http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/a-new-way-is-needed-to-help-burmas-people-20081117-695m.html?page=-1
Andrew Selth
November 18, 2008
Humanitarian aid will at least improve the daily lives of the Burmese.
THE SENTENCING of more than 30 Burmese dissidents to up to 65 years in prison for their part in last year's anti-Government demonstrations sends a strong message to pro-democracy campaigners inside Burma and their supporters abroad. And the message is simple: no amount of internal agitation or external pressure is going to deter the country's armed forces from perpetuating their rule through the creation of a military-dominated parliament in 2010.
Since 1988, when Burma's armed forces crushed a pro-democracy uprising and took back direct political power, different strategies have been tried to persuade them to return to the barracks.
The US and EU countries have taken the hardest line, condemning the regime and imposing tough economic sanctions.
Others, like the ASEAN members, have pursued "constructive engagement" in the hope that quiet diplomacy and trade would encourage political and economic reforms.
The UN has tried to act as an honest broker, by promoting reconciliation between the regime and the opposition movement, led by Aung San Suu Kyi.
Given the dearth of reliable information about Burma, it is hard to say exactly what impact these strategies have had. It is self-evident, however, that they have all failed to achieve their stated aims.
The military regime has not collapsed, nor handed over power to a civilian administration. In fact, it is probably stronger now than at any time since 1988.
Nor is there any sign that the generals are prepared to bow to international opinion and free Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest.
Indeed, the greater the pressure exerted against the regime, the more determined it has become to resist what it calls interference in Burma's internal affairs.
As long as the Burmese armed forces remain united and loyal, it is difficult to see how the regime can be removed from power. There have been reports of dissension in the ranks and some high-profile dismissals, but so far military discipline has held firm.
The opposition movement is weak and divided, and the few remaining insurgent groups pose no military threat. Despite the fears of
the generals, and the hopes of their opponents, no country is going to invade Burma to restore democracy. And the regime has enough powerful friends to survive economic sanctions and Security Council resolutions.
So what can be done? The international community cannot agree on a strategy.
The UN seems powerless. Even Burma's friends, like China, have limited influence with the generals, who jealously guard the country's independence.
The harsh reality is that there are few options against a regime that refuses to observe customary norms of behaviour, puts its survival before the welfare of its people and is protected by its allies.
Symbolism is important in international politics, but we also have to be pragmatic. There needs to be a new approach.
Countries such as Australia must keep faith with the Burmese people, who have clearly demonstrated their desire for a democratic government. It is important that Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners are released. And the regime must not be allowed to think it has escaped scrutiny. At the same time, a way needs to be found to help those in dire need. Thanks to decades of inept military rule, Burma suffers from major problems in areas such as health, education and social welfare.
This is where the international community can do something concrete to assist the Burmese people.
The regime has made the delivery of humanitarian aid very difficult. It imposes onerous conditions on providers, restricts access to those in greatest need (including the ethnic communities) and siphons off foreign aid for its own benefit. Formal contacts with the regime can be seen as granting it a legitimacy it does not deserve.
These may be the costs, however, that the international community has to pay to help alleviate the suffering of the Burmese people. It is a price most of them would count as cheap, if it meant an improvement in their basic living conditions.
Since cyclone Nargis hit Burma in May, more than 45 non-government organisations have been working in the country, providing aid at the grass-roots level. They are being helped by numerous local groups. Also, the tens of thousands of Burmese refugees in neighbouring countries are crying out for more assistance.
Instead of looking for new ways to punish an entrenched and nationalistic regime, a more constructive approach might be to provide increased humanitarian aid to those communities, both inside and outside Burma, which desperately need help.
The signs are that change will come slowly to Burma. Also, it will have to come from within the country and involve the armed forces, something that Aung San Suu Kyi herself recognises. It may take a new generation of military officers more tolerant of political diversity, or even a Gorbachev-like figure prepared to overturn the system that created him.
That is small comfort to the Burmese people, who have already been waiting 46 years for another democratic government. But until that day dawns we can at least make a greater effort to improve the quality of their daily lives.
Dr Andrew Selth is a research fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University.
Monday, November 17, 2008
A new way is needed to help Burma's people
Opium production on the rise-THAILAND-BURMA
http://www.bangkokpost.com/171108_News/17Nov2008_news10.php
SUBIN KHEUNKAEW AND THEERAWAT KHAMTHITA
CHIANG MAI : Authorities are worried about an increase in poppy cultivation in the Golden Triangle, fearing that opium production in the region would be boosted due to the global economic slowdown.Deputy secretary-general of the Narcotics Control Board (NCB) Pitaya Jinawat said yesterday that opium cultivation in Thailand, Laos and Burma has increased over the past three years.
He said poppy-growing areas in the country's northern region, a prime cultivating area, increased from 700 to 1,800 rai last year and was expected to grow to 2,000 rai this year.
A significant increase in opium production in Laos and Burma has also been reported, he said.
In a statement issued last week by Shan State Army leader Col Yodsuek, the production of raw opium in Shan state would triple this year to 3,000 tonnes.
Mr Pitaya said the situation has alarmed the United Nations Development Programme, which plans to call a meeting to find out the real causes of the unusual increase. Thailand, meanwhile, has its own five-year plan to reduce planting areas, he said.
The NCB will focus on areas where opium is grown repeatedly even though authorities destroy the plants every year.
There are about 1,000 rai in the northern provinces where heavy suppression is needed, Mr Pitaya said. Under the five-year plan, the NCB will also join hands with the royal projects to encourage farmers to switch to other crops.
According to Mr Pitaya, most opium growers in Thailand are financed by influential figures, most of whom are either local politicians or ex-state officials.
The NCB will ask the cabinet to set aside a special budget for the task. The government recently renewed its campaign against narcotics trafficking.
Porntep Iamprapai, head of the NCB's upper northern office, said the agency is racing against time to secure the grant under this government.
"If parliament is dissolved, our plan would hit a snag," he said.
Meanwhile, the Pha Muang Task force arrested a Burmese man as he tried to smuggle 4,000 speed pills into Chiang Rai's Mae Sai district.
Yi Taiyai, 37, of the Tai Yai ethnic minority, paddled his boat across the Sai river from Burma to the Sob Ma pier in Mae Sai. He told police he was hired by a man, whom he only identified as Mr B, in Mae Sai for 2,000 baht to take the pills, produced by the Wa ethnic group, to Thailand.
ENVIRONMENT-BURMA: Conflict Threatens Karen Biodiversity
http://globalintel.net/wp/2008/11/17/environment-burma-conflict-threatens-karen-biodiversity/
Posted on 17 November 2008
Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Keya Acharya
BANGKOK, Nov 17 (IPS) - On top of 60 years of military occupation, the Karen people of Burma are now facing severe impairment of their environmental and cultural foundations, say activists.
Burma’s incredibly rich and highly endemic biodiversity has a recorded 11,800 plant species including a species-collection of 800 orchids, 100 bamboos, 1,000 birds and 145 globally threatened mammals.
A great part of this biodiversity is found in Karen State in southeast Myanmar bordering Thailand, now suffering heavily due to the ongoing conflict between the government’s State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) and the Karen National Union (KNU).
The conflict has displaced over 500,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) within Karen State, mostly hiding in the forests.
Civilians have become the target of the Burmese military as the SPDC aims to weaken the KNU by cutting off provisions and support from local Karen. And, according to Paul Sein twa, director of the Karen Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN), there is a toll on the environment as well.
In the forests, IDP families sleep in makeshift shelters on open ground. Healthcare and education are non-existent and the majority is severely malnourished.
In the northern Karen district of Mu Traw alone, 200 villages have been burnt or destroyed since 1997 and farmlands mined, leaving around 37,000 villagers hiding as IDPs in the hills, says a KESAN report,’ Diversity Degraded’ written by ethnic Karen researchers.
Marty Bergoffen, an American environmental lawyer helping KESAN develop a forest policy, told a gathering of journalists convened by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Bangkok, last month, that there were over 100,000 refugees on the Thai border and ”literally millions of economic refugees in Thailand, Malaysia, India and elsewhere”.
KESAN is a Chiang-Mai, Thailand-based organisation of Karen activists working with indigenous Karen on both sides of the Burma-Thailand border.
Bergoffen says women are especially affected in the conflict, facing physical vulnerabilities and limited access to work because of border security issues.
”Thailand has no long-term refugee policy, so it’s hard for the Karen to plan any future”, he says.
Bergoffen terms the Karen’s local biodiversity as the ‘lynchpin’ of community-survival that the war is now threatening.
The military has mined the farmlands of those IDPs hiding in the hills, barring them from returning to cultivate crops.
The Karen had survived for centuries on a seven-year rotational cycle of cultivation that allowed fallow land to regenerate, but now with mined lands and military occupation, villagers make do with shrunken land space that is resulting in overexploitation of both biodiversity and land.
”In the past I didn’t cultivate on very sloped land or in old forest. But now I cannot survive if I don’t cultivate in the old forest. I know that these are not good places to use for cultivation but I have no choice”, says a Ta Paw Der a villager in the KESAN report.
Besides the SDPC, the KNU have also been involved in unsustainable exploitation of Karen’s biodiversity, selling off timber for arms as they retreat from increased military offensives.
Increased militarisation has already resulted in the loss of the severely endangered Sumatran Rhinoceros, says KESAN.
To add to the problem, indigenous knowledge, a tradition handed orally down the generations, is as threatened as local biodiversity, forests and traditional lifestyles disappear in the fighting.
Ta Paw Der village previously had over 150 kinds of edible forest products, including wild honey, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, gingers, tubers, roots, nuts and fruits, but it is now physically unsafe to collect such produce.
Another biodiversity survey of Karen’s arterial Salween River opposite Thailand’s Mae Hong Son province, undertaken by KESAN, has identified over 40 endangered plant and animal species which are being threatened by ongoing military action.
Over two dozen endemic and unknown species, including eight endemic fish species have also been identified by Dr. Chavalit Vidthayanon of WWF-Thailand.
KESAN’s report shows that the Salween River still contains amazing biodiversity, and deserves more attention from international scientists.
But a deal between Thailand and Burma for the first large-scale hydropower project on the Salween river could displace and negatively impact upon tens of thousands of poor and marginalized people from ethnic minorities in that country.
Five giant hydropower dams, of which the first is the Weigy has been planned on the Salween river by the Burmese, Thai and Chinese governments, adding to the threat from the cumulative impact of cascading dams.
KESAN activist, Ko Shwe says: ”The Karen people depend on a healthy Salween ecosystem, including fish, forest products, riverside gardens and transportation. The proposed dams will ruin the ecosystem and the free flowing river, kill the surrounding forests and destroy the lives of thousands of people.
Burma has several ongoing and proposed hydropower, gem-mining and natural gas projects countrywide with various nations, including China, Thailand, Korea and India.
In northern Shan district, a 600 Mw Chinese hydroelectric project will give Burma just 15 percent of the electricity generated and the rest will be sold to China at an undisclosed price.
According to EarthRights International, there are 69 Chinese trans-nationals involved in 90 completed, current and planned projects in hydropower,oil, natural gas and mining.
Ka Hsaw Wa, executive director of EarthRights International says on its website: ”We’ve repeatedly seen foreign companies coming into Burma with disregard for local people and the environment. Given what we know about development projects in Burma and the current situation, we’re concerned about this marked increase in the number of these projects.”
The New York-based Human Rights Watch group has called for countries to boycott Burmese gems, deals for which are going to support the military, while environmental activists say that indiscriminate mining for jade and rubies is destroying the ecology and ecosystems of northern Burma.
But despite such calls and a U.S. ban on the import of Burmese rubies and jade gem dealers say their lucrative trade has buyers from China, Russia, Thailand, India, EU and the Gulf countries.
All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.
Burma’s Exports Hit by Global Economic Downturn -IRRAWADDY
http://www.irrawaddy.org/highlight.php?art_id=14642
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By KYI WAI Monday, November 17, 2008
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RANGOON — Burma’s exports have been severely hit by declining orders from some of the country’s key trading partners, including China, Thailand, Singapore, India and Malaysia, which are reeling from the economic effects of the world financial crisis.
“The global financial crisis is also affecting Burma’s trade and economy,” said a senior government official.
A trader inspects some black lentils at the Bayintnaung commodity wholesale market in Rangoon. A deepening global economic recession is beginning to take a toll on Burma’s exports, as demand for agricultural products falls in neighboring countries. (Photo: The Myanmar Times)
“The effects of the financial crisis in the US have reached China, and now China’s economic difficulties are beginning to impact our country, as demand for agricultural products has fallen,” the official added.
Agricultural products, including rice, beans and pulses, are Burma’s second-largest source of export income after natural gas, earning US $600 million from China and India annually.
“Demand for beans and pulses has fallen noticeably since September and now there are no new orders,” said a dealer in Rangoon. “Prices are at their lowest level in three years. If we don’t get more orders, prices will continue to decline.”
The sudden drop in demand has taken many exporters by surprise. Some companies that have stockpiled agricultural products for export are now having trouble earning back the money they’ve spent, according to industry insiders.
Rubber is another product that has been hard hit by the global slump.
“There was no buying at the beginning of the rubber season,” said a member of the Rubber Production Association. “Our business depends entirely on exports, so now everyone at the rubber plantations—employers and employees—is in serious trouble.”
According to a report on Burma’s rubber production, the country exports over 50,000 tonnes of the material annually, produced mainly in Mon State and Irrawaddy, Rangoon and Pegu divisions.
Even rice exporters are finding themselves short of customers. “Some domestic companies received rice export permits, but now they have no buyers,” said a representative of the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry.
The deterioration of the export sector is expected to have far-reaching effects on Burma’s struggling economy. It will shrink the country’s foreign exchange reserves, increase the number of unemployed, lower purchasing power and productivity and result in the collapse of some businesses, said one economic expert.
“To rehabilitate the economy, government stimulus packages—reducing taxes, creating more job opportunities and supporting businesses with money—are very, very important,” said the expert.
“If the government neglects to do something, it will also feel the effects of this crisis. The government has an obligation to improve living conditions and prevent an economic breakdown,” he added.
Remittances take a hit, as Singapore's economy slumps-MIZZIMA
http://www.mizzima.com/news/global-financial-crisis-a-burma/1310-remittances-take-a-hit-as-singapores-economy-slumps.html
Remittances take a hit, as Singapore's economy slumps
by John Moe
Monday, 17 November 2008 18:34
Singapore (Mizzima): Over recent years, millions of Singapore dollars have found their way to Burma through the Burmese remittance system, the nexus of the operation being run out of shops and human resources agencies in the heartland of the Lion City.
However, owing to the global financial crisis that burst upon the international stage this September, the Singapore-Burmese remittance link has suffered. With Singapore officially announcing in October that it is in a state of recession, Burmese working, or hoping to find work in the city, have found the going increasingly difficult.
A businessman from Peninsula Plaza, wishing to remain anonymous, told Mizzima, "Business has been affected and worse times are yet to come, the effect is huge for Burmese exporters, especially for those regularly trading with Singapore in rubber, gems, woods and agricultural products."
Even Burmese workers not yet drastically affected, are spending in a more circumspect manner. Bo Bo Win, owner of the Ya Nant Thit Restaurant, said, "My regular customers have not turned up during the weekend, bringing the sale's percentage down. We just broke even."
Burmese in Singapore are currently focusing their spending on essential goods, avoiding superfluous expenditures. "Since the financial market upheaval, gross sales revenue has fallen by more than ten percent," added the restaurateur.
And now, among Burmese establishments, business stakeholders are carrying out increased sales promotions, in the fight over a diminished customer base.
Furthermore, the global financial crisis has forced many new arrivals to the city-state to return to Burma – empty-handed, their being unable to secure a job in Singapore during this period of recession.
As for Burmese professionals, they are also being affected, as companies have been forced to lay off staff.
Nwae Nwae Naing, a professional and holder of an Employment Permit, together with eight other Burmese architects and designers, was recently laid off by Smallwood, Reynolds, Stewart & Stewart (SRSS). The company has not, however, cancelled their Employment Permits, granting them one month in which to line up new jobs, otherwise they will be forced to return to Burma as well, within six weeks time.
Nwae Nwae Naing told Mizzima, "The company had 135 staff from top management down to junior staff. After the restructuring of the company, 50 staff had to be laid off, also including French, Philippine, Malaysian and Indonesian nationals."
Meanwhile, those unemployed Burmese in Singapore with Permanent Resident (PR) status are trying to get by as they continue to look for work.
Thiri Sandar Tun (25), holder of a Bachelor's in Commerce from Rangoon, said, "I have been looking for a job for over three months in Singapore, and I am still yet to achieve my goal."
"My father sends 800 dollars a month to cover my living expenses," she added. "But I have already spent more than ten thousand dollars over six months, including school fees."
Khine Zar Lwin (24), a Bachelor in Business Administration recipient and former administration staff manager at the Ginzarpan Pizza Hut in Rangoon, has taken up waitressing at a food court in Singapore, where she is overworked and underpaid.
"I have no other opportunities to choose from," laments Khine Zar Lwin. "I have to consider the agent's fees and I don't want to go back to Burma with empty hands." From her monthly wages (approximately US$ 650) she pays 60 percent toward her living and transportation costs, while the other 40 percent is sent home – still a colossal amount which she would never be able to earn in Burma as a waitress.
The current economic situation in Singapore can make living on the island very harsh for Burmese. The stylish art facilities, education institutions, shopping malls, sports and recreational facilities, are on par with western countries, and demand good money to be enjoyed.
It used to be that, prior to the global economic crisis, benefits offered to Burmese employees helped make Singapore livable and enjoyable, and ease the transition to a new life; affordable housing could be found. Now, the situation is much more difficult, with some Burmese in Singapore finding it difficult to make ends meet.
Due to her unemployment, Nwae Nwae Naing still cannot remit money to her family back in Burma. For now, the Burmese-Singapore remittance system, to which so many back in Burma are dependent, hangs in limbo – as Burmese in Singapore struggle to survive the financial crisis and the Lion City battles to regain its economic roar.
Chinese flex muscles in Microsoft piracy fight
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ab068622-b408-11dd-8e35-0000779fd18c,dwp_uuid=9c33700c-4c86-11da-89df-0000779e2340.html
By Kathrin Hille and Mure Dickie in Beijing
Published: November 16 2008 18:37 | Last updated: November 16 2008 18:37
When Microsoft rolled out its latest anti-piracy initiative this year, it was not aimed at any particular country. Windows Genuine Advantage, a tool that identifies users of counterfeit software and pushes them to buy the real thing, was launched worldwide in several geographical blocs.
But Microsoft ran into trouble when the roll-out hit China last month. While users in other markets kept silent when hit by one of WGA’s more extreme features, a mechanism that blackens the desktop background on computers found to be using counterfeit Windows, their Chinese peers broke into a storm of anger, forcing Microsoft officials in the country into damage control mode.
EDITOR’S CHOICE
Lex: Microsoft will return - Nov-10Microsoft rules out Yahoo takeover - Nov-07Web guidelines aim at repressive governments - Oct-29Microsoft in online Office demonstration - Oct-28Google strikes deal over online library - Oct-28Microsoft opens a new Windows in the ‘cloud’ - Oct-27China’s piracy rates, at 82 per cent according to the Business Software Alliance, are not the world’s worst. But the country’s sheer size means piracy generates vastly bigger losses there – $6.7bn for all software companies last year – than in any other market, according to the industry group.
In a dramatic illustration of the scope of the problem, several million Chinese are using a Windows license key held by the University of Pennsylvania, which is freely available on the web.
But fighting these problems is proving a sensitive affair in an increasingly nationalistic country that is well aware of its weight in the global economy.
Last month, Dong Zhengwei, a Beijing-based lawyer, called on the police to pursue Microsoft for what he called a “hacker-style attack” on consumers.
Local bloggers have also taken up the issue in fervent postings. “If we ignore them for six months, they will come back begging us to take it for free,” one blogger called ‘liangyouliang’ wrote at the weekend. “If they don’t seek good relations with us and not give us a little something for our [exported] clothes, then the people of their country will go naked.”
Well aware of the mood expressed by such postings, the government has also criticised Microsoft. “Violating consumers’ rights just to protect your own rights is inappropriate,” warns Liu Binjie, Commissioner of the National Copyright Administration. He adds that in future he wants the company to discuss anti-piracy measures with the government before they are launched.
Like other multinationals doing business in China, Microsoft cannot ignore that message.
People familiar with the company’s dialogue with the government say that it needs to apply more diligence to its intellectual property rights strategy in China. They say that the next planned big anti-piracy step, the shutting down of illegitimately-used software license keys such as that held by the University of Pennsylvania, will not go ahead until the current crisis in China is resolved.
Separately, Microsoft is taking another look at its anti-piracy tool, and does not exclude the possibility that it could look different in the future. “Microsoft engineers are working on ways to improve the user experience,” says Garth Fort, Microsoft’s marketing head for Greater China.
Although China-specific changes that would take away the black desktop feature are deemed unlikely, there could be global adjustments to WGA triggered by the Chinese protests.
The reason is simple: China is becoming an extremely important market. Microsoft’s revenue in Brazil, Russia, India and China grew more than 50 per cent in the fiscal year to June 30, more than double the world average. Company officials point to the fact that more than one-fifth of the world’s computer science students are now in Chinese universities. If the software group falls foul of Chinese public opinion, what is at risk is not just its standing with today’s Chinese consumers but its image with tomorrow’s software engineers.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
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China hints at aircraft carrier project
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d59c34fe-b412-11dd-8e35-0000779fd18c.html?nclick_check=1
By Mure Dickie and Martin Dickson in Beijing
Published: November 16 2008 23:32 | Last updated: November 16 2008 23:32
The world should not be surprised if China builds an aircraft carrier but Beijing would use such a vessel only for offshore defence, a senior official of the Chinese Ministry of National Defence has told the Financial Times.
The comments from Major General Qian Lihua, director of the ministry’s Foreign Affairs Office, come amid heated speculation within China and abroad that the increasingly potent naval arm of the People’s Liberation Army has decided to develop and deploy its first aircraft carrier. Traditionally, a carrier would accompany and protect a battle group of smaller ships.
EDITOR’S CHOICE
Chinese army turns on charm - Nov-16US 'needling' Beijing with Taiwan arms sale - Nov-17The Pentagon said this year that China was actively engaged in aircraft carrier research and would be able to start building one by the end of this decade, while Jane’s Defence Weekly reported last month that the PLA was training 50 students to become naval pilots capable of operating fixed-wing aircraft from such a ship.
Maj Gen Qian declined to comment directly on whether China had decided to build a carrier, but in the defence ministry’s most forthright statement yet on the issue he made clear that China had every right to do so.
“The navy of any great power . . . has the dream to have one or more aircraft carriers,” he said in the interview, which aides said was the first arranged by the defence ministry on its own premises. “The question is not whether you have an aircraft carrier, but what you do with your aircraft carrier.”
Though he did not mention the US by name, Maj Gen Qian pointedly contrasted the function of a possible Chinese vessel with the way the US Navy uses its 11 carriers. “Navies of great powers with more than 10 aircraft carrier battle groups with strategic military objectives have a different purpose from countries with only one or two carriers used for offshore defence,” he said. “Even if one day we have an aircraft carrier, unlike another country, we will not use it to pursue global deployment or global reach.”
That pledge is unlikely to reassure those in the region concerned about the PLA navy’s emergence as a blue-water force. An effective Chinese carrier could have serious implications for any conflict involving Taiwan by strengthening the mainland’s ability to counter the island’s air force and control its sea-lanes.
Beijing claims sovereignty over Taiwan and threatens military action against the island if it tries to further formalise its current de facto independence. Taiwanese separatism was the “biggest threat” China currently faced, Maj Gen Qian said.
Admiral Timothy Keating, head of US Pacific Command, said in Beijing last year that Chinese development of a carrier should not be the cause of any unnecessary tension, and that the US would even be willing to lend a helping hand.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
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Burma, Iraq, and the Need for an Effective UN
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=ROS20081115&articleId=10976
by Sherwood Ross
Global Research, November 15, 2008
Besides wrecking Iraq and killing a million people, President Bush’s illegal invasion has given a boost to military dictators around the world.
“The idea, popular in the nineteen-nineties, that the world may intervene in countries whose governments show no regard for human life is now seen as reflecting Western arrogance,” writes George Packer in The New Yorker magazine. Packer refers specifically to Burma but militarists globally have followed the U.S. assault on Iraq closely. Many dictators consider George Bush to be a man after their own heart---and he proves it by showering them with weapons.
According to Rachel Stohl, a senior analyst at the Center for Defense Information(CDI), “the U.S. is sending unprecedented levels of military assistance to countries that it simultaneously criticizes for lack of respect for human rights and, in some cases, for questionable democratic processes.”
“The occupation of Iraq has been a boon to the Burmese generals,” Packer writes. It has deprived the U.S. of any moral authority it once had. And neighbors China and India---motivated by selfish economic concerns---look the other way at the Burmese junta’s horrendous human rights abuses. China’s approach, Packer says, “has become the standard.” Chinese businessmen are plowing investment funds into Burma and China’s dictators are selling arms to their Burmese counterparts. China and India are also competing for contracts to explore offshore oil and gas and to build a gas pipeline across Burma, Packer writes.
China even tried to prevent the United Nations Security Council from discussing Burma and when a U.N. envoy said he planned to discuss the prospect of talks between the junta and opposition political leader Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest, at a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Burmese Prime Minister threatened to walk out. The U.N. envoy’s talk was cancelled.
The despotism in Burma, like Bush’s criminal war against Iraq, is a textbook study in human folly that cries out for international solution. Both reflect how calloused militaries ravage innocent civilian populations because there is no real “law and order” on much of planet Earth.
Since seizing control in 1962, military officers have installed themselves in most of Burma’s top government posts, operating with absolute contempt for the well-being of the nation’s 50-millions. Arbitrary arrests, torture, the use of child labor, and total suppression of political freedom are the norm. Starvation is common. The junta’s failure to aid the survivors of last May’s cyclone that killed 130,000 people or to allow Western aid into the country makes the Bush response to hurricane-struck New Orleans appear positively benevolent.
“American policy toward Burma has been to isolate the regime through sanctions,” Packer writes. “This policy has been pursued as a moral response to a deplorable government, without much regard for its effectiveness.” And he adds, “the alternative policy---economic engagement along the lines of Burma’s neighbors---has also failed. Every year, the junta grows stronger while the country sinks deeper into poverty.”
“Sanctions are a joke,” one Western diplomat stationed in Rangoon told Packer. “They’re just a pressure release. The generals don’t care what the rest of the world thinks about them, because they don’t think about the rest of the world. What they care about is their financial and physical security.” FYI, Transparency International ranks Burma as the second most corrupt regime in the world, after Somalia.
The only bright spot for U.S. policy in Burma is the State Department’s American Center in Rangoon, crowded with Burmese reading Western literature. Packer credits two State Department officials, Thomas Pierce and Kim Penland, for expanding the Center’s library, plus starting a political discussion class, a training workshop for journalists, a literature book club, and a debate club. “In a country where the law forbids unauthorized meetings of more than five people, none of this could have happened anywhere outside the gates of the Center,” Packer writes.
The lesson of Burma is the UN needs a standing army to step into a country and guarantee honest elections, and, when necessary, even to depose a junta. The lesson of Iraq is that the UN needs a mechanism to prevent jingoists like Bush from making a war in behalf of financial interests, in this case the western oil firms and the U.S. military-industrial complex. Diplomat Heraldo Munoz, Chile’s permanent representative to the United Nations, is quoted in the November 15th New York Times as writing in his book “A Solitary War” that “Americans do not recognize the value of the United Nations in assuring the United States’ central role in the world.”
As psychologist Michael McCullough writes in his book “Beyond Revenge”(Jossey-Bass), “By acting as the world’s policeman, the United Nations was supposed to be the strong supranational government that could prevent warfare between nations. However, the UN’s ability to stop nations from attacking each other has been hamstrung by the fact that any member of the UN Security Council (which includes the most militarily powerful nations in the world) can veto any proposed UN military action that it views as a threat to itself or one of its allies.”
“Until the UN becomes strong enough to stop violence between nations before it gets out of hand, or until some stronger form of supranational governance comes along, violence between nations, spawned and nurtured by feelings of vengefulness, will likely continue to be a fact of life,” McCullough adds.
Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based public relations consultant who has written for major dailies and wire services. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com
Sherwood Ross is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Sherwood Ross
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Child Warriors Around The World -- Manipulation Without End
http://www.rferl.org/content/Child_Warriors_Around_The_World__Manipulation_Without_End/1349622.html
November 16, 2008
By Mirjana Rakela
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child categorically prohibits involving children in war operations. But despite international conventions, minors continue to be used as soldiers in military conflicts around the world. Europe is no exception -- thousands of child soldiers fought during the Balkan wars between 1991 and 1995. Mirjana Rakela, from RFE/RL's South Slavic and Albanian-Languages Service, received the Lorenzo Natali Prize on November 15 for her reports on child soldiers, first broadcast in November 2007.
An estimated 300,000 children are currently involved in 33 armed conflicts around the world. Nongovernmental organizations say about 100,000 of them live in Africa.
They are usually between 14 and 18 years of age, although child soldiers as young as nine are not rare.
Some are volunteers, but the vast majority of them were forcefully recruited into paramilitary and military units. They took up arms in order to survive after family, social, and economic breakdowns, often after seeing their families tortured or killed by the regime's soldiers or armed groups.
Girls are not spared either. In El Salvador, Ethiopia, and Uganda, almost a third of little soldiers are girls.
Increasingly modern, user-friendly military technology and weapons have made it easier for armed groups to misuse children and turn them into warriors.
Once recruited, children can be used as cooks, suppliers, or guards. But more often than not, they are sent to the front line of combat, to patrol mine fields, and even on suicide missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere.
Enrique Restoy, of the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, says children have fought in all known conflicts in the Middle East. He has personally met many child soldiers from regions such as the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, or Sudan.
Children, he says, suffer the after-effects of war, even when they try to hide them -- war memories don't fade overnight, especially if these children have committed crimes.
Support programs for these children, however, are generally quick and rarely focus on long-term education and social reinsertion.
Easily Manipulated
Restoy says some children are actually proud to have served in armed groups that combated forces occupying their country.
"Children in Iraq and the Palestinian territories live surrounded by violence -- on one side there are armed groups, on the other the occupying army," Restoy said. "They face violence almost daily and unfortunately they have access to weapons. It's true that in some countries, like Yemen, weapons are part of the culture and very young children carry weapons as a symbol of their family's importance and prestige.
"But children are easily manipulated, and this is why we want to prohibit any kind of involvement of children in armed conflicts. They are not mature enough to decide whether or not they want, and should, belong to an armed group. Armed groups or the army recruiting them manipulate them without difficulty. And regardless of whether the children voluntarily join these groups or live in a region under occupation, there's always a crime committed by their recruiters and a manipulation committed by their recruiters."
Diar Bamri, a correspondent for RFE/RL's Iraqi Service, says media reports and international organizations confirm that terrorist groups in Iraq use children as militants.
The "Los Angeles Times" for instance, citing U.S. sources, reported in 2007 that some 800 children suspected of carrying out terrorist attacks were jailed in U.S. prisons in Iraq, some as young as 11 years old.
Poverty is a key factor pushing children to enroll as fighters.
"I think one of the reasons is money. Many come from very poor families, they have lost their fathers and brothers. These families need money because they don't have any regular income. They ask children to go out on the streets and bring money home, they don't ask where this money comes from," Bamri says.
"They tell them to drop out of school because the time is for survival, not education. On the streets, children become easy prey for terrorists and organized groups that recruit them. A child can go anywhere without being stopped by soldiers and policemen, so unfortunately they can carry out any kind of attack.
"Such children do not differ from other children on the street, and there are many thousands of them wandering around Iraqi cities. Who can determine whether a child is good or bad, whether or not he is a terrorist? When you speak to these boys, they tell you: 'I was manipulated, used, forced because our family is very poor.' Terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda pay these children up to $300 a month. By comparison, an average Iraqi family today survives on $100 to $150 a month. That's why these children are ready to do anything for money."
State Of Fear
The testimonials published by Human Rights Watch are shocking. Emilio, recruited into the Guatemalan army when he was 14 years old, recalls how child soldiers were constantly beaten up into a state of permanent fear. They were more often hungry than sated, they had to carry heavy armament. They were taught to fight against enemies in a war they didn't understand.
Susan, a 16-year-old from Uganda, tells the story of a boy from her village who tried to escape after being abducted and recruited into the Lord's Resistance Army. He was captured, and the other children were forced to beat him to death with hoes. After they had killed him, they were ordered to smear their own hands with his blood, to overcome their fear of death and dissuade them from escaping.
Following the latest wave of violence in Burma, Human Rights Watch published a report detailing how the military regime in this Asian country recruits children into their armed forces.
Jo Becka, who works at Human Rights Watch's New York headquarters, says the Burmese army is recruiting thousands of children into its forces.
"The army is constantly increasing its number of battalions, but at the same time there are more and more deserters. The armed forces have trouble meeting recruitment quotas, so they realized that children make an easy target. They approach them on the street, in public places, and force them to join the army," Becka says.
"Children have told us that they are beaten when they are not able to endure military drills. They frequently try to escape, but when they are captured and taken back to the recruitment center, they are beaten by their colleagues. In some cases they are severely injured, some even die. We spoke to about 20 former soldiers. The majority of them were recruited when they were 10 years old.
"Three of the former soldiers we spoke to were recruited twice. One of them was first recruited when he was 14 years old. He managed to escape the following year, but he was captured. When his grandmother and aunt realized that he was back in the army, they traveled to his unit and asked the commander to release him. The man said: 'I will let him go, but only if you bring me five other recruits in exchange.' When the boy found this out, he told his aunt: 'Don't do that, don't bring five other people. Life here is terrible and I have to face it myself.' Afterwards, he started voluntarily signing up for the most dangerous assignments. What he said to us was: "In the army, my life was worthless.'"
The director of RFE/RL's North Caucasus Service, Aslan Doukaev, says there is no precise figure for the number of child fighters in the region. But rights groups say a great number of minors are definitely involved in fighting in the North Caucasus.
"I saw with my own eyes how a boy who was 13 or 14 at most grabbed a gun from a Russian paramilitary soldier in the center of Grozny, on a marketplace, and killed him. Children try to get hold of weapons in order to join military groups," Doukaev says.
"I also know that some of them are real experts in planting mines and traps. But there is no organized campaign to recruit children. This often happens spontaneously. Some children don't have parents, others come from poor or destroyed families, and joining militant fighters makes them feel important and significant. Schools are either closed or function poorly, kids have nowhere to go. They have a choice between staying at home and risking being arrested, exposed to violence and drugs; or join one of the military groups. Very often, they choose the second option."
The number of children fighting in Afghanistan is not known either; international organizations say the Taliban and Al-Qaeda have thousands of boys in their ranks. Their number has been declining in recent years. But Mohammad Amin Mudaqiq, the director of RFE/RL's Kabul bureau, says the insurgents are still recruiting children.
"The Talibans usually enroll teenagers, children aged 13 to 14. Some are even younger, but they prepare all of them equally for suicide missions. Al-Qaeda and the Talibans take advantage of the fact that high-ranking state officials are usually happy to meet children. Children are easily brainwashed and led to believe that after the suicide attack, they will go to heaven," Mudaqiq says.
"We know of a boy who was recruited as a suicide bomber but then changed his mind and decided to surrender to authorities. He called his father from Pakistan to ask him for forgiveness, and the father forgave him publicly. A child was used as a human shield in a recent suicide attack in Baghlan that killed around 80 people. The bomber walked behind the child, who approached a member of parliament with a bunch of flowers. Security forces let the child and the older person through, and when they were close to the deputy the suicide bomber detonated the explosive. Insurgents recently also used students from the madrasah in order to approach NATO soldiers in Kabul and attack them. NATO soldiers fired in retaliation, and 12 children died."
European Problem
In Europe, too, children have been draw into armed conflicts -- the 1990s Balkan wars are the most recent example.
The UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child was largely ignored during the war years, and scores of children died in the fighting. The war prompted the European Union in 2003 to adopt guidelines concerning children affected by armed conflicts.
The European Parliament drafted a resolution aimed at curbing the recruitment and use of children in armed conflicts. Such a document would give the European Parliament more leverage on governments, but also international bodies such as the United Nations, when calling for more measures against the use of children in armed conflicts.
One of the driving force behind the resolution was Britain's Sharon Bowles, a member of the European Parliament. Using children as soldiers, she says, is a new form of slavery.
"Quite often they are given drugs and put in the front line, their childish innocence and unpredictable behavior are used as a weapon in war. We want as many people as possible to be aware of the existence of child warriors and to have as many states as possible take part in the action, in order for the Convention on the Rights of the Child to be truly respected," Bowles says.
"I would like to emphasize that the use of children as soldiers is a new form of slavery. This is a type of forced labor in horrifying conditions. This is the worst possible form of slavery. Our goal is to have countries of the West, big nations, such as the United States or Russia, exert real political pressure on countries where this is taking place. This is part of today's reality, but we have to be active in preventing it as much as possible and applying diplomatic pressure."
SPDC sent Ko Min Ko Naing and twelve student leaders to different prisons
http://burmadd.blogspot.com/2008/11/spdc-sent-ko-min-ko-naing-and-twelve.html
BDD
88 Generation Students, including Min Ko Naing, Ko Ko Gyi, Mya Aye, Htay Kywe, Pyone Cho (aka) Htay Win Aung, Aung Thu, Hla Myo Naung, Aung Naing (aka) Myo Aung Naing, who were transferred to Ma-ubin Prison in the delta region on Oct 30, 2008, were transferred back to Insein Prison after they have been sentenced 65 years imprisonment on 11.11.2008. They arrived at Insein Prison in the afternoon of 15th November.
Min Ko Naing and the eight were sentenced 65 years imprisonment by a special court held inside the Ma-ubin Prison on Nov 11, 2008. Not long after have they arrived Insein Prison, 13 members of 88 Generation Students, including Min Ko Naing, Ko Ko Gyi and Mya Aye were transferred to remote prisons located near the border in the early morning (03:00 a.m) of 16th November . Regime worried that any attempt of protest from the student leaders.
Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi were transferred to Kengtong the (Eastern Shan State near Thai Border), Mya Aye to Loikaw (Kayah State, near Thai border), Pyone Cho to Kawthaung, (southernmost part of the country near Thai border), Hyay Kywe to Buutheedaung (westernmost of Rakhine State near Bangladesh border), Hla Myo Naung to Myitkyeenar (northern part of Kachin State near China border), Aung Thu plus 7 members of 88 Generation Students to Putao (northernmost part of Kachin State near China border) and Aung Naing to Kalay (western part of Sagaing Division near India border).
Photo: Irrawaddy Online
Posted by BURMA DEMOCRACY & DEVELOPMENT at 11/16/2008 12:55:00 PM
ေျပာင္းလဲဖို႔ အတြက္ ကိုယ္တိုင္ႀကိဳးစားဖို႔လိုအပ္ေၾကာင္း အရွင္နာယကမိန္႔ၾကား-"MTK Library"
('နအဖက သူတို႔အာဏာတည္ျမဲဖို႔အတြက္ သံဃာေတာ္ေတြကို ရက္ရက္စက္စက္ သတ္ရဲတယ္။ ဦးဇင္းတို႔သံဃာေတြကေတာ့ အမ်ဳိး၊ ဘာသာ၊ သာသနာေတာ္ တည္တံ့ရွင္သန္ႏိုင္ေရးအတြက္ ရဲရဲႀကီးအေသခံရဲတယ္'(အရွင္နာယက))
ေျပာင္းလဲဖို႔ အတြက္ ကိုယ္တိုင္ႀကိဳးစားဖို႔လိုအပ္ေၾကာင္း အရွင္နာယကမိန္႔ၾကား
၂၀၀၈၊ ႏို၀င္ဘာ(၁၆)
'ကံ-ကံ၏အက်ဳိး'ကိုသက္၀င္ယံုၾကည္ၾကသည့္ ေထရဝါဒဗုဒၶဘာသာႏြယ္ဝင္ ျမန္မာလူမ်ဳိးမ်ားအေနျဖင့္ စစ္အာဏာရွင္လက္ေအာက္ မွလြတ္ေျမာက္ဖို႔ႏွင့္ ဓမၼံႏၲရာယ္ ရန္မွတြန္းလွန္ကာကြယ္ႏိုင္ဖို႔အတြက္ မိမိတို႔ကိုယ္တိုင္ႀကိဳးစားေဆာင္ ႐ြက္ဖို႔လိုအပ္ေၾကာင္း သာသနာ့ ဥေသွ်ာင္အဖဲြ႔အတြင္းေရးမွဴးဆရာ ေတာ္ ေဒါက္တာအရွင္နာယကမွ ဂ်ပန္ေရာက္ဒီမိုကေရစီအင္ အားစုမ်ားႏွင့္ ေတြ႔ဆံုေႏြးပဲြတြင္ မိန္႔ၾကားလိုက္သည္။
ဂ်ပန္ႏိုင္ငံ၊ တုိက်ဳိၿမိဳ႔ အဆကု ဆ(ဗ်ေုက်ေ)တြင္ ႏိုဝင္ဘာ ၁၄ ရက္ေန႔မွ ၁၇ ရက္ေန႔အထိ က်င္း ပျပဳလုပ္သည့္ ၂၄ ႀကိမ္ေျမာက္ ကမၻာ့ဗုဒၶဘာသာဆိုင္ရာႏီွးေႏွာ ဖလွယ္ပဲြသို႔ တက္ေရာက္စာတမ္း တင္သြင္းရန္ ဖိတ္ၾကားျခင္းခံရ သည့္ ရခိုင္အမ်ဳိးသားဆရာေတာ္ အရွင္နာကယက ႏိုဝင္ဘာ ၁၆ ရက္ေန႔ကျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ေသာ ဂ်ပန္ ေရာက္ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီအင္အား စုမ်ားႏွင့္ေတြ႔ဆံုေဆြးေႏြးပဲြတြင္ ''ဦးဇင္းတို႔ရဲ႔ ဗုဒၶျမတ္စြာဘုရားက 'ဧဟိပတိေကာ(က်င့္ၾကံအားထုတ္ ႀကိဳးစားလွည့္)၊ အကာလိေကာ (အခါမလင့္အက်ဳိးေပးအံ)'လို႔ ေဟာၾကားေတာ္မူခဲ့တယ္။ ဆုမ ေတာင္းခိုင္းဘူး။လက္ရွိပစၥဳပၸာန္ အက်ဳိးအေၾကာင္းတရားကိုပဲ ႀကိဳးစားအားထုတ္က်င့္ၾကံခိုင္းတာ။ ျမန္မာျပည္မွာ သာသနာအႏၲ ရာယ္ကေနကာကြယ္ဖို႔ ဦးဇင္း တို႔က နအဖကိုယေန႔ထက္ထိ 'ပ တၲနိကၠဳဇၨနကံ'ေဆာင္ဆဲပဲျဖစ္ တယ္။ ဒါကာ/မတို႔ကလည္း အာဏာရွင္စနစ္ေအာက္က ေနခ်ဳပ္ၿငိမ္းဖို႔၊ လက္ရွိဘဝကေန ေျပာင္းလဲဖို႔အတြက္ ဆုေတာင္းမ ေန၊ ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ေစာင့္ဆိုင္းမေနၾက ဘဲ ညီညီၫြတ္ၫြတ္နဲ႔ ကိုယ္တိုင္ ႀကိဳးစားအားထုတ္ဖို႔လိုအပ္တယ္..'' ဟုမိန္႔ဆိုသည္။
ဆက္လက္၍ ၄၄ ဦးေျမာက္ အေမရိကန္သမတျဖစ္လာေတာ့မည့္ ဘားရက္အုိဘားမားသည္လည္း 'ေျပာင္းလဲဖို႔အတြက္၊ ငါတို႔လုပ္ ႏိုင္ပါတယ္'ဆိုတဲ့ (Change! Yes..We Can)စကားအတိုင္း လက္ေတြ႔အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္ လုပ္ေဆာင္ခဲ့သည့္အတြက္ အေမ ရိကန္ႏိုင္ငံသမိုင္း၏ ႏွစ္ ၂ဝဝ ေက်ာ္စာမ်က္ႏွာတြင္ ပထမဦး ဆံုးေသာလူမည္းသမတျဖစ္လာရျခင္းျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း၊ မျဖစ္ႏိုင္ဘူးဆိုတာမရွိေၾကာင္းႏွင့္ သံဃာႏွင့္ျပည္သူကို မယံုၾကည္ႏိုင္ေလာက္ ေအာင္ႏွိပ္စက္သတ္ျဖတ္ေနသည့္ မင္းဆိုးမင္းညစ္မ်ားကို အျမန္ဆံုးဖယ္ရွားႏိုင္ဖို႔အတြက္ မစုိးရိမ္ ဆရာေတာ္ႀကီးမိန္႔မွာခဲ့သည့္အ တိုင္း နည္းေပါင္းစံုနဲ႔ေတာ္လွန္ၾကဖို႔လိုေၾကာင္း အက်ယ္တဝင့္ ရွင္းလင္းမိန္႔ၾကားခဲ့သည္။
ဆရာေတာ္အရွင္နယကသည္ အေမရိကန္ႏိုင္ငံ၊ နယူးေယာက္ ၿမိဳ႔ရွိ ကိုလံဘီယာတကၠသိုလ္တြင္ ဗုဒၶဘာသာဆိုင္ရာ သမိုင္းအ ခ်က္အလက္မ်ားကို ေဟာေျပာပို႔ ခ်ေပးေနသည့္ သံဃာေတာ္တပါးျဖစ္သည္။ ၂ဝဝ၇ ခုႏွစ္ သံ ဃာသပိတ္တြင္လည္း ဦးေဆာင္ ပါဝင္ခဲ့ၿပီး ယေန႔အခ်ိန္အထိ နအဖစစ္အုပ္စုကို 'ပတၲနိကၠဳဇၨန ကံ' ေဆာင္ထားဆဲျဖစ္သည္။
ကမၻာတဝွမ္းမွ ဗုဒၶသားေတာ္ ၅ဝဝ ေက်ာ္တက္ေရာက္ခဲ့သည့္ ၂၄ ႀကိမ္ေျမာက္ ကမၻာ့ဗုဒၶဘာ သာဆိုင္ရာႏီွးေႏွာဖလွယ္ပဲြတြင္ 'စစ္အာဏာရွင္လက္ေအာက္က်ေရာက္ ေနေသာ ျမန္မာျပည္ဗုဒၶဘာသာ'ေခါင္းစဥ္ျဖင့္ စာတမ္းတေစာင္ကို အေထာက္အထားျပည့္ျပည့္စံုစံုႏွင့္ တင္သြင္းခဲ့ၿပီး သာသနဥေသွ်ာင္မွ အဂၤလိပ္လိုပံုႏွိပ္ထားသည့္ စာအုပ္ကိုလည္း ႏွီးေႏွာဖလွယ္ပဲြတြင္ ျဖန္႔ခ်ိခဲ့ေၾကာင္းလည္းသိရွိရသည္။
အရွင္နာယကထံ တိုက္႐ိုက္ဆက္သြယ္လိုပါက-
Ashin Nayaka(Ph.D)
Visiting Professor
Department of History
Columbia University,
New York
Buddhist Missionary Society
35-25 90th St: #2R
Jackson Heights,
NY 11372
USA
P&F:(1718)898- 8274
an2201@columbia. edu
www.bmsusa.org
被害者参加制度：被害者に捜査資料開示 初公判前、質問に備え－－最高検通達
http://mainichi.jp/select/wadai/news/20081114dde001040007000c.html
最高検は、重大犯罪の被害者や遺族が望めば、刑事裁判の初公判前に供述調書や実況見分調書などの捜査資料を開示するよう全国の地検、高検に通達した。被害者側が法廷で直接被告に質問したり、量刑への意見を述べられる「被害者参加制度」が導入される１２月から適用される。制度を積極的に活用できるように、従来の方針を転換した。効果的な質問の準備などが可能になり、被害者の権利を守るものとして、遺族らは高く評価している。【林田七恵】
通達は９月５日付。刑事訴訟法は「公益上の必要がある場合以外は、訴訟に関する書類を公判前に公にしてはならない」と規定し、被害者でも公判が始まるまで閲覧や謄写ができなかった。
０５年１１月から裁判官と検察、弁護側が事前に証拠や争点を絞る「公判前整理手続き」が導入され、公判開始後に被害者が参加しても証拠を吟味する時間が他の当事者より短くなると危ぶまれていた。
今回の通達は法務・検察側が同法の「公益上の必要がある場合」を積極的に解釈した結果とみられる。１２月以降に起訴された被害者参加制度の対象事件で、被害者や遺族、被害者側弁護人が担当検事に要請すれば、検察側が請求する予定の証拠を公判前に閲覧できるようになる。公開への被告側の同意は不要だが、第三者のプライバシーにかかわる証拠などは開示を見送る場合もある。
情報開示を法務省に働きかけてきた「ＴＡＶ交通死被害者の会」（大阪市北区）会員、森本祐二さん（５４）＝兵庫県川西市＝は「膨大な件数を少人数で調べる交通犯罪は捜査ミスが起きやすいが、遺族は初公判まで把握できなかった。真相解明への壁に穴を開けた大きな一歩だ。警察捜査段階での証拠開示も求めたい」と話している。
＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝
■ことば
◇被害者参加制度
犯罪被害者の声を公判に直接反映させて権利拡充を図る制度。対象は殺人や強姦（ごうかん）、誘拐、自動車運転過失致死傷などの重大事件。被害者や遺族が希望し裁判所が許可すれば「被害者参加人」として検察官の隣に座り、被告に直接質問したり証人に被告の情状を尋問できる。検察官の論告求刑の後、法律の範囲内で量刑意見を述べることもできる。
英訳
毎日新聞 2008年11月14日 東京夕刊
Crime victims receive rights in court (Japan)
http://vaonlinefusion.blogspot.com/2008/11/crime-victims-receive-rights-in-court.html
Under a new law in Japan, crime victims and survivors will be made full participants in trials, with rights to pre-trial summaries of statements and evidence, the right to directly question the accused, and the right to make victim impact and post-sentencing statements.
The move will apply from December, in line with the launch of a system that will allow crime victims to directly question defendants in court and state their opinions on sentencing. The notice, representing a shift from previous policy, was made to promote the system of victim participation in trials. Bereaved families have praised the move, saying it protects the rights of victims and will help them to prepare effective questions in trials.
...Under the new victim participation system, if victims, bereaved families or the lawyers of victims in applicable cases make a request to the prosecutors in charge, they will be allowed to view the evidence that prosecutors are planning to seek before the start of the trial. No consent will be needed from the defendant, but when privacy issues are involved, there may be times when the information is withheld.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/news/20081114p2a00m0na009000c.html?inb=rs
Crime victims given right to view investigation material ahead of trials
The Supreme Public Prosecutors Office has instructed district and high public prosecutors offices to disclose investigation information such as depositions and spot investigation records ahead of trials over serious crimes if victims or bereaved families want the information, it has been learned.
The move will apply from December, in line with the launch of a system that will allow crime victims to directly question defendants in court and state their opinions on sentencing. The notice, representing a shift from previous policy, was made to promote the system of victim participation in trials. Bereaved families have praised the move, saying it protects the rights of victims and will help them to prepare effective questions in trials. The notice was dated Sept. 5.
The Code of Criminal Procedure states that documents pertaining to court cases must not be brought out before trials unless there is "a need to do so for public benefit." As a result, victims of crimes have not been able to view or copy documents before the start of trials.
In November 2005, a system of pretrial summary procedures was introduced, in which judges, lawyers and public prosecutors narrow down in advance the point of dispute in cases and the evidence. However, the issue was raised that victims participating from the beginning of trials would have less time to familiarize themselves with evidence.
The notice sent out by the Supreme Public Prosecutors Office is believed to be the result of a positive interpretation of the "need do so for public benefit" under the Code of Criminal Procedure.
Under the new victim participation system, if victims, bereaved families or the lawyers of victims in applicable cases make a request to the prosecutors in charge, they will be allowed to view the evidence that prosecutors are planning to seek before the start of the trial. No consent will be needed from the defendant, but when privacy issues are involved, there may be times when the information is withheld.
Yuji Morimoto, 54, a member of the Osaka-based Traffic Accident Victims Net, had been encouraging the Ministry of Justice to release the information.
"It is easy for mistakes to occur in the investigation of traffic crimes, where a huge number of cases are investigated by a small number of people, but bereaved families don't find out about them until the start of the trial," he said. "This is a major first step in which a hole has been opened in the wall to shed light on the truth. I also want to seek the disclosure of evidence at the police-investigation stage."
Burma: A Prison State
http://www.i-times.org/interesting_times/2008/11/burma-a-prison.html
The latest string of imprisonments in Burma has confirmed once more that the ruthless military dictatorship has gone way past the police state to enter the prison state.
A military court has sentenced nine pro-democracy activists to 65 years in prison each, bringing the total for the week to 70 people who have summarily been put in the country's already overcrowded prisons.
On Friday, journalist Ein Khaing Oo was sentenced to a two-year term for covering the protests last June against the government's dismal response to the humanitarian catastrophe triggered by a devastating cyclone.
The nine sentenced activists belong to the 88 Generation Student movement, named after the 1988 pro-democracy demonstrations that were crushed by a bloody campaign of repression by the military junta.
Also in the past week 14 other members of the Generation 88 Students group were sentenced to prison terms of 65 years each, and a labor activist, Su Su Nway, was sentenced to 12 1/2 years. Ten people allied with Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy got jail terms of eight to 24 years.
(...)
Many of the activists were involved in protests in September 2007 that led to huge pro-democracy demonstrations that the army put down by force. According to estimates from the United Nations, at least 31 people were killed and thousands of demonstrators were detained. Many fled the country or went underground.
Amnesty International and other international human rights groups say the junta holds more than 2,100 political prisoners, up sharply from nearly 1,200 in June 2007, before the pro-democracy demonstrations.
On Monday, blogger Nay Phone Latt was sentenced to 20 and a half years in prison after being found in possession of a banned video and poet Saw Wai to two years for writing a satire of the junta.
Perhaps the only force that can rattle the members of the ruling junta in their ivory towers would be a stern warning from their major enablers, the Chinese government. What are they waiting for?
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The price of political indifference
http://baganland.blogspot.com/2008/11/price-of-political-indifference.html
Brig Gen Shahedul Anam Khan ndc, psc (Retd)
THANKFULLY, a conflict situation with Myanmar has been avoided, for the time being at least. The incident had the making of a protracted naval deployment with the potential of a conflict. The maritime issue has unfortunately spilled over onto the land, with the BDR being now confronted by a heavily reinforced border security force of Myanmar along the Bangla-Myanmar border.
The Korean exploration rig, that encroached into our territorial waters in the area of block-13 backed up by two Myanmar man-of-war, has been withdrawn inside Myanmar waters, and whatever reason they would like to cite for doing so, undoubtedly the major motivation was the physical demonstration by the Bangladesh Navy of our resolve to protect our national interest and our territory at all cost.
But one would like to ask whether the situation should have come to such a pass at all. This, if I may make so bold as to assert, is the result of sloth and extremely lackadaisical attitude of, on the one hand, the successive governments over the years since the adoption and coming into force of UNCLOS III in 1994, and on the other, the inability of our foreign ministry to convince the political leadership of the significance of the issue, one that was of a paramount national interest, and the need to address it on an urgent basis.
That we need leaders capable of comprehending issues of long-term strategic significance is borne out by the Territorial Waters and Maritime Zone Act 1974, a very timely and appropriate move on the part of the leaders of the time, and in contrast, by the indifference with which the issue of delimitation, particularly after we had ratified UNCLOS-III in July 2001, was handled at the political level. Needless to say, in the dynamics of our bilateral relations with Myanmar the nub of the matter is the UNCLOS-III and maritime boundary delimitation.
There was very little, if any, political guidance as to how to go about handling the matter of encroachment of our territorial waters and at the same time get our two neighbours to agree on an equitable resolution of the delimitation issue before the cutoff date for Bangladesh, i.e. July 2011. It may be mentioned that the lines, that India and Myanmar are using to define their territorial waters, if accepted, would completely block Bangladesh's access to the extended continental shelf.
Bangladesh needs to lodge claims over its maritime boundary to the International Seabed Authority as per UNCLOS-III by 2011. As per the convention, Bangladesh will be required to submit necessary documents to the UN to validate its claim of territorial water, EEZ up to 200 nautical miles and continental shelf up to 350 nm from the baseline, which we had declared through the said act of 1974, or else lose the right over an area, as large if not larger, than mainland Bangladesh.
To whose failure should one ascribe the fact that since the last more than 20 years Bangladesh could not sit with either of our two neighbours for even once ? May one ask the status of the expert committee and what have its inputs been since it was formulated in 2004? And can we be fully assured by the statement of the foreign ministry, given on the eve of General Moung Mint's visit to Dhaka in September of this year as leader of the Myanmar delegation, that Bangladesh was in the final stage of preparation to put forward its claim to the United Nations?
About the recent development, it can be said with some certainty that the matter did not brew up in a day or a week. Firstly, when we delimited the gas blocks in our EEZ, both Myanmar and India protested, claiming that Bangladesh had encroached into their territory. On the contrary, one is not aware of any official protest lodged from our side when Myanmar went for production sharing contract of gas blocks, some of which were in Bangladesh claimed EEZ.
Between 2005 and now the Korean company had been conducting survey of the area, and yet there was no protest from our side. It appears as if the foreign ministry had switched off completely insofar as this issue is concerned, till November 1 happened, or that Myanmar paid little heed to our diplomatic moves thinking that we would not go so far as to precipitate a situation where, given the severe imbalance in naval strength weighted in favour of Myanmar, we would be prepared to employ force to uphold our territorial integrity, more so at a time when we are going through a political flux. The fact is, we had failed to initially deter an aggressive posture of our neighbour.
One needs to go into the reasons why Myanmar chose this moment to conduct oil and gas exploration inside our territory when only in the month of September a high level delegation from that country had been in Dhaka to discuss delimitation issues, and also appreciate the strategic and political implications of the act.
It is well to remember that 2009 is the cut off year by when Myanmar has to submit its claims to the UN under the provisions of UNCLOS-III. Apart from establishing its right by possession, planting a rig in areas claimed by Bangladesh would provide them a strong basis to register their claim on the extended continental shelf. This was perhaps also to test Bangladesh militarily in view of our less than firm diplomatic position vis a vis Myanmar that the past governments had taken. This might well have prompted India, with whom too we have unresolved maritime issues, to resort to a similar venture, taking this as a precedent. The ensuing situation would have impacted severely on our national interest.
At the end of the day a strong diplomatic posture, backed up by the Bangladesh Navy who gave the message that it meant business, saw the resolution of the issue. But I feel that it is only temporary. How can we be sure that Myanmar will desist from similar ventures in the future? We cannot guess others' intention, but what we can certainly do is to ensure at our end certain objective conditions that would deter others from harming our interest.
Firstly, we must gather all the relevant data and have them verified by international agencies. That will help us establish our right on the maritime areas that we have staked our claim on. At the same time we must register our objections to claims made by the other co-littoral countries on our EEZ. While we must never abjure the path of friendly and peaceful way of settling differences, the recent incident has reinforced the fact that our forces must not only be strong but their deterrence capability must be credible.
Needless to say, our navy lacks the resources even to maintain vigilance on our claimed EEZ, not to speak of protecting it. Time has come to seriously get down to planning the physical defence of our country. Notwithstanding the budget crunch, our military expenditure can be so rationalised, and acquisition of weapons and equipment prioritised, so as not to unnecessarily burden the soft sectors.
The author is Editor, Defence & Strategic Affairs, The Daily Star.
Global climate changes could lead to violence
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/6113758.html
Experts say it will accelerate the race for food, water
By SCOTT CANON
McClatchy-Tribune
Nov. 15, 2008, 6:06PM
KANSAS CITY, MO. — A warmer planet could find itself more often at war.
The Earth's fast-changing climate has a range of serious thinkers — from military brass to geographers to diplomats — predicting a spate of armed conflicts driven by the weather.
Shifting temperatures lead to shifting populations, they say, and that throws together groups with long-standing rivalries and thrusts them into competition for food and water.
"It's not hard to imagine violent outbursts," said Julianne Smith of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Smith helped write one of four major studies put out in a little more than a year by centrist organizations in Europe and the United States that warn climate change threatens to spark wars in a variety of ways.
Each report predicted starkly similar problems: gunfire over land and natural resources as once-bountiful soil turns to desert and coastlines slip below the sea. They also expect violent storms to unsettle weak governments.
Just years away
Security analysts say profound dangers are just years, not decades, away. They already see evidence of societies at odds.
Ethnic groups clash in Sudan's Darfur region, trading gunfire in a conflict with climatological overtones. The armed thugs who rule Myanmar were exposed, and their regime knocked back on its heels, when Cyclone Nargis killed tens of thousands of people in May and the leadership responded so poorly. Likewise, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 began the fall of President George W. Bush's approval ratings.
Much more is going on in Darfur than climate change, but crop scarcity in the region has pushed rival ethnic groups onto the same turf.
Even those scientists who are most adamant that the planet is warming in unnatural ways don't blame single storms on climate change. But even conservative climatologists predict crazier weather that is capable of toppling governments.
"Governments that are already weak will be destabilized much more often and much more easily," said Jay Gulledge, a senior scientist at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "And if cooperation isn't enough to stretch resources, then what happens?"
Military planning
Although still controversial in some circles — Congress has split along partisan lines over whether the military should plan for global warming — the scientific consensus is that the Industrial Revolution increased greenhouse gases that set off an unprecedented rate of climate change.
Growing seasons could lengthen. Frozen seas could thaw to make way for convenient shipping routes. Previously inaccessible spots could be ripe to gush oil.
Meantime, wetlands could dry up. Rivers could disappear. Scientists already think that hurricanes, blizzards and droughts are more frequent and more severe. Rising sea levels could send tens of millions of people scurrying for higher ground.
"The idea that somehow there are winners in this is wrong," said Peter Ogden, a security analyst at the Center for American Progress. "Even places that come out ahead will see pressure on them from outside from the losers."
Last year the Center for Naval Analyses gathered retired generals and admirals to gauge the potential for climate to cause conflict. The former commanders concluded that war would be more likely, that the U.S. military needed to plan for the new threats, and that the United States had to reduce its carbon emissions.
"We will pay for this one way or another," wrote retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, the former chief of the U.S. Central Command. "We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today, and we'll have to take an economic hit of some kind. Or, we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives. There will be a human toll."
Developing countries stand most at risk, the studies conclude. Those countries lack the resources to absorb resulting disasters.
Consider Bangladesh. Long riddled by crushing poverty, it lies in a region that scientists expect will see even more devastating storms and the steady retreat of its coastline. That could send even more Bangladeshi Muslims running to the fence that predominantly Hindu India is building to keep them out.
Likewise, weather patterns that make it harder to grow food in Latin America could increase the rush to cross the southern U.S. border.
"People will pay no attention to borders. They will swamp borders. They will trample over them in desperation," said Raymond Callahan, a military historian at the University of Delaware.
Even efforts to mitigate global warming could prove dangerous.
Nuclear power doesn't add greenhouse gases, but it could mean the spread of doomsday technology to unstable parts of the world. Iran already is thought to be cloaking nuclear weapons ambitions inside "peaceful" nuclear facilities.
Senate's No. 2 Republican says Hillary Clinton as secretary of state wouldn't be bad idea
http://www.startribune.com/politics/34547574.html
Associated Press
Last update: November 16, 2008 - 10:26 PM
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gobush??
Compare resumes between the Obama staff and the dog and pony show that was the Bush White House staff. Obama has already named staff with … read more well over 100 years of combined experience on The Hill. Obama is going to need everyone he can find to work with democrats and republicans to get this mess cleaned up. To call Obama's staff inexperienced is either incredibly dumb or purely delusional.
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WASHINGTON - The Senate's second-ranking Republican says it wouldn't be a bad idea if President-elect Barack Obama named Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state.
"It seems to me she's got the experience. She's got the temperament for it. I think she would be well received around the world," said Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz. "So my own initial reaction is it would be a very good selection."
Both Clinton, Obama's fiercest rival for the presidential nomination, and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who also ran for the White House this year, interviewed with Obama in Chicago last week for the post, according to Democratic officials.
In an interview aired Sunday on CBS' "60 Minutes," Obama acknowledged meeting with Clinton last week but refused to say whether she was being considered for a Cabinet position. He also said the Republican party will be represented in his Cabinet.
A team of lawyers with Obama's transition team was examining former President Bill Clinton's foundation and financial ties, The New York Times reported in a story posted on its Web site Sunday night. A Democratic official told The Associated Press that several candidates were being vetted for the position.
Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said he did not think Hillary Clinton, if nominated, would have trouble winning confirmation in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
"She's worked across the aisle, has good bipartisan relationships," Dorgan said. In the role of chief U.S. diplomat, Clinton "would have instant credibility around the world," he added.
He said the U.S. has "a lot of relationships to repair and a lot of work to do, so I think she'd be a fine choice."
At a symposium organized by the National Bank of Kuwait, former President Bill Clinton said, "If he decided to ask her to do it and they did it together, I think she would be really great at being secretary of state."
Richardson has extensive foreign policy experience. He was President Bill Clinton's ambassador to the United Nations and has conducted freelance diplomacy for the U.S. in Sudan, North Korea and elsewhere.
Richardson and Clinton are not the only candidates Obama has talked to about the job, Democrats said.
Kyl and Dorgan appeared on "Fox News Sunday."
Continue to next page
Richardson has extensive foreign policy experience. He was President Bill Clinton's ambassador to the United Nations and has conducted freelance diplomacy for the U.S. in Sudan, North Korea and elsewhere.
Richardson and Clinton are not the only candidates Obama has talked to about the job, Democrats said.
Kyl and Dorgan appeared on "Fox News Sunday."
Tibet envoys say China talks a failure
AFP – Tibetan monks offer prayers in Dharamshala. Envoys of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, … DHARAMSHALA,
Sun Nov 16, 6:30 pm ET
India (AFP) – Envoys of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, said on Sunday that their most recent talks with China had failed, as the Tibet movement gathered in north India to assess its future.
The talks had confirmed "the failure on the part of the Chinese government to seriously respond to the efforts of His Holiness the Dalai Lama over decades," Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari, one of the envoys, said.
They released a memorandum that was delivered to China at the talks earlier this month outlining their belief that Tibetans' demands were possible within the Chinese constitution.
"The Dalai Lama felt confident that the basic needs of Tibetan nationality can be met through genuine autonomy within the People's Republic of China," it said.
He had made a "clear and unambiguous" commitment to seek a future for the Tibetan people within China, it added.
China had earlier said the two days of talks had made no progress.
The Dalai Lama has sought "meaningful autonomy" for Tibet since he fled his homeland following a failed uprising in 1959 against Chinese rule, nine years after Chinese troops invaded the region.
China claims he actually seeks full independence -- a "separatist" action which it opposes.
A special meeting of leading Tibetans opens at the exiles' base in Dharamshala on Monday to debate the future direction of the community.
The Dalai Lama recently admitted his push for greater autonomy had ended without success, and urged the meeting to discuss all options on how to conduct policy towards Beijing.
ASEAN-UN study finds migrants vulnerable to AIDS
http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=182606
JAKARTA (AFP) -– Millions of migrants across Southeast Asia are vulnerable to HIV infection as they lack access to AIDS-related services and legal or social protection, an joint ASEAN-UN report said Thursday.
In Thailand, which has more comprehensive data, migrant fishermen showed HIV infection rates of up to 9.0 percent, according to the report published here by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the United Nations.
In the Philippines, 35 percent of registered people living with HIV were returning migrants. In Laos, the figure reached 30 percent.
""Migrant workers are a vital force to national economies in Southeast Asia, yet when it comes to protecting their rights and ensuring HIV prevention and treatment, they are often among the forgotten,"" United Nations Development Program regional director Ajay Chhibber said.
More than 1.5 million people are living with HIV in the region and most of them are of working age, the report said.
Risk behavior and HIV infection rates were considerably higher among migrants than in the general population.
""While migrants and their sexual partners are included as a vulnerable group in the national strategic plans of ASEAN countries, comprehensive programs to address their needs have yet to be developed, funded and implemented,"" UNAIDS regional director JVR Prasada Rao said.
The report included for the first time an analysis of current migration patterns along with HIV infection in ASEAN's 10 member countries
In some of ASEAN's worst affected countries, such as Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand, over 1.5 percent of the adult population had been infected with HIV.
Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, the Philippines and Vietnam have developed pre-departure training on HIV prevention for outbound, documented migrant workers.
However, many of the training sessions were ineffective, the report found.
Japan economy, world's second largest, in recession
http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/2008-11-16-japan-economy-shrinks_N.htm?csp=34
By Tomoko A. Hosaka,
Associated Press Writer
TOKYO — Japan fell into a recession in the third quarter for the first time since 2001, as the impact of the global slowdown took its toll on the world's No. 2 economy.
Japan's gross domestic product, or the total value of the nation's goods and services, dropped at an annual pace of 0.4% in the July-Septebmer period as companies sharply curtailed spending, the government said Monday.
The weaker-than-expected result indicates that Japan, along with the euro-zone, is now technically in a recession, defined as two straight quarters of negative growth. GDP in the April-June period fell a revised 3.7% and rose 4.0 in the first quarter.
Economists surveyed by Kyodo news agency had predicted an annualized 0.1% rise in the third quarter.
On a quarterly basis, GDP contracted 0.1%, the government said. Business investment — a main driver of Japan's six-year economic recovery since 2002 — slid 1.7% from the previous quarter.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Japan | Tokyo | Nissan Motor Company | April-June | Toyota Motor Corp | Kyodo | Prime Minister Taro Aso | JPMorgan Securities | Masamichi Adachi
But the worst may be yet to come, economists say, especially with dramatic falls in demand overseas for trademark Japanese products like cars and gadgets. As a result, major exporters including Toyota Motor Corp. and Nissan Motor Co. have slashed their profit forecasts and sales projections for the full year.
Since taking office in late September, Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso has so far unveiled two economic stimulus packages in an effort to cushion the blow.
The deteriorating conditions led Masamichi Adachi, senior economist at JPMorgan Securities in Tokyo, to recently downgrade his outlook on the Japanese economy.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Prison terms devastate Myanmar democracy movement
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081116/ap_on_re_as/as_myanmar_dissidents_2
By MICK ELMORE, Associated Press Writer Mick Elmore, Associated Press Writer – Sun Nov 16, 3:21 pm ET AP – In this May 27, 2007, file photo leaders of the 88 Generation Student Group, Ko Ko Gyi, front left, Min … BANGKOK, Thailand – In a devastating week for Myanmar's democracy movement, dozens of its members have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms, as the military-ruled government locks away writers and Buddhist monks — as well as musicians, a poet and at least one journalist.
By the weekend, more than 80 had received sentences of up to 65 years — a move that seemed designed to keep them jailed long past upcoming elections, activists and analysts said Sunday.
"They are clearing the decks of anyone who is likely to challenge their authority ahead of the election" in 2010, Larry Jagan, a Bangkok-based newspaper columnist and Myanmar analyst, said of the generals who rule the country.
Many of those sentenced were arrested following mass pro-democracy protests that were crushed by the ruling junta in September 2007. According to U.N. estimates, at least 31 people were killed and thousands were detained. Many fled the country or went underground.
Others sentenced this week were arrested in 2007 for protesting a massive fuel-price hike — demonstrations that preceded the protests in September. The blogger received more than 20 years in prison for Internet activities, and a poet was sentenced to two years for allegedly concealing the text of an anti-government slogan in one of his works. The journalist was arrested while covering a demonstration staged by victims of this year's devastating cyclone.
News of the sentences came mostly through activists and analysts. The military junta that has ruled Myanmar since 1962 did not comment on the sentences, most of which were handed down in closed-door proceedings. It was not known why the prisoners were sentenced now, although many analysts concluded the move was made to eliminate opposition ahead of the election that the junta has described as part of its "roadmap to democracy." Opposition groups and other critics dismiss it as a sham meant to perpetuate military rule.
"Now they won't be able to participate in the election," said Soe Aung, spokesman for the National Council for the Union of Burma, a Thailand-based umbrella organization for exile groups. "The generals are trying to put the final nail in the coffin to keep themselves in power forever."
Twenty-three of those sentenced were members of the 88 Generation Students group, veterans of a brutally suppressed 1988 democratic uprising, who received prison terms of 65 years each, and a labor activist, Su Su Nway, was sentenced to 12 1/2 years. At least 10 people allied with the pro-democracy National League for Democracy party headed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi received jail terms of eight to 24 years.
"They fear the 88 Generation Students. They were at the forefront of the protest last year, and they are not passive," Jagan said.
Early Sunday, nine of the more prominent members of the 88 Generation Students group were taken from infamous Insein Prison in a Yangon suburb to prisons in more remote parts of the country, according to Aung Din, co-founder of the Washington-based U.S. Campaign for Burma, which lobbies for political change in Myanmar, also called Burma.
"The transfer of political prisoners to far-flung districts is an additional punishment to the activists and such a move will cause extreme social and financial burden to the families," said Nyan Win, spokesman for the National League for Democracy party.
The European Union said last week that the election will be seen as illegitimate unless the junta frees all political prisoners.
Amnesty International and other human rights groups say the junta holds more than 2,100 political prisoners, up sharply from nearly 1,200 in June 2007, before the pro-democracy demonstrations.
The prisoners include opposition leader Suu Kyi, who has spent more than 13 of the past 19 years under house arrest.
Myanmar: Myanmar Emphasises On Hydropower
http://www.mysinchew.com/node/18411?tid=37
Foreign 2008-11-17 14:17
YANGON, MYANMAR: Myanmar has made emphasis on development of hydroelectric power, saying that 15 more hydropower projects are being planned in addition to the six completed and 22 ongoing projects since the country laid down a series of state- level special projects which also include hydropower for the development of the sector.
According to a report by Xinhua news agency, the 15 hydropower projects will be implemented by the Ministry of Electric Power-1 on approval by the government's Special Projects Implementation Committee, headed by Senior-General Than Shwe, Chairman of the State Peace and Development Council.
The 15 hydropower projects, with an installed capacity ranging from 48 megawatts (mw) to 2,800 mw, lie in seven divisions and states.
Of the projects, seven are located in the northernmost Kachin state, six of which range over 1,200 mw, the report said, adding that the rest of the projects are scattered in Sagaing, Mandalay, Magway and Bago divisions, and Rakhine and northern Shan states.
The 15 projects on completion in the future will add 13,847 mw to the country's installed capacity as predicted.
The government claimed that since the committee was established, six hydropower plant projects with a total of 442 mw have been finished which are known as Zawgyi-2, Zaungtu, Thaphanseik, Monechaung, Paunglaung and Yenwe.
"A large number of special projects have been completed and the people have witnessed and enjoyed the benefits of the projects," the Myanmar top leader said at the committee's coordination meeting in the last few days, stressing the need to speedily implement the ongoing state-designated special projects for the benefit of the people.
The 22 ongoing hydropower projects will also add a total 16,599 mw more to the country's electric power installed capacity on completion, according to estimation.
Meanwhile, Myanmar claimed in its monthly statistical report that the country's electric power installed capacity reached total of over 1,690 mw as of April 2008 and the power generated stood 6. 603 billion kwh in 2007-08, up from 6.172 billion kwh in 2006-07.
In recent years, companies from Thailand, China, South Korea, Bangladesh and India were engaged in Myanmar's hydropower projects in response to the country's invitation of foreign investment in the sector.
Major hydropower projects that Thailand is involved go to the 7, 110-mw Tar-hsan's on Myanmar's Thanlwin River in eastern Shan state's Tachilek which started in April 2007 by Myanmar and the MDX Group Co Ltd of Thailand under a US$6 billion-contract reached in April 2006.
The hydropower plant will produce 35.446 billion kwh a year, according to the contract.
The US$6 billion Thai investment in the Tar-hsan hydro power project had sharply raised Myanmar's contracted foreign investment to US$14.736 billion as of the end of 2007, a record high since late 1988.
Another Thai-engaged hydropower project is the 600-mw Hutgyi's on Myanmar's Thanlwin River being implemented by the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) under an agreement signed in December 2005. It can produce 3.82 billion kilowatt hours (kwh) yearly.
The project constitutes part of those on the Thanlwin and Tanintharyi Rivers agreed earlier between the two countries in June 2005.
Power generated from these projects is expected to be partly exported to Thailand.
Besides, Myanmar has signed five contracts respectively with some Chinese companies since 2004 on the implementation of the country's 790-mw Yeywa hydropower project on the Myitnge River which can generate 3.55 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually upon completion.
Other China-involved hydropower projects went to Upper Paunglaung by the Yunnan Machinery and Equipment Import and Export Co Ltd (YMEC) and the Upper Thanlwin by the Farsighted Investment Group Co Ltd and Gold Water Resources Ltd.
Moreover, the China Power Investment Corporation (CPI) was also reportedly to build seven hydropower projects for Myanmar on the confluence of Ayeyawaddy river and Maykha and Malikha rivers in Kachin state with a combined capacity of 13,360 mw.
In September this year, India's National Hydroelectric Power Corporation Ltd took up two projects, namely the 1,200-mw Htamanthi and the 600-mw Shwesayay, while in October, the Italian-Thai Development Public Co. Ltd and the Windfall Energy Services Ltd of British Virgin Island launched a hydropower project of 600 mw in Myanmar's southern Tanintharyi division.
Besides, Myanmar and Bangladesh are enhancing cooperation in seeking to build hydropower plants in Myanmar for export of electricity to Bangladesh. The exploration has identified potential sites for such move in some areas in two states in western and northwestern parts of the country.
According to the government's National Investment Commission, the electric power sector dominated foreign investment in Myanmar with US$6.311 billion as of the end of 2007.
With rich water resources, Myanmar possesses great potential for the development of its hydropower sector to resolve its power shortage issue. (Bernama)
MySinchew 2008.11.17
Senior general Than Shwe chaired the SPDC Cabinet's presentation
http://burmadd.blogspot.com/
BDD
Senior general Than Shwe chaired at the SPDC cabinet ministers meeting yesterday. He was sitting whole day long at the meeting, report said. Vice-chairman general Maung Aye and general Shwe Mann were sitting top table, left and right of Than Shwe at the meeting. General Than Shwe showed all SPDC members that general Shwe Mann role was not over and he is still at the number 3 position of the SPDC.
Last few weeks, SPDC observers speculated that hardliners pressured general Shwe Mann because of his soft approach towards economic reform. However, general Than Shwe seemed trusting general Shwe Mann, and general Maung Aye seemed comfortable for his stability, report said.
SPDC ministers made up and false presentation took more than two days. However, Heavy Industry one and two has to merge in terms of losing so much money, report said.
One point, social welfare and relief minister explained how perfect functions that pleased general Than Shwe for Nargis recovery process; a minister said "international community appreciated SPDC programs and assistance projects" totally opposite of what really happened to the Nargis victims by NGOs' report.
Posted by BURMA DEMOCRACY & DEVELOPMENT at 11/17/2008 05:19:00 PM
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Lawmakers urge UN to enquire into excessive prison sentences in Myanmar/Burma -AIPMC
http://www.aseanmp.org/news/?p=1697
12 November 2008
Legislators from ASEAN States are calling on the office of the United Nations Secretary-General and other relevant bodies of the United Nations to immediately enquire into Myanmar’s authorities’ reported sentencing of human rights defenders to 65 years imprisonment.
Parliamentarians from Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, Cambodia and Indonesia, who make up the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus (AIPMC), are extremely concerned with reports that these jail-terms were reportedly handed down in a closed-door ‘Special Court’ hearing in Yangon’s Insein Prison on 11 November 2008.
“These are draconian sentences. Moreover, these extraordinarily lengthy sentences were reportedly handed down to these activists whom did not have legal representation at that time. This is against basic judicial principles and cannot still be occurring in a time when international conventions exists that protect human rights and justice for people,” said AIPMC President Kraisak Choonhavan.
“The fact that the Myanmar military regime has ratified the ASEAN Charter is also enough grounds to call into question the legality of these sentences. Regional and international leaders must act,” he added on behalf of his regional parliamentary colleagues from AIPMC.
AIPMC urges the United Nations to commission its various Special Rapportuers – such as the Special Rapportuer on the Independence of Judges and Freedom of Lawyers, Special Rapportuer on Human Rights Defenders, Special Rapportuer on Torture and Special Rapportuer on Freedom of Expression – to investigate and respond to these reports.
‘The honourable Mr. Ban Ki-moon has on numerous occasions expressed his concern with what happens in Myanmar. It is with great hope that we urge him, the UN Special Rapportuers and various bodies in the UN to investigate these happenings, and should these reports be accurate, the UN must intervene and hold accountable the military for its acts of tyranny towards its citizens,” added the AIPMC President.
Reports indicate that apart from the 14 pro-democracy and human rights defenders, whom were sentenced to the 65-year prison term, one blogger was sentenced to 20 years while many others were handed a varied amount of long jail terms.
Ends
For media contact or to facilitate an interview with AIPMC Parliamentarian members, please call: Roshan Jason (AIPMC Executive Director) at +6-012-3750974 or the numbers above.
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