BurmaNet News, February 6 - 8, 2010

[Editor]

February 6 – 8, 2010, Issue #3892


INSIDE BURMA
Monster and Critics via DPA: Myanmar authorities hinder disaster-relief
projects

ON THE BORDER
Irrawaddy: Karen refugees warned not to talk

BUSINESS / TRADE
DPA: Ghana rejects "unwholesome" Myanmar rice
South China Morning Post: Activists target Li's Myanmar investments

REGIONAL
AFP: Philippines sees 'farcical' Burma elections
South China Morning Post: Rohingya still dream of fleeing poverty; Despite
nightmarish treatment by Thais, group remains desperate to reach Malaysia

INTERNATIONAL
BBC News: Australia to increase aid to Burma

OPINION / OTHER
New York Times: Nelson Mandela’s captive audience: My hero, page by page –
Ko Bo Kyi
Irrawaddy: The case for China's intervention in Burma – Min Zin
Toronto Sun (Canada): A bridge to nowhere – Teviah Moro

INTERVIEW
Journalism.co.uk: Q&A: Aye Chan Naing, chief editor, Democratic Voice of
Burma

PRESS RELEASE
The Conservative Party Human Rights Commission: UK Conservative Party
Human Rights Commission calls for investigation into crimes against
humanity in Burma, a universal arms embargo and increased aid ahead of
Burma’s sham
Maldive’s Presidents Office: New Ambassador of Myanmar presents his
credentials to President Nasheed




____________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

February 7, Monster and Critics via Deustche Presse Agentur
Myanmar authorities hinder disaster-relief projects

Yangon - Myanmar authorities have slowed recovery programs for areas hit
by Cyclone Nargis in the Irrawaddy Delta, by delaying visas and travel
permits to aid workers, media reports said Sunday.

William Sabandar, the head of Nargis relief operations in Myanmar, said
timely processing government documents was critical for recovery projects
under the 2008 Prioritised Action Plan (PONREPP).

'I hope these issues can be resolved very soon because if (visas and
permits) continue to be delayed, projects under the PONREPP will be
delayed,' he told The Myanmar Times.

On May 2-3, 2008, Cyclone Nargis inundated the Irrawaddy Delta with tidal
waves and left up to 140,000 people dead or missing.

The disaster sparked outrage at Myanmar's paranoid ruling junta, which was
reluctant to allow foreign aid and aid workers into the devastated area.

An action plan was finally established between the government, United
Nations and the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) for
emergency and recovery efforts.

But 20 months later, problems with access to the affected area remain,
according to Sabandar.

The third post-Nargis periodic review will be held on February 9 in Yangon.

International donors pledged 90.4 million dollars for recovery projects at
the previous conference held in Bangkok on November 25.

Of the total pledged, 71.3 million has been spent, but more money is
needed, Sabandar said.

'More funding is needed for the shelter sector and I urge donors who have
not allocated their funding to allocate that sector,' he said.

'ASEAN is engaging with the government to ensure an effective coordination
between recovery activities and longer-term development programs,'
Sabandar told The Myanmar Times.

____________________________________
ON THE BORDER

February 8, Irrawaddy
Karen refugees warned not to talk – Simon Roughneen

The Thai military on Saturday warned Karen refugees at Tha Song Yang not
to speak to the media or the UN's refugee agency, the UNHCR––or risk
arrest and deportation.

According to Blooming Night Zan, a spokesperson for the Karen Women's
Organization (KWO), army personnel entered camps where the Karen refugees
are staying on Saturday afternoon. She told The Irrawaddy that army
personnel entered the camps in plain clothes to evade the attention of
international representatives and media.

This comes after an overnight suspension of plans to begin the deportation
of all remaining Karen refugees in the area, who fled a June 2009 military
offensive in northeastern Karen State by the Burmese army and its
proxy-militia, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), against the
rebel Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA).

The refugees were scheduled to be sent back by Feb. 15, with 161
originally due to be sent on Friday in what the Thai authorities deemed to
be a voluntary repatriation.

After media reporting, lobbying by NGOs and the intervention of 28 US
lawmakers in a letter to the Thai government, the army called a suspension
of the deportations after 12 Karen were repatriated on Friday morning. The
12 were sent back to Ler Per Her, a camp for internally displaced persons
inside Karen State in eastern Burma.

This smaller group had been repatriated before a US embassy official and
UN representatives arrived at the Thai-Burmese border. The Thai army said
that the 12 had crossed the border to tend to livestock and later came
back to the Thai side.

Rights groups have said that the refugees do not want to go back and claim
the Thai army has been pressuring them to leave.

The local commander, Col Noppadol Watcharajitbaworn, said the group of 30
families who were to be deported as part of the original scheme “planned
to go back on Friday,” then changed their minds after talking with the
foreign representatives.

Activists, including the Friends of Burma and the KWO, on Friday submitted
an open letter to Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva calling for an end
to the deportations. The letter was copied to the National Security
Council and the ministries of interior and foreign affairs.

Contradictory statements have been coming from the Thai authorities on
this issue. The army has said that the deadline for all the refugees to be
deported is Feb. 15, while others say there is no deadline.

Acting government spokesperson, Dr. Panitan Wattanayagorn, told The
Irrawaddy that there was no immediate plan to change the deportation
policy or deadline, but later Col Noppadol said the Defense Ministry has
told his task force to suspend all further repatriation, according to a
report in Saturday's Bangkok Post.

"We are re-evaluating the situation after rights groups voiced concerns,"
he said.

However, the Thai military is maintaining pressure and intimidation on the
refugees. Karen representatives said that in recent weeks the military has
been ordering the refugees to tell international representatives that they
were willing to return to Burma. It is thought that the area they are to
be repatriated to is heavily mined, despite claims by the Thai authorities
that mines have been cleared.

Blooming Night Zan said, “We are not sure what will happen over the next
few days. It is not clear that the deportation is going to be stopped
permanently. We ask the Thai authorities not to go ahead with this, as the
refugees do not have a safe place to return to.”

____________________________________
BUSINESS / TRADE

February 7, Deutsche Presse Agentur
Ghana rejects "unwholesome" Myanmar rice

Yangon – Ghana's rejection last month of 15,000 bags of 'unwholesome' rice
from Myanmar has sparked calls for improved quality controls for the
commodity, one of the country's key export items, media reports said
Sunday.

Ghana's Food and Drugs Board last month rejected a shipment of Myanmar
rice 'for being unwholesome for human consumption,' as it was infested
with weevils and gave off an offensive smell, the Myanmar Times reported.

Myo Aung Kyaw, a central executive committee member of the Myanmar Rice
Industry Association and secretary of the Myanmar Rice Traders
Association, said the rejection was a wake-up call for the local industry.

'Africa is a key export market for Myanmar rice, and quality control is a
priority, from seeds to finished products,' he said.

'If this happens again, Myanmar rice could disappear from the
international market. Our rice exporters and traders have to meet
international standards,' Aung Kyaw told the Myanmar Times.

He said the country needs to ensure that exported rice contains no more
than 14-per-cent moisture.

'If moisture levels in the rice aren't properly checked, you can get foul
odour, caking and discolouration,' he said.

As of October 1, 2009, halfway through the country's fiscal year which
ends on March 31, Myanmar had exported 558,900 tons of rice.

____________________________________

February 6, South China Morning Post
Activists target Li's Myanmar investments – Annemarie Evans

Myanmese activist Khin Omar said yesterday businessman Li Ka-shing should
either put pressure on the Myanmar junta to democratise or get out of her
country.

She said the head of Cheung Kong (Holdings) (SEHK: 0001) had a
responsibility as an investor in the Southeast Asian regime's logistics
industry to influence the government and not permit it to perpetrate war
crimes against its own people.

Khin Omar, the co-ordinator of the non-governmental organisation Burma
Partnership in Mae Sot, Thailand, was invited here by the Hong Kong
Coalition for a Free Burma.

She led a group of demonstrators from the Sun Hung Kai Centre in Wan Chai
yesterday in a bid to protest outside the Myanmar Consulate.

They were stopped by police officers and the building's security men.

"They told us the Myanmar Consulate is shut - for a holiday," said one of
the demonstrators.

Some wore masks depicting democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and waved
placards for democracy in Myanmar. The small group then moved on to Cheung
Kong Center in Central, where they passed a petition to a company
representative inside, while shouting "Free Burma" and "Election not
selection" outside.

"I would like Cheung Kong to be ethically and socially responsible for
their business in Burma (Myanmar)," said Khin Omar. "They should not allow
the Burmese government to use their money to commit war crimes against
their own people."

Khin Omar said Li's money indirectly paid for weapons used on Myanmar's
people. She also said his port operations could allow ships in that had
weapons on board.

"Recently a North Korean ship headed for Myanmar was turned back by the
Americans, but it would have come through his port," she said.

Hutchison Whampoa (SEHK: 0013) invests in Myanmar through subsidiary
Hutchison Port Holdings which operates the Myanmar International Terminals
Thilawa in Yangon.

A spokesman said Hutchison Port Holdings made a port investment in 1996
when Myanmar was in the process of being accepted into the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations, expecting the country to be opened up.

"We are still hopeful our investments can help to spur economic
improvement and that economic progress of the country will bring about
overall benefits to the community in the longer term," the spokesman said,
adding Hutchison Port had offered scholarships to Myanmar Maritime
University since 2004.

____________________________________
REGIONAL

February 7, Agence France Presse
Philippines sees 'farcical' Burma elections

Burma is likely to hold elections around September but they are shaping up
to be a "farce" with democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi unable to run,
Philippine Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo said Friday.

On a visit to Washington, Romulo said he expected the fellow Southeast
Asian nation's military regime to release Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi,
who has spent most of the past 20 years under house arrest.

"I believe the election will go through in September -around that time -
and I believe that perhaps from what we hear that Aung San Suu Kyi would
be released before the election," Romulo said at the Center for Strategic
and International Studies think-tank.

But he said that the junta would likely prohibit Aung San Suu Kyi from
running as well as some members of her National League of Democracy, which
won the last election in 1990 but was never allowed to take power.

"If this is so, then it's a mockery of Burma's own roadmap to democracy,"
he said. "Such an election would be a farce."

The Philippines has been outspoken in demanding the release of Aung San
Suu Kyi, with Romulo calling his country a "strong and sometimes solitary
voice" on Burma in the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN).

The junta has pledged to hold elections in 2010 but has not set a date.

The opposition and ethnic minorities have been deeply suspicious about the
election, fearing the junta would use it to legitimize its rule.

US President Barack Obama's administration has called for a free election
as part of its policy of engagement with Burma.

Romulo said it supported the new US approach to Burma, long a pariah to
Western nations.

"We think this is a step in the right direction," he said. "It's time to
adopt a new tactic."

____________________________________

February 7, South China Morning Post
Rohingya still dream of fleeing poverty; Despite nightmarish treatment by
Thais, group remains desperate to reach Malaysia – Shaikh Azizur Rahman

The boats that once brought Rohingya to an uncertain fate on Thai shores
have stopped sailing. But the poverty and the persecution that spurred
their journeys continue, reports Shaikh Azizur Rahman.

Twenty-one-year-old Rohingya man Saifullah had long dreamed of boarding a
boat in his adopted home of Bangladesh and setting sail for Malaysia,
where he hoped to break the cycle of poverty that afflicts his ethnic
group.

Then last year, just after he had saved enough for the voyage, Saifullah
heard the stories of how Thai authorities were capturing Rohingya
boatpeople then setting them adrift in powerless boats, with deadly
consequences. The snakeheads behind the voyages and the authorities in
Bangladesh heard about it too, and the people-smuggling route which had
attracted thousands of Rohingya every winter was shut down, almost
overnight.

That was one year ago. Exactly how many lives have been saved as a result
is impossible to say. Compared with the hundreds who died and the
survivors of the nightmarish voyages, adrift without food or water,
Saifullah is one of the lucky ones.

But Saifullah isn't grateful. He's angry.

"I worked very hard, from morning through midnight and it took me three
years to save enough to pay for my journey up to Malaysia," he said
recently in his bamboo-and-plastic shack in a squalid Rohingya colony
outside Cox's Bazar.

"When some of my friends took the boats from Cox's Bazar in 2008, I even
told them that within a year I would be joining them in Malaysia. But now
I doubt I can reach there easily, even though I have the money. It's
frustrating."

Although the traumatised survivors of the Thai expulsion policy have vowed
never to seek their fortune abroad again, many other young Rohingya men
feel the same as Saifullah.

They still toil in poverty and dream of better jobs in nearby Malaysia,
which is viewed as a Muslim promised land of prosperity and opportunity.
If anything, their lot has worsened in the 12 months since the Sunday
Morning Post exposed the Thai abandonment policy in January last year.

Bangladeshi authorities, alarmed by the revelations that most of the
journeys started in Cox's Bazar, launched a crackdown on Rohingya illegal
immigrants from Myanmar. Members of the squalid Rohingya settlements who
have not been deemed refugees - including Saifullah - now live in fear of
arrest.

Saifullah, an illiterate rickshaw puller, said he crossed into Bangladesh
from Myanmar with his wife and their one-year-old daughter in 2006. His
goal from the outset was to somehow reach Malaysia within a few years and
earn a better livelihood.

Last year's revelations put paid to that. Saifullah said that after
Bangladeshi police launched a crackdown on illegal Rohingya immigrants, he
was forced to give up his job. He and his family have been in hiding since
November.

"To escape persecution in Myanmar I fled to Bangladesh. Now I am jobless
and have virtually gone underground here. In this situation I desperately
need to escape to Malaysia," he said. "I still hope that the Malaysian
route will somehow reopen for us and the agents will be able to take me to
that country soon, before we perish here."

In previous winters, the snakeheads would gather desperate men like
Saifullah at points along the Bangladeshi coastline and in Myanmar's
Rakhine state. Between November and January, when the seasonal winds were
at their most benign, from 3,000 to 5,000 would set off, hugging the
coastline as they sailed furtively towards Thailand, from where they would
make their way overland to Malaysia.

No travel documents were required by the snakeheads, and, if all went
well, no border checkpoints were encountered, making the route appealing
to the undocumented Rohingya. The route became so successful that hundreds
of non-Rohingya Bangladeshis began joining the journeys in 2007 and 2008.
After all, a legitimate journey to Malaysia would cost 150,000 taka
(HK$16,600), while the snakeheads charged 20,000 taka to Thailand and
another 60,000 taka or more for safe passage to Malaysia.

But on January 12, 2009, the Post first reported the now-halted Thai
policy of casting Rohingya adrift. More reports followed in the next weeks
as it emerged that hundreds of boatpeople had died under nightmarish
circumstances. Photos documented the secret detention of Rohingya on the
Thai island of Koh Sai Daeng. It was soon being reported by the BBC, CNN,
Al-Jazeera and other international media organisations.

"As soon as newspapers and TV channels reported of the torture by
Thailand, planned trips by some boats were cancelled," said Zakir Hossain,
a Rohingya tourist guide in Saint Martin's Island in the northeastern Bay
of Bengal.

Hossain said the suspension of the illegal snakehead service was a blow to
the 230,000 Rohingya in Bangladesh, 90 per cent of whom live in squalor
outside official refugee camps.

As the persecution of the shunned Muslim minority continues in Myanmar,
Rohingya continue to flee across the border to Bangladesh. Despite being
fellow Muslims, Rohingya are not received well in Bangladesh, a poor
nation struggling to provide for its own burgeoning population. To keep a
check on the growing Rohingya community, Bangladesh last year resumed a
policy of pushing illegal Rohingya across the border, and arresting other
Rohingya immigrants in increasing numbers.

A reporter for the Cox's Bazar newspaper Apan Kantha, who recently visited
Myanmar's Rakhine state - the home land of the Rohingya - said people's
desire to flee continued unabated, regardless of the risks.

"Every [Rohingya] family I met in Rakhine state said to me that they found
persecution by the Myanmese military intolerable and they would like to
sneak out of the country," the Bangladeshi journalist said.

"Almost every young Rohingya man in one village said that they had the
dream of somehow landing in Malaysia. They knew of the torture and tragic
death of their fellow boatpeople last year, yet they said they would still
take the chance if the illegal sea and land route to Malaysia reopens."

Police in Cox's Bazar reacted to last year's reports by taking action
against boat owners and snakeheads. This was in spite of the long
relationship between police and the smugglers, and some say it is only a
matter of time before business resumes.

If the snakeheads become confident that Thailand will not repeat its
actions of last winter and resume their business, they will find no
shortage of desperate customers.

Farid Hossain, 23, a Rohingya neighbour of Saifullah said he was sure that
the route to Malaysia would reopen next winter, or maybe the one after
that. When it does, he will be ready with his fare, and a heart full of
hope for a better life.

"The agents are very smart. They will discover a new route to take us to
Malaysia, bypassing Thailand, if they need to. It will take some time. But
I am sure they will help me enter Malaysia one day," Farid said.

Saifullah, too, is undeterred. "The hardship in Bangladesh is growing for
us. If the service [to Malaysia] resumes, I am ready to take the risk.
I'll be on the first boat."

____________________________________
INTERNATIONAL

February 8, BBC News
Australia to increase aid to Burma

Australia is to increase humanitarian aid to Burma to help the country to
be ready for political change, Australia's foreign minister has said.

Stephen Smith said Burma could not be allowed to decay "to the ultimate
disadvantage of its people".

He said the increase was in line with US policy, which calls for
engagement with Burma as well as sanctions.

But Mr Smith said the pledge was not to reward Burma's generals for their
plans to hold elections later this year.

"Burma's capacity cannot be allowed to completely atrophy to the ultimate
disadvantage and cost of its people," said Mr Smith, in a statement to
parliament.

"The international community needs to start the rebuilding now."

The humanitarian aid will increase from A$30m ($26m; £16.7m) this
financial year to around A$50m next year, a rise of some 40%.

'Significant change'

Mr Smith said the increase was "not a reward for Burma's military, but a
recognition of the immense task faced by current and future generations of
Burmese".

He said Australia had "long been appalled both by the Burmese military
suppression of the democratic aspirations of the Burmese people and by its
disrespect for their human rights".

"Until we see significant change from Burma's authorities, Australia will
maintain a policy of targeted financial sanctions."

Australia imposes travel restrictions on senior Burmese military figures
and has had a ban on defence exports to the country since pro-democracy
protests were crushed in 1988.

Last year, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that sanctions alone
had not succeeded in bringing political change to Burma and that the White
House was seeking to engage with the generals.

Burma's government is planning elections for later this year.

They will be the first since 1990, when the military refused to recognise
the landslide victory of the opposition National League for Democracy
(NLD).

Pro-democracy leader and NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi is currently under
house arrest and is not expected to be released in time to take part.

____________________________________
OPINION / OTHER

February 7, New York Times
Nelson Mandela’s captive audience: My hero, page by page – Ko Bo Kyi

News of Nelson Mandela’s release dominated the radio broadcasts by the BBC
and Voice of America on Feb. 11, 1990. I felt I understood why he had
resisted so long, because in Burma, as in South Africa at the time Mr.
Mandela was in jail, the majority of people were struggling to make their
voices heard. Within three months, the military junta would refuse to
recognize the results of our national election — and I would be locked up
in Rangoon’s Insein Prison for leading a demonstration.

Released in 1993, I was sent to prison again in 1994. It was during my
second sentence that I managed to read a magazine article describing Mr.
Mandela’s autobiography, “Long Walk to Freedom.” Single pages of this
article were smuggled into the prison over a period of weeks, and I pieced
them together from tightly folded scraps. But the story was worth the
trouble: Mr. Mandela’s refusal to give up his principles, during more than
27 years in jail, was an inspiration to me and all the other political
activists in Insein. “Nelson Mandela is the black power from South Africa,
he can overcome 27 years of darkness,” went the refrain of a song that one
of my fellow prisoners composed, a song we used to sing to keep up our
spirits.

Mr. Mandela wrote that time drags in prison only if you are idle; if you
organize, study and work, prison life can be very busy. But his situation
seemed in some ways better than mine. He could study openly, whereas my
friends and I could do so only clandestinely. We pleaded with the guards
to allow it, but they told us we had to renounce political resistance
first.

The Burmese authorities repeatedly pressured me to cooperate with them.
But I held firm. In 1999, one year after my second prison term was
finished, I escaped to Thailand — and right away got a copy of “Long Walk
to Freedom.” “The challenge for every prisoner, particularly every
political prisoner, is how to survive prison intact, how to emerge from
prison undiminished, how to conserve and even replenish one’s beliefs,”
Mr. Mandela wrote. “Prison is designed to break one’s spirit and destroy
one’s resolve.”

For the Burmese people, the long walk toward a free society is not
finished, but we are walking in the right direction, and we will arrive
one day.

Ko Bo Kyi spent nearly eight years in prison in Burma before escaping to
Thailand and co-founding the Assistance Association for Political
Prisoners.
____________________________________

February 6, Irrawaddy
The case for China's intervention in Burma – Min Zin

In the aftermath of Burma's 2007 "Saffron Revolution" and the military's
subsequent crackdown, China has been increasingly pressured to assume a
larger role in helping to resolve Burma's crisis.

A gathering cloud of myth however, has formed with regard to Beijing's
policy on Burma, indicating that China has limited sway with the military
junta’s generals and that Burmese activists and their advocates in the
West overestimated China's influence on the generals.

This view is simply wrong or, at worst, Chinese propaganda. Of course
China has more power and influence on the generals than any other country.
The question is whether the Chinese Communist government wants to use its
leverage to facilitate change in Burma. It does not mean that China is the
patron that pulls the strings, and the self-isolated, delusive Burmese
regime is its puppet.

The generals are highly aware of China's overwhelming strategic weight
over Burma and appear eager to diversify and reduce its dependence on
China since the mid-1990s. The junta may manage to reduce its military and
economic over-reliance on China, but China's political and diplomatic
protection remains indispensable to the regime's survival. Moreover,
China's influence over the ethnic cease-fire groups in northeastern Burma
that borders China's southwestern province could complicate relations
between two countries.

If Beijing chose an uncooperative policy toward Burma in the latter's
handling of its ethnic groups, the regime's state-building effort would
face a serious hurdle. Therefore, the regime has no choice (no matter
whether its intentions indicate otherwise) but to rely on China for
political and diplomatic protection and cooperation. In other words,
Burma's dependency on China is the consequence––by default––of the junta's
struggle for survival rather than its stated intentions, such as
nationalism and Sinophobia.

Therefore, China has leverage not only in terms of its provision of
carrots, but also in terms of the sticks it can wield to hurt the regime.
But China has not used its stick to poke the generals toward change at
least for two reasons: first, China does not want Western-style
democratization on its southern flank; and second, Beijing does not want
to be seen as a "threat" to its neighbors.

Although China wants to see economic reform taking place in Burma, China
has almost no sympathy for Burma's democratic crusade and its advocates;
Beijing considers them too close to the West. China does not have
confidence in the opposition's capacity to maintain stability in the
divisive nation. And more importantly, China has also gained unrivaled
economic advantages by supporting the pariah regime.

The second reason for not using its leverage is related to China's
geopolitical strategy that aims to undermine the feasibility and
desirability of a US policy of containment mainly by forging solid working
relations with its smaller neighbors and other major powers.

While China continued its program of economic and military modernization
through the 1990s, it wants to minimize the risk that others, most notably
the member-states of the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (Asean),
will view China as an unacceptably dangerous threat which must be parried
or perhaps even forestalled.

If China continued to meddle in Burma's affairs in the 1990s the way it
backed Burmese communist insurgents in the late 1960s and 1970s, it would
stir grave concerns in Asean. China would be viewed as a bully.

These concerns would coincide with the current South China Sea dispute
between China and some Asean members over territorial claims and
resources. China's leaders have decided to follow Deng Xiaoping's cryptic
instruction: "Hide our capacities and bide our time, but also get some
things done." (tao guang yang hui you suo zuo hui). China has adopted an
opportunistic foreign policy of maintaining relations with any government
that would remain friendly to China and serve China's security and
economic interests, irrespective of that government's propensity for
reform.

However, this policy of self-serving pragmatism appears to be more and
more untenable for at least two reasons. First, it puts China in a
difficult dilemma whenever the Burmese regime faces serious vulnerability
in domestic power shifts. For instance, Beijing found itself in policy
confusion when the opposition National League for Democracy won a
landslide victory in the 1990 multi-party elections.

During the Buddhist monk-led protests in 2007, China similarly faced an
uneasy situation. Since former Prime Minister Khin Nyunt, who China viewed
as "Burma's Musharraf," was purged in 2004, China has felt itself losing
its grip on the regime's power establishment and has become increasingly
frustrated with Snr-Gen Than Shwe's manipulative foreign policy.

In the wake of Khin Nyunt's fall from grace, Than Shwe visited India and
agreed to the latter's bid for a UN Security Council seat. He later
backtracked on that policy. The junta chief also reached out to Russia and
North Korea, another gesture that irritated the Chinese. To top it off,
Burma recently chose to buy a fleet of Russian MiG-29 fighter jets,
despite China's offer to sell its latest J-10 and FC-1 fighters at a
bargain price.

While Beijing's communist bureaucrats may be able to remain indifferent to
the casualties of Burma's "Saffron Revolution," they cannot underestimate
the high stakes resulting from the Burmese army's attacks on ethnic
cease-fire groups along its border. The Burmese junta's recent military
offensive against the Han-blooded Kokang resulted in a massive influx of
refugees into China.

Indeed, the policy of "contained Balkanization" in Burma could lead to a
resumption of localized armed conflicts between certain ethnic cease-fire
groups and the Burmese army. Since the most volatile areas are around the
Sino-Burmese border, where formidable Wa and Kachin ethnic armies are
based, China is likely to face increased instability in its southwest and
consequential disruptions of its economic and strategic interests.

The risk is imminent and urgent because the regime has set 2010 as an
election year and has to impose a deadline on cease-fire groups joining
the Burmese army's Border Guard Forces.

For more, visit: http://irrawaddy.org/opinion_story.php?art_id=17753

____________________________________

February 6, Toronto Sun (Canada)
A bridge to nowhere – Teviah Moro

MAE SOT, Thailand - Trucks packed with goods as high as they are long line
up to cross the "Friendship Bridge" between Thailand and Burma.

This is the most conventional way across the Moei River, that separates
the two countries.

But black market goods – everything from teak to amphetamines - make their
way

into Thailand via more unorthodox routes.

Burmese migrant workers, the mainstay of this border town's underground
economy, fall into that category.

They are ferried across the river on inner tubes, while Thai border guards
look the other way for 20 baht (about 64 cents Canadian).

There are an estimated 100,000-plus Burmese migrant workers in the border
town of Mae Sot and more than 2.5 million in all of Thailand.

Hoping for a life free of oppression and grinding poverty, the migrants
look for a better life on the other side.

More often than not, however, life on the construction sites, garment
factories and farms that hire them fall well short of ideal conditions.

"All the factories use migrant workers," says Moe Swe, who heads up the
Yaung Chi Oo Workers Association. "They treat them like animals. When they
need them, they hire them. When they don't need them, they kick them out."

San Dar was one of countless Burmese women who toiled for long hours on a
sewing machine in Thailand until she lost her job.

The 24-year-old woman from Rangoon came here with her mother about a

year ago because of Burma's dismal economic conditions.

In Burma, San Dar - a false name the migrant woman made up due to fear

of reprisals from Burmese authorities - owned a sewing machine, which

she used to run a small business.

A day's wages in Burma, an impoverished nation of about 50 million, could
not buy meat, a relative luxury she can afford in Thailand, she noted.

But in Thailand, San Dar and her mother have watched dreams of a better
life get shredded at a garment factory.

At the garment factory, she worked from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., a shift broken
up by a two-hour break, seven days a week.

That earned her 61 baht ($1.96 Canadian) a day.

The legal minimum wage in this part of Thailand is 152 baht ($4.87
Canadian) for a day's labour, but is easily skirted for the sweatshops who
have learned how to hide their conditions from government inspectors.

Things turned sour for San Dar and her mother when the factory's manager
asked them to move to other sleeping quarters, which she said were beside
smelly toilets.

Because her mother was already very sick, San Dar refused, a response that
prompted the manager to kick their dinner across the floor, she said.

“That's why they came to us," said Moe Swe, whose association offers a
safe house for dismissed migrant workers.

Apart from emergency shelter, his workers' association offers migrants
retraining,

coaches them on workers' rights and advocates for their compensation from
ruthless employers.

Between May 2002 and July 2008, the association, working with lawyers paid
for by international aid organizations, successfully represented 1,835
workers before the Thai courts.

In 132 cases, the total compensation was 10.7 million baht ($342,935.53).

That's made Moe Swe an unpopular man among Thailand' business community.

A neatly dressed man with glasses and a laid-back manner, he is used to
upsetting the status quo.

Before he fled Burma, he led a student uprising in 1988 and spent 12 years
hiding in the jungle.

Now, it's not the Burmese regime that's gunning for his head. It's
sweatshop owners in Mae Sot.

"I've cost them a lot of money,” Moe Swe says with a laugh.

While migrant workers are able to register to work legally in Thailand,
many employers prefer to remain underground.

About 997,000 migrant workers registered with the government in 2009, but
Moe Swe said an equal number or more did not.

Others choose to bypass the factories for a life of mining through
mountains of trash at a local garbage dump at the edge of the border town.

Trash pickers can earn between 30-40 baht (96 cents-$1.28 Canadian)
digging through trash and reselling their finds – about the same wages
they would make taking care of cows at an area farm.

About 200 Burmese migrants have traded their troubled homeland for
rudimentary bamboo dwellings perched amid the peaks and valleys of
foul-smelling rubbish.

"It's worse in Burma," says a 25-year-old mother of two children from
Rangoon who has lived in the dump for about a year.

Last month, her husband died here after a bout with malaria. He was 28
years old.

Elsewhere, others languish in refugee camps.

While the line between migrant and refugee tends to blur in Thailand,
there are an estimated 50,000 refugees living in a camp just north of Mae
Sot, waiting for a chance to return home or move on.

Officially, there are roughly 150,000 Burmese living in Thai camps.

Some camp residents have spent their whole lives there.

Though some at Mae La earn money as migrant workers in illegal sweatshops,
many get by on food rations.

Ley Nge would like to leave the camp and earn some money, but is too
afraid to cross paths with Thai authorities.

"Here's it's peaceful, but it's not like a village," says the 30-year-old.

Thai policies that restrict camp dwellers' freedom of movement are
troublesome, says Sally Thompson, deputy director of the Thailand Burma
Border Consortium (TBBC), a group of aid agencies that provide camp
dwellers with food and other basic necessities.

"The opportunities for livelihood are extremely limited," Thompson said.

"It's really unrealistic to think that refugees can be self-reliant within
a camp context."

Lucky children lodging at Kaw Tha Blay Hostel, a residence supported by
Canadian-based charity Project Umbrella Burma, are able to go to school.

The Orillia, Ont., charity provides about $600 to feed, educate and house

each orphan or unaccompanied youth who stays at the hostel.

Lucky ones may study two more years at Project Umbrella Burma's college.

One Burmese man working at a small eatery in downtown Mae Sot likened the
life of a migrant to one of perpetual limbo.

"I've got no future now. I cannot live in my country. I cannot live in
Thailand," said 25-year-old Johnny Adhikari.

Adhikari said he and his uncle found themselves at the wrong end of
Burmese authorities when they made the mistake of confronting a soldier
for stealing a goat.

Realizing they would never win their case, his uncle told him to leave the
country.

"He said, 'Johnny, you have to go.'"

Now a river separates his new home and his old, with little hard times no
further behind him.

____________________________________
INTERVIEW

February 8, Journalism.co.uk
Q&A: Aye Chan Naing, chief editor, Democratic Voice of Burma – Laura Oliver

Democratic Voice of Burma Reports and images from the anti-government
protests in Burma in 2007 brought the plight of citizens, journalists and
free speech in the country to the world's attention.

Three years later, journalists in the country are still being sentenced to
lengthy prison terms for carrying out their work - not least Ngwe Soe Lin
and Hla Hla Win, both contributors to Norway-based radio station
Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), who were imprisoned in the last two
months.

Funded by governments in Scandinavia and several other funding agencies in
Europe, the US and Canada, DVB covers news from Burma in English and
Burmese with a network of reporters in the country and is staunchly
independent, its executive director and chief editor Aye Chan Naing tells
Journalism.co.uk.

Journalism.co.uk spoke with Naing to find out more about how DVB operates
and why it will fight for its journalists and for independent news for
Burma.

When was DVB set up and what were the circumstances?

DVB was set up in Oslo and our first programme on shortwave radio went on
air on 19 July 1992. We are in Oslo because the Nobel Peace Prize was
given to opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi the year before.

When she got the prize in 1991, our exiled government leaders were invited
to Oslo and they requested the Norwegian government to help set up the
radio station. The request was granted and we have been here since then.

How many staff are currently working for DVB?

Altogether we have 150 people both full-time and part-time. The majority
of them are in Burma. We have a lot of contacts throughout the country, in
addition to our journalists working within the country. We use internet
and mobile phones to gather information and send it to Oslo.

Our main focus is news about Burma and we have an audience both inside and
outside of Burma. Our website has around 7,000 visitors every day. Most of
them are from outside of the country, because the government has blocked
access to our site from inside Burma.

What are the biggest challenges facing news reporting on Burma and
gathering news in the country?

The risk of getting arrested is the main challenge for our journalists
inside the country. You are working as reporter but you can't tell anyone
who you are. Other challenges are poor communication and lack of openness
among the public and government officials.

It should not be a crime to work as a DVB journalist within Burma or to
send news to DVB: that is the bottom line. When we started, we started as
opposition media, but in 2002 we became an independent media organisation
not associated with any opposition group. All our journalists follow basic
international journalistic ethics and we always welcome Burmese government
officials to speak on our radio and TV [to give] their side of the story.

How and why in the face of these challenges does DVB keep going?

We will continue to fight legally within Burma against the treatment of
our journalists as criminals and raise these issues internationally. But
regardless of the risk of getting arrested, we will continue to do our
work within the country. Imagine a country without independent
journalists. It would cause a total blackout of information within the
country and allow whoever rules that country to think they can do whatever
they want - regardless of rule of laws and consequences.

We can't let Burma be in this situation. Millions of Burmese people are
counting on us and depending on us. After all, many journalists take risks
every day and a lot of them have paid with their lives to expose the
truth.

What do you think a service like DVB means to the Burmese people?

I want to quote one of our audience comments to answer this: "In Burma, we
survive not by breathing air but by listening to your station."

In a country like Burma, we are needed to provide access to independent
news and for authorities to know that someone is watching and reporting on
their activities.

The length of the sentence on our reporters, 27 years [in a combined
sentence] for Hla Hla Win and 13 years for Ngwe Soe Linn, clearly shows
how much the government wants to silence the people and how important our
job is.

____________________________________
PRESS RELEASE

February 8, The Conservative Party Human Rights Commission
UK Conservative Party Human Rights Commission calls for investigation into
crimes against humanity in Burma, a universal arms embargo and increased
aid ahead of Burma’s sham elections

The UK Conservative Party’s Human Rights Commission has today released a
policy paper calling for increased action on Burma ahead of the regime’s
sham elections later in the year.

In a paper submitted to the Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague today,
the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, chaired by Tony Baldry MP,
recommended that a new Conservative government in the United Kingdom
should take pro-active steps to build international support for a
universal arms embargo, a UN commission of inquiry into crimes against
humanity and targeted financial sanctions.

The Commission called for the EU to adopt more carefully targeted
measures, such as a ban on insurance. Sanctions should be linked more
directly to developments in the country, the report concluded.

“The regime must be given a clear message that sanctions will be tightened
further in response to events in  Burma and, similarly, if there is
concrete, long-lasting, significant progress, including the release of
Aung San Suu Kyi and all political prisoners, an end to offensives and
human rights violations in the ethnic areas, and a meaningful process of
tripartite dialogue between the regime, the [democracy movement] and the
ethnic nationalities, some sanctions could be lifted,” the Commission
recommended. “The Generals should not, however, be rewarded for taking ten
steps back and one small step forward – the progress must be significant,
based on the benchmarks outlined here.”

A unified international approach should be developed, high-level
engagement efforts through the UN should be increased, and economic
pressure “must be accompanied by intense, high-level diplomatic and
political pressure”.

A full copy of the report is available from Benedict Rogers, Deputy
Chairman of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, at
ben at csw.org.uk

For comment please contact Benedict Rogers on

+44-208-329-0041 or +44-7823-329664
____________________________________

February 8, Maldive’s Presidents Office
New Ambassador of Myanmar presents his credentials to President Nasheed

The new Ambassador of Myanmar to the Maldives, U Ohn Thwin of Myanmar,
presented his Credentials to President Mohamed Nasheed today.

The President congratulated Ambassador Thwin on his appointment, and
welcomed him to the Maldives.

President Nasheed and the Ambassador discussed on possible areas of
cooperation between the Maldives and Myanmar. Discussions were especially
focused on strengthening trade ties between the two countries.

The President also expressed his hope that Aung San Suu Kyi would be
released soon.