A Chinese company, called Chinnery Assents Ltd., will begin off-shore exploration along Burma’s western coast, on March 23 where oil and gas prospects are a plenty for the requirement of energy-guzzling neighbouring economies.
2009 March 20
tags: Human Rights, Junta, Burma, Thugs and Thievesby peacerunningChinese firm to explore western offshore
by Moe Thu
Friday, 20 March 2009 21:05
Rangoon (Mizzima) - A Chinese company, called Chinnery Assents Ltd., will begin off-shore exploration along Burma’s western coast, on March 23 where oil and gas prospects are a plenty for the requirement of energy-guzzling neighbouring economies.
Exploration in the area sparked a maritime controversy a couple of months ago between military-ruled Burma and its neighbour Bangladesh mainly because of the storehouse of energy.
“The company, a division of China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), is conducting 2D maritime seismic survey in deep-water offshore block AD-6, to tap natural gas,” said a company press release issued today.
The company’s exploration – from March 23 to April 30 – borders block A-1, which is already being explored by South Korea’s Daewoo International Corporation.
The Chinese company entered Burma’s offshore energy sector in January 2007, by signing a production sharing contract with military-run Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise to explore gas reserves in blocks AD-1, AD-6 and AD-8, which cover an area of 10,000 square kilometers off the Rakhine coast line in western Burma.
Chinnery Assets, which also acquired onshore block IOR 4 in central Burma, had found gas reserves that hold 300 billion cubic feet of gas. Mizzima News
from → Burma
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Chinese company, called Chinnery Assents Ltd., will begin off-shore exploration along Burma’s western coast
Power and Population in Asia
http://japanfocus.org/-Nicholas-Eberstadt/2079
By Nicholas Eberstadt
Few would contest the general proposition that the population factor bears directly on the course of the friendly — and sometimes unfriendly — competition between states in the world arena today. Problems arise, however, when we try to move from the general to the specific. How, exactly, do human numbers (population size, composition, and trends of change) affect the ability of governments to influence events beyond their borders — or affect the disposition of a country’s interactions with outside actors? And this is no less important for the would-be strategist: How can we use population indicators to anticipate, with some reasonable hope of accuracy, the impact of yet-unfolding demographic forces on the balance of international power? This essay explores these questions for the world’s largest strategic arena: the great Asian/Eurasian expanse.
Auguste Comte, the nineteenth-century French mathematician and sociologist, is widely credited with the dictum “Demography is destiny.” It is a wonderful aphorism — but it promises too much and offers too little. A more operational formulation might suggest that demographic forces can alter the realm of the possible, both politically and economically, for regularly established population groupings. Demographic considerations can (but are not always required to) alter the complex strategic balance between, and within, countries.
By comparison with other contemporary forms of change — social, economic, political, technological — demographic changes are very slow and very regular. Over the past generation, for example, a 3 percent per annum rate of population growth would have been considered terribly high in Asia, while a 3 percent inflation rate would have been regarded as remarkably low. And demographic change is only sharp and discontinuous in times of utter upheaval and catastrophe (circumstances, to be sure, not unfamiliar to modern Russia, China, Cambodia, and Korea — and a number of other Asian or Eurasian populations). From the standpoint of strategic demography, momentous developments can and do occur from one generation to the next, but rather less of note can be expected to take place over the course of three to five years.
For our purposes here, we will try to peer into the Asian and Eurasian demographic future to the year 2025. To many readers, that may sound like an exercise in science fiction — but such a time horizon is by no means as fantastical as might be supposed. For one thing, contemporary Asia’s population structure invites the longer view. Apart from a few outposts, most places in East Asia and Eurasia are rather far along on the notional “demographic transition” from high birth and death rates to low ones. In practical terms, this means — barring only horrendous catastrophe — that we can expect relatively little “turnover” within a given population from one year, or even one decade, to the next. Projections by the United Nations Population Division (unpd) make the point. According to the unpd’s most recent medium variant figures, for example, in 2025 roughly four-fifths of the inhabitants of East and Southeast Asia will have been alive in 2000, and 60 to 70 percent of these future East and Southeast Asian inhabitants will be people who were already living in those regions as of the year 2000.1
We can also talk with more confidence about Asia/Eurasia’s demographic future today than we could in the relatively recent past because a great many blank spots in the region’s demographic map have been filled in over the past generation. As recently as the late 1970s, Asia — a perennial land of mystery to the Western traveler — was also tremendously mysterious to the student of population trends: Huge portions of the Asian/Eurasian landmass qualified as a demographic terra incognita. China, Vietnam, and North Korea (among other countries in the region) had never conducted a modern national population count, had not done so for decades, or had not released such internally collected data for decades — and the ussr, well into its “era of stagnation,” had taken to suppressing methodically those demographic data that Brezhnev luminaries took to be politically sensitive or ideologically embarrassing. Today, by contrast, practically every Asian or Eurasian country save Afghanistan and Burma has conducted a national census within the past decade — even reclusive North Korea. Though most countries in this expanse do not yet maintain comprehensive systems for the annual registration of births and deaths, we nevertheless have a fairly good picture of the demographic contours of the countries in the area — and of the trends that have created, and continue to form, the region’s respective population profiles.
Population explosion: Yesterday’s news
The asian/eurasian territory encompasses an extraordinary crush of humanity. Although the population patterns of the countries in question (we are deliberately excluding the Arabian peninsula and most of the “Asian” Middle East from consideration here) vary markedly, the absolute numbers under discussion are vast: As of mid-2000, over 3.6 billion, roughly three-fifths of the total population of the globe, resided in Asia. Seven of the world’s 10 most populous countries — China, India, Indonesia, Russia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Japan — are located within the Asian/Eurasian perimeter.
Over the past half-century, the population of this region has grown on a scale and at a tempo without historical precedent. Between 1950 and 2000, according to the unpd’s estimates, the population of the collectivity of countries in Table 1 (see next page) multiplied by a factor of 2.5 — rising by almost 2.2 billion in absolute numbers and at an average annual pace of over 1.8 percent per year. Perhaps not surprisingly, this extraordinary Asian “population explosion” captured the attention and aroused the foreboding of commentators, scholars, and policymakers around the world. (A small library of literature was generated over the course of two generations on the purported economic, political, and strategic implications of this vast population shift.) The vision of unrelenting and unprecedented increases in human numbers in Asia continues to inform much popular and policy discussion — thanks in no small part to official alarms regularly sounded by institutions and programs established over the past few decades with the express purpose of slowing population growth.
But that vision is by now outdated and increasingly misleading. The great twentieth-century demographic boom is essentially over in East Asia. It is winding down rapidly in Southeast Asia, and even in South Asia the situation has changed greatly. (Russia, for its part, has been recording negative natural increase — more deaths than births — every year over the past decade.)
China's Military and Security Activities Abroad
http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.29576/pub_detail.asp
By Michael Auslin
Posted: Friday, March 20, 2009
TESTIMONY
U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission
Publication Date: March 4, 2009
In a recent congressional hearing before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, AEI resident scholar Michael Auslin said that China's increasing efforts to modernize the naval capabilities of the People's Liberation Army has set off a modest yet potentially worrisome maritime arms race in the Asia Pacific.
I will focus my remarks on China's growing naval role and the evolution of its maritime strategy in the broader context of its security activities abroad. At the outset, let me set the stage by noting that China's naval activities are a significant, but not the only, element in the changes occurring today in the Asian Maritime Domain. The Asian Maritime Domain (AMD) comprises the great arc moving southwest from the Bering Sea through the Bay of Bengal. In practical terms, it includes the Pacific Ocean reaches at least through Guam, as well as the western limits of the Indian Ocean, including the Arabian Sea.
The Asian Maritime Domain covers over 50 million square miles, nearly 60 percent of the world's population, and over 40 sovereign states. For the past four decades, it has also been at the center of global economic production. This region, including Japan, China, South Korea, Vietnam, and India, among other important economies, accounted for nearly a third of total global economic output, at least until the current economic crisis erupted last year.
During the past decade, moreover, the Asian Maritime Domain has also witnessed a host of security-related changes that point to an increasingly complex regional future. These changes include the rise of blue water naval forces now projecting power throughout the region, the emergence of the undersea realm as a key security and economic concern, the requirement of air-sea integration for reliable intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and battlespace operations, and the slow development of multilateral political organizations that may shape trading and security norms in the coming decades.
The Background to China's Evolving Maritime Strategy
The fear of a naval arms race is a real one in the world's most populated maritime region as freedom of navigation and access to strategic waterways are the lifeblood of Asia's most economically advanced states.
Historically, China has been a continental power with extensive maritime networks. The size of its domestic economy, and the sophistication of its political and technological systems, in centuries past ensured that a dense web of maritime trade routes converged on China, stretching from India all the way to Japan, roughly the same as today's Asian Maritime Domain.
On this view, China's recent maritime expansion is a reversion to a more traditional regional role. As the recently released Defense White Paper puts it, the PLA Navy is "responsible for・afeguarding China's maritime security and maintaining the sovereignty of its territorial waters, along with its maritime rights and interests." China's reliance on overseas markets for imports of raw materials and export of finished or semi-finished goods, has resulted in a strategic decision to build its naval capabilities beyond a brown-water force and towards a true blue-water orientation. The scope of China's recent naval activities suggest that they have achieved at least a first stage of this strategy, though they do not yet appear to have reached the capability for large-scale, extended overseas missions.
China's maritime strategy is also closely tied to its growing global political role. Few nations other than the United States have the capability of "showing the flag" on extended missions of any size. Yet, as Beijing deepens its diplomatic activity around the world, but particularly in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, a blue-ocean navy is a valuable instrument to be able to wield. As a rising power, the dispatch of PLA Navy vessels on goodwill port visits around the world, or off the coast of Somalia in recent anti-piracy operations, gives Chinese leaders' statements regarding their country's global role a credibility it would otherwise not have.
In addition to its defensive and political roles, the PLA Navy provides the Chinese leadership with the means to assert its claims to disputed maritime territory. China currently has several on-going territorial disputes with other Asian nations. These include disputes over the Diaoyutai/Senkaku Islands, with Japan; the Nansha Islands and Beibu Gulf, with Vietnam; and the Spratly Islands, with various ASEAN states. Driving much of the territorial disputes is the question of access to vast amounts of natural resources, including undersea oil and natural gas fields, and control over strategically important sea lanes of communication (SLOCs).
China's Growing Naval Role in the Asian Maritime Domain
The PLA Navy has steadily developed its capabilities and gained operational experience over the past decade. In particular, the past several years have witnessed more complex maritime deployments, each of which can be viewed as fitting into a larger strategy of developing a true blue-water and power projection capability.
The East Sea Fleet and the South Sea Fleet provide China with a non-littoral maritime presence in Asia. The East Sea Fleet, founded in 1949, is headquartered at Ningbo, and is responsible for the East China Sea, including defense of the Chinese homeland from the Shandong/Jiangsu provincial border to the Fujian/Guangdong provincial border. Any PLA military operation against Taiwan would be supported by the East Sea Fleet, including amphibious landings. The South Sea Fleet, founded in 1950, is charged with defense of the maritime area from China's border with Vietnam up to the Fujian region.
Both commands have developed an integrated fleet of destroyers (both foreign purchased and domestically produced), frigates, submarines, and support ships. Particular focus has been made on the submarine force, which contains nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, nuclear-powered attack submarines, and conventional submarines. Extensive networks of bases along the Chinese coast, including the new submarine base on Hainan Island, provide a dispersion capability plus redundant supply and communications points. Future procurement and development plans of the PLA Navy have received worldwide attention, namely China's expressed plans to build at least two aircraft carriers, and outfit a former Soviet carrier, with the goal of creating full-fledged carrier groups by 2015 that could dramatically expand the reach of China's air and naval power.
China's modernization of the PLA Navy has been accompanied by a steady expansion of its maritime activities. Chinese naval vessels now make port calls throughout the world, not just in Asia, thereby demonstrating an ability to undertake extended, transoceanic voyages. For example, from July through October 2007, a PLA Navy guided missile destroyer and supply ship traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia, Portsmouth, England, Spain and France. In 2007 and 2008 alone, Chinese naval vessels made port calls in Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, as well as the European counties noted previously. These port visits provide political benefits for Beijing in Asia and around the world, simultaneously giving China a global presence and buttressing Beijing's portrayal of its "peaceful rise," yet also showcasing the strength and capabilities of the PLA Navy.
A subordinate, yet related, element of the regular global presence of Chinese naval vessels is China's interest in overseas ports and naval bases throughout the Asian Maritime Domain. This "string of pearls," as it is referred to, stretches from the South China Sea through the Bay of Bengal to the Arabia Sea. Working with countries such as Pakistan, Burma, and Bangladesh, China has helped build ports, bases, and surveillance facilities and received guarantees of use that provide it with a forward presence, unparalleled access to strategic SLOCs, and unimpeded ISR platforms. Again, the end result is to facilitate China's constant maritime presence in Asia and link it to a growing network of regional states that benefit from China's economic and military support.
Despite these on-going activities, China not surprisingly concentrates its maritime presence closer to home. The modernization of both the East Sea and South Sea Fleets has allowed the Chinese to institute regular patrols throughout the East and South China Seas, bringing them into proximity of Japan's Ryukyu Islands chain as well as coastal Southeast Asia, the Philippines, and Indonesia. As noted earlier, most of China's maritime territorial disputes are in these two seas, and constant patrolling by the PLA Navy is a reminder that China's claims to these areas is unwavering.
Starting in 2005, the PLA Navy began patrols near the disputed Chunxiao/Shirakaba oil fields in East China Sea north of Taiwan. Aerial patrols by electronics warfare aircraft have also become commonplace in this area off the Diaoyutai/Senkaku Islands. As China increased its oil and gas exploration projects throughout the area, tensions with Japan have risen, despite a 2008 agreement to share exploration of a portion of the Chunxiao fields. The scale and complexity of Chinese patrols in the East and South China Seas continues to grow. From the initial 2005 patrol with but five warships, the Chinese Coast Guard in July 2008 sent out a fleet of over 60 vessels, including its most advanced maritime patrol ship, on a week-long voyage to the Chunxiao gas field. The operational experience gained from such voyages will lead to improved command and communications, logistical support, and ocean mapping capabilities of Chinese naval forces.
The experiences gained from a decade of regular patrols and international port visits has led to the third phase of PLA Navy evolution, the anti-piracy deployment off the Horn of Africa and Somalia. A three-ship flotilla of two destroyers and a supply vessel, replete with special forces, helicopters, and anti-ship missiles, departed China at the end of last December and has been engaged in escorting Chinese-flagged vessels through pirate-infested waters. This requires a level of operational, logistical, and communications sophistication in a potentially hostile environment that the PLA Navy has lacked until now. The experiences gained on this operational deployment will undoubtedly help the navy plan even larger, more complex international and regional missions in coming years.
Regional Reactions
China's naval modernization has not gone unnoticed by other nations, especially maritime ones, in Asia. As a result, the region is in the midst of a modest, yet potentially worrisome naval arms race. The PLA Navy is purchasing or building the most advanced platforms and weapons available, including supersonic anti-ship ballistic missiles, Aegis-equipped destroyers, and targeting systems. While the Chinese remain at least a decade behind the U.S. Navy, they are already outstripping most, if not all, other Asian navies. The Japanese Maritime Self Defense Forces (JMSDF) and Indian Navy are the next largest in Asia and the most concerned by the PLA Navy's growth. As a result, they have both embarked on naval modernization programs, including the purchase of Aegis-class destroyers, anti-ballistic missile systems, and greater anti-submarine reconnaissance platforms, among others.
Asian maritime nations feel the greatest threat from China's submarine force, which currently number approximately 55 vessels. From Jin-class ballistic missile submarines to Shang- and Yuan-class attack submarines, China's sub-surface forces pose a potentially devastating threat to the naval and commercial shipping fleets of other Asian nations. In response, India, Singapore, and Japan have joined with the U.S. Navy in the past on large-scale training exercises, such as the Malabar 07, which took place in the Indian Ocean. Japan continues to deepen its naval cooperation with the United States, while seeking to deepen relations with other maritime nations in the region, such as Australia and India.
The fear of a naval arms race is a real one in the world's most populated maritime region. Freedom of navigation and access to strategic waterways are the lifeblood of Asia's most economically advanced states. Since World War II, they have depended on the United States to patrol and secure the seas. Should they doubt the American commitment to maintaining naval supremacy they will be forced to make uncomfortable choices, ranging from trying to balance China to considering accommodating Beijing's maritime goals, whatever those may turn out to be. The result would almost certainly be a less stable Asian Maritime Domain, and one in which the United States would have less freedom of action.
China's Maritime Goals
The scale and scope of China's naval activities in the Asian Maritime Domain raises the question of Beijing's larger goals. China's maritime policy operates at several levels, each of which is self-reinforcing and tied into larger global strategy. A large part of the Chinese naval buildup over the past decade has been designed to allow the PLA Navy to act as a credible maritime force, from regional and global presence to operational capability. This then buttresses Beijing's desire to be seen as a major regional and international power, giving heft to its diplomatic and economic initiatives. Countries, whether in Africa or Southeast Asia, are more likely to pay attention to China's proposals if the diplomatic arm is backed by an active, credible, and recognized military.
Equally important, however, is the long-term result of a technologically advanced, operationally experienced, blue water PLA Navy. Like rising powers in the past, China's pursuit of a first rank navy is not merely a sign of its global prominence, but a key element of its ability to project national power where and when it sees fit. That does not mean that the Chinese leadership has yet decided how it will employ its navy a decade hence, nor that it has decided to challenge the United States for naval mastery in Asia, even if such a goal were realistic. These are political decisions that become possible only if the navy is of a size and quality to allow for such discussions.
Numerous questions must be answered before China's naval strategy can be fully articulated. Whether the force remains largely defensive in nature or, as seems the case, moves increasingly into an offensively-based orientation is obviously of paramount importance in divining Beijing's long-term intentions and perception of the international environment. In addition, whether the PLA Navy begins to provide public goods in the Asian Maritime Domain, as the U.S. Navy has done for decades, joined in recent years by elements of the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Forces and Australian Navy, will indicate the role that China seeks to play in the region.
Finally, how China seeks to interact with other naval forces in the region, particularly India and Japan, will show not merely its strategic thinking, but its larger political calculations for the Asian region. The United States must also consider the degree to which China shares information, reciprocates the U.S. outreach, and helps us and others in the region understand its long-term goals and intentions. These, of course, are just a sampling of some of the questions American planners and analysts need to begin considering.
Michael Auslin is a resident scholar at AEI.
Related Links
Related article on the growth of Chinese naval capabilities by Auslin
Related article on the strategic disconnect between the U.S. and China by Claude Barfield
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Myanmar uses alternative way to generate electricity in water-scare summer for supplying Yangon
http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewiStockNews/articleid/3133960
Thursday, March 19, 2009 11:03 PM
YANGON, Mar. 20, 2009 (Xinhua News Agency) -- Myanmar is using fuel as an alternative way to generate electricity for distribution to the former capital city of Yangon when water resources, which create hydropower, are reducing in the present summer.
The reduction in water resources has led to the generation of only 300 megawatts (mw) of electricity, which include that from four gas-run power plants, to feed Yangon against the city's demand of over 500 mw for daily power consumption, the local Biweekly Eleven said Friday.
In order to enable alternate electricity supply to residential houses and 450,000-workforce industrial zones for at least five hours, the authorities temporarily stopped operation of some high power-consuming heavy industries such as some steel plants in the Myaungtaka Industrial Zone in Yangon, it said.
At a time when running of such heavy industries are suspended, Myanmar is using fuel for electricity generation, the report added.
Meanwhile, the prolonged abnormal electricity supply in Yangon has impacted the business of all walks of life.
For a successive months since the end of last year, residents in Yangon have been generally experiencing a hard time under serious electricity shortage with intermittent power supply available only in a day instead of round-the-clock supply normally.
With business and industrial enterprises mostly lying in Yangon, the city's electricity consumption takes up 60 percent or about 530 mw.
At the time of electricity and water shortage, a large number of people equip themselves with big and small petrol- or diesel- run generators to lead their lives.
The running of generators have created much noise and unpleasant smell from its exhaust which add to the environment issue, residents reflected.
(Source: iStockAnalyst )
Burma is an International issue: China
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=15341
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By WAI MOE Friday, March 20, 2009
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China’s representative in Geneva has said at the United Nations Human Rights Council that issues of development and national reconciliation in Burma are difficulties and challenges that are in the interests of the entire international community.
“We understand the difficulties and challenges that Myanmar [Burma] is confronted with in domestic development and in promoting national reconciliation, especially in the current rampant financial crisis,” said Yan Jiarong on March 16.
“The stability and development of Myanmar is not only in the interest of the region, [but it is] also the interest of the whole international community,” she added.
The statement was in response to a recent report on Burma’s human rights record by UN Human Rights Rapporteur Tomas Ojea Quintana who visited Burma in February.
China hoped the world would foster a conducive environment for gradually achieving democracy and development in the country, Yan said.
In the past, Beijing regularly refused to be drawn into debate on the Burmese crisis, referring to the matter an internal issue. In a 2007 UN Security Council meeting, China and Russia vetoed a draft resolution on the release of political prisoners in Burma.
However, China appears to be shifting its policy on Burma. It has cooperated on Burmese issues with other countries, such as the United States and the European Union, as well as India and Southeast Asian nations.
China has been the Burmese junta’s closest ally, particularly since 1988. It also sells arms, warships and aircraft to the Burmese regime despite international condemnation.
Chinese officials have visited Burma recently and met with high-ranking generals, including the head of the junta, Snr-Gen Than Shwe. On Wednesday in Naypyidaw, Than Shwe met Chen Bingde, chief of the general staff of the Chinese People's Liberation Army.
Li Changchun, a senior official of the ruling Communist Party of China, left on Friday for a four-country trip of the Asia-Pacific region, where he will also visit Burma.
Myanmar junta stubborn as ever
http://atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/KC20Ae01.html
Mar 20, 2009
By Nick Cumming-Bruce
GENEVA - Once again, a United Nations (UN) investigator of human rights in Myanmar has urged its ruling generals to release all political prisoners. And once again the junta has brusquely brushed off the demand. Myanmar has no prisoners of conscience, only law breakers, its ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Wunna Maung Win, brazenly asserted.
So nothing has changed? Well, not quite.
In a report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday, special rapporteur Tomas Ojea Quintana painted a grim picture of conditions in the country: 400 political prisoners sentenced in the last quarter of 2008 to jail terms ranging from 25 to 64 years; a total of more than 2,100 political prisoners in the
country (twice the figure of two years ago); and a 20-year-old student union member jailed for 104 years in January.
There was more: opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi detained for the last six years under a law that permits detention for no more than five years; multiple abuses of the rights of Rohingya Muslims in North Rakhine state; continuing recruitment of child soldiers; prevalent rape of ethnic minority women by soldiers; forced labor; use of landmines; and, in a country which should have a food surplus if properly run, acute food shortages in five states.
Quintana also noted that the junta did not accede to his request to meet political party leaders because "all the leaders were held in detention, either under house arrest or in prisons in remote areas". And yet six months into his job as special rapporteur, Quintana is trying to make it as easy as possible for Myanmar's ruling junta to grasp the nettle of human rights issues that have made it an international pariah.
He defines his task as "to cooperate with the government of Myanmar and assist in its efforts in the field of promotion and protection of human rights". Within that framework, he has decided to focus attention on four "core elements" of human rights: a review of national legislation to ensure its compliance with the constitution and international obligations, progressive release of political prisoners, training for the armed forces in international humanitarian law and establishing an independent, impartial judiciary.
Reporting on his second and latest mission to Myanmar in mid-February, Quintana was at pains to find the positives. His three meetings with the junta's human-rights body, not the most conspicuously effective group, were "constructive". He met senior mandarins, including the chief justice, the attorney general, the minister of home affairs, the chief of police and the army's judge advocate general, which yielded "substantive and fruitful discussions". The junta allowed him to visit a number of prisons and to talk to prisoners, as well as a visit to the usually off-limits Kayin state.
The minister of home affairs promised to consider his recommendations for the progressive release of all political prisoners, Quintana reported. The attorney general told him that ministries were checking 380 laws for compliance with the new constitution, passed last year in a national referendum. And the chief justice insisted Myanmar's judiciary was independent, but accepted a suggestion that Myanmar should engage with the UN's rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers.
Weak assurances
Such assurances cost the junta little, but Quintana is also pressing for tangible results within a specific timeframe. Release of all political prisoners should be completed before elections scheduled for next year, he said, "If not, it's going to be difficult to talk of real participation in the elections." British ambassador to the UN Peter Gooderham set out the issue more bluntly: unless all political prisoners were released and political parties and ethnic minorities were able to participate freely in the election the outcome would have no international credibility.
In the Orwellian state the generals have created, it is difficult to imagine circumstances in which elections could win international respect. The junta's mindset and approach to the elections is all too clear from its brutal intimidation of the opposition, the hammering of any dissent and the political party machinery apparatus it has established to ensure elections do not allow the opposition a repeat of the democratic victory they won in 1990.
Still, Quintana's role arguably is not to second-guess the outcome of the election, but to exploit what little space he has to try to achieve or create conditions for measurable improvement of human rights and the position of those within the country still active in trying to defend them.
To do that, Quintana is seeking to widen the agenda of discussions with the junta. In addition to pursuing issues such as the incarceration of political prisoners, where progress is locked into the junta's rigid mindset on political reform he has turned attention to the functioning of the judicial system.
"It's important to open different channels of communication, we need to start working on the rule of law," Quintana said in an interview. "This is the first time we found space to have discussion with lawyers" regarding the functioning of the judicial system.
"From our perspective it's one of the better ways to address the situation," said Michael Anthony of the Hong Kong-based Asian Legal Resource Center, a human-rights watchdog that has exhaustively documented the regime's abuse of its own legal and criminal justice system to crush dissent. The human-rights debate "has focused too long on the list of violations without addressing the system of injustice".
Quintana also emphasizes there will be little progress on human rights unless the international community and particularly Myanmar's Southeast Asian neighbors in the Association of South East Asian Nations - now establishing its own human-rights body - are willing to push them. Legal reform and adherence to international humanitarian law provides an avenue some observers think Myanmar's politically-reticent Asian neighbors may find easier to support.
Quintana can have few illusions about the uphill nature of his task. At the Human Rights Council in Geneva, non-governmental organizations were quick to spotlight potential limitations in his dialogue with the junta. Myanmar's constitution, tainted by the coercion and intimidation invested in winning its approval, hardly presented a sound benchmark for assessing judicial and legislative reforms, the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development noted. Was he confident, the UK asked, that training the judiciary, civil servants and police would be effective given the dominant position in those sectors of people close to the regime?
Moreover, Myanmar's ruling generals never seem to miss an opportunity to live down to the lowest expectations of their conduct, and Tuesday was no exception. Just as Quintana delivered his statement to the council, news broke that the junta had arrested five more members of the opposition National League for Democracy in Yangon. Among them was a party member reportedly inactive for more than a year after suffering a stroke.
Nick Cumming-Bruce is a Geneva-based journalist with decades of experience reporting from Southeast Asia.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
MYANMAR: Beyond the delta, aid projects miss out
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=83543
A young girl shields herself from the sun by placing an empty rice bag on her head. Despite millions of dollars in cyclone assistance, much of the country has yet to receive the development aid it needs
YANGON, 19 March 2009 (IRIN) - The positive aspects of the Cyclone Nargis response in the Ayeyarwady Delta have yet to translate into better access or more funds for aid operations in the rest of Myanmar, where needs are great and often unmet, according to aid workers.
“The needs in the country are large and very little is done,” said Frank Smithuis, country director of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Holland. “Myanmar is the lowest recipient of overseas development aid in the world. Much more money is needed for the health of the people.”
After a frustratingly slow start, aid agencies say the humanitarian response to Cyclone Nargis, which struck Ayeyarwady Delta in May 2008 and left close to 140,000 dead or missing, has been highly effective.
Much of this is credited to the Tripartite Core Group (TCG), comprising the government, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the UN, whose mandate has been extended for another year.
The government eased bureaucracy and restrictions on access for humanitarian agencies in the delta, and money and resources have poured in.
Outside the cyclone area
More on Myanmar
Coordination mechanism extended for one year
Majority of under-five deaths preventable - UNICEF
Water shortages loom in delta
NGOs cut smoother path in the delta, but challenges remain
Three-year cyclone recovery plan launched
However, this is not the case in the rest of Myanmar, where more than 100,000 children under five die each year, most of them from preventable diseases.
One third of under-fives are underweight, says the UN, and malnutrition is a contributory factor in about half those deaths.
“When Nargis happened it was impossible to focus elsewhere,” Chris Kaye, the head of the World Food Programme (WFP) in Myanmar, told IRIN in Yangon. WFP had a huge US$115 million programme to feed those who had lost their livelihoods in the cyclone.
“That was at some cost it seems now, because we have not been able to follow through and get the attention of donors elsewhere [in Myanmar].”
Last year, WFP raised half of its funding needs for areas such as Northern Rakhine State, near the border with Bangladesh.
“We had to cut back on certain activities – a very difficult decision to take – and in the end decided to cut support for vulnerable households through schools,” said Kaye.
This Food for Education project provided a family food ration to a child who attended school 80 percent of the time, often forming a major component of the daily diet during the lean June-October monsoon season.
Ongoing restrictions
The TCG mechanism does not apply outside the delta, and long-standing government restrictions on aid agencies are unchanged. Aid workers must seek permission to travel to project sites, which takes three weeks.
Photo: Stacy M Winston/ECHO
A young boy in Myanmar's cyclone-affected Ayeyarwady Delta carries a bag of donated rice. WFP says it has reached nearly one million people in the Delta and Yangon area
Some NGOs have not been able to secure agreements to work in Myanmar at all, and operate informally through local partners. Many UN agencies do not have access to much of the country.
“There are huge developmental deficits,” said Kaye.
Such constraints have added to the reluctance of donors to provide aid to Myanmar, which receives far less assistance than other countries in the region with similar poverty levels.
Laos, for example, receives $50 per person per year, and Cambodia receives $40. Myanmar, by contrast, receives $2-$3.
Healthcare needs
But the needs are great. MSF Holland estimates there are between five and 10 million malaria patients each year, in a country of 53 million. Only a small proportion receive effective treatment and thousands die each year.
“As a consequence, the people of Myanmar suffer, in particular the poorest, who can't afford to pay for their healthcare,” said Smithuis.
He argues that MSF’s 17 years in Myanmar, plus the more recent cyclone response, prove that aid can be delivered effectively.
“If there is a good monitoring system that guarantees the population benefits directly, then there is absolutely no reason to withhold large-scale assistance to Myanmar people,” he said.
Mark Canning, the British ambassador to Myanmar, said the relative success of the Nargis aid operation could inspire greater confidence among major donors such as the UK.
“The issue of confidence is fundamental,” Canning told IRIN. “A virtuous circle can be created - the more donor money is used effectively, the more money is drawn in. But the reverse also applies. Assistance needs to be whiter than white.”
contributor/ds/mw
Theme(s): (IRIN) Aid Policy, (IRIN) Food Security, (IRIN) Natural Disasters
[ENDS]
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
Myanmar's foreign trade rose 16 percent last year
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Myanmars-foreign-trade-rose-apf-14697771.html
Myanmar's foreign trade rose 16 percent last year; imports jump 31 percent
Friday March 20, 2009, 4:18 am EDT
Buzz up! Print YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- Myanmar's foreign trade rose by 16.7 percent to $10.34 billion in the first 11 months of 2008 over the same period a year earlier, a government report said.
Exports rose 9.5 percent to $6.42 billion from $5.86 billion the previous year, the Ministry of National Planning and Development report said.
Imports jumped 30.8 percent to $3.91 billion compared to $2.99 billion a year earlier. Government sector imports increased 121.8 percent to $1.64 billion, representing 41.8 percent of total import value.
The report said that natural gas exports, which accounted for about 38 percent of all export revenue, declined 4.7 percent in value to $2.44 billion from $ 2.56 billion. Myanmar's gas exports go to neighboring Thailand.
The United States and the European Union have imposed economic sanctions against Myanmar to pressure the military government to improve human rights and release detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
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