BurmaNet News, September 14, 2010

[Editor]

September 14, 2010 Issue #4041


INSIDE BURMA
DPA: Myanmar’s main opposition party dissolved, state media reports
TIME: Burma: Should opposition parties boycott the elections?
DVB: Activist monks call for election boycott
Irrawaddy: Military restricts Rangoon monks

ON THE BORDER
Irrawaddy: Junta deploys more troops after China visit
IMNA: Displaced Mon villagers struggle to survive
AFP: Elephant injured by landmine in Myanmar

INTERNATIONAL
DVB: UN war crimes probe ‘still just an idea’
BBC: Tyneside teenager speaks at Papal vigil

OPINION / OTHER
Independent (UK): Burma's junta can't escape from the net – Phoebe Kennedy
DVB: It’s a warped mirror into which Than Shwe stares

PRESS RELEASE
Freedom Now: Countdown to freedom: Aung San Suu Kyi must be released on
November 13, 2010



____________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

September 14, Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Myanmar’s main opposition party dissolved, state media reports

Myanmar’s main opposition party, led by democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi,
has been dissolved after failing to register to contest the November
polls, state television reported on Tuesday.

The National League for Democracy (NLD), which won the 1990 election by a
landslide, was “automatically abolished” for failing to register within
the time limit to contest this year’s polls, state—run TV reported.

Another four parties were also dissolved for failing to field enough
candidates in the upcoming polls.

As a result, only 37 political parties from a total of 42 are to contest
the polls, The parties will be permitted to campaign on radio and TV
starting on October 31, the broadcast said.

Myanmar’s junta is to stage the country’s first general election in 20
years on November 7 for lower, upper and regional parliaments.

Opposition figures have already labelled the polls unfair because election
regulations have effectively excluded the participation of the NLD and
Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

A party registration rule stipulated that contesting parties must exclude
members currently serving prison terms, a regulation that appeared to be
tailor made to force the NLD to drop Suu Kyi, who is serving an 18—month
house detention term due to expire on November 13.

Instead of dropping their leader, a democracy icon in Myanmar, also called
Burma, and abroad, the NLD chose not to contest the election, leading to
its demise as a legal political entity.

“Even so, the NLD continues to be a political force,” said Aung Din, who
heads the US Campaign for Burma. “After the election we will urge foreign
governments to pressure the elected government to open a dialogue with Ms.
Suu Kyi and the NLD for national reconciliation in exchange for
recognizing the election and dropping sanctions,” he said.

The election is expected to be won by the pro—junta Union for Social
Development Party, the political arm of the military. It is the only party
that has sufficient funds to field candidates for the more than 1,000
contested seats.

A 500—dollar registration fee per candidate has limited the number of
opposition contestants in Myanmar where average per capita income is about
600 dollars.

The National Democracy Force, a splinter group from the NLD, has only been
able to field about 160 candidates.

____________________________________

September 14, TIME
Burma: Should opposition parties boycott the elections?

Rangoon – Kaung Myint Htut was just 15 years old when he says Burma's
military intelligence dragged him blindfolded from his home in Rangoon for
the third time. It was December 1990, six months after the junta had
failed to recognize a landslide election victory by Aung San Suu Kyi's
National League for Democracy (NLD). Like many young students, Kaung Myint
Htut had been unable to contain his objections to the political oppression
of the military regime, prompting him to become a student leader involved
in regular strikes and demonstrations. "They got mad at me," he says,
recalling how his interrogators advised him to abandon politics between
beatings. "But I couldn't quit."

Six years in prison and two decades later, Kaung Myint Htut has chosen a
less confrontational stance ahead of the Nov. 7 elections. The first since
1990, the polls' legitimacy has been widely called into question because
the previous election results were ignored. He plans to run as an
independent candidate in Rangoon's South Okkalapa township, the same
constituency as Rangoon Mayor Aung Thein Linn. "We have opposed this
illegal government for 20 years," he says. "If you don't participate in
the election ... things would be worse." Like many politicians taking
part, he argues that an election boycott — the long-standing policy of Suu
Kyi's NLD — would allow the junta to win uncontested.

Suu Kyi's party and Burmese political groups outside the country have
condemned the plans of Kaung Myint Htut and others. "Their participation
in the election helps the regime in making a permanent dictatorship," says
Aung Din, also a former political prisoner who runs U.S. Campaign for
Burma, an organization campaigning for a boycott. The government's
decision to ban those in detention from running in the elections, which
prompted a faction of the NLD to split with Suu Kyi, means no Burmese
should participate, he argues. "Any political process in Burma without
Aung San Suu Kyi is like removing Nelson Mandela from South Africa's
antiapartheid movement," Aung Din says. It remains to be seen whether the
junta will free the Nobel Peace Prize winner when her latest period of
house arrest expires one week after the vote.

Kaung Myint Htut and the NLD's offshoot, the National Democratic Force
(NDF), argue any window of political opportunity in Burma is better than
none. But most of the dozens of opposition parties say there has been too
little time to prepare since the elections were called on Aug. 13, and
that the steep candidate-registration fee of $500 and heavily restrictive
campaigning regulations are setting their candidates up for failure. Even
Kaung Myint Htut's fledgling political party, Myanmar Democracy Congress,
died before campaigning started in earnest, unable to raise the funds to
register the minimum number of candidates and forcing him to run alone.

With few avenues for collecting party funds — authorities have sought to
prosecute opposition politicians collecting donations in public — even the
big opposition parties are struggling to compete nationwide, says Khin
Maung Swe, formerly of the NLD and now chairman of the NDF. Suu Kyi's
continued house arrest and the fractured nature of the opposition means
the different factions will have to avoid undermining each other, he adds.
But win or lose, Khin Maung Swe says opposition parties will increasingly
work together in the future. "We will have a coalition in the parliament
once the election is over."

One thing both sides of the boycott debate agree on is that the odds are
stacked against the opposition. Of the 498 elected seats in the lower and
upper houses in the national parliament, the NDF is likely to contest 150
at most. By contrast, the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development
Party (USDP), led by Burma's Prime Minister Thein Sein, is expected to run
for every seat in the country. The military automatically gets 25% — or
166 parliamentarians — in the national legislatures, in addition to the
nation's top posts. So even if the elections are free and fair — and
that's a big if given that independent monitors are barred from the
process — the numbers are hardly in the opposition's favor.

Less clear is just how the various houses of parliament will operate once
the votes have been counted. To what extent will opposition MPs be given a
voice? Burma has not had a functioning parliament since the military took
power in 1962 and the day-to-day logistics remain unclear. A Rangoon-based
Western diplomat, who has held several meetings with the USDP since the
party was launched in April, described feeling "increasingly pessimistic"
about Burma's elections and their aftermath. "It's about trying to manage
a process. I don't feel they will give space to the opposition."

For the likes of Kaung Myint Htut who have attempted to forget previous
harsh treatment by the military, deciding to work within the heavily
flawed election framework has required a certain level of trust the
government has done little to deserve. But he says it's a gamble he feels
is necessary if Burma is ever going to change — even if everything is on
the military's terms. "My intention was not to be a politician, but I need
the legitimacy," he says. "This legitimacy is best for Burma."

____________________________________

September 14, Democratic Voice of Burma
Activist monks call for election boycott – Aye Nai

An underground Burmese monk activist group has urged would-be voters
across the country to boycott the 7 November elections.

The call was made by the All Burma Monks’ Alliance (ABMA) yesterday as
proceedings get underway to mark the three-year anniversary of the
September 2007 monk-led uprising.

“We are calling on the people of Burma to boycott the 2010 elections,
which are intended to transform the military dictators into a legitimate
government, by not voting,” said ABMA spokesperson Dhamma Siri.

The statement made reference to the 2008 constitution, which awards 25
percent of parliamentary seats to the military prior to voting, whilst it
claimed that the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party
(USDP) will likely dominate the remaining seats.

Asked whether their will be more freedom for Buddhist monks under the
post-election government, Dhamma Siri said it was unlikely. “There are a
lot of interferences – harassments in a way – on religious affairs by the
current coup government.

“They play nice and rough with us by utilising their power in many
different ways, so there is no way the new government formed by this
military junta will be good.”

The ABMA is formed of key players in the September 2007 uprising, which
has come to be known as the Saffron Revolution in testament to the
thousands of saffron-robed monks that took to the streets of Burma before
a bloody crackdown on 26 September.

Calls for a boycott of Burma’s first elections in 20 years have been
spearheaded by detained opposition icon Aung San Suu Kyi, who is banned
from competing and whose party, the National League for Democracy (NLD),
was dissolved following its decision not to run.

There looks set to be 42 parties competing for seats in the new
parliament, although the USDP, with nearly 1000 candidates across the
country, has a clear advantage. In contrast, the National Democratic Force
(NDF), which was born from the ashes of the NLD, will field 161, a figure
significantly lower than the USDP but still a healthy one compared to
other opposition and ‘third force’ parties.
____________________________________

September 14, Irrawaddy
Military restricts Rangoon monks

Burma’s military government has imposed tight restrictions on Buddhist
monks in Rangoon in an attempt to prevent a recurrence of protests during
the anniversary of the monk-led protests that led to a massive
pro-democracy uprising in September 2007.

Rangoon's sources said the military junta told the Association of
Abhidhamma Propagation in Rangoon to hold a quiet celebration for the 43rd
annual Abhidhamma exams in Rangoon.

Speaking to The Irrawaddy, a senior Buddhist monk whose duty is to check
exam papers and protect monks while they are taking the exams said, “They
are not allowing us to use loudspeakers or put up flags and signboards
during the Abhidhamma exam this year.”

The exam, which tests knowledge of texts that are thought to originate
from the 3rd century BCE and contain the thoughts of the Buddha's
disciples and followers, is held from Sept. 11 to 19 at the Abhidhamma
Yadanayaka Monastery in Bahan township near the Shwedagon Pagoda.

The restrictions also extend to lay associations in residential blocks set
up to donate food to monks. They now have to get permission to invite
monks to merit-making ceremonies when food is donated and they must be
responsible for security.

“We have to take responsibility for monk's behavior when they come to our
ceremonies, so if the monks protest like they did in the saffron uprising,
we will be responsible and could be sent to prison,”
said one association leader.

Fearing protests, the authorities have deployed more security forces on
the streets near monasteries and pagodas, with tight security being
enforced near Shwedagon Pagoda.

If security forces suspect a monk or a lay person, they follow them and
photograph them.

Meanwhile a source in Rangoon's police said that the Ministry of Home
Affairs released a statement instructing police to crack down on
protesters who disturb the upcoming election.

“We have started training on how to block roads and control protesters and
even on how to prevent fire as part of our security procedures prior to
the coming election,” he said.

Burma's state-run newspaper, New Light of Myanmar, reported on Tuesday
that the authorities found several bombs in Pegu, Thaton and Rangoon
recently, and accused insurgents of planting them, saying they are trying
to kill innocent people and destroy public property.

____________________________________
ON THE BORDER

September 14, Irrawaddy
Junta deploys more troops after China visit – Wai Moe

The Burmese junta has increased its troops deployment near areas
controlled by the largest ethnic armed group, the United Wa State Army,
following Snr-Gen Than Shwe’s  five-day trip to China, where he discussed
border issues with his Chinese counterparts in Beijing.

Ethnic sources along the Sino-Burmese border said several hundred
government troops have reinforced the tactical command of the Military
Operation Command (MOC)-1  around Tangyang in northern Shan State since
Sunday, a day after Than Shwe returned to Burma.

“We learned on Sunday that an estimated 500 government troops were sent to
the MOC-1’s tactical command in Tangyang. Before fresh reinforcements,
there were seven battalions under the command. So now there could be
around 2,000 troops total in Tangyang under the MOC-1,” said an ethnic
source, who said one more light infantry division is likely to be deploy
in northern Shan State.

An official of the Shan State Army-South (SSA-South) said that since last
week there also are  more government troops deployed in southern Shan
State, particularly near areas controlled by UWSA bases along the
Thai-Burmese border.

Before the dispute started in April 2009 between the junta and ethnic
armed groups over their transformation into a border guard Force (BGF)
under the command of the Burmese army, the UWSA deployed three division
commands along the Sino-Burmese and five division commands in southern
Shan State near the Thai border.

Meanwhile, the UWSA has called for new soldier recruitment as well as more
militias following the BGF tension.

Apart from the situation around UWSA areas, the junta also has restricted
movements of the Kachin Independence Organization(KIO), another
significant cease-fire group in northern Burma and along the Sino-Burmese
border which has also rejected the BGF plan.

“The KIO conveys and official travel in Kachin State are not like before.
Now the government has restricted it,” said a KIO official from the
group’s headquarters in Laiza.

KIO sources said a rumor spread along the border that during Than Shwe’s 
visit  he had talked to Chinese counterparts about a military offensive
against ethnic armed groups along the Sino-Burmese border.

“But this rumor came from traders from Myitkyina and Bamo, not from the
China side. So it seems like psychological warfare from the military
government, the same as in the state-run-newspapers,” the KIO official
said.

The New Light of Myanmar reported on Sunday that Chinese President Hu
Jintao said, “China vows not to accept and support any groups who world
carry out” anti-government movements along the border “to damage bilateral
relations.”

However, a story by China’s Xinhua news agency differed from Burma’s state
media coverage. “Hu called on both sides to jointly safeguard peace and
stability on the frontier and to boost economic and social development of
the border areas,” Xinhua reported.

Responding to Burmese newspaper reports, ethnic minority sources on the
border said they are not working against the junta, but they are working
for better autonomous and ethnic rights in the region.

Burma and China share more a 2,200 km-long border. Ethnic minorities such
as the Kachin, Shan, Kokang and Wa live in Burma as well as in China’s
southwest province of Yunnan.

A UWSA source said that what they call autonomous rights is what those
ethnic groups in Yunnan are enjoying in China. “But the [Burmese]
government does not give us even these kinds of rights,” he said.

Meanwhile, Xinhua reported on Tuesday that the China National Petroleum
Corporation will break ground on the Chinese end of a 771-kilometer 
pipeline to Burma on Friday, a section of the  Sino-Burmese oil and gas
pipelines from Burma’s Kyaukpru Port to China’s Yunnan Province.

The strategic pipeline, 2,806 km long, will run parallel to each other,
and they are expected to carry 22 million tons of crude oil and 12 billion
cubic meters of gas annually to China. The natural gas pipeline will
extend farther from Kunming City to nearby Guangxi and Guizhou, Xinhua
reported.

____________________________________

September 14, Independent Mon News Agency
Displaced Mon villagers struggle to survive

In the face of worsening relations between the New Mon State Party (NMSP)
and the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), recently displaced Mon
villagers who have been living in a site on the Thai-Burma border since
May are finding survival increasingly difficult.

According to NMSP officers in control of the temporary displacement site,
located in Baleh Done Phai village on the border, international donors
stopped supporting the site in July. Mon youth living in foreign countries
are reportedly continuing to contribute financial support to the site in
question, but IMNA’s sources within the NMSP claim that these funds are
insufficient to cover residents’ needs.

Residents of the camp told IMNA that they face day-to-day
forweb-300x165difficulties finding the money to purchase enough food to
eat.

Mi San Yie, who lives in the site with her family, told IMNA “ After I
arrived in Baleh Done Phai village, I could not get a job. Nobody wanted
to lend me money. My children when they go to school, they are jealous [of
the other children] and sad because they have no money to buy food. We do
not have a single baht.

Following the NMSP’s formal refusal of the SPDC’s Border Guard Force offer
on April 22nd of this year, fighting between the two groups was feared to
be imminent, and roughly 600 Mon villagers living in NMSP-controlled
territory fled to the Thai-Burma border, near Halackhanee camp and Baleh
Done Phai village.

According to the Mon Relief and Development Committee’s (MRDC) records,
500 of these villagers returned to their homes in May, after a war between
the NMSP and the Burmese army no longer seemed to be an immediate threat.
20 families, mostly composed of individuals with disabilities and women
with children, remained in the relocation area.

The MRDC’s records report that of these 20 families, there are 38 males
and 39 females over the age of five, and 8 males and 9 females under five
years of age. The MRDC also reported that the site contains 30 temporary
homes, which were provided by the NMSP.

The NMSP formally refused to surrender its armed wing to the SPDC once
again, on September 1st of this year. Thus far, villagers living in
NMSP-controlled territory have opted to remain in their villages. Sources
from these areas claim, however, that many villagers are anxious at the
thought of impending conflict.
____________________________________

September 14, Agence France Presse
Elephant injured by landmine in Myanmar

Bangkok – A 10-year-old elephant who stepped on a landmine in Myanmar had
to walk part of the way to Thailand for treatment to a badly injured foot,
vets said on Tuesday.

Boonmee, the second elephant in about six weeks to be hurt by a mine in
Myanmar, is too young to work in logging but was kept with her mother on
the trip, said Soraida Salwala, founder of Friends of the Asian Elephant.

She stepped on the device on Saturday night after slipping her chain and
wandering off from the area where she was being held.

"Her right leg is severely injured with no sole left on her foot and two
nails lost," Soraida said.

Despite the wound Boonmee walked three kilometres (1.86 miles) with her
handler to the Moi river but the tide was too high for her to cross and
she was eventually transported by boat across on Monday afternoon.

The incident follows a similar mine injury suffered by an elephant working
in another area of Myanmar last month.

According to a 2009 Landmine Monitor report, the continued use of mines in
Myanmar by the junta and ethnic rebel groups had increased the number of
explosives in the country, while no humanitarian clearance had been
undertaken.

Boonmee is the 14th elephant treated for mine injuries at a hospital run
by Friends of the Asian Elephant -- an NGO in Lampang province in northern
Thailand -- since 1997.

Five years ago a 44-year-old female called Motala was given a temporary
prosthetic foot to prepare her for having a permanent limb fitted.

The animal, who was injured in 1999 while working at a logging camp on the
Thailand-Myanmar border, wore a 10 kilogram (22 pound) shoe-like device
which contained sawdust and cushions for up to six hours a day for months.

____________________________________
INTERNATIONAL

September 14, Democratic Voice of Burma
UN war crimes probe ‘still just an idea’ – Francis Wade

No movement has been made by the UN on an investigation into possible war
crimes and crimes against humanity by the ruling junta in Burma, a UN
spokesperson has said.

The call for a commission of inquiry was made in August by the UN’s
special rapporteur for Burma, Tomas Ojea Quintana, and follows demands by
rights groups for a top-level probe into gross human right abuses
committed by the military generals, who are preparing for controversial
elections on 7 November.

But Quintana’s proposal “is not something that’s gone beyond an idea”,
Farhan Haq, deputy spokesperson for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, said
last week. “Mr. Quintana has proposed that idea. Whether anybody takes
that up is up to the various bodies of the UN system.”

Asked by a reporter what the next step would be, he responded:
“Ultimately, the bodies of the UN system, including the Human Rights
Council, can consider Mr. Quintana’s views and see whether any further
steps need to be taken.”

Han said in August that he was “not aware of any of the [UN] bodies
taking
up this particular issue”.

The probe was given its highest endorsement last month after the US said
it would throw its weight behind an investigation, while an anonymous
White House official told the Washington Post that US sanctions on Burma
may also be tightened.

Both the US and the UN appear to have had a torrid time encouraging the
military junta, which has ruled Burma in various guises since 1962, to
embark on the road to democratic reform. Washington’s decision last year
to pursue a policy of engagement has produced no results, and the Obama
administration has since toughened its rhetoric.

Meanwhile, the UN has come under fire as it continues to vacillate over
appointing a successor to Ibrahim Gambari, the oft-criticised envoy to
Burma who was reassigned to Sudan in December last year. In January it
defended the hiatus on reappointing an envoy by claiming that UN Chief of
Staff Vijay Nambiar was temporarily filling the role.

But perhaps its most scathing criticism was reserved for Ban Ki-moon,
whose once vocal and consistent condemnation of the junta appears to have
quietened in the past year: in a leaked 50-page report in July, the former
chief of the UN’s anti-corruption agency, Inga-Britt Ahlenius, said that
the UN secretariat was in a “process of decay” after three years of
“absence of strategic guidance and leadership” under Ban, and that its
“relevance
in disarmament, in Myanmar [Burma]” was highly questionable.

____________________________________

September 14, BBC News
Tyneside teenager speaks at Papal vigil

A Tyneside teenager will be addressing a crowd of more than 80,000 people
during the Papal visit to the UK.

Declan Stokle will address an audience which will include Pope Benedict
XVI and speak about human rights abuses in Burma.

The 17-year-old, from Gosforth, has made a number of visits to help people
in refugee camps on Burma's border.

He said the prayer vigil, in London's Hyde Park, would be a chance to
publicise the situation in Burma.

Declan, who describes himself as a "normal Geordie lad", first visited a
refugee camp at the age of 10, with his family.

He said: "I've seen the atrocities over there, children my own age who've
suffered so much, and felt the need to start campaigning, and gradually
started to speak in front of people.

"Obviously it's a massive opportunity to publicise Burma to the world media.

"That will be a great thing for the people of Burma, who don't get much
publicity, which is a great shame because it's a horrendous military
dictatorship which runs the country."

He added: "I am pleased to be speaking in front of 82,000 people in the
hope that this will publicise the situation for these communities.

"The people of Burma do not have a voice, I have to be that voice."

____________________________________
OPINION / OTHER

September 14, Independent (UK)
Burma's junta can't escape from the net – Phoebe Kennedy

Rangoon – Burma's military rulers won't be inviting foreign observers to
monitor November's general election - a poll already dismissed as a sham
by Western governments - but the country's network of bloggers and
"citizen journalists" is planning to do the job for them.

Despite internet censorship and harsh punishments for those caught
criticising the junta online, Burma has a lively cyber community of
bloggers and Facebookers who believe the internet is the strongest force
for change in a country which has been locked under military dictatorship
for half a century. The 7 November election won't be free or fair - senior
general Than Shwe has already seen to that by bankrolling a huge proxy
party stuffed with ex-military candidates, while intimidating and
financially squeezing the small opposition parties which have dared to
stand.

But gathered in an internet café in central Rangoon, a group of young
cyber-activists say they are taking the vote seriously, even if the result
is a foregone conclusion.

"The regime is going to keep power after the election - we all know that -
but boycotting the election will not help. We need to grab any opportunity
to bring change," said Aung, a 27-year-old female blogger and author of
the popular Burmese-language blog "Me and My Stuff".

Optimistic and sometimes painfully idealistic, the bloggers are strongly
opposed to the government but are fed up with what is written about Burma
from outside the country: media reports, blogs written by political exiles
and human rights websites are all damning of the junta but offer nothing
positive, they say.

"They are just attacking the regime and nothing else," said Eugene, a
30-year-old blogger. "They don't show us a way out. They talk about the
problems but not the solution - many people are searching for more, and we
want to give them that."

Like everyone under the age of 38 in Burma, none of the bloggers has voted
before. The last national election in 1990 was won overwhelmingly by Nobel
Peace Prize-winner Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, but
the generals overturned the result.

Despite their inexperience of democracy, the bloggers see their role as
educating and informing.

"We want to explain how the election will work," said "Timpler" the cyber
name of a 30-year-old IT consultant and father of two. "I already post
information about political parties, the election commission and other
things about politics. Some people can be quite outspoken, making fun of
the government politicians, or saying that they are lying."

On election day itself, the bloggers plan to spread out across Rangoon and
other cities and towns to create an network of election monitors.

"Our role as bloggers, or CJs (citizen journalists) will be to
individually monitor the election," said Aung. "We plan to organise
ourselves to phone in from the polling stations and use SMS and Twitter to
get information out and to say whether the voting is free. This as our
responsibility."

The bloggers are well aware of the risks. Fellow blogger Nay Phone Latt
was arrested in early 2008 and sentenced to 12 years in prison for
breaking the Electronics Act. The 30-year-old was a prominent blogger
during the September 2007 "Saffron Revolution" and documented the uprising
led by Buddhist monks and its violent aftermath, in which dozens of
peaceful protesters were shot dead.

Nay Phone Latt, named this year as one of Time magazine's 100 most
influential people, is serving his sentence in the remote Hpa'an prison in
eastern Burma. His family is able to visit him occasionally, but the only
communication he now has with his online community is by hand-written
letter.

The bloggers plan to be careful. Their individual blogs can be easily
traced to them, so they may use a group blog such as Burmese Bloggers
without Borders, the site they set up in 2007 to record the uprising. The
regime has tried to block blog sites inside Burma and they cannot always
be viewed. But the bloggers say the government's haphazard approach to
controlling the internet and their own superior technical knowledge keep
them a step ahead.

"We can get around their controls and blocks, it's easy for us. We use
anonymity software and proxy servers outside the country. That's just
natural for us," said Aung, an English language graduate and IT trainer.
The bloggers' hope for the election is that a civilian-fronted government
will bring some new freedoms, small cracks in the system that can be
wedged open by their drive and activism.

"There will be no revolution, but even a little change will be good for
us," said Aung. "We don't want to be politicians, we see ourselves as
social activists. We believe in the power of new media to make a
difference in our country."


>From the blogs


Simple loss of faith, February 2009

We no longer have faith in the government, the education system and the
health-care system, etc. A visit to any government office will require a
string of briberies to get things done, starting from the lowest-rank.
Many educators and health practitioners have traded in their sense of
integrity in exchange for the pursuit of materialistic goals or simply the
need of survival. Schools have lost their essence of education and
nurturing. Our educational certificates no longer hold much worth. People
no longer have a sense of pride at being "educated". Corruptions and lies
have crept into Burma over the decades and slowly but surely, settled into
the daily lives of our people.

Past is haunting, present is daunting, July 2008

So, what is the present situation in Burma now? Burmese civilians did try
their best whenever the circumstances favoured. Then military regime has
repeatedly tortured and killed whomever is against them. Many families
were broken and destroyed under this oppression. Mothers are crying. Sons
are dying. Political prisoner are lying in the darkness. Political crisis
makes ever-deepening social crisis and in turn it's causing political
unrest again. Moreover, Nargis cyclone pushes Burma to the edge of the
worst. Everything seems hopeless and unimaginable what would happen to
worrisome and desperate 50 million souls. Will it be another revolution?
Will it be another cyclone to make us sufferer? Will it be another
earthquake to punish dictator? Will it be any betterment? Will it be even
worse? One thing for sure is present is daunting.

All of Burma is a prison, June 2008

Why is my brother in Insein [prison]? On Feb. 15, the military raided the
offices of the Myanmar Nation and took my brother, the weekly journal's
editor in chief, to jail. His crime? Possession of a UN report on the
military's brutal crackdown on last September's demonstrations by monks
and democracy activists - known around the world as the "Saffron
Revolution".

My brother's name is Thet Zin, and he is one of hundreds of Burmese
citizens who struggle to tell the truth about what is happening in their
country - whether through traditional forms of journalism or through the
internet - under threat of arrest or worse by the military regime. Along
with my brother, his office manager, Sein Win Maung, was also arrested.

Source: Burmese Bloggers w/o Borders

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September 14, Democratic Voice of Burma
It’s a warped mirror into which Than Shwe stares – Joseph Allchin

As part of the Senior General’s visit to ‘big brother’ China, he paid an
impromptu visit to Shenzen, the Chinese city which in 1980 became a
Special Economic Zone (SEZ) and thus one of the country’s first forays
back into commercialism.

Than Shwe spoke of his desire to emulate China’s remarkable and highly
successful transformation into one of the most successful capitalist
stories ever, where over a 30-year period the average income of every
citizen has doubled every nine years. But what is behind China’s
successful growth, and what can Burma learn from this?

Sadly for the generals, it may be more salient to look back to pre-1978
China than to the present epoch, for 1978 is broadly viewed as the year in
which open market principles were introduced through the ascendancy of
Deng Xiaoping, and the growth paradigm was unleashed upon the ‘middle
kingdom’. Pre-1978 China would be viewed by many as similar to Burma
pre-1988, but the differences are stark and, it must be noted, extremely
significant.

Whilst China’s Maoist revolution brought about a draconian single-party
state, infamous for brutal collective actions like the Great Leap Forward
and the Cultural Revolution, the reforms that were made on the base level
– healthcare provisions, for instance – are in many ways the bedrock of
China’s current success. In human development terms, these are probably
more significant than the double-digit growth rates that have had
commentators salivating.

When China’s Communists won independence in 1949, life expectancy was a
deplorable 41 years; by 1978, it had risen to 65 years. Figures for infant
mortality are even more remarkable: in 1949, 195 babies out of every 1,000
did not make their first birthday, and 29 years later this had dropped to
52. In Burma, infant mortality is roughly equivalent to Ethiopia.

Prior to 1978, China’s economy was maligned globally, with economic growth
negligible. The ubiquitous ‘Made in China’ label was still a dream and as
of 1978, China’s populace was predominantly rural, as it is in Burma today
where roughly 70 percent of the population is engaged in agriculture.

World Health Organisation (WHO) figures for today show that Burma has an
infant mortality rate of around 80 per 1000 births, while China’s is
around 20, with a rough decrease year-on-year of about four percent over
the past decade. Meanwhile, Burma’s life expectancy remains lower than
China’s 30 years ago.

Burma supposedly took the steps to liberalise its economy in the early
1990s, but it is here that we perhaps see the issue: unlike Burma, China’s
austerity – its climb up the economic ‘dialectic’ or transitions – was
whole-hearted and not rushed.

China did not seek the prosperity that she is now and that Burma now seeks
before certain criteria was met – it did not myopically build a shiny new
airport, a new capital city, various ‘cyber parks’, whist children
starved. China, even after its transformation, was a fairly drab,
disciplined place; the majority of its populace had only recently left
collectivised farms on which they were guaranteed a price for their goods
and had the so-called ‘iron rice bowl’ – a guarantee of food.

Upon liberalisation of these farms the land was, by all accounts,
distributed in a fairly egalitarian manner. Moreover there was not a
crisis, far from it – peasants who had the basis of education and
healthcare proved more than able vassals to transform the economy and the
destiny of China. Into the agricultural family-run units a new sense of
competition was injected, and as fewer hands were required on the farms so
a generation of sons and daughters headed east to cities like Shenzen to
begin producing the labour-intensive products that would traverse the
globe.

In Burma then, this past year has seen possibly the most significant
economic transformation since the early 1990s, with large tracts of
Burma’s state-owned assets sold off. While this could be seen to emulate
China, it is in fact almost the opposite.

For a start, Burma’s population is not equipped to compete globally: the
infrastructure for sustained economic growth is not there. By this point
in China, basic infrastructure like power and roads had been installed
and, crucially, economic liberalisation was limited to highly
labour-intensive manufacturing. This would ultimately take the strain of
liberalisations that take jobs out of the economy.

According to the Burmese government’s statistics (fiction) department, the
economy has in the past decade mirrored the cherished symbol of China’s
rise: double-digit growth. The figures are however roundly shot down by
senior economist U Myint, who tellingly says in a December 2009 report
that, “Such sustained double-digit growth represents a sharp break with
the country’s development experience in its entire post- independence
era.”

He highlights how the said GDP growth has not been accompanied by a
coinciding growth in investment, concluding that “decision-makers in
Myanmar [Burma] have a fixation with high GDP growth rates, which are
believed to indicate the country’s growing prosperity and well-being.
Hence these growth rates have become highly politicised, and in the
process, credibility and good sense have fallen by the wayside.”

Much of Burma’s economic growth and liberalisation has however been in the
extractive sector, as Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz commented in Forbes
Asia: “They produce natural resources but no jobs. You can see this all
over the world where you have rich countries and poor people. That’s why
it’s so important to manage the natural resources from a macro-economic
point of view
You’re poor, because you’re destroying your asset base. If
you squander your assets, you’re jeopardising the future of your country.”

To this day, much to the chagrin of the EU and the US, the Chinese have
done precisely the opposite of their ‘puppets’ by the Bay of Bengal. China
has banned the export of certain commodities which are key to the upstream
economy. Preventing these commodities from leaving the country keeps their
price down for the internal market – for factories that employ millions of
Chinese and keep the trade surplus rosy. This in turn keeps China’s
Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) buoyant and world-beating, with an estimated
post-2008 crash value at around US$300 billion.

In terms of Stiglitz’s comments regarding the management of natural
resources it may be interesting to note the case of North Sea oil: at just
about the time that China’s economic reforms were coming ‘online’ in the
early 1980s, oil was struck in the North Sea between Norway and the UK.

The then-UK Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, was obsessed with
privatisation, but her regime was urged to invest the proceeds of the oil
into a SWF, as have the Chinese from their manufacturing boom, the
Kuwaitis from their oil or the Singaporeans from their mercantilism. She
refused, seeing state management of economic resources as regressive.
Instead she deregulated the economy as much as possible and created a
stock market boom, which has subsequently crashed twice with spectacularly
destructive consequences. Such an ethos is blamed by many for the 2007-08
crash which has asked serious questions of the UK economy. This year Price
Waterhouse Coopers, a London-based management consultancy firm, estimated
that had Thatcher created the SWF, pre-recession it would have been worth
some US$450 billion.

Like a child who is given nothing and the child who is given everything it
is remarkable to note what is described by Stiglitz as the “natural
resource curse”. For when Britain industrialised, the first such example
in history, it was not as a result of a natural resource bonanza that she
had in the 1980s.

Economist Adam Smith and others since have hypothesised why, and indeed
some natural or topographic elements may have helped the transition. But
likely underlying it is a smooth transition from agrarian society to
industrial, in which no part of the society pays too heavily for the
change.

Britain’s was probably not as smooth as China’s and her industrialisation
could, indeed most probably is, the single greatest reason for Marx’s
world-changing work, spawning as it did the multitude of social movements
and clamours for reform, including China’s.

If we consider then why the Burmese Way to Socialism failed while Mao’s
succeeded, it must be noted that Burma’s ‘path’ was characterised by one
man, and one man only – General Ne Win, the country’s first military
dictator. He did not write any books, and regardless of his moniker, he
was not a socialist; in fact he actively fought the communists to the
north. Despite the vaguely Maoist steps taken to ban most entertainment
and to nationalise enterprise, his policies did little to disrupt the
feudal relationships that entomb many societies and prevent a
redistributive effect from planning. He was, like Hitler, a ‘national
socialist’ – his efforts that could appear ’socialist’ were not, for all
extents and purposes, ‘people-orientated’.

Whilst economically the brash army general was not a planner, exports were
and have always been strong in extractive industries, strong at times in
agriculture, and throughout the post-independence period strong in the
illegal sector, namely drugs. This a fact that reflects Burma’s and Ne
Win’s past relationship with China, for it was northern Burma that British
companies such as Jardine Mathesen introduced opium for forced export to
China. And in the 20th century Ne Win’s ‘neutralism’ led him to allow
US-backed Chinese nationalists to carry on the practice, selling opium to
fund their anti-communist struggle.

Agriculture was another key. Whilst China’s agricultural system was viewed
as inefficient by the early 1980s, it was initially heralded in through
greater yields; a ‘green revolution’ with new techniques and seed
varieties and much more egalitarian distribution. In contrast, with
typical Orwellian aplomb Ne Win criminalised all trade unions soon after
his ascension to power in 1962.

Meanwhile, Ne Win’s agricultural reforms were “a mess”, as political
scientist Josef Silverstein noted in 1966, four years after the coup that
began Ne Win’s ‘revolution’. In an incredibly brazen statement,
Silverstein quotes Ne Win admitting that “if Burma were not a country
abundant in food we would be starving”. But the decline in agricultural
output in Burma under Ne Win is staggering, with rice exports falling from
some 3.3 million tons in 1938 to around 250,000 today.

It seems that problems in Burma were upstream, not necessarily at farm
level – output fell as farmers were not provided with the abilities to
increase production and were not guaranteed prices as they were in China.
When things got bad in Burma as a result of mismanagement of the economy,
the government simply reduced the prices at which grain could be sold.
Silverstein reports that the trading of grains was done by “young
[military] officers assigned this task as their duty”.

Indeed this seems the enduring problem. As Than Shwe toured Shenzen on the
30th anniversary of its formation as an SEZ, he wants to copy what looks
nice, what has worked, what enables China to be successful – but he is not
quite sure why.

China’s rulers, for all their faults, have had a plan, an idea based on
utilitarianism, Marxism and technical understanding for the development of
their country and for how to distribute wealth in order to fix society.
And in doing so they have forgone all the trappings that have
characterised the Burmese junta: the quick profits, the massive
corruptions and the illegitimacy that this has entailed.

All these have created the ultra-nationalist notion of union of the
country and maintenance of power as a sought of military religion – in a
word, an obsession. They cannot run the economy efficiently because they
cannot open up to criticism and rise instead as a result of military
cunning, as opposed to any academic prowess or knowledge. Burma’s path to
emulate China’s miracle, it seems, needs to begin at the drawing board,
and it needs a dose of thought.

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PRESS RELEASE

September 14, Freedom Now
Countdown to freedom: Aung San Suu Kyi must be released on November 13, 2010

Washington, D.C. –Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi, General Secretary of the
National League for Democracy and the world’s only imprisoned Nobel Peace
Prize Laureate, should be released immediately and unconditionally from
her illegal house arrest; however, she must, under Burmese law, be
released on November 13, 2010. This release will occur after the Burmese
junta’s fraudulent elections, scheduled for November 7, 2010. This legal
assessment is consistent with the January 2010 announcement by thenBurmese
Minister for Home Affairs Major-General Maung Oo that Suu Kyi “will be
released this November.”

Suu Kyi has spent nearly 15 of the past 21 years in illegal detention. Her
most recent series of illegal detentions began on May 30, 2003, when the
junta placed Suu Kyi in “protective custody” after an assassination
attempt by thugs associated with the junta-backed Union Solidarity
Development Association. The attack also left an estimated 70 of her
supporters dead. Suu Kyi’s detention was executed under Burma’s draconian
State Protection Law. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary
Detention has declared Suu Kyi’s detentions since 2003 to be arbitrary and
in violation of international law on four separate occasions, including,
most recently, in Opinion 12/2010 issued on June 16, 2010.

The State Protection Law under which Suu Kyi was held is unconstitutional
under Burmese law as it was adopted under Article 167 of its 1974
constitution. The junta annulled the 1974 constitution when it took power
in 1988 and it was later replaced by the 2008 constitution. Further, even
under its own terms, the law was illegally applied to Suu Kyi in two key
respects. First, the State Protection Law does not permit protective
custody but rather, permits only the detention of an individual who might
perform “any act endangering the sovereignty and security of the state or
public peace and tranquility.”

Second, the State Protection Law allows for a maximum of five years of
detention without charge or trial, renewable in one-year increments. Suu
Kyi, therefore, even under the junta’s illegal application of an illegal
law, should have been released on May 30, 2008, five years after her
initial detention. The junta, however, claimed it had the right to detain
Suu Kyi under the State Protection Law for six years.

On August 11, 2009, almost three months after she was due to be freed from
her illegal house arrest of six years, Suu Kyi was sentenced to three
years in prison, which was then commuted to 18 months of house arrest
under Section 401(5) of the Criminal Procedure Code. According to the
junta, this extension was justified by Suu Kyi’s alleged violation of the
terms of her house arrest when American John Yettaw swam onto her property
uninvited.

This latest illegal 18-month extension of Suu Kyi’s house arrest ends on
November 13, 2010.
Under Burmese law, the term must be counted as beginning when she was
transferred to Insein prison on May 14, 2009, and detained in prison under
the new charge of violating the terms of her house arrest.

The junta cannot legally renew or extend Suu Kyi’s house arrest—not only
has she served one year more than the maximum five years permitted under
the now unconstitutional State Protection Law, but the junta issued the
18-month term of house arrest for violating the law under a provision
which is neither renewable nor extendable.

Unfortunately, if the junta were to not follow through with her release,
it would not be the first time it falsely claimed Suu Kyi would be
released to alleviate the international pressure surrounding her illegal
detention. In 2003-2004, then-Burmese Foreign Minister Win Aung repeatedly
and publicly stated that Suu Kyi would be released. Yet, she remains under
house arrest today. The international community must therefore be vigilant
and ensure that the junta meets it commitment to release Aung San Suu Kyi.

Contact: Jared Genser
+1 202.320.4135
jgenser at freedom-now.org