BurmaNet News, March 19, 2009

[Editor]

March 19, 2009, Issue #3674


INSIDE BURMA
Kantarawaddy Times: France’s Human Rights Minister visits Karenni refugee
camp, promises
IRIN News: Beyond the delta, aid projects miss out

ON THE BORDER
Daily Mirror (UK): Ethnic cleansing on Burma border
The Economist: Myanmar's overflow

BUSINESS / TRADE
Irrawaddy: Junta threatens to nationalize construction companies
Khonumthung News: Traders face problems as exchange rate falls

HEALTH / AIDS
Irrawaddy: Drinking water crisis in Delta

INTERNATIONAL
Mizzima News: Junta’s blatant denial of rights abuse shameful: activists

OPINION / OTHER
UPI: Cyber-thought crime in Bangkok and Rangoon – Awzar Thi
Asia Times: Myanmar junta stubborn as ever – Nick Cumming-Bruce
The Guardian (UK): Anatomy of an uprising – Anders Østergaard

ANNOUNCEMENT
Refugees International: Report – Burma: Capitalizing on the gains



____________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

March 19, Kantarawaddy Times
France’s Human Rights Minister visits Karenni refugee camp, promises

Karenni refugees are expecting that with the arrival of France's Junior
Human Rights Minister, Mrs. Rama Yade, support and help for Karenni
refugee camps would be more forthcoming. Relief measures and items of
daily necessity, which were earlier given to refugee camps, have been
reduced after Cyclone Nargis hit Burma.

Ma Sie, a youth secretary from Karenni refugee camp 2, said, "We hope that
being from the European Union (EU), she will herself come to our refugee
camp and find out our difficulties. Therefore, we would be likely to get a
little more support than before."

A delegation of France's Junior Human Rights Minister, Mrs. Rama Yade, the
Thai Foreign Minister and representatives from NGOs arrived in the Karenni
refugee camp on March 13. She met camp administrators and visited an
orphanage. She asked about various problems. She said that she would put
pressure to change Burma's military politics.

"They do not have a lot of time. Therefore they cannot talk much about it.
She said at the camp's administration office, that she would help by
putting pressure to change Burma's military regime. Besides, she saw what
difficulties there were at the orphanage," a Karenni refugee said.

According to the Human Rights Minister's statements, she has already
opened an orphanage in France. Therefore, it is related to her work. I
hope that these children can benefit with some support and help from her
visit, Ma Sie added.
____________________________________

March 19, IRIN News
Beyond the delta, aid projects miss out

The positive aspects of Cyclone Nargis response in the Irrawaddy Delta
have yet to translate into better access or more funds for aid operations
in the rest of Burma, where needs are great and often unmet, according to
aid workers.

“The needs in the country are large and very little is done,” said Frank
Smithuis, country director of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) Holland.
“Myanmar (Burma) is the lowest recipient of overseas development aid in
the world. Much more money is needed for the health of the people.”

After a frustratingly slow start, aid agencies say the humanitarian
response to Cyclone Nargis, which struck the Irrawaddy Delta in May 2008
and left close to 140,000 dead or missing, has been highly effective.

Much of this is credited to the Tripartite Core Group (TCG), comprising
the government, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the
UN, whose mandate has been extended for another year.

The government eased bureaucracy and restrictions on access for
humanitarian agencies in the delta, and money and resources have poured
in.

However, this is not the case in the rest of Burma, where more than
100,000 children under five die each year, most of them from preventable
diseases.

One third of under-fives are underweight, says the UN, and malnutrition is
a contributory factor in about half those deaths.

“When Nargis happened it was impossible to focus elsewhere,” Chris Kaye,
the head of the World Food Programme (WFP) in Burma, told IRIN in Yangon.

WFP had a huge 115 million dollar programme to feed those who had lost
their livelihoods in the cyclone.

“That was at some cost it seems now, because we have not been able to
follow through and get the attention of donors elsewhere [in Burma].”

Last year, WFP raised half of its funding needs for areas such as Northern
Rakhine State, near the border with Bangladesh.

“We had to cut back on certain activities – a very difficult decision to
take – and in the end decided to cut support for vulnerable households
through schools,” said Kaye.

This Food for Education project provided a family food ration to a child
who attended school 80 percent of the time, often forming a major
component of the daily diet during the lean June-October monsoon season.

The TCG mechanism does not apply outside the delta, and long-standing
government restrictions on aid agencies are unchanged. Aid workers must
seek permission to travel to project sites, which takes three weeks.

Some NGOs have not been able to secure agreements to work in Burma at all,
and operate informally through local partners. Many UN agencies do not
have access to much of the country.

“There are huge developmental deficits,” said Kaye.

Such constraints have added to the reluctance of donors to provide aid to
Burma, which receives far less assistance than other countries in the
region with similar poverty levels.

Laos, for example, receives 50 dollars per person per year, and Cambodia
receives 40 dollars. Burma, by contrast, receives 2-3 dollars per person.

But the needs are great. MSF Holland estimates there are between five and
10 million malaria patients each year, in a country of 53 million. Only a
small proportion receive effective treatment and thousands die each year.

“As a consequence, the people of Myanmar suffer, in particular the
poorest, who can't afford to pay for their healthcare,” said Smithuis.

He argues that MSF’s 17 years in Burma, plus the more recent cyclone
response, prove that aid can be delivered effectively.

“If there is a good monitoring system that guarantees the population
benefits directly, then there is absolutely no reason to withhold
large-scale assistance to Myanmar's people,” he said.

Mark Canning, the British ambassador to Burma, said the relative success
of the Nargis aid operation could inspire greater confidence among major
donors such as the UK.

“The issue of confidence is fundamental,” Canning told IRIN. “A virtuous
circle can be created - the more donor money is used effectively, the more
money is drawn in. But the reverse also applies. Assistance needs to be
whiter than white.”

But the needs are great. MSF Holland estimates there are between five and
10 million malaria patients each year, in a country of 53 million. Only a
small proportion receive effective treatment and thousands die each year.

“As a consequence, the people of Burma suffer, in particular the poorest,
who can't afford to pay for their healthcare,” said Smithuis.

He argues that MSF’s 17 years in Burma, plus the more recent cyclone
response, prove that aid can be delivered effectively.

“If there is a good monitoring system that guarantees the population
benefits directly, then there is absolutely no reason to withhold
large-scale assistance to Burma people,” he said.

Mark Canning, the British ambassador to Burma, said the relative success
of the Nargis aid operation could inspire greater confidence among major
donors such as the UK.

“The issue of confidence is fundamental,” Canning told IRIN. “A virtuous
circle can be created - the more donor money is used effectively, the more
money is drawn in. But the reverse also applies. Assistance needs to be
whiter than white.”

____________________________________
ON THE BORDER

March 19, Daily Mirror (UK)
Ethnic cleansing on Burma border – Tom Parry

Across Burma aid continues to trickle to those who need it most - or in
some cases is denied completely.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with the courageous relief workers
distributing supplies as best they can; rather it is the due to the
stubborn determination of the junta and their cronies to thwart
humanitarian missions.

They would rather see some entire populations wiped out.

In the stricken Irrawaddy Delta - destroyed in last year's apocalyptic
cyclone - the emergency aid programme is finally being replaced by more
permanent recovery.

According to Liz Hughes from the Red Cross villagers are being offered
cash-for-work schemes to help rebuild ruined infrastructure like bridges
and jetties for fishing boats.

But the marginalised and abused Karen people on Burma's eastern border
with Thailand are still being deliberately neglected in the cruellest
manner imaginable.

This picture of a young Karen child at the Ei Thu Tha refugee camp, just
across the border from Thailand is a typical case.

She, like thousands of others, is displays the outward symptoms of chronic
malnutrition.

According to the London-based Burma Campaign this is because the
tyrannical regime, headed by General Than Shwe, won't allow aid to reach
them from in country, as part of its ethnic cleansing policy against the
Karen minority.

Spokesman Mark Farmaner said: "The only way to get aid is cross-border.
The British government isn't funding this aid to the Karen, and the EU is
cutting support it gives to refugees in Thailand.

"As a result the children are living on nothing but rice and salt for
breakfast, and dinner (they get no lunch) more than seventy of the
children in the camp are now covered in this skin rash from malnutrition.

"The Burmese army attacks their villages and forces them to flee."

Meanwhile, according to the Burma Campaign, the Thai government won't let
the Karen ethnic minority cross the border into refugee camps.

Local sources in the region have told recently how just after christmas a
seven-year-old Karen girl was raped and killed by a Burmese army soldier.

____________________________________

March 19, The Economist
Myanmar's overflow

MORE than 1m people from Myanmar have opted to labour in the sweatshops,
fields and fisheries of Thailand rather than endure the daily struggle for
survival many face at home. The global downturn has conspired to make
their prospects, never rosy, even bleaker.

An estimated 120,000 migrant workers live in the Thai border town of Mae
Sot. Most work in garment factories, seen as the best of a few bad
choices. Others have to take dirty and dangerous jobs processing fish or
spraying crops, where abuses, including beating and enslavement, are
reportedly most common. Garment-workers say they typically take home about
70 baht ($2) a day, less than half the legal minimum wage. They dispute
employers’ claims that the discrepancy reflects the cost of food and
lodging.

Some workers, particularly from minority ethnic groups, are fleeing
persecution. One young woman, stitching baby clothes, is saving to pay for
a physics course at Yangon University. But most workers are in Thailand to
support families at home. According to Sean Turnell, a specialist on
Myanmar’s economy at Macquarie University in Australia, the average worker
sends back around $300 a year, a crucial prop for hundreds of thousands of
poor families.

The downturn was quick to hit Mae Sot’s export-focused garment factories.
According to Chaiyuth Seneetantikul, of the local chapter of the
Federation of Thai Industries, orders are down by only around 12% and
redundancies have been minimal. But many workers say that production has
dwindled; the talk is of lay-offs, unpaid leave and the cancelling of
overtime, on which most rely to make any savings.

The value of their remittances has been further eroded by the appreciation
of Myanmar’s currency, the kyat. It has risen by a quarter against the
baht over the past year, mostly, says Mr Turnell, because of inflows of
aid after Cyclone Nargis. The appreciation has been exacerbated by falling
demand for imports inside Myanmar, a symptom of a slumping economy.

The plight of migrant workers in Thailand is worsened by the unregistered
and hence illegal status of at least half of them. This makes them
vulnerable to exploitation by employers, frequent extortion by the police
and periodic clampdowns. Migrant workers have been quietly encouraged, but
no new registrations have been accepted since 2006. In January, when his
government was under pressure over the army’s callous treatment of
ethnic-Rohingya boat people, originally from Myanmar, Abhisit Vejjajiva,
the prime minister, told journalists that the illegal-immigrant problem
had to be solved. “We will push them out of the country,” he blustered.

According to activists in Mae Sot, the next three days witnessed the
rounding up and expulsion of 1,500 migrant workers. Most reportedly came
straight back across the open border. There may be more such incidents as
the Thai economy worsens. But the impact of the slump on migrant labour
may not be straightforward. Garment-workers will doubtless continue to
feel the pinch and suffer redundancy and lost income. But those toiling in
dirty and dangerous jobs may still be in demand, even as prices and
incomes fall. Cheap labour is rarely scorned in a downturn.

____________________________________
BUSINESS / TRADE

March 19, Irrawaddy
Junta threatens to nationalize construction companies – Aung Thet Wine

Burmese authorities have told businessmen in the construction sector to
complete their stalled their projects across the country or face
nationalization.

“The Department of Human Settlement and Housing Development, Ministry of
Construction met with private construction businessmen to sign a
notification of this nationalization program,” a well-known construction
businessman told The Irrawaddy.

Khin Shwe, the chairperson and owner of Zay Gabar Construction Company,
confirmed the move during the annual meeting of the Myanmar Construction
Entrepreneurs Association held on March 14.

An estimated 100 construction projects are currently stalled in Burma. The
stalled projects include companies such as Zay Gabar and Htoo, whose
owners are close to high-ranking members of the military regime.

Since 2007, many construction companies have lost their operating capital
due to the financial crisis which halted numerous housing projects,
according to businessmen.

“Contractors have been losing money for two years successively and have
yet to overcome the situation,” said a 50-year-old contractor. “In this
period of the global financial crisis, it is impossible to complete
stalled housing projects.”

Observers in Rangoon said that, like other Asian governments, the Burmese
regime should support to the businessmen, because their companies are in a
slump.

“The government needs to prop up the construction companies to be able to
survive [in this critical moment]. Every contractor wants to complete
their projects, but they halted the work due primarily to the [financial]
difficulties,” said a housing contractor. “The construction business [in
Burma] will collapse if the government just pressures companies without
giving any assistance.”

____________________________________

March 19, Khonumthung News
Traders face problems as exchange rate falls

The Indo-Myanmar money exchange market has crashed affecting Burmese
currency from January 2009. It has caused difficulties for most traders in
the Indo-Myanmar border areas which have a market in Mizoram state, India.

The earlier exchange rate was Rs. 1 is to Kyat 28, but now it has gone
down to Kyat 18. This has caused problems for most of the traders who are
totally dependant on exchange rates.

“Most of the traders cannot do business as we are depending on money
exchange. At the same time, the prices of goods in Chin State have not
changed. But now the exchange rate is very low here. We have to wait for
sometime,” said a trader.

Although it’s difficult to figure out the exact number of traders whose
business is stagnant most middle and small traders are lying low except
for big traders.

At the same time, because of a halt in trading most stevedores are jobless
in Tiau village on the Indo-Myanmar border trade No. 2, said a local
stevedore.

“We are facing serious problems in trade here in the border areas.
Business has fallen and we don’t have our normal job. We have to do other
jobs,” he added.

There are an estimated 100 traders into Indo-Myanmar trade. Most of them
deal in Chinese items like plastic goods, household things, foods and
other items.

Burmese traders collect goods from the Chin border on a payment system and
then go to Mizoram state, India for selling these items. But they have to
wait to get paid by the dealers or agents in Mizoram state as they are
into an installment system, said a trader.

“When we give our goods to a shop they never pay us in full. We have to
wait till it is convenient for them. It could take a month or more. 
Meanwhile, we have to incur lots of expenditure as house rent and for
food.  Now the money exchange rate is also down and it’s a hard time for
us,” said a trader in Aizawl, Mizoram state.

____________________________________
HEALTH / AIDS

March 19, Irrawaddy
Drinking water crisis in Delta – Aung Thet Win

Burma’s Irrawaddy delta region faces an extreme shortage of drinking water
this summer because lakes and ponds used for drinking water were destroyed
by salty sea water after Cyclone Nargis hit in May 2007.

Local residents worry about an outbreak of infectious diseases because
many people are forced to drink unclean water.

Villagers say emergency assistance is urgently needed to solve the problem.

The Laputta region, one of the hardest-hit areas, has 50 village tracks
composed of about 500 villages. Currently, United Nations agencies, Save
the Children, Merlin, and other international aid groups work to
distribute clean drinking water in the area.

A French INGO that distributes drinking water to 88 villages in Laputta
Township uses 15 boats which can carry about 100 gallons of water each.

A staff member said governmental red tape is one of the factors that
hamper distribution.

“There are many obstacles,” he said, requesting anonymity. “For example,
before we can distribute water to a village, we need to get permission
from the Township Peace and Development Council, a military command unit
and other local government agencies. We must submit every step of our
activities to them.”

“In fact, we can solve the local villagers’ problem if only the government
authorities and the aid organizations could work together better,” he
said.

Many outlying villages, at the far reaches of the aid groups, have an even
harder time getting safe drinking water.

“Our village track has 24 villages,” one villager told The Irrawaddy. “All
the villages are now facing a shortage of drinking water.”

The drinking water distribution network conducted by international aid
agencies in Laputta doesn’t meet the needs of the outlying population,
according to a villager in Michaung Ai village.

“At the end of February, the aid agencies set up a fiber tank and started
to provide drinking water in Michaung I village, where more than a 100
people are living in 48 households,” he said. “At the beginning, they
carried drinking water with a boat and filled the tank every three days.
Each villager got three liters of water. But now they haven’t come to fill
the tank for 20 days.”

“Our lake was destroyed by salty water, and it now has such a low water
level that we can see the ground because the people use it more and more
as a water resource,” he said.

He said it’s difficult for many villagers to get to Laputta, and even
then, some people can’t afford to buy drinking water

The situation at inland villages is worse because they are farther from
rivers and streams, said a villager in Htin Su village in the Alagyaw
village track. “They are also out of reach of the drinking water
distribution by aid groups.”

Even villagers who live close to Laputta Township have difficulty
obtaining clean water. When villagers go to Laputta to buy water, they pay
1,200 kyat (US $ 1.20) per barrel.

“To buy water from the town, we need to have access to a boat, fuel and
money to buy water,” said one villager.

People have asked Laputta Township authorities to find a solution,
according to a member of the village Red Cross in Michaung Ai village, but
officials have not yet come up with a plan.

“We even participated in paramilitary training with the hope that the
authorities will help solve our problem,” he said. “But nothing happened.”

____________________________________
INTERNATIONAL

March 19, Mizzima News
Junta’s blatant denial of rights abuse shameful: activists – Solomon

The Burmese Ambassador to the United Nations is spinning white lies at the
Human Rights Council by denying the presence of political prisoners in
Burma, activists alleged on Thursday.

Wunna Maung Lwin, Burmese Ambassador to the UN on Tuesday denied a report
by the UN special envoy on Human Rights Tomas Ojea Quintana that over
2,000 political prisoners continue to languish in prisons across Burma.

Denying Quintana’s report, Wunna Maung Lwin at the 10th Session of Human
Rights Council, being held at Geneva from March 2-27, said, “There were no
prisoners of conscience, the only individuals serving prison terms had
broken the laws of Myanmar [Burma].”
While several representatives at the Session condemned Burma’s military
rulers for its appalling human rights records, Russia, a long time
supporter of Burma’s military junta defended it.

The Russian representative in a statement said, “The increasing attention
paid by the international community to the issue was artificial, and the
accusations levelled at the leadership were based on unreliable
information, from unverified and politicised sources.”

David Scott Mathieson, Burma consultant of the Human Rights Watch (HRW)
based in Thailand said Burma’s denial of the presence of political
prisoners and the appalling human rights situation could mislead the
international community.

“We know that there are more than 2,000 political prisoners, but he [Wunna
Maung Lwin] denied it. But the danger is not in the stupidity of what he
said but the danger is what he is causing the international community into
believing,” said Mathieson.

He added that it is dangerous that some countries would choose to believe
such statements made by the Burmese junta and the actual human rights
situation could be ignored.

HRW said the international community should not believe what the Burmese
Ambassador said. They should pay more attention to the human rights
situation inside Burma.

“This is not a serious statement and does not reflect a policy of honesty
to the international community and to the UN. It is an insult to the
global human rights project,” Mathieson added.

Quintana, who last visited Burma in February, in his report said the human
rights situation in Burma is still challenging and that over 2,000
political prisoners remained locked up in prisons across the country.

He also called on Burma’s military rulers to release the political
prisoners including detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi before the
junta convenes a general election in 2010.

Aung Myo Min, a human rights activist based in Thailand said, he had seen
the Special Rapporteur’s report that carries specific human rights
violations in Burma including cases of porterage, and the use of human
minesweepers, but he doubts the effectiveness of the report.

“Only if all the members of the UN take effective action, then the report
will be meaningful,” Aung Myo Min said.

“The Burmese ambassador’s denial means that the junta is brazenly denying
human rights violations and also his [Quintana] report,” he added.

Meanwhile, Bo Kyi , joint-secretary of Thailand-based Assistance
Association for Political Prisoners- Burma (AAPP-B), said the condition of
political prisoners in Burma is getting worse by the day.

According to the AAPP-B, there are at least 2,100 political prisoners
languishing in prisons across the country. The group said following the
September 2007 monk-led protests, the number of political prisoners has
doubled.

“The junta’s denial is nothing new, they have always given excuses like
this, without any proof,” said Bo Kyi.

But he said he is concerned with the deteriorating condition in which
political prisoners have to live. Political prisoners continue to endure
physical and mental torture by the authorities without proper medical
treatment.

“Political prisoners are dying a slow death in the prisons,” said Bo Kyi,
who was a former political prisoner in Burma.

____________________________________
OPINION / OTHER

March 19, United Press International
Cyber-thought crime in Bangkok and Rangoon – Awzar Thi

A court in Rangoon on March 5 sentenced three men who didn’t know each
other to a decade’s imprisonment for a crime that they never committed –
or rather, for a crime so nebulous that if any of them had ever used a
computer he wouldn’t know if he had committed it or not.
The three, Win Maw, Zaw Min and Aung Zaw Myo, were accused of sending news
about the September 2007 protests in Burma through the Internet. All were
already in jail for other purported crimes.

The next day, police in Bangkok came to one of Thailand’s few outspoken
and credible media outlets, Prachatai, searched the premises and arrested
its director, Chiranuch Premchaiporn. She is accused of having failed to
patrol, censor and delete the comments that readers left on a news
website.

The police have charged Chiranuch under the Computer Crime Act 2007, which
is only an “act” to the extent that the assembly of handpicked military
stooges that passed it could be considered a legislature. According to
this law, the importing of “false computer data, in a manner that is
likely to cause damage” to a third party or the public or “is likely to
damage the country’s security or cause a public panic” can land the
accused a five-year jail term.

Now let’s compare that with Burma’s Electronic Transactions Law 2004,
which is better described as an executive decree rather than a law.
According to this law, whoever does “any act detrimental to the security
of the State or prevalence of law and order or community peace and
tranquility or national solidarity or national economy or national
culture” with a computer can be put away for up to 15 years; the minimum
term is seven.

Although the law in Burma is more exhaustive in its categories of offence
and harsher in its penalties, it is fundamentally the same as the one in
Thailand. The two are being applied in considerably different contexts and
with different specific features, but they have a shared subtext.

First the different contexts: A closed court inside the central prison in
Rangoon tried the three accused there in the absence of lawyers or
relatives. The police had no credible evidence. It didn’t matter, because
the case was decided before it was begun. The trial and its outcome went
unreported inside the country, which is still a technological backwater
despite a big uptake in Internet use during the last few years.

By contrast, a court released Chiranuch on bail. She has received strong
local and global support. She will be tried in public, with lawyers,
journalists and human rights defenders present. The police might be able
to lodge the charges against her with a few scraps of randomly acquired
evidence, but once hearings begin they will need more than this.

Thailand is one of the more technologically advanced countries in
Southeast Asia. It is home to many millions of savvy computer users. Even
accounting for its declining civil and political rights in the last
decade, especially since 2006, it is still – in comparison to the majority
of its neighbors, not least of all Burma – an open society.

Second, the common subtext, which runs as follows: You as a computer user
may do something we don’t know about and don’t understand. We don’t
respect you and are afraid of this technology. We don’t know what to
expect and therefore we have drawn up a category of wrongdoing that can
encompass any conceivable use of the Internet, and we will decide what
does or doesn’t fall within its boundaries, case by case.

Win Maw, Zaw Min, Aung Zaw Oo and Chiranuch in reality all stand accused
of the same crime: a commitment to free speech. Their offences have
nothing to do with the technology after which the draconic instruments
they purportedly transgressed have been named. The medium offended no one.
The stuff that passed through it apparently did. These are not cybercrime
laws at all. They are thought-crime laws.

In his most recent report to the U.N. Human Rights Council, the special
envoy on Burma has written that the Electronic Transactions Law violates a
raft of international standards. He has called upon the government to
review and revise this and other laws to lower the incidence of systemic
rights abuse in Burma. There is no such envoy on Thailand, but were there
one – and perhaps it would not be a bad idea – the same would be written.

Although the scale of abuse in Burma and vengefulness of its government
far exceed that of Thailand, the computer crime laws in the two countries
are not substantively different. They are in every respect an affront to
human rights, and in their deliberate indeterminacy run contrary to
legality itself. They are un-legal laws. They are an insult to the
millions of Internet users who deserve to be treated better, not least
among them, Win Maw, Zaw Min, Aung Zaw Oo and Chiranuch Premchaiporn.

Abrogate the Computer Crime Act! Revoke the Electronic Transactions Law!

--

(Awzar Thi is the pen name of a member of the Asian Human Rights
Commission with over 15 years of experience as an advocate of human rights
and the rule of law in Thailand and Burma. His Rule of Lords blog can be
read at http://ratchasima.net)

____________________________________

March 19, Asia Times
Myanmar junta stubborn as ever – Nick Cumming-Bruce

Once again, a United Nations (UN) investigator of human rights in Myanmar
has urged its ruling generals to release all political prisoners. And once
again the junta has brusquely brushed off the demand. Myanmar has no
prisoners of conscience, only law breakers, its ambassador to the UN in
Geneva, Wunna Maung Win, brazenly asserted.

So nothing has changed? Well, not quite.

In a report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday, special
rapporteur Tomas Ojea Quintana painted a grim picture of conditions in the
country: 400 political prisoners sentenced in the last quarter of 2008 to
jail terms ranging from 25 to 64 years; a total of more than 2,100
political prisoners in the country (twice the figure of two years ago);
and a 20-year-old student union member jailed for 104 years in January.

There was more: opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi detained for the last
six years under a law that permits detention for no more than five years;
multiple abuses of the rights of Rohingya Muslims in North Rakhine state;
continuing recruitment of child soldiers; prevalent rape of ethnic
minority women by soldiers; forced labor; use of landmines; and, in a
country which should have a food surplus if properly run, acute food
shortages in five states.

Quintana also noted that the junta did not accede to his request to meet
political party leaders because "all the leaders were held in detention,
either under house arrest or in prisons in remote areas". And yet six
months into his job as special rapporteur, Quintana is trying to make it
as easy as possible for Myanmar's ruling junta to grasp the nettle of
human rights issues that have made it an international pariah.

He defines his task as "to cooperate with the government of Myanmar and
assist in its efforts in the field of promotion and protection of human
rights". Within that framework, he has decided to focus attention on four
"core elements" of human rights: a review of national legislation to
ensure its compliance with the constitution and international obligations,
progressive release of political prisoners, training for the armed forces
in international humanitarian law and establishing an independent,
impartial judiciary.

Reporting on his second and latest mission to Myanmar in mid-February,
Quintana was at pains to find the positives. His three meetings with the
junta's human-rights body, not the most conspicuously effective group,
were "constructive". He met senior mandarins, including the chief justice,
the attorney general, the minister of home affairs, the chief of police
and the army's judge advocate general, which yielded "substantive and
fruitful discussions". The junta allowed him to visit a number of prisons
and to talk to prisoners, as well as a visit to the usually off-limits
Kayin state.

The minister of home affairs promised to consider his recommendations for
the progressive release of all political prisoners, Quintana reported. The
attorney general told him that ministries were checking 380 laws for
compliance with the new constitution, passed last year in a national
referendum. And the chief justice insisted Myanmar's judiciary was
independent, but accepted a suggestion that Myanmar should engage with the
UN's rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers.

Weak assurances
Such assurances cost the junta little, but Quintana is also pressing for
tangible results within a specific timeframe. Release of all political
prisoners should be completed before elections scheduled for next year, he
said, "If not, it's going to be difficult to talk of real participation in
the elections." British ambassador to the UN Peter Gooderham set out the
issue more bluntly: unless all political prisoners were released and
political parties and ethnic minorities were able to participate freely in
the election the outcome would have no international credibility.

In the Orwellian state the generals have created, it is difficult to
imagine circumstances in which elections could win international respect.
The junta's mindset and approach to the elections is all too clear from
its brutal intimidation of the opposition, the hammering of any dissent
and the political party machinery apparatus it has established to ensure
elections do not allow the opposition a repeat of the democratic victory
they won in 1990.

Still, Quintana's role arguably is not to second-guess the outcome of the
election, but to exploit what little space he has to try to achieve or
create conditions for measurable improvement of human rights and the
position of those within the country still active in trying to defend
them.

To do that, Quintana is seeking to widen the agenda of discussions with
the junta. In addition to pursuing issues such as the incarceration of
political prisoners, where progress is locked into the junta's rigid
mindset on political reform he has turned attention to the functioning of
the judicial system.

"It's important to open different channels of communication, we need to
start working on the rule of law," Quintana said in an interview. "This is
the first time we found space to have discussion with lawyers" regarding
the functioning of the judicial system.

"From our perspective it's one of the better ways to address the
situation," said Michael Anthony of the Hong Kong-based Asian Legal
Resource Center, a human-rights watchdog that has exhaustively documented
the regime's abuse of its own legal and criminal justice system to crush
dissent. The human-rights debate "has focused too long on the list of
violations without addressing the system of injustice".

Quintana also emphasizes there will be little progress on human rights
unless the international community and particularly Myanmar's Southeast
Asian neighbors in the Association of South East Asian Nations - now
establishing its own human-rights body - are willing to push them. Legal
reform and adherence to international humanitarian law provides an avenue
some observers think Myanmar's politically-reticent Asian neighbors may
find easier to support.

Quintana can have few illusions about the uphill nature of his task. At
the Human Rights Council in Geneva, non-governmental organizations were
quick to spotlight potential limitations in his dialogue with the junta.
Myanmar's constitution, tainted by the coercion and intimidation invested
in winning its approval, hardly presented a sound benchmark for assessing
judicial and legislative reforms, the Asian Forum for Human Rights and
Development noted. Was he confident, the UK asked, that training the
judiciary, civil servants and police would be effective given the dominant
position in those sectors of people close to the regime?

Moreover, Myanmar's ruling generals never seem to miss an opportunity to
live down to the lowest expectations of their conduct, and Tuesday was no
exception. Just as Quintana delivered his statement to the council, news
broke that the junta had arrested five more members of the opposition
National League for Democracy in Yangon. Among them was a party member
reportedly inactive for more than a year after suffering a stroke.

Nick Cumming-Bruce is a Geneva-based journalist with decades of experience
reporting from Southeast Asia.
____________________________________

March 19, The Guardian (UK)
Anatomy of an uprising – Anders Østergaard

Burma VJ was supposed to be a modest little film: a half-hour, low-key yet
intimate portrait of Joshua, a 26-year-old Burmese video journalist, or
VJ. Joshua had decided to do his bit for a better Burma by taking his
video camera, usually concealed, on to the streets of Rangoon to document
what he could of everyday life. When we started work on the project, in
early 2007, the footage Joshua was able to show us was, frankly, totally
uneventful: little reports on street kids, life in his village, the
miserable state of the railways.

But since Rangoon is a city packed with informers and secret police, we
understood the risk Joshua was taking. However slight, his footage was
still a major subversive achievement. Joshua worked as a VJ for the
Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), the broadcaster-in-exile stationed in
Oslo. We quickly realised he was an endearing guy, cheeky, wise and well
educated. I felt his charismatic commentary, coupled with this footage,
would open a tiny peephole on to this isolated, almost forgotten country.

Instead, we ended up crashing right through the main gate. What we got was
beyond my wildest imaginings. In the summer of 2007, a few protests grew
into an uprising that swept the streets. Soon Joshua and his fellow
activists-turned-VJs were feeding CNN, the BBC and the rest of the world's
media with stunning videos, showing the Burmese people's fight for freedom
and the brutality of the military regime. The VJs underwent a tremendous
rite of passage, turning from young, spontaneous activists into war-torn
veterans of a media revolution.

Back in the editing room in Copenhagen, our lives also changed. We started
off being in full artistic control of a nice little project, but then
graphic footage of beatings and shootings by the military and the police
began to flood in. We were now chroniclers of world history. Some of the
tapes arrived in a fairly organised way, via the DVB. But even months
after the uprising, shocking and hitherto unseen footage would still show
up, having been smuggled out. These tapes had no labels on them, and came
with no information as to where and when they were shot, or by whom.

We had to spend weeks doing "video archaeology" - working out the time and
place of bits of footage from the details they contained. One of the most
helpful tools turned out to be Google Earth, with its satellite
photographs of Rangoon's inner city. By matching street corners,
high-rises and pagodas visible in the background of the clips with those
on 3D maps, we were able to establish the development of demonstrations as
they moved through the city. Slowly, the anatomy of the uprising - and
perhaps, indeed, of any uprising - fell into place.

It was fascinating, with each stage clear and well defined. We saw the
early, hesitant days when the first groups of protesting monks would start
marching at a fast, nervous pace in silence, cautiously applauded by
onlookers. The next stage was more daring: the monks would begin their
religious chanting and the public joined in, an expression of their
yearning for freedom camouflaged in Buddhist generalities. Then came a
euphoric outburst of political slogans and direct demands to the
government, which echoed through the streets. This defiance turned into
panic as the military beast finally got on its feet and struck back. Even
though we knew the end of the story all too well, we were still
heartbroken to see all those hopes for change and liberation dashed, as
the protest transformed into a fight for survival in the course of a
single afternoon.

It's conventional wisdom that, in the cutting room, films take on a will
of their own: they tell you how they want to be made. But this was an
extreme case. It brought home, more than ever, the rare, but incredible
rewards of being a documentary film-maker. It's about discovery rather
than invention - the wonders of working with something much bigger than
yourself.

• Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country is at various London cinemas
from Sunday to Tuesday as part of the Human Rights Watch international
film festival. On general release later this year.
hrw.org/iff

____________________________________
ANNOUNCEMENT

March 19, Refugees International
Report – Burma: Capitalizing on the gains

In the past year, humanitarian assistance to Burma has been primarily
focused on victims of Cyclone Nargis, which struck the Irrawaddy delta on
May 2, 2008.  Though the initial delivery of assistance was hampered by
government obstruction, the aid programs that have since developed in the
delta have benefited from an ease of operations unseen in other parts of
the country.  Relief work in the delta is progressing smoothly, but
attempts to expand access to the rest of the country are struggling. 
Nonetheless, to capitalize on the existing gains, the U.S. should provide
significant funding for programs throughout the country.

For the full report, please visit:
http://www.refugeesinternational.org/policy/field-report/burma-capitalizing-gains