BurmaNet News, November 25, 2010

[Editor]

November 25, 2010 Issue #4092

Dear BurmaNet Subscriber: Please note that there will be no BurmaNet
on 26 November. An extended digest featuring news from 26 November
to 29 November will be released on Monday, 29 November.

INSIDE BURMA
AFP: Suu Kyi to appeal in party dissolution case
Mizzima: Regime clips Yangon Airways’ wings

ON THE BORDER
Mizzima: Junta cuts vital Kachin cash source
Economist: Good fences: Myanmar's border with China
NMG: Vehicles without license seized

BUSINESS / TRADE
DVB: Investment tops $30bn as S Korea climbs

HEALTH / AIDS
AP: Myanmar allows HIV shelter to continue operating

DRUGS
AP: UN warns illicit drugs major threat to Asia

REGIONAL
Irrawaddy: Thailand, Vietnam earn regime praise for election stand

INTERNATIONAL
Today’s Zaman: Burmese citizens flock to Turkey to seek safe haven

OPINION / OTHER
WSJ: Beijing's Unlikely Ally in Burma? – Kelley Currie
European Parliament Press Release
IRIN: Myanmar: Education on the run in east
Indian Express: An election, a release, an opportunity - Shyam Saran

____________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

November 25, Agence France-Presse
Suu Kyi to appeal in party dissolution case

Yangon - Myanmar's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi will appeal the
Supreme Court's refusal to hear her lawsuit against the junta for
dissolving her party, her lawyer said on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize
winner's National League for Democracy (NLD) was disbanded for boycotting
the military-ruled country's first election in 20 years in response to
rules that seemed designed to bar her from taking part.

Suu Kyi "has said to continue the legal process until it finishes," said
her lawyer Nyan Win.

"We will file a special appeal at the Supreme Court in Naypyidaw to hear
the case," he said.

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to consider the lawsuit.

Suu Kyi, who co-founded the NLD, had unsuccessfully filed an earlier suit
with the Supreme Court aimed at preventing its abolition.

Court verdicts rarely favour opposition activists in Myanmar, one of the
world's oldest dictatorships with more than 2,200 political prisoners.

Myanmar's courts also rejected a series of appeals by Suu Kyi against her
house arrest before it expired on November 13, resulting in her release
after seven straight years of detention.
____________________________________


November 25, Mizzima
Regime clips Yangon Airways’ wings - Myo Thant

Chiang Mai – Domestic airline Yangon Airways will suspend all flights from
December 3 in the slipstream of the Burmese civil aviation authority
rejection of its operating licence renewal, the carrier has admitted to
tour operators.

A gardener keeps vigil at the front of Yangon Airways’ shuttered head
office in Mingalar Taungnyunt Township, Rangoon, on November 25, 2010,
amid news that the junta had rejected the airline’s licence renewal and
that its flights were to cease from December 3. The carrier is linked to
the United Wa State Army.
The privately owned carrier also said it would assist customers in
transferring tickets to other airlines.

Its present owner is Aik Hauk, a son-in-law of United Wa State Army (UWSA)
chairman Bao Yuxiang, according to a source at the airline.

Observers said the revocation of the carrier’s air operator’s certificate
(AOC) reflected the junta’s recent tendency to thwart the ethnic armed
ceasefire group’s movement and livelihoods, observers said.

An AOC is granted by a national aviation authority to allow an operator to
use aircraft for commercial purposes. It requires that the operator has
staff, assets and systems to ensure staff and public safety. It will list
the aircraft types and registrations to be used, for what purpose and in
what area, including specific airports or geographic regions.

Notorious drug traffickers, the UWSA has at least 20,000 troops and has
rejected the Border Guard Force (BGF) plan, a junta proposal requiring
that the groups bring their troops under Burmese Army command. The junta
also cancelled national elections in the areas controlled by UWSA, citing
security reasons.

The US government imposed sanctions against Yangon Airways under the
Kingpin Act 1999, which targets international drug traffickers, on
November 13, 2008.

Mizzima tried in vain to reach Yangon Airways for comment.

The carrier was established in 1996 as a joint venture between Myanmar
Airways and the Krong-Sombat company of Thailand. In 1997, Myanmar
Mayflower company acquired the remaining shares by Krong-Sombat.

In 2003, the US Treasury Department imposed special measures
(money-laundering) under Section 311 of the USA Patriot Act against the
Myanmar Mayflower bank so junta broke up the bank as a legal entity.

The Yangon Airways fleet comprises two ATR 72-210 aircraft.

Burma has two other carriers, the state-run Myanmar Airways and Air Bagan,
owned by Tay Za, a Burmese tycoon and close associate of junta leader Than
Shwe.

Following the junta’s brutal crackdown on nationwide protests against it
led by monks on the streets of many cities in Burma in 2007, the United
States government imposed sanctions against Tay Za and the companies he
controls including Air Bagan and Htoo Trading.

____________________________________
ON THE BORDER

November 25, Mizzima
Junta cuts vital Kachin cash source - Phanida

Chiang Mai – Burma’s military junta banned yesterday the carriage of goods
from areas under Kachin Independence Organisation control, cutting a
valuable income source for the ethnic armed group, KIO sources said.

A Kachin Independence Army soldier pauses this month (November 2010)
during a patrol above Laiza town, site of the headquarters of the Kachin
Independence Organisation in the far northern Burmese Kachin State, which
borders China. The junta seems to be making a concerted effort to cut the
ethnic group’s revenue stream, as it today stopped goods that had passed
from China through Laiza on their way to other towns in the state.

Banned were fruit, machinery, machine tools and kitchen utensils imported
from China that pass through KIO headquarters at Laiza on the Sino-Burmese
border to Kachin State’s capital at Myitkyina. Some products also usually
flow on to other areas in the state through Laiza.

Police and Military Affairs Security (MAS) officers under the army’s
Northern Command at the Lajaryan checkpoint, six miles (10 kilometres)
south of Laiza, stopped trucks carrying such goods and confiscated them.
It is the last checkpoint on Myitkyina-Bhamo highway.

“SPDC troops did not allow any goods imported from China through Laiza.
They didn’t even allow apples,” a Kachin official at Laiza’s Wungrawt bus
terminal in Laiza told Mizzima, using the abbreviation for the State Peace
and Development Council, the junta’s name for itself.

The officers however allowed passengers and vehicles to go through. They
similarly checked goods without stamps signifying that import duties had
been paid but recently they had been lax in enforcing such checks and
payments, KIO sources said.

The ban affected KIO income, he said, declining to give any further details.

An official at the Myitkyina bus terminal confirmed the bans. “The goods
are not allowed starting from today 
 Many goods are stranded there [in
Laiza].”

Laiza bus terminal manger said about 40 passenger buses and cargo trucks
passed the Lajaryan checkpoint today. About 10 vehicles were also halted
at the customs checkpoint in Waimau Township near the Balaminhtin Bridge
across the Irrawaddy River last night, a Laiza driver said.

Meanwhile, a KIO source said Infantry Battalion (IB) 242 manning the
Lajaryan checkpoint blocked cargo trucks carrying bananas grown at the
Shadanpar regional development centre in a junta-controlled area 10 miles
from Laiza. The source said the regime had reinforced the existing force
with 100 troops from IB 58, Light IB 321 and IB 318 stationed at the
former KIO base at Pajau, four miles west of Laisinbwam, in the last week.

Lieutenant Colonel Thet Pone from Northern Command MAS phoned KIO
officials a few days ago and ordered them to close their liaison offices.
The KIO instructed its units to close the offices no later than November
25. The ban coincides with this deadline.

____________________________________
November 25, The Economist
Good fences - Myanmar's border with China

China dreads fighting along a chaotic borderland

Meng’a - The square at the new border checkpoint in Meng’a village is
largely deserted. Past a four-storey building, over a bridge crossing the
swift-flowing Nanka river, is Myanmar. Chinese authorities, worried that
fighting could break out on the other side, have restricted crossings. War
would be a nightmare for China.

Meng’a is one of China’s main points of entry into Myanmar. Across the
river lies Bangkang, the capital of Myanmar’s Special Region No. 2. In
more relaxed times Chinese tourists enjoy day trips to escape their
country’s ban on gambling by visiting Bangkang’s casino. But for several
months China has allowed only residents of the border area over the
bridge. Special Region No. 2 is controlled by the largest of Myanmar’s
ethnic militias, the United Wa State Army (UWSA). China’s fear is that
Myanmar’s junta, having conducted the country’s first (stage-managed)
elections in 20 years on November 7th, might be ready to break
longstanding ceasefires and bring the UWSA and other militias to heel.

In August last year Myanmar’s army mounted an offensive against an ethnic
Chinese militia in the Kokang region, north of the UWSA’s territory;
37,000 of its residents sought refuge in China’s Yunnan province. The
authorities gave them food and pitched tents for them. Most returned to
Myanmar within a few days. But the UWSA could put up a far more protracted
and bloody struggle. The junta demands that the militias join its own
Border Guard Force, but few of them are interested in ceding the swathes
of drug-trafficking territory they control along the Thai and Chinese
borders.

Rumblings have begun. Last month Myanmar’s state media began referring to
the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) as “insurgents”, a designation that had
not been used since the group agreed to stop fighting in 1994. Rattled by
the push in Kokang, the KIA has started arming villagers in preparation
for an onslaught. The National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA), across the
border from Xishuangbanna, a hotspot for Chinese tourism, is also bracing
itself. Exiles from Myanmar report that the UWSA has boosted production of
methamphetamine and heroin to buy weapons. At 20,000-strong, it is several
times bigger than the KIA or NDAA.

This is bad news for China, which struggles to keep Myanmar’s drugs at
bay. In recent years it has tried weaning the Wa peasants off the
cultivation of opium poppies, sponsoring alternative crops such as rubber
and coffee. A resident of Meng’a, however, tells how she abandoned a
rubber-tree plantation she tended in UWSA territory last year after
somebody—she suspects Myanmar’s army—set fire to it.

China faces a dilemma. It supports the junta and regards Myanmar as an
important potential supply route for gas and oil, which could be piped
from the Bay of Bengal (construction of the lines officially began in
June). But it also has close ties with the militias. The UWSA and NDAA
evolved from the Communist Party of  Burma, which occupied the same border
areas and once received arms from China. China does not like the militias’
drug business, but it views their territories as a useful buffer. Myanmar
relishes China’s backing in the UN but it also courts China’s rival,
India. China certainly does not want fighting. The International Crisis
Group, a Brussels-based think-tank, says it helped broker talks in
February between the UWSA and the junta, but they were inconclusive.

Officials in Yunnan have a keen interest in keeping the border calm.
Yunnanese companies are big investors in mining, rubber and other
industries in militia-controlled areas. Though Bangkang’s living standards
lag behind those of China’s border towns, its neighbours say the city has
flourished thanks to Chinese business. Many of the signs there are in
Chinese and the yuan is commonly used. On the Chinese side, gleaming
sport-utility vehicles with Wa State licence plates are a common sight.
One story doing the rounds in Meng’a is that a Chinese driver was recently
offered thousands of dollars to smuggle a truckload of cash from Bangkang
into China. “It shows how wealthy some of them are,” a villager explains.

When fighting in Kokang broke out last year, three shells landed on the
Chinese side, killing one person and injuring two others. Many of those
who fled Myanmar then were Chinese citizens doing business. But the
possibility of similar mayhem appears not to deter some from finding ways
round China’s clampdown on crossings. Touts at the checkpoint in Meng’a
offer to arrange illegal trips across the river (towing passengers across
on tyres, says one, promising “absolute safety”). Villagers say dozens
take the risk every day.

____________________________________


November 25, Network Media Group
Vehicles without license seized - Arr Mee

Vehicles without license coming from Thailand loaded with goods were
seized near the broken bridge on the Thai-Burma border town of Myawaddy on
November 22, according to a local eyewitness in Myawaddy.

“Vehicles without license coming out from the economic and manufacturing
zones were seized on the road. A total of 12 Hilux, and 8 Hino vehicles
were seized. The vehicles loaded with domestic goods were seized on
November 22 and those loaded with goods for import were seized on November
23. Domestic goods including chili and onion and goods for import
including clothing, slippers, cooking oil, Ajinomoto, and candy were
confiscated worth about 100 lakh (10 million) Kyat,” he added.

Joint forces of the Burmese Army and BGF-DKBA armies seized the vehicles
without license. Police and customs officers not present in the team.

Vehicles which had licenses issued by BGF-DKBA were not seized, according
to a driver.

An officer of the BGF-DKBA said “We seized vehicles without license. We
have ordered people to register for legal licenses.”

A police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the seizure
has to do with DKBA members, who rejected the BGF, and are led by
Brigadier Gen. Saw Lah Pwe.

“There is no problem for ordinary people. But, we seized the vehicles
linked to Brigadier Gen. Lah Pwe’s group recently. Now the police station
compound is full of vehicles,” the officer said.

Even though the Thai-Burma Friendship Bridge has been closed since July
but goods for import and export have been crossing every night from the
DKBA’s border gate, which is under the control of Col. Saw Chit Thu of the
BGF-DKBA, according to local residents.

____________________________________
BUSINESS / TRADE

November 25, Democratic Voice of Burma
Investment tops $30bn as S Korea climbs – Francis Wade

A ship loads at Bo Aung Kyaw jetty along the banks of Rangoon river, a
sign of growing commercial activity in Burma (Reuters)
Burma’s energy sector has generated the bulk of capital for the military
regime as figures show that total foreign investment in the country has
now topped the $US30 billion mark.

Nearly $US13.5 billion has been pumped into the oil and gas sector,
accounting for nearly half of the $US31.957 billion accrued by the junta
since it opened to investment in 1988, the Biweekly Eleven journal said.

Trailing oil and gas is electric power, which has attracted $US11.3
billion, followed by $US2.4 billion for mining and $US1.6 billion in the
manufacturing sector. Despite a lengthy campaign to boycott tourism to
Burma, the industry has garnered $US1 billion.

The first half of 2010 saw the sharpest climb in foreign investment,
largely attributable to the $US8 billion that China poured into the
country, $US5 billion of which went to hydropower and the remaining
majority to oil and gas.

That figure accounted for nearly two-thirds of the total amount Beijing
has pumped into Burma over the past two decades, and despite Thailand
being the biggest investor to date, the powerhouse to the north is rapidly
becoming the ruling junta’s key economic crutch.

China’s economy expanded 9.6 percent in the third quarter of 2010, and in
September Beijing broke ground on its end of the 770-kilometre Shwe dual
pipeline that will take oil and gas from Burma’s western coast to Yunnan
province.

The project is set to net the Burmese junta $US30 billion over the next 30
years, and could transport up to 22 million tons of African and Middle
Eastern oil offloaded in the Bay of Bengal to the developing province.

These sizeable investments, analysts say, are dampening the impact of
Western sanctions on Burma that have achieved little in the face of
warming economic relations between the junta and its neighbours.

South Korea is also rising up the ranks, and is now thought to be the
country’s fourth largest investor. It recently poured around $US62 million
dollars into a rubber plantation in Burma’s western Arakan state, the
first investment it has made into the country’s agriculture sector this
decade.

Despite Burma once boasting the world’s largest output of rice, which
peaked at 3.4 million tonnes in 1934, it exported only 250,000 tonnes of
rice in the first six months of this year. Its agriculture sector has
steadily dwindled since military rule began in 1962, and has attracted
only $US96.35 million since 1988.

____________________________________
HEALTH / AIDS

November 25, Associated Press
Myanmar allows HIV shelter to continue operating


Yangon -- Authorities in military-ruled Myanmar gave a last-minute
reprieve Thursday night to HIV patients living in a shelter run by
supporters of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, after earlier saying it
had to be shut down.

Yarzar, one of the shelter's staff, said the authorities agreed Thursday
night to let the patients stay. Last week, local officials ordered the 80
patients to be moved by this week, saying without explanation that it
would no longer approve the requests for overnight guests that are legally
required.

The shelter's organizers believed the eviction threat was issued because
Suu Kyi visited it just days after her Nov. 13 release from extended house
arrest, promising to help provide badly needed medicine. The ruling junta
regards Suu Kyi and her nonviolent struggle for democracy as a threat to
its power.

The conciliatory gesture has a hitch, however: The permits must be renewed
each week, and there is no guarantee that they will be.

Still, Yarzar said, "I am greatly relieved and so are the patients."

The shelter's organizers, who are public supporters of Suu Kyi's political
movement, said earlier that they would not send the patients away despite
the threat of legal action

The state-run Myanma Ahlin newspaper said Wednesday that health officials
had inspected the shelter in July and August and found it to be
unhygienic, with patients susceptible to infections due to overcrowding.


 Yarzar acknowledged the shelter was crowded but said preventive measures
have been taken against the spread of diseases among the patients.

He said health authorities had offered to relocate the patients to a
state-run HIV center but the patients refused to move, saying their
shelter not only offers medical care, food and accommodation but "warmth
and affection that no other center can provide."

____________________________________
DRUGS

November 25, Associated Press
UN warns illicit drugs major threat to Asia – Grant Peck

Bangkok—Political instability in military-ruled Myanmar has helped make it
the region’s prime source of methamphetamine pills, according to a United
Nations’ report on the illicit drug trade issued Thursday.

The highly addictive stimulants have replaced heroin, opium and marijuana
as the top threat in several East and Southeast Asian countries, the UN
Office on Drugs and Crime said. Myanmar was once the main source for the
world’s opium and its derivative, heroin.

The production of methamphetamines remains “at high and worrying levels,”
Gary Lewis, the agency’s regional representative for East Asia and the
Pacific, said in a statement. “It now poses a serious challenge to law
enforcement agencies because the essential chemicals used to produce it
are easily sourced.”

The drugs can be made from pseudoephedrine, a decongestant found in
over-the-counter cold medicines.

Myanmar’s border areas are under loose central control, making them ideal
for drug production and trafficking. Where the country’s eastern border
meets Thailand and Laos is known as the Golden Triangle — for many years,
the world’s biggest source of heroin. In the past decade — as opium
production picked up in Afghanistan — the area has become a source for
methamphetamine production as well.

The number of pills seized in 2009 in Myanmar and in neighbouring China,
Laos and Thailand tripled to 93.3 million from the year before, it said.
It added that the evidence suggest that there may be “significant, still
undetected manufacturing” of methamphetamine in Myanmar, including as many
as 12 likely large-scale methamphetamine manufacturing operations in the
Golden Triangle region.

Myanmar’s military government this month held the country’s first general
election in two decades as part of its self-styled “road map to
democracy.”

But the junta’s critics charge the process is rigged to perpetuate
military rule. At the same time, the government has been seeking to
tighten control over the border areas controlled by ethnic minority
groups, the same areas that are used or drug production.

____________________________________
REGIONAL

November 25, Irrawaddy
Thailand, Vietnam Earn Regime Praise for Election Stand – Ba Kaung

Burma's state-run newspapers on Thursday praised neighboring countries
which had reacted positively to the Nov 7 election, but attacked Western
governments which had criticized the way it had been held and its result.

A commentary carried by the official press charged that the US and some
countries of the European Union (EU) were “shaming the elections in a
negative way.”

By way of contrast, the commentary singled out Thailand and Vietnam and
praised them for their positive reaction.

In particular, it quoted Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva as saying
that a single election could not change Burma's situation overnight and
that his government would deal with the new government emerging from the
election in an open and constructive way.

Vietnam, which currently presides over the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (Asean), earned praise for describing the election as “the first
and foremost step towards democracy” in Burma—a view echoed by Burma's
giant neighbors, China and India.

The commentary claimed that the voting was free and fair and challenged
widespread allegations of vote fraud. In a Washington reaction, US
President Barack Obama said the ruling junta had simply stolen the
election, while the EU rejected it as flawed and not compatible with
international standards.

On Wednesday, freed pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi called for a
coordinated approach within the EU in its policy towards Burma, warning it
would be a “disgrace” if the group fell victim to the junta's divide and
rule tactics.

“'In terms of the EU, and other allies of ours, I think we would like to
see a more coordinated approach,' Suu Kyi said in a telephone interview
with  Germany's Deutsche Presse Agentur news agency.

Asked for her opinion about some European countries and groups who were in
favor of the election before it was held, Suu Kyi recently told The
Irrawaddy that “perhaps this was a good lesson for them,” referring to the
large scale of voting fraud, which surprised the previously pro-election
groups.

Burma was on the agenda of a Brussels meeting on Monday of EU foreign
ministers. The EU foreign affairs chief, Catherine Ashton, later told a
press conference: “We took a cautious approach to the situation as it
currently stands.”

According to the Chinese news agency Xinhua, the junta-backed Union
Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) scored a landslide victory in the
flawed election, in which its candidates won 883 of the 1,154 contested
parliamentary seats, or 76.5 percent of the vote.

Burma's Election Commission has not yet announced the official final
results, however.

____________________________________
INTERNATIONAL

November 26, Today’s Zaman (Turkey)
Burmese citizens flock to Turkey to seek safe haven – Ercan Yavuz

The number of people from the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, or Burma,
who illegally entered Turkey to seek refuge from the ongoing human rights
abuses of the military junta in their homeland has seen a dramatic
increase this year compared with the previous two years.

The growth in their number has been tremendous, so much so that for the
first time in history they outpaced the Afghans and Pakistanis who make up
the majority of people migrating to Turkey illegally, in that regard.
According to the data from the General Staff, 16,789 illegal migrants were
captured at the border gates alone -- meaning that those captured by the
gendarmerie forces and the Coast Guard are not included in this figure --
in the first 10 months of this year. Of them, 6,853 are Burmese. The
annual data show that the year illegal Burmese migration to Turkey spiked
was 2008, when, for the first time, their numbers exceeded 4,000 and
started to rival those of the Afghans and Pakistanis. Although the number
of those captured by the gendarmerie and the Coast Guard has not yet been
released, authorities expect that it will be some 9,000 by the end of this
year.

Currently there are 9,810 asylum seekers in Turkey. Taking the lead among
them are Afghans, with 3,840 people. The Burmese came in second, their
number reported as slightly less than 2,000. The main reason for Afghans
to flock into Turkey is known to be the present problems in the country.
Authorities predict that the illegal migration from Myanmar will therefore
continue to break new records as long as stability is not sustained in the
Southeast Asian nation.

Nevertheless, Turkey still has not taken the necessary steps to meet the
demands made by the European Union, as well as the Office of the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), because of economic reasons. Being a
popular route -- due to its geographical position between three continents
-- for smugglers to take people into Europe, Turkey says the economic
consequences of illegal entry into Turkey and into Europe through Turkey
should be shared by the EU member states. Preparations for the creation of
a special department to deal with illegal migration and asylum at the
Ministry of the Interior have been suspended until 2012.

Problems that arise are still being addressed with legislation enacted in
1994. The promise on passing the asylum legislation in Parliament as part
of the EU accession process has not yet been kept.

____________________________________
OPINION / OTHER

November 25, Wall Street Journal
Beijing's Unlikely Ally in Burma? – Kelley Currie

Aung San Suu Kyi would make better progress than the ruling junta on
issues of concern to China's leaders.

The Nov. 13 release of Aung San Suu Kyi has set off a predictable deluge
of commentary about the significance of her return to the fore of Burma's
pro-democracy movement. But there has been little commentary on how China
factors into Ms. Suu Kyi's future. Beijing's reaction to this event, and
how Ms. Suu Kyi fits into China's strategic calculus in Burma, may be one
of the most important yet poorly understood aspects of this unfolding
morality play.

The conventional wisdom is that the Chinese government's overriding
concern with cross-border stability and access to Burma's abundant energy
and other resources, not to mention a shared authoritarian character,
dictate that it will continue to support the Burmese junta. Beijing
supposedly prefers the junta's "discipline-flourishing" version of
democracy to a genuine, and potentially chaotic, one under Ms. Suu Kyi's
leadership. Moreover, Beijing is understood to consider Ms. Suu Kyi
"pro-Western" and a leader who would likely swing Burma into the American
orbit.

If this widely held view is not in fact wrong, it should at least be
reconsidered and challenged—not least by Beijing—in light of the
priorities articulated by both China and Ms. Suu Kyi herself.

Ms. Suu Kyi's actions and policy pronouncements since her release should
make policy makers in Beijing sit up and take notice. In particular, her
immediate focus on a more durable and equitable resolution of Burma's
festering interethnic relations should pique interest from Kunming to
Zhongnanhai. By proposing to reopen negotiations on a new Panglong
Agreement, modeled on the 1947 pact between the central government and
minorities, Ms. Suu Kyi is not only aspiring to complete the unfinished
work of her martyred father but is also potentially laying the groundwork
for genuine security and economic prosperity in the border areas where
most ethnic nationalities live.

Such an outcome is in China's interests, since it would resolve the
dilemma arising from its present conflicted role. Beijing poses as both
the protector of ethnic Chinese minority peoples on the Burmese side of
the border, and also the political protector and economic enabler of their
tormentors.

The best possible resolution of this dilemma is a real peace between
Burma's central authorities and the ethnic nationalities, particularly the
armed groups that are concentrated on the China-Burma and Thai-Burma
borders. The Chinese government's hopes that the recent elections would
help move the country in that direction have proven to be illusory, as
armed conflict has resumed in the wake of widespread disenfranchisement
and continued state violence in ethnic areas.

The unstable situation with the ethnic nationalities also has major
implications for China's quest to exploit Burma's natural resources, as
both petroleum pipelines and major hydroelectric projects traverse or are
located in ethnic homelands. These projects have already been the site of
anti-Chinese violence.

According to recent reports by the International Crisis Group, policy
makers in China are increasingly frustrated with the arbitrary and
unpredictable junta, particularly its rough approach to the ethnic groups
on China's border. If Ms. Suu Kyi can succeed where the junta's coercive
approach has failed, China would be one of the biggest beneficiaries.

Likewise, there is something for China in Ms. Suu Kyi's visit to an
HIV/AIDS clinic in Rangoon and her exhortation to do more for those
suffering from Burma's epidemic. Burma has some of the most severe
infection rates in the region, not only from HIV/AIDS itself but also from
attendant infectious diseases such as hepatitis and tuberculosis.

The junta's response has been to ignore, stigmatize and harass not only
infected persons but those trying to assist them, including at times
throwing up barriers to the work of local and international organizations.
In 2005, at the height of the epidemic, UNAIDS reported that the junta
spent less than $150,000 on HIV/AIDS treatment. The same year, the U.N.'s
Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis withdrew from the
country due to problems working with the government. While the situation
for donors and implementing agencies has improved in recent years as the
regime has begun to grasp the seriousness of the problem, the needs swamp
the available resources.

Unsurprisingly, given the Burmese junta's poor response to the epidemic
and the nature of cross-border trade between China and Burma, public
health experts and epidemiologists have tracked a vector of HIV/AIDS and
other infectious diseases that begins in Burma and sweeps into China's
Yunnan province—home of China's highest HIV/AIDS infection rates—before
spreading out into the rest of the country. Absent a responsible
government that genuinely cares about attacking the problem on the Burmese
side, this will be an ongoing slow-motion disaster for not only the
authorities in Yunnan and surrounding provinces that are most heavily
impacted, but for China's central authorities as well.

While Ms. Suu Kyi's post-release moves are primarily intended for a
domestic political audience, it seems clear that there is a not-too-subtle
message there for the junta's patrons in Beijing: The Lady is someone they
not only can deal with, but at the end of the day, she would be a better
partner than the capricious xenophobes in Naypyidaw.

Ms. Currie is a senior fellow with the Project 2049 Institute, a
Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

____________________________________


November 25, European Parliament Press Release
Human rights: Burma, Iraq, Tibet, Plenary sessions

In three resolutions adopted in Strasbourg on Thursday, the European
Parliament welcomes the recent release of Burmese opposition leader Aung
San Suu Kyi, strongly condemns the recent attacks on Christian communities
in Iraq and urges the Chinese authorities to support a genuine bilingual
language policy in Tibet.

Burma

MEPs welcome the recent release of Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu
Kyi but are concerned about her safety and insist that her freshly
regained freedom must be unconditioned and unrestricted. They urge the
Burmese regime to engage in discussions with her and with representatives
of the minority peoples.

In a plenary resolution passed on Thursday, MEPs call on the EU and its
Member States "to employ its full economic and political influence in
order to bring about freedom and democracy in Burma" and urge them to
continue to provide funding for refugees on the Thai-Burma border.  They
also welcome the decision to send a Parliamentary delegation to Burma to
hand Aung San Suu Kyi the Sakharov Prize she won in 1990, should she be
unable to attend the official Sakharov ceremony in Strasbourg in December.

Regarding the 7 November elections in Burma, MEPs say they were conducted
in a climate of fear, intimidation and resignation, with hundreds of
thousands of Burmese citizens, monks and political prisoners being banned
from voting. Up to 2200 political prisoners should be immediately released
without any pre-condition, stress MEPs. They also call on ASEAN members,
China, India and Russia (Burma's main trading partners) to stop supporting
the regime and exert pressure to bring positive change to the country.
Censorship of the press and political control of the internet and mobile
phone network are other serious sources of concern to Parliament.

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November 25, IRIN
(a service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs)
Myanmar: Education on the run in east

Oo Kray Kee - A chorus of children's voices echo from the bamboo hut on
the edge of Oo Kray Kee village in Myanmar's Karen State. Nea Po Chee
wants to be a teacher when she grows up. "I want to continue to study in
grade five - if we have grade five here," says the 14-year-old, whose
education continues to be interrupted by Burmese government forces in
eastern Myanmar.

"I need to learn more to be a teacher because I'd like my nation to become
better educated."

But as Nea Po Chee and 40 classmates finish their half-day of learning in
the one-room school, ethnic Karen soldiers load their weapons in a nearby
field preparing for another attack by Burmese troops.

Sixteen months ago, the village was bombed and burnt down by government
soldiers, leaving the villagers with nothing more than a few personal
belongings as they fled their homes.

Constant displacement due to attacks by Burmese troops has left
generations of children without a proper formal education - let alone a
normal childhood, say aid workers.

"Thousands of children are completely missing out on an education,"
explains Sally Thompson, deputy executive director of the Thai Burmese
Border Consortium (TBBC).

"In cases where they are on the run, the children often resort to learning
in a jungle school which might simply be a blackboard set up under a tree,
taught by older students."

Displaced

In 2009, more than 110,000 villagers in eastern Myanmar were displaced by
military action, according to the TBBC.

In the same area, between 2002 and the end of last year, more than 580,000
civilians, most of them children, were forced from their homes, the group
said.

"I'd say there were as many as 30,000 persons displaced after the
elections and many of them came across the border to the Thai side. In
some parts of eastern Burma the education system has basically collapsed,"
Thompson added.

Government spending on education and health is the lowest in the region at
just 1.6 percent of Myanmar's gross domestic product, a 2009 TBBC report,
Protracted Displacement and Militarization in Eastern Burma, said.

Much of the area remains without basic infrastructure such as roads and
electricity following fighting between the ethnic Karen National Union,
which has been seeking independence for decades, and the military
government.

In eastern Myanmar, fewer than half the children aged five to 13 attend
school regularly, according to a 2010 report by the Karen Human Rights
Group, which focuses on human rights violations in rural eastern Myanmar.

Children often drop out of school to scavenge for shelter and food.

Compounding problems further, in rural eastern Myanmar, more than 40
percent of children under five suffer from acute malnutrition, according
to the Mae Tao Clinic, which operates an emergency medical centre in the
Thai border town of Mae Sot.

Schools under fire

Attacks on schools remained a major concern last year, others say.

According to the Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict, Burmese forces
have occupied educational facilities for military purposes, recruited
teachers and students for forced labour, and planted landmines close to or
on the paths to schools.

The army has also reportedly set fire to whole villages - including
schools - to prevent people from returning, the group says.

And as the danger for teachers increase, interest in working in the area
decreases.

"We are scared of attacks from the SPDC [State Peace and Development
Council government forces]. We have to move five or six times when our
village comes under fire from the SPDC," explains head instructor Eh Thwa.
"Here the salary is very low, so many teachers are uninterested to work in
such a difficult location."

Meanwhile, there are no signs of the difficulties letting up, following
the 7 November elections, described by many as a sham.

Fighting is expected to increase as many ethnic groups have refused to lay
down their arms and join the government's border guard forces.

Still, for Eh Thwa, there remains a glimmer of hope. "If the situation is
good and we have peace and democracy, I think it will develop."

But just one day after IRIN visited Oo Kray Kee, her one-room school was
closed down and most of the village's 300 residents were again on the run,
living beneath plastic sheets in the jungle.

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November 26, Indian Express
An election, a release, an opportunity - Shyam Saran

On March 27, 1999, news came to us in the Indian Embassy in Yangon that
Michael Aris, the well-known British scholar of Tibetan Buddhism, had
succumbed to cancer and died in Oxford. I had never met Dr Aris, but his
was a familiar name; he was the husband of Myanmar’s internationally
respected political leader, Aung San Suu Kyi (ASSK). My wife and I decided
to pay a condolence call on his widow at her lakeside bungalow. At the
security barrier leading to her residence, we had to run the gauntlet of
plainclothes intelligence personnel who made no effort to be discreet as
they videotaped our diplomatic car, its number plates, the national flag
and, of course, its irritated occupants.

ASSK received us very graciously, bearing her tragic loss with rare
composure and dignity. There was not much we could say, but she spoke
fondly of the many happy days she and her husband had spent in India.
Grief did overcome her when she spoke about how Michael’s effort to obtain
visas for himself and their two sons to visit her in Yangon during his
last days had been frustrated. She said she did have to wrestle with her
conscience before finally deciding that it was more important to remain in
Yangon and continue her struggle for democracy than to risk not being
allowed to return if she travelled to Oxford to be with her dying husband.
She did not express her disappointment over India’s shift in policy, which
now favoured engagement with the country’s military regime even while
discreetly urging upon it a policy of national reconciliation and
restoration of democracy.

I confess that my encounter with her in her hour of profound grief left me
with a twinge of guilt and regret. Here was an individual of extraordinary
fortitude and strength of character. And yet, I had argued strongly with
our government that our overriding national interests necessitated working
together with the military regime . One cannot but rejoice in her
regaining freedom after several years of isolation under house arrest.

What are the implications of ASSK’s release soon after the
carefully-managed elections under Myanmar’s new constitution?

Myanmar’s politics in best understood as a three-legged stool, the legs
being, respectively, the country’s powerful military; the democratic,
civilian opposition overwhelmingly of Burmese ethnicity; and the 17 major
ethnic groups which are ranged all around the Burman heartland in a
contiguous crescent, which have been in a state of insurgency against the
Central government ever since the country’s independence in 1948. Several
of them used to be grouped together under the Burmese Communist Policy
(BCP), supported and manipulated by China. In any “three-legged”
situation, if two legs ally, the third will inevitably be marginalised.
For long-term political stability, though, all three legs need to
cooperate on at least a minimally-agreed political platform. This is also
true of Myanmar.

Let us assess the possibilities as well as pitfalls of the latest
developments against the above backdrop. In 1990, the democratic, civilian
opposition led by ASSK’s National League for Democracy, or NLD, won an
overwhelming electoral victory in national elections. This became an
elemental threat to a military elite that had ruled for over 30 years. To
maintain its hold on power, the regime courted the hitherto hostile ethnic
groups which the NLD unfortunately neglected. With China’s intermediation
and support, “arms for peace” or “ceasefire agreements” were concluded
with virtually all the ethnic groups except the Karens, based mainly in
neighbouring Thailand. The concessions made to the groups included a high
degree of autonomy, the right to keep their armed cadres and freely
establish trade and economic links across the border with China. This
enabled the military regime to repudiate the election results and
ruthlessly crush the civilian political opposition. ASSK was incarcerated,
but being the daughter of the legendary General Aung San, the founder of
the Burmese Army and the leader of its independence movement, she was
spared a harsher denouement. The country’s generals are acutely aware that
the daughter carries her father’s aura in addition to her democratic
credentials. These remain her best guarantee of safety.

Is the three-legged dynamic changing? ASSK’s release may reflect
self-confidence among the generals that a carefully-orchestrated electoral
process is likely to yield an outcome they are comfortable with. It is
also a clever tactical manoeuvre to divert attention from the managed
character of the elections. If this is all, then expect ASSK to go back
into confinement as soon as the military again feels threatened by her
political activities.

However, it may be worthwhile to look at what is happening with the ethnic
groups. In April 2009, these groups were told to convert their armed
cadres or militias into “border guards” which would be placed under the
central control. This has been strongly resisted since this would severely
limit and roll back the very real autonomy they have enjoyed for 20 years.
In August 2009, there was a major Myanmar army offensive against the
Kokang, ethnically close to the Chinese across the border in Yunnan, which
resulted in 30,000 refugees streaming across the border into China and
creating tensions between the two countries. More lately, there have been
open clashes with the Kachin Independence Army, another major, well-armed
group. The regime claims that the autonomy the ethnic groups enjoy, in
particular, the right to keep armed militias, were temporary arrangements
until a new constitution was proclaimed. Now they need to come back into
the fold. A number of groups have rejected this and the government
retaliated by cancelling voting in several of the districts in the ethnic
zone.

If the military regime now believes that the most potent threat to its
political pre-eminence are the ethnic groups, then a more accommodating
posture towards the now weakened but still politically relevant civilian
political parties should be expected. ASSK’s release may then portend more
significant political changes in the months to come. She herself seems to
have realised this by calling for a second Panglong Conference to
facilitate reconciliation and political consensus between the Burman
majority and the ethnic groups. The first Panglong Conference was convened
by her father in 1947. It led to the historic agreement with Shan, Kachin
and Chin ethnic group leaders to unite to seek independence for Myanmar
from British rule. The agreement conceded a high degree of autonomy to
peoples living in the country’s ethnic periphery.

Also expect China to play an active role to ensure that the political
benefits it has gained by brokering peace between the ethnic groups and
the Myanmar military are not eroded. China will put pressure on both the
ethnic leaders as well as the Myanmar military using its significant
leverage over both. Nevertheless, change is in the air and India may well
have political opportunities it can exploit to consolidate its presence in
a strategically important neighbour.

The writer, a former foreign secretary, served as India’s ambassador to
Yangon from 1997 to 2001. He is currently a senior fellow at the Centre
for Policy Research