protesting sons of Buddha who
had gathered in front of her home to chant the “Metta Sutta” (the Buddha’s
words on loving kindness) on September 22.

This time, there is no doubt that she, through the good office of the UN
secretary-general, would seek a way to bring about reconciliation in the
country while the fear-driven generals at Naypyidaw seek to deceive the
world.

The six-week long protests have further diminished the generals'
seven-step political road map to democracy, which, in fact, is a way to
cement the generals' power, legitimately, under the forthcoming new
constitution.

The generals' pathetic attempt to stage pro-regime rallies for the benefit
of special envoy Gambari showed their callous disregard for reality. Are
they oblivious to the fact that the Burmese people have voted against them
with their lives?

Since 1991, the United Nations General Assembly has adopted a series of
resolutions on the Burma situation but to no avail. Now is the time for
the UN Security Council to adopt a binding resolution to restore
reconciliation and democracy in Burma.

The UN Human Rights Council’s special session on Burma on October 2-3 in
Geneva said it “strongly deplored the continued violent repression of
peaceful demonstrations in Myanmar [Burma].” This time, the resolution was
adopted by consensus with the cooperation of the regime’s strongest
supporter, China.

Unfortunately, the body has no power to help the oppressed people of Burma
by sending a mission to investigate the regime’s brutal killings, as
requested by more than 200 human rights and civil society organizations in
17 countries.

How long will the civilized world ignore the notorious generals' slaughter
of innocent people?

“The world is watching and while the time for mere words has passed,
decisive action is now needed. No State can condone such actions,” Paulo
Sérgio Pinheiro, the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights
in Burma, told the session in Geneva on October 2.

However, the Burmese people are exhausted by such words. Many people now
believe that democracy will come only with the sacrifice of tens of
thousands of lives.

____________________________________

October 3, Mizzima News
Security forces search for protesters photographs in hand - Ko Dee

Security envelopes Rangoon with riot police and soldiers scouring the city
with photographs in their hand to arrest participants in last weeks
protests, which posed a direct threat to nearly half a century of military
rule in Burma.

While security forces had earlier conducted random searches on the streets
among passers by, local residents said, authorities have stepped up the
hunt by distributing pictures of protesters and arresting them on sight.

"They [authorities] distributed pictures of those who had participated in
the protests to different township authorities and they in turn raided
houses of people who had taken part and arrested them," a local resident,
who requested anonymity, told Mizzima.

"We heard that photos [of protestors] have arrived in our local township
peace and development council office. But so far we have not heard any
body being arrested. If they have to arrest, it would have to be all the
people in the township because every one of us participated in the
protest. So, may be they cannot arrest all," another resident of Rangoon's
North Okklapah Township said.

Most of the pictures of protesters were taken by a police informer, Tin
Maung Latt, who under the protection of the riot police and soldiers took
photographs during the protests last week, a Rangoon based journalist
said.

Security forces continue to be stationed on major road junctions and
popular places such as the Sule pagoda. And several soldiers in military
trucks also continue to patrol the city both day and night to check any
unrest, residents said.

____________________________________

October 3, Democratic Voice of Burma
Arakan protests continue despite threats from authorities

Over 10,000 people in the Arakan town of Man Aung staged another protest
yesterday against the Burmese government's harassment of demonstrators.

The demonstrations took place despite threats from Man Aung authorities
that anyone taking part in protests in the town would be arrested.

Villagers from around Man Aung township began the protest at around 10am,
and were later joined by town residents. The protesters were given food,
water and cheroot by bystanders in a show of support.

"We shouted slogans calling for the release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and
other political prisoners and demanding that the government stop harassing
monks," said a person who joined the protest.

"We also went to Mahagyi pagoda in town and prayed for freedom for those
who have been detained," added the protestor.

This follows a protest on Monday staged by residents of the town and
nearby villages which was joined by over 5,000 people.

____________________________________

October 3, Irrawaddy
Junta leader's family still out of Burma—says diplomat - Violet Cho

The family of Burma's junta chief, Snr-Gen Than Shwe, is still out of the
country following the bloody crackdown on monks and pro-democracy
demonstrators, according to a Western diplomat in Rangoon.

Than Shwe’s family, including his wife Kyaing Kyaing, appears not to be in
the country, said a diplomat who asked to be anonymous. He said he had no
idea of the family's whereabouts.

So far, the rumor mill has covered a wide base: Than Shwe's family is said
to be in Vientiane, Laos; Macau, China; or Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The family is believed to have left Rangoon on the day security forces
opened fire on protesting monks and demonstrators.

The Bangkok-based newspaper The Nation earlier reported that Than Shwe’s
wife had fled to Thailand. Then, she was reported to be in Dubai, where
she was allegedly spotted by some Burmese who live there.  That report
said Burmese tycoon Tay Za was accompanying the family.

Tay Za is a close business associate of Than Shwe’s family and is the CEO 
of the Htoo Trading Company and the owner of Air Bagan.

____________________________________

October 3, Democratic Voice of Burma
Burmese authorities target citizen journalists

Government authorities are initiating a media campaign targeting citizen
journalists who took footage of government brutality during the recent
protests in Rangoon and distributed it to foreign media, according to
journalists and reporters in Burma’s former capital.

The government has called upon state-run media agencies and government
supporters to publish photographs of citizen journalists and take action
against them.

Reporters said that the government's campaign against citizen journalists
is being carried out by photographers and cameramen from the News and
Press department of the Ministry of Information and reporters from the
state-run Myanmar News Agency, in cooperation with the army, government
guards and Swan Arr Shin members.

The MNA, whose office is located in front of the Interior Minister’s
Office on Theinphyu road, is also working with the Special Information
Unit of the Burmese police, according to a veteran journalist in Rangoon.

____________________________________
ON THE BORDER

October 3, Mizzima News
Famous Burmese actor Kyaw Thu sheltered in Thailand

Rumors are rife in the Burmese community in exile that famous Burmese
movie star Kyaw Thu and wife Shwe Zikuat have fled Burma and are taking
shelter in a Buddhist monastery in a refugee camp along the Thai-Burma
border.

A source at the Maela refugee camp in Mae Sod district of Thailand's Tak
province said actor Kyaw Thu and wife have been taking shelter at the
Thiri Sandar Buddhist monastery camp and are now applying for refugee
status with the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

The source, who claims to have seen the actor and his wife at the
monastery said, the camp authorities confirmed their arrival but refused
to arrange a meeting with them.

"They [the camp authorities] did not allow any one to meet the actor. But
it is confirmed that he has arrived and is now staying at the monastery.
Since I am friendly with the camp authorities I asked them about the
actor's arrival and they confirmed that Kyaw Thu had arrived but refused
to let me meet him," said the source.

However, the information could not be independently verified.

The Burmese Academy Award winning actor, on September 24 joined veteran
Burmese politician U Win Naing in his 'Swan' offering to the protesting
monks in Rangoon's Shwedagon pagoda along with fellow actor and critic
Zarganar, author Minlu and director and author Maung Wunnah.

Following the Swan offerings to the protesting monks, on September 25,
authorities arrested U Win Naing and Zargana. But Kyaw Thu, who evaded the
arrest, remained in hiding in Rangoon, colleagues said.

Authorities raided the actor's residence as well as his parent's home
searching for him, family members said.

Kyaw Thu, after winning the Burmese movie academy award in 2005, had
founded a free funeral service association and had volunteered in helping
the poor and needy for their
funeral services free of charge.

____________________________________

October 3, Kaladan News
BDR arrests 11 monks entering Bangladesh

Teknaf, Bangladesh : Eleven monks were arrested in Teknaf by Bangladesh
Rifles (BDR) yesterday when they were entering Bangladesh from Burma ,
said a local from the border.

The Nasaka, Burma ’s Border Security Force has tightened security on the
Burma-Bangladesh border since September 19, as protests continued in Burma
. Some protesters have started to flee the country to evade arrest
following the crack down on demonstrators.

Yesterday, at about 5:30 p.m. 11-monks entered Bangladesh through the
border in Teknaf. They were arrested by BDR Battalion No. 23 in Teknaf
under the Cox's Bazaar district, said an aide close to the BDR.

They were handed over to the police station in Teknaf for interrogation.
The arrested monks claimed that they are Bangladesh citizens. They said
they went to Burma to acquire religious lessons, the aide added.

BDR has also put in place tight security on the Bangladesh-Burma border to
stop protesters from Burma entering the country, border villagers said.

____________________________________

October 3, Washington Post
Marking time in Thailand; millions of Burmese who fled violence at home
languish in limbo near the Border - Edward Cody

The wooden shacks of Mae La Camp have multiplied ceaselessly over the
years, rising in a lush green forest only a few miles from the border with
Burma. Over time, they have spread across several hilltops, spanned a
little stream and become long-term shelter for 40,000 Burmese refugees.

The latest spasm of turmoil across the border, concentrated in Rangoon and
Mandalay, Burma's two major cities, has drawn broad attention and urgent
demands from President Bush and other world leaders for political reform
by Burma's long-ruling military junta. But conflict -- ethnic as well as
political -- has riven Burma for years, sending a steady stream of
refugees into Thailand and creating a huge and potentially destabilizing
foreign population all along the border.

Kraisak Choonhavan, a Thai senator until last year's military coup d'etat,
said Thais cringe when they hear Western leaders say Burma's repressive
military government previously had not generated high-level attention
because it did not create a security problem beyond its borders. Viewed
from Thailand, he said, Burma's junta, in power for more than 40 years,
and the recurring explosions of violence it has engendered are clearly
risks because of the number of people fleeing here for safety.

"For us, it is indeed a security problem," he said.

Thai government officials estimate that 3 million Burmese have taken up
residence in Thailand over the years. Some have been confined to camps
such as Mae La, the largest of several refugee communities closely guarded
by Thai soldiers. Others have moved farther from the border, seeking
employment and, to some degree, melting into the Thai population. The
actual number could be higher, officials said, because many of the Burmese
fleeing conflict, repression and poverty have not registered with the
government and nongovernmental agencies that provide care.

In the border region around Mae Sot, a market city 30 miles south of here,
the Burmese population has grown into the majority, estimated at up to 70
percent. "When you walk around Mae Sot, sometimes you can't even hear
anybody speaking Thai," said an Australian relief worker.

The entry of so many desperate Burmese refugees into the labor market has
created downward pressure on wage levels, causing resentment among Thai
workers. Kraisak said some Thai industries that need cheap labor have come
to rely on the Burmese, some of whom accept particularly low wages because
they are below the radar of Thai immigration authorities.

Soldiers have allowed Burmese refugees to leave Mae La freely in recent
days, for instance, because it is harvest season in the border region and
Thai farmers need extra hands for low-paying fruit-picking jobs, said
Lawla Say, a Burmese refugee and medical worker.

Thai authorities, although far from happy about the influx, have allowed
the Burmese to remain on humanitarian grounds. But increasingly good
relations between Burma and the Thai government, which is also run by a
military junta, have meant controls on Thai-based anti-government
activity. Refugees and relief workers said dozens of Burmese were deported
across the border Sunday after demonstrations backing the uprising in
Rangoon.

Refugees are picked off buses regularly and transported back across the
border because they lack requisite registration cards, relief workers
said. But often they return the next day. Crossing the border has never
been hard. Burmese were seen Monday paddling unmolested across the muddy
Moei River from Myawadi, just inside Burma, atop truck inner tubes topped
with canvas to make a dry seat. Others entered legally across Friendship
Bridge leading directly into downtown Mae Sot.

As the Burmese military clamps down inside the country, with more than
15,000 troops said to be stationed in and around Rangoon and up to 2,000
monks and other activists arrested, Thai authorities have begun bracing
for another flow across the border. Unless there is a political
resolution, relief workers here said, it is only a matter of time before
the monks and secular political agitators who are hiding make their way to
the border.

Khin Ohmar, who was a student demonstrator in Rangoon during a similar
uprising in 1988, said it took her and fellow protesters two months to
sneak across Burma and into the safety of Thailand. Now 39 and a Mae
Sot-based anti-government activist, Ohmar said she sees on the televised
faces of protesters in Rangoon the same frustration and anger that she and
the other students felt in 1988.

"They are saying the same things," she said. "They have the same level of
outrage on their faces."

The hope among Burmese here is that, this time, after all the attention
brought into focus by Internet reports and video images, international
pressure will force change on the 12-member junta, the State Peace and
Development Council, she said.

A special U.N. envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, met separately on Tuesday with the
junta chief, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi
in hopes of loosening controls and starting dialogue between the two
camps, the Reuters news agency reported from Rangoon. There was no word on
what if any results the talks yielded.

Gambari, a former Nigerian foreign minister, carried a message from Suu
Kyi to the military government, U.N. sources said, and was to return to
New York on Friday. Gambari expects to return to the country in early
November at the government's request, the sources said.

But the refugees here have heard talk of dialogue before, and they are
still in the camps. "If the international [community] doesn't give
pressure, if it's only voices, then there is no hope," said Say, the
medical worker, as he stood just outside the fence separating Mae La's
refugees from the rest of Thailand.

Say, 35, who sought asylum here 20 years ago, said that as a young
teenager he fought in the Burmese jungle alongside Karen separatists, who
have mounted one of at least three long-running ethnic rebellions against
the junta's 400,000-member army. More than half the camp's 40,000
residents are Karen, he said, but some are also ethnic Burmese similar to
those protesting in the cities now.

Monks from that group organized a protest Sunday in the camp, he added.
And whatever their ethnic groups, he said, the refugees have been tuning
in shortwave radios to listen to news from abroad about what is happening
in their country. They all share the goal of returning home, said another
veteran of the Karen rebellion, Maede La, 35.

"Living here is like confinement," Say said.

____________________________________
BUSINESS / TRADE

October 3, Asia Times
Thailand a key to new Myanmar sanctions - Andrew Symon

As international condemnation mounts against Myanmar's military government
and its recent armed crackdown on street demonstrators, the country's
money-spinning oil-and-gas sector could soon be the target of new and
tighter Western-led sanctions. Should new bans on energy trade and
investment come to pass, more than any other regional country Thailand
will find itself caught between a diplomatic rock and an economic hard
place.

Natural gas exports to Thailand are by far the Myanmar government's
largest source of foreign revenues, accounting for nearly US$160 million
per month in take-or-pay contracts negotiated before the 1997-98 Asian
financial crisis - and well before the recent spike in global energy
prices. According to statistics from the Asian Development Bank, gas
exports contribute nearly one-third of Myanmar's total official export
revenues. And there are several big new bilateral investment plans
underway to pump up further natural gas and electricity exports from
Myanmar to Thailand.

Under former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand came under US
criticism for expanding its business ties with Myanmar's junta. His
government's so-called "forward engagement" policy towards Myanmar was out
of line with US- and European-led trade and investment sanctions, but was
in accord with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which,
since admitting Myanmar into the grouping in 1997, had preferred economic
engagement over isolationism to influence the regime.

After the recent military crackdown, however, ASEAN has been openly
critical, signaling to some analysts that the grouping might try to throw
its lot in with whatever punitive measures Western countries may move to
impose. However any meaningful collective action would need to include
Thailand and it seems doubtful the country's interim military government
would be willing to pull the plug on crucial energy supplies for
morality's sake.

That means any new sanctions against Myanmar's energy industry are likely
to have as marginal an impact on Myanmar's ruling junta's staying power as
the punitive measures the US first imposed in 1997. China and India are
both bidding to negotiate greater access to Myanmar's untapped energy
resources. And both countries have notably refrained from criticizing the
regime after last week's crackdown. Energy analysts note that if Thailand
were to abandon its contractual arrangements in Myanmar, China and India
would likely move to take up the slack.

Natural gas is Myanmar's hotly contested prize, with several regional
countries bidding to explore new blocks up for tender. In the early 20th
century Myanmar, then known as Burma, was an important regional oil
producer from its deep onshore fields. However, oil production had
dwindled in recent decades and large - although not massive - natural gas
resources have more recently been discovered and foreign investments have
helped to boost output.

New sanctions targeting existing rather than only new investments in
Myanmar's energy industry would at least temporarily dent the regime's
ability to profit from these resources. Potential targets of Western-led
and ASEAN-upheld sanctions could hit some of the largest energy companies
in the world, including France's Total, the US's Chevron, Malaysia's
Petronas, South Korea's Daewoo and Korea Gas Corp, and, hypothetically,
Thailand's PTT Exploration and Production (PTTEP).

There are also several small and medium sized Western upstream oil and gas
companies - including so-called larrikin outfits - which currently operate
below the political radar, but if forced to withdraw due to new sanctions
on existing investments would at least temporarily disrupt Myanmar's
ability to tap offshore wells, until China, India or another
non-Western-aligned country moved in to fill the technology gap.

Energized competition
The politics of imposing new sanctions against Myanmar would be highly
complex and potentially damaging to the Thai economy if Bangkok were to
take part. Myanmar is already expanding its energy export base, emerging
as a key new supplier to China and possibly also to India and South Korea.
China and India are locked in competition for gas supply from fields now
operated by South Korean companies offshore near western Myanmar.

China has secured at least the initial advantage for a gas pipeline plan
approved by the Myanmar government to send supplies to southwest China and
the idea for another pipeline taking product landed in Myanmar from Africa
and the Middle East - giving China an additional supply route to the
congested Malacca Strait - is also on the table.

India has mooted a similarly ambitious pipeline plan with Myanmar, which
conceivably would send gas through Bangladesh and supply areas in eastern
India. But it's still unclear if Dhaka, which has stonewalled other energy
projects with India, would support any India-Myanmar initiative which
passes through its territory.

Thailand's own supplies of natural gas, which currently fuel 65% of the
country's total electricity output, are fast diminishing at a time
industrial demand for the resource is simultaneously rapidly rising.
According to BP figures, proven gas reserves in the Gulf of Thailand will
likely run dry over the next 17 years. There are still untapped resources
in the joint Thai-Malaysia development area as well as in the contested
overlapping claims area with Cambodia - but even if maximized are not
expected to bridge the emerging shortfall.

Meanwhile, state energy company PTT predicts that national natural gas
demand will grow from 3.32 billion cubic feet per day (cfpd) at present to
6.1 billion cfpd by 2015. Thailand's power generation capacity, meanwhile,
is projected to increase to 58,000 megawatts by 2021 from its current
level 28,500 megawatts in the current power plan. Myanmar gas currently
meets over 25% of total Thai demand and plans to steadily increase those
volumes are now on the cards.

Gas is now piped from the offshore Yadana field, operated by France's
Total in partnership with the US's Chevron, as well as from the offshore
Yetagun field in the eastern Andaman Sea. These two fields alone supply an
average of 900 million cfpd to Thailand. Volumes from those same fields
are set to increase by another 300 million cfpd by 2011 in a big new
offshore project operated by Thailand's PTTEP.

Additionally, there are a growing number of joint Thai-Myanmar hydropower
projects planned or under development on the Salween River, which forms
part of the shared border between the two countries. These include the
7,110 megawatt Tar-Hsan and 1,500 megawatt Hut Gyi dams, both of which
were signed by Myanmar's junta and Thai companies, including the state-run
monopoly the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand.

Both controversial projects are designed specifically to supply power to
Thailand, but analysts say could conceivably be rerouted to China if
Bangkok were to back new Western-led sanctions. China is currently backing
other hydropower projects on the upper reaches of the same river designed
to supply power to its fast growing south-western regions.

So far Thai officials have sent mixed signals about their intentions and
have downplayed Thailand's significance to new sanctions imposed against
the regime. Defense Minister Boonrawd Somtas told reporters that the
current protests were unlikely to unseat Myanmar's junta and that
political change was unlikely unless China, India and Russia exerted
"serious pressure".

Meanwhile, top Thai energy official Piyasavati Amranand has said Myanmar's
recent troubles have prevented his officials from negotiating any new gas
supply deals and that any planned talks would be delayed until the
political situation stabilizes. At the same time, he said that Thailand's
intention to secure new natural gas supplies from Myanmar remains
unchanged.

Andrew Symon is a Singapore-based journalist and analyst specializing in
energy and mining issues.

____________________________________
REGIONAL

October 3, USA TODAY
China not likely to rebuke Burma after crackdown; Top ally's political
influence limited, Asia analysts say - Calum MacLeod

Beijing -- Burma's bloody crackdown has silenced Buddhist monks and other
protesters but raised calls for China, the country's top ally, to push for
change in the isolated, military-led nation also known as Myanmar.

China buys oil, natural gas, timber, gems and minerals from Burma, and
2million Chinese migrants now work in the country of 50million.

Before Burma's generals sent troops into the streets last week to crush
protests, China issued rare calls for restraint. Since then, China has
been largely silent, despite helping to arrange a visit to Burma by United
Nations envoy Ibrahim Gambari.

Analysts say they do not expect China to take a more active role, akin to
the one it has in Sudan. China sent a special envoy to Sudan to try to
defuse tensions in Darfur after calls by international activists to
boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

As in Burma, China has powerful commercial interests in Sudan. But China's
political influence over its Asian neighbor is limited, and its priority
is stability in the region -- not a more open, democratic Burma, experts
say.

"People expect too much of China, yet it doesn't really have much clout.
The Chinese don't want regime change in Burma. They are comfortable
dealing with this regime," says Bertil Lintner, a Bangkok-based expert on
Burmese affairs. "We can expect quiet diplomacy at best."

Burma was a vassal state of China until the British took over in the 19th
century. Today, the Chinese are back, providing military and financial aid
to their secretive neighbor.

First lady Laura Bush has argued that China can move Burma's intensely
wary military junta -- which is accused of widespread human rights
violations including slave labor -- in the right direction.

China has a "huge amount of influence over Burma," she said in July. She
accused China of "propping up" a failed state.

The first lady suggested pro-democracy groups could use China's desire for
a smooth, politics-free Olympics to press China to use its influence to
get Burma's generals to ease repression.

Others say China must tread carefully because it is hampered by its
history, which includes past support for Burma's opposition Communist
Party.

"The Burmese don't like China and see it as a big, dangerous neighbor,"
Lintner says.

Burmese fear economic domination by China. The Chinese "do not want to
jeopardize the influence they have gained since then by being a big
bully," Lintner says.

Ian Storey, a fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in
Singapore, agrees. "There is a long tradition of xenophobia and
nationalism in Burma. The Chinese have to be very careful. ... At one
point in the protests, the monks stopped outside the Chinese Embassy, and
the protests had a bit of an anti-China feel: 'You're the ones giving the
oxygen of support for this regime,'" Storey says.

China and Burma grew close in the early 1990s, when both were shunned by
the West for crushing pro-democracy protests: in 1988 in Burma and 1989 in
China.

China's Communist-dominated domestic politics also explain its reluctance
to intervene.

"If you support peaceful political change in Burma, then it opens too many
doors and questions like 'Why aren't you supporting it here?'" says
Russell Leigh Moses, a Beijing-based China specialist.

Professor Shen Dingli, an international relations expert at Shanghai's
Fudan University, says China won't step in and try to calm the regime in
Burma because of its long-held view that dissent is strictly an internal
matter.

"Morally, China is doing no better than Myanmar, and we are in no position
to tell them what to do," Shen says. "China has used tanks to kill people
on Tiananmen Square (in 1989). It is Myanmar's sovereign right to kill
their own people, too. Only the U.N. Security Council can decide who can
intervene."

____________________________________

October 3, Mizzima News
India asks Burma to probe crackdown, opposes sanctions - Syed Ali Mujtaba

New Delhi: India has strongly opposed sanctions on Burma but at the same
time has asked the military regime to "consider undertaking an inquiry
into recent incidents and the use of force" against the people in the
peaceful protests in the country.

The Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Navtej Sarna said that
External Affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee met his Burmese counterpart U
Nyan Win on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Monday in New
York.

Mr Mukherjee urged Mr U Nyan Win to complete the process of national
reconciliation and political reform that was started by the military
regime, the MEA spokesperson said.

The Minister also discussed the Burma situation with UN secretary-general
Ban ki Moon where he made it clear that India would oppose sanctions,
Sarna said.

"I do not subscribe to penal sanctions at all times. We should instead try
to engage the country concerned in negotiations, in talks, in dialogue.
Sanctions from the Security Council should be the last resort because we
find that the frequent use of this very powerful instrument becomes
counter-productive. Instead of correcting the errant rulers, it ends in
the suffering of innocent people," Mukherjee told UN Secretary General,
Sarna said.

Sarna said also said. "The UN special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, has been in
touch with India on developments in Burma." Gambari flew out of Yangon on
Tuesday after finally meeting Myanmar's top military leader, Senior
General Than Shwe, and the second in command, Gen Maung Aye. He stopped
briefly in Yangon to meet imprisoned leader Aung San Suu Kyi for the
second time.

____________________________________
INTERNATIONAL

October 3, Mizzima News
UN Rights body wants Burmese junta to allow investigation - Mungpi

For the first time, an outraged United Nations Human Rights Council has
condemned the Burmese military junta for its violent crackdown on
protesters and demanded it be allowed to immediately investigate the
situation in Burma.

The Council, which held a special session on the human rights situation in
Burma on Tuesday, passed a resolution that demanded the junta allow a
special Rapporteur to investigate it.

The resolution said it "strongly deplores continued violent repression of
peaceful demonstrators in Burma, including beatings, killings, arbitrary
detentions and enforced disappearances."

"The council calls on the government of Burma to allow Paulo Sergio
Pinheiro, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights, to
visit Burma and investigate the situation," Aung Myo Min, a Burmese human
rights activists, attending the special session on Burma at the council's
fifth meeting, told Mizzima.

The Burmese government last week resorted to a brutal crackdown on
Buddhist monk-led protesters by opening fire on them in Rangoon and
arresting more than 200 monks in midnight raids on monasteries.

While the government officially admitted to about 10 deaths during the
crackdown on the biggest anti-government protest in nearly 20 years of
military-rule in Burma , activists said the death toll could be in
hundreds if not in thousands.

Sources in Rangoon told Mizzima that several bodies of monks have been
found floating in the Rangoon River and the bodies bear evidence that the
monks had been beaten to death.

The Burmese Army conducted midnight raids on at least 15 monasteries and
arrested at least 2000 monks, sources said.

While monasteries remained sealed off in Mandalay, the second largest city
in Burma, authorities in other parts also launched midnight raids on homes
of several leading activists as well as members of the opposition party,
sources added.

The HRC, in a rare criticism against a government, agreed to place the
findings of the special Rapporteur to the UN General Assembly and to the
Security Council, which observers say will give more evidence to discuss
at the UNSC.

However, Aung Myo Min, director of the Thailand based Human Rights
Education Institute of Burma (HREIB), expressed concern over the
effectiveness of the council's resolution as it lacks enforcement should
the Burmese junta flatly deny access to the special Rapporteur.

"The question is what if the junta denies entry to the special Rapporteur?
We are also worried on reports that the junta is destroying evidence of
human rights violations, so even if the junta agrees to let the Rapporteur
in, can he find the true facts," Aung Myo Min asked.

Pinheiro, who has been denied entry into Burma over the past two years,
along with six other UN human rights experts on September 28, issued a
statement condemning the Burmese junta for its brutal crackdown on
protesters and called on the HRC to "show strong resolve in taking the
steps necessary to restore respect for human rights in Myanmar [Burma]."

____________________________________

October 3, Agence France Presse
US or EU must lead new effort to end Myanmar crisis: experts - P.
Parameswaran

The United States or the European Union must spearhead an initiative with
China, India, Japan and ASEAN states to prod Myanmar's ruling junta to end
its brutal crackdown on dissent and embrace democratic reforms, experts
say.

Two decades after the junta grabbed power, the Western policy of imposing
trade, investment and diplomatic sanctions and the Asian strategy of
constructive engagement have failed to bring about reforms in the
resource-rich Southeast Asian nation.

The military generals, who suppressed a peaceful uprising in 1988 by
killing an estimated 3,000 civilians, again crushed a peaceful
pro-democracy uprising led by Buddhist monks last week, with at least 13
people reported killed and about 1,000 detained.

As the United Nations faces an uphill task of bringing about
reconciliation, experts say the time has come for an end to the sanctions
versus engagement battle, and to build an international consensus aimed at
giving incentives for the junta to reform and increasing the price it will
pay if it fails to change.

Although this may seem like an unlikely proposition, it has more potential
today than ever before, said Michael Green, a former top Asia adviser to
President George W. Bush, and Derek Mitchell, an Asian expert at the
Pentagon during the Bill Clinton administration.

One way to proceed, they said, would be for Washington to lead a group
that also included the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN),
China, India and Japan to develop a road map for Myanmar's junta with
"concrete goalposts."

It should lay out development assistance and other benefits the junta will
enjoy if it pursued true political reform and national reconciliation and
the costs it would suffer if it continued to be intransigent, they said in
a joint paper following the recent turmoil in Myanmar.

The junta should be given assurances of regional support for Myanmar's
territorial integrity and security and the five parties' commitment to
provide, under the appropriate conditions, the necessary assistance, they
said.

"The current approach -- with each party pursuing its individual policy
with an eye as much toward competing with the others for its own advantage
as toward promoting change in Burma (Myanmar) -- has clearly played into
the junta's hands," Green and Mitchell said.

Washington, on its part, will also need to relax its strict prohibition on
official high-level contact with the military generals, they said.

But Mohan Malik, an Asian expert at the Hawaii-based Asia-Pacific Center
for Security Studies, said the European Union (EU) instead of the United
States should play a lead role in such a diplomatic effort.

The Chinese and Myanmar's junta are reportedly suspicious of any
Washington involvement, he said.

He said during his visits to Asia, he was told by various parties that
"there will be no takers for a lead US role mainly because of China's
hostility and the (Myanmar junta's) suspicion about US involvement."

The US invasion of Iraq also had damaged US credibility in Asia, Malik said.

"The EU could take the lead and sponsor this with the involvement of
China, Japan, India and Thailand or Indonesia because the EU won't invoke
any concerns that the US participation involvement would invoke from the
Chinese and the (junta)," he said.

China is the biggest ally of and top weapons supplier to Myanmar.

Another diplomatic offensive to rein in the Myanmar problem could come
from China, India, Japan and the 10 ASEAN states with "an Asian solution
to an Asian problem but the push has still to come from outside the
region."

____________________________________

October 3, Deutsche Presse-Agentur
EU members agree on tougher sanctions on Myanmar

European Union member states agreed Wednesday to impose new sanctions on
the government of Myanmar while looking for ways to boost humanitarian aid
to the country's population.

At a meeting of the ambassadors of the EU's 27 member states in Brussels,
representatives "agreed to toughen EU sanctions against the regime in
Burma" and "requested the European Commission to explore ways to increase
humanitarian assistance," a statement announced.

They also called for further diplomatic action on all levels, including in
the UN, the statement from the Portuguese government, which currently
holds the presidency of the EU, said.

And they called for diplomats to engage "key players, especially in the
region," in an apparent reference to regional superpower China, whose
input is seen as crucial to any efforts to defuse the explosive situation
in the troubled country.

Experts will now work on the details of the targeted sanctions, which are
meant to punish members of Myanmar's ruling junta and their closest allies
without harming the population, in time for a meeting of EU ministers in
Luxembourg on October 15.

Current EU sanctions include an arms embargo, a ban on loans to companies
and persons linked with the government, and an entry ban on 405 members of
the regime, the military and their families.

____________________________________

October 3, Associated Press
No word on progress from UN envoy's Burma mission


A UN envoy remained tightlipped Wednesday about his meetings with Burma's
junta chief and democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, a highly watched mission
that followed the regime's deadly crackdown on democracy protesters.

An eerie quiet prevailed in Rangoon where the junta has continued its
scare tactics. Military vehicles patrolled the streets overnight blaring
warnings from loudspeakers that soldiers were searching for protesters:
"We have photographs. We are going to make arrests!"

Ibrahim Gambari, the UN Secretary-General’s special envoy on Burma, was in
Singapore Wednesday after his four-day trip to Burma. He and the junta's
reclusive leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe sat in the same room together Tuesday
for more than an hour in the remote capital of Naypyidaw. But neither side
issued any comment that could satisfy the world's hopes for a halt to the
junta's harsh crackdown on protesters.

After meeting the generals, Gambari flew to Rangoon to meet Aung San Suu
Kyi, the detained Nobel laureate who has come to symbolize the yearning
for democracy in Burma. It was his second meeting in three days with Suu
Kyi, who has spent 12 of the last 18 years under house arrest.

The United Nations released photos of a grim-faced Gambari and an equally
somber Suu Kyi shaking hands at Burma's State Guest house.

On Wednesday, Gambari was scheduled to meet Singaporean Prime Minister Lee
Hsien Loong, whose country currently chairs the 10-member Association of
Southeast Asian Nations, which has expressed revulsion at the junta's
violent suppression of demonstrators.
As he headed to the meeting, Gambari avoided reporters by leaving his
Singapore hotel through the basement.

Gambari is expected to brief UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the UN
Security Council on Friday on the outcome of his trip, diplomats said.

____________________________________

October 2, International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC)
Burma: No clean hands for foreign businesses
"Leave Burma Now": ITUC Tells Multinationals

Brussels,:  The ITUC is writing to several hundred companies known or
suspected of having business links to Burma to pull out of the country and
"stop propping up the brutal regime", and is calling on governments to
extend economic sanctions to cover all economic sectors.  While numerous
foreign companies have ceased doing business with Burma, under pressure
from the international trade union movement and human rights and democracy
groups, many multinational companies still have relations with the
military dictatorship.

"No company can claim to have clean hands if it is doing business in or
with Burma, since the Generals take their cut out of every deal. We have
been calling for several years on companies to disinvest, and those who
have refused to do so will now be exposed to the full weight of public 
condemnation for effectively supporting a ruthless, corrupt and bloody
dictatorship", said ITUC General Secretary Guy Ryder.

Burma's economy is built on absolute repression of its workforce, with the
use of forced labour still rife in the country despite international
pressure on the regime to respect fundamental rights. The case for full
and effective sanctions is now absolutely compelling, and any company
which does not withdraw voluntarily must be made to do so by governments
and international and regional organisations including the United
Nations and the European Union.  The international trade union movement
and the European Trade Union Confederation have for many years called on
the EU to include Burmese state monopolies covering gas, oil, mining,
tropical woods and precious stones in the list of companies with which
EU-based multinationals are forbidden to do business.

"The junta's murderous reaction to the demonstrations in recent days shows
how far they will go to maintain total power, and continue lining their
own pockets at the expense of the massive majority who are deprived of
access to proper healthcare, education, decent food and other essentials. 
Only a tiny few benefit from Burma's links to foreign business, and they
are the very authors of the murder, torture and  violence which is still
going on," said Ryder.

Top of the ITUC list are several key multinationals with well-documented
business links to Burma, including Caterpillar (USA), China National
Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC),
Daewoo International Corporation (Korea), Siemens (Germany), Gas Authority
of India (GAIL), GlaxoSmithKline (UK ), Hyundai (Korea), ONGC Videsh Ltd
(India), Swift (Belgium), and Total (France).  Several hundred other
companies are currently being investigated for links to Burma, and the
results will be published shortly.  Military aid will be a special focus
of the trade union campaign, which will also look closely at the junta's
growing economic links with India, China and several other countries. 
India's trade for example has grown from some US$ 341 million in 2004-5 to
$650 million the following year, with a target of US$ 1billion set for
2006-7.

"Companies which think they can continue to pretend that their business
with Burma somehow helps ordinary people there are seriously mistaken.
They will come under unprecedented pressure to pull out," said Ryder.

A meeting of the global trade union committee on Workers' Capital this
week in Madrid will also examine shareholder and investment strategies in
support of the worldwide campaign.

The ITUC is asking its affiliates to join worldwide Burma democracy and
human rights demonstrations this Saturday.

Founded on 1 November 2006, the ITUC represents 168 million workers in 153
countries and territories and has 305 national affiliates. Website:
http://www.ituc-csi.org

For more information, please contact the ITUC Press Department on: +32
2224 0204 or +32 476 621 018.

____________________________________
OPINION / OTHER

October 3, Irrawaddy
Generals extend blood-stained hands to Gambari - Kyaw Zwa Moe

UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari ended his mission to Burma on Tuesday,
leaving the Burmese people still helpless before a ruthless regime
determined to stamp out opposition no matter how much abhorrence it
arouses in the international community.

What did he achieve? We’ll have to wait for a day or two more, probably
until Friday, before knowing the answer to that question.

But already an answer is forming. Just look at the pictorial clues. The UN
released a collection of official photographs that resemble a family
snapshot album.

After an absence from the public scene of some weeks, the top generals
line up for a photocell with their distinguished guest from New York. Than
Shwe and the others—Maung Aye, Thura Shwe Mann and acting Prime Minister
Thein Sein—seem almost smug in their freshly-laundered uniforms. Than Shwe
has reason to be satisfied—he looks considerably younger than his advanced
age, officially given as 74.

They all seem blissfully unaware of the carnage they have caused in the
streets and monasteries of their country.

Newsreel footage of the photo call shows Gambari giving a slight bow as he
firmly shakes hand with the generals. He smiles—but is there really
anything to smile about? Did he have problems removing the stains left by
the press of the generals’ blood-soaked palms?

Contrast this bizarre scene with the photographs of an unsmiling Aung San
Suu Kyi meeting Gambari at a government guesthouse near her home, where
she has spent nearly 12 of the past 18 years under house arrest. She
certainly had nothing to smile about.

It’s deplorable that Gambari allowed himself to be used as a propaganda
tool by the regime, who had already humiliated him and the organization he
represented by keeping him waiting two days before summoning him to a
meeting. On the first day of Gambari’s “urgent” mission to Burma he was
sent off on a sightseeing tour of remote areas of northern Burma, which
included a visit to a rally of regime “supporters” paid or pressed to
attend.

Again, the contrast is staggering—between these stage-managed photographs
and the pictures of the bloody events in Rangoon.

Even as Gambari was meeting the generals, security forces in Rangoon,
nearly 400 km to the south, were tightening their steel grip over the
city, continuing their raids on city homes and reportedly sending arrested
monks to detention camps far removed from the former capital.

At least 2,000 monks and protesters are being detained in detention
centers and jails. No one knows their fate. Many could already have died
from abuse, torture and from the wounds they received during their clash
with troops and police. Secret military courts have sentenced an unknown
number of monks to long terms of imprisonment.

It’s clear that Gambari was in no position, and possessed no real
authority, to challenge the generals directly. He is just the latest in a
line of UN special envoys who, between then, have achieved absolutely
nothing.

By sending them on futile missions to Burma, the UN has only raised false
hopes and has contributed to the generals’ grip on power.

On a previous visit to Burma, Gambari said the junta appeared ready to
“turn a new page.” It must have been a blank page. Arousing false hope in
this way only helps the generals survive.

The Burmese people are crushed by the junta and powerless to resist. But
must this mean that the UN is to remain powerless to help them?

Betrayed by their own government, the Burmese people are now betrayed by
the UN, from whom they can expect no help. Instead of being part of the
solution to the Burmese crisis, the UN is in reality part of the problem.

But the Burmese people’s struggle is not yet over. More blood will
inevitably flow. And Gambari, or whoever the UN sends on a next junket to
Burma, will again be seen shaking the blood-soaked hands of the generals.

____________________________________

October 8, The Weekly Standard
The Saffron Revolution; Bloody but hopeful days in Burma - Stephen Schwartz

At this writing, on Friday, September 28, the Burmese military regime has
brought its heavy hammer down on the thousands of people demonstrating
against the country's 45-year-old dictatorship. Police and troops have
fired on protesters, killing at least 13 people. Buddhist monasteries have
been raided and sealed, including the Shwedagon Pagoda, the most famous
and beautiful building in Rangoon, and some 200 monks are under arrest.
Internet traffic, which dissidents used to report events to the world, has
been cut.

It may be pardonable to begin comment on a land almost completely sealed
off from the rest of the world with the only trace of humor in its
situation--the difficulty some English-speaking newsrooms have had in
deciding whether to adopt the nationalist renaming of the country and its
main city, from Burma and Rangoon to Myanmar and Yangon. The Washington
Post sticks with the former; the New York Times and other leading dailies
prefer the new system, though the mouthful "Myanmarese" has failed to gain
currency, leaving pretty much everyone still saying "Burmese."

Whatever one calls the country, its history since World War II has been
one of almost unrelieved tragedy. Ruled as a part of British India from
1886 to 1948, it was once rich enough to be aptly symbolized by the gold
of its pagodas--especially the thousands in the town of Pagan. An
earthquake in 1975 damaged many of Pagan's treasures, but that destruction
was merely physical--nothing compared with the political and psychological
cruelties Burma has endured.

Burma has been subjected to just about every form of political and
governmental brutalization the 20th century--and now the 21st--could
offer. It has much in common with other victims of state socialism,
including Cuba and the former Yugoslavia.

Like Castro's fiefdom, it fell from significant prosperity to extreme
poverty, becoming a backward, ramshackle place. Like Yugoslavia, it was
never a genuine nation-state. Although the CIA World Fact Book (which
calls it Burma) claims the population of 47 million is 68 percent ethnic
Burman, some question that figure. The many minority groups in the
northern and eastern highlands, usually called "hill tribes," probably
comprise at least a third of the population. They include several major
and dozens of minor identities, with Karens and Shans being the best
known, because of their long armed struggle for freedom.

While ethnic Burmans are typically Buddhist, the Karens are Christians and
the Shans have their own religion mixing Buddhist and animist elements. A
Muslim minority spread throughout the country is indistinguishable from
the Burman majority in language, but has also been violently repressed,
and hundreds of thousands of Burmese Muslims have fled west to neighboring
Bangladesh.

Burma has not enjoyed real peace in over 50 years. Already in the 1930s it
saw growing nationalist agitation against British rule. With the outbreak
of World War II, "the Thirty Comrades," a group of Burmese patriots
opposed to Britain, were recruited by the Japanese and trained in Tokyo to
lead a "Burma Independence Army" (BIA). In 1942, the Japanese invaded
Burma. They were welcomed as liberators by the anti-British populace, and
the BIA collaborated with them in ruling the country. Quickly, however,
the new invaders' atrocious behavior alienated the people, and the
resulting resistance movement had a strong radical-leftist flavor.

The leader of the collaborationist, then anti-Japanese, forces was General
Aung San, the most charismatic and popular of the nationalists. His
assassination in 1947 was a national trauma. With the fall of the
Japanese, Communist and ethnic independence fighters such as the Karens
sought to establish power in their own enclaves. Even after independence
in 1948 and the establishment of a nationalist/populist government--a
"light" one-party state--turmoil continued, fed partly by China, which
treats Burma as its satellite.

In the "nonaligned" dreamland of the 1950s, when figures like Tito in
Yugoslavia, Nasser in Egypt, and Sukarno in Indonesia (that last having
also previously cooperated with Japanese invaders) claimed to lead the
former colonies toward progress, Burma was a major player. Its
representative at the United Nations, U Thant, served as U.N.
secretary-general from 1961 to 1971, even after Ne Win (one of the
original Thirty Comrades) and the military seized control of the country
in 1962.

Ne Win committed Burma to economic and political ruin by adopting a scheme
called "the Burmese Way to Socialism," based on total isolation, the
looting of the economy for the benefit of the military caste, and
continued suppression of the minority peoples. He was a confirmed believer
in astrology and numerology, who reconfigured the national currency, the
kyat, in bills of 45 and 90 units in the hope of increasing his own
longevity.

Ne Win left power in 1988, the year of a democratic movement that the
military suppressed by killing thousands, and which brought Aung San Suu
Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) to the fore. Esteemed as
the daughter of Aung San, she commanded respect in her own right for her
dignity and simplicity. Since the late 1980s, and even after she was
awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, Aung San Suu Kyi has been in and out
of house arrest, where she remains today.

Burma's current leader is General Than Shwe, another megalomaniac, who is
busy moving the capital from Rangoon to a "new city" 200 miles to the
north called Naypidaw. Than Shwe seems bent on delivering another lesson
to his subjects and the world about the defiance of Rangoon's military
rulers. But before he shut down the Internet, the whole world saw the
affecting sight of Buddhist monks and nuns, in their maroon and saffron
robes, peacefully protected and assisted by ordinary citizens, filling the
streets of Rangoon and Mandalay in orderly protest.

Some Western pundits have argued that a China now oriented toward
capitalist growth has an incentive to dissuade the Burmese army from
administering a bloodbath. Such optimism about Beijing, however, is
vain.The only hope for the rescue of the tormented peoples of Burma
resides in the solidarity expressed by President George W. Bush at the
U.N. General Assembly when he said, "Americans are outraged by the
situation in Burma. The ruling junta remains unyielding, yet the people's
desire for freedom is unmistakable."

Cynics may decry the president's stand as a mere effort to renew the
vision of democratization that accompanied U.S. intervention in Iraq. But
Burma--like Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzia before it--shows that the weak
links in the global chain of tyranny are breaking, one by one, and that
the worldwide movement for entrepreneurship, accountability, and popular
sovereignty can assert itself, with or without the help of outsiders. For
Americans and all haters of oppression, the message is clear: The United
States should show effective support for the aspirations of Burma's
diverse citizens; tougher sanctions against the regime are only the
beginning.

____________________________________

October 3, The Times (London)
Boycotting Burma makes things worse - Carl Mortished

The shouting and hand-wringing by politicians over Burma is almost over.
Soon, attention will turn to the inglorious task of finding a scapegoat
for political embarrassment. In Brussels there are calls for more
sanctions against the Rangoon junta and, in response to big talk from the
French President, his Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner is waving a little
stick and a European company, perhaps Total, will be held up to example.

Burma is a tiny sore, a snag in the woodwork that occasionally trips us up
and begs the question: why did we not mend this problem years ago?
Tellingly, when asked about British investments in Burma, David Miliband,
the Foreign Secretary, admitted that he could think of none. He might have
asked John Battle, a former Labour Foreign and Commonwealth Office
minister, who in 2000 led a campaign against Premier Oil, a small British
explorer that found gas in the Andaman Sea.

Campaigners latched on to Premier, the only significant British investor,
and made wild accusations that the company used slaves to build a gas
pipeline. Premier became embroiled in the politics and played a clever
game. Instead of distancing itself, it became more engaged with the
regime, forcing embarrassed military officers to take part in human rights
seminars and, occasionally acting as an intermediary, helping to secure
the release from prison of James Mawdsley, a young Briton who had staged a
rash protest in Rangoon.

Still, Premier tired of the Government's nagging and the cost in
management time of dealing with Burma. It quit in 2002, selling its
investment in the Yetagun gasfield to Petronas, the Malaysian oil company.

That was five years ago and what has changed? Burma is poorer, its people
more desperate and isolated and, it seems, the army more entrenched than
ever before.

Mass protests led by Buddhist monks have failed to prise the generals from
their villas. There are no significant Western investors, other than
Total, which operates another gasfield, piping fuel to power stations in
Thailand. It is Burma's neighbours that hold the few cards that matter,
notably China, which provides military support to the generals, and Thai
logging companies, which raid the Burmese forests. As long as businessmen
from Shanghai to Singapore can secure supplies of hardwood and gemstones,
the generals will survive. While tribal warlords and corrupt Thai police
facilitate the drug trade on the Burmese frontier, there will be little
support in Asia for regime change in Rangoon.

Isolation from the West is a virus that is slowly killing Burma. Moral
voices, including that of Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader who
lives imprisoned in her own house, call for more sanctions, but at best
they are ineffective, at worst they will harm people who have suffered
enough. For every multinational that has struck Burma off its list of
manufacturing locations, there have been countless deaths and lost jobs
that would have prevented the steady flow of desperate young Burmese women
into disease-ridden brothels in Thailand.

This is killing by neglect and those in Europe who protest that foreign
investment fills the generals' pockets are washing their hands of
responsibility and forcing the Burmese to prostitute themselves to their
neighbours.

It's been going on since Ne Win took power in 1961 and steered the country
on a bizarre path of socialist autarchy, militarism and Buddhism.

Watching the extraordinary spectacle of monks in saffron robes marching
through the streets, it's tempting to see this as a Gandhi-like civil
rights movement, "loving kindness" confronting the jackboot of tyranny. It
is nothing of the sort; this is a Burmese quarrel, a civil war with all
that is dreadful within family conflict. If every Burmese family has a
member in monastic orders, the same could be said of representation in the
Armed Forces, which number about 400,000, roughly equivalent to the number
of monks.

These two communities are perhaps the only institutions that function
effectively in Burma. One is loved, the other feared, but neither offers
any solutions to the country's backwardness and isolation. Both the
mendicant monks and the parasitic military are a burden on a society that
has never properly developed a professional middle class.

It is depressing that our only response to such a crisis is to shut an
entire country back into its cage. Decades ago, when American and European
multinationals monopolised the global investment game, sanctions had moral
authority and some limited economic effect. Today, Asian investors have
clout in every corner of the globe and an attempt to organise a boycott
without their participation is not just pointless but likely to undermine
the moral authority of Western business principles.

If our only response to offensive regimes is to cut them off, we not only
lose a business advantage but the moral high ground as well.

____________________________________
PRESS RELEASE

October 3, International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and Forum Asia
Special Session of the UN Human Rights Council
The UN Special Rapporteur must have access to Burma

Paris, Bangkok, Geneva, 3 October 2007 - We welcome the fact that the UN
Human Rights Council devoted today a special session to the human rights
situation in Myanmar/Burma. “The whole world has been watching Burma:
States have been widely denouncing the harsh repression by the military
junta against the Burmese people”, said Anselmo Lee, Executive Director of
FORUM-ASIA.

We take note of the adoption of the resolution by consensus by all member
states of the UN Human Rights Council, including traditional supporters of
the Burmese regime like China and Russia. We regret however that the price
to pay was a softened wording including no express condemnation of the
human rights violations perpetrated by the junta.

The Human Rights Council urged the government of Myanmar to cooperate with
the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Burma, and
requested him to seek an urgent visit in Burma and report back to the
Council in December.

“This is a signal to the junta that they cannot continue repression behind
closed doors: those who ordered or perpetrated international crimes must
be held criminally liable. Therefore the establishment of facts is
crucial. The ball is now in the court of the military regime: should they
keep not cooperating with the UN Special Rapporteur, UN member states will
then have to take strong measures under the UN Charter, such as an arms
embargo and targeted economic sanctions”, concluded Souhayr Belhassen,
President of FIDH.

Press contact: Gaël Grilhot : +33-1 43 55 90 19

____________________________________
ANNOUNCEMENT

October 3, Asian Human Rights Commission
Burma: Bloggers declare international day for Burma

A group of bloggers has declared an international day calling for peaceful
political change in Burma.

The Free Burma! bloggers group has proposed the International Bloggers'
Day for Burma on October 4 to "show our sympathy for these people  who are
fighting their cruel regime without weapons", according to its website.

The page is calling on bloggers "to refrain from posting to their blogs on
October 4 and just put up one Banner... with the words Free Burma!"

By Wednesday over 3100 bloggers had joined the campaign. Bloggers
interested to join and download banners can visit:
http://www2.free-burma.org/index.php.

One who had already signed up on Wednesday was Awzar Thi, whose Rule of
Lords blog on Burma and Thailand can be read at http://ratchasima.net.

"Blogging was an unexpected and important part of the Saffron Revolution,"
Awzar Thi said.

The September uprising against military rule has been referred to as the
Saffron Revolution to allude to the monks who led the biggest protests.

"I read blogs by people in Burma and around the world constantly
throughout this time," he said.

"It is eerie to see many of those Burma-based blogs now disappearing
or being censored," he added.

"For instance, whereas http://reporterdiary.blogspot.com carried heartfelt
commentary and photographs on the uprising, a couple of days ago it was
replaced by some generic computer-generated rubbish by a profile with 16
blogs, none of which have any contents," Awzar Thi noted.

"As bloggers in Burma are no longer in a position to communicate and
report freely on what is going on there, it is fitting that their peers
around the world keep speaking out," he said.

About AHRC: The Asian Human Rights Commission is a regional
non-governmental organisation monitoring and lobbying human rights issues
in Asia. The Hong Kong-based group was founded in 1984.

____________________________________

October 3, The Asia Society and the Open Society Institute: Monks, Media
and the Military: The Saffron Revolution

Speakers:
Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar;

Ashin Cando Bhasacara, Burma American Metta Buddhist Association;

Aung Din, US Campaign for Burma and former political prisoner;

Nay Tin Myint (via teleconference), National League for Democracy Youth
leader and political prisoner (released in 2005);
Patrick Shank, Human Rights Education Institute of Burma, who just
returned from Burma last weekend;

Maureen Aung-Thwin Thwin, Director, Burma Project/Southeast Asia
Institute/Open Society Institute (moderator)

Suzanne DiMaggio , Director, Asian Social Issues Program/Asia Society,
will introduce the program

**A reception will precede the program from 5:30 to 6:00 pm.**

Friday, October 5, 2007
5:30 to 6:00 pm Registration and Reception
6:00 to 7:30 pm Discussion and Q&A

Asia Society: 725 Park Avenue at 70th Street, New York City

Registration: Free admission, seating limited.
To register, call the Asia Society box office at (212) 517 ASIA

____________________________________
OBITUARY

October 3, The Nation
Ailing Burmese Prime Minister dies

Burma's ailing Prime Minister Lt Gen Soe Win has died at the military
hospital in Mingalardon, Rangoon on Tuesday, sources said.

Soe Win, who returned to Burma on Monday from a secret medical treatment
in Singapore, died at about 5:00 p.m (local time), Mizzima News online
quoted sources as saying.

The Burmese Prime Minister is known to have been suffering from Leukemia
and had secretly received medical treatment in Singapore.

Soe Win, who is a Senior General Than Shwe loyalist, is also known as "the

Butcher of Depayin" for orchestrating the Depayin massacre in 2003 by
ordering mobs to attack on pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's
motorcade.

Sources said Soe Win will be replaced by Lt-Gen Thein Sein and Tin Aung
Myint Oo will be promoted to Thein Sein's position as Secretary-I.