http://thejakartaglobe.com/opinion/north-korea-helps-burmas-junta-dig-in-against-perceived-threats/311318
June 10, 2009
Bertil Lintner
North Korea Helps Burma’s Junta Dig In Against Perceived Threats
Missiles and missile and nuclear technology, counterfeiting money and cigarette smuggling, front companies and restaurants in foreign countries, labor exports to the Middle East — North Korea has been very innovative when it comes to raising badly needed foreign exchange for the regime in Pyongyang. But there is a less known trade in services that the North Koreans have offered to their foreign clients: expertise in tunneling.
Photos obtained by this correspondent between 2003 and 2006 show that while the rest of the world is speculating about the outcome of long-awaited elections in Burma, the ruling military junta has been busy digging in for the long haul — literally. North Korean technicians have helped them construct underground facilities where they can survive any threats from their own people as well as the outside world. It is not known if the tunnels are linked to Burma’s reported efforts to develop nuclear technology — in which the North Koreans allegedly are active as well.
The photographs show that an extensive network of underground installations was built near Burma’s new, fortified capital Naypyidaw. In November 2005, the military moved its administration from the old capital Rangoon to an entirely new site that was carved out of the wilderness 460 kilometers north of Rangoon.
Meaning the “Abode of Kings,” Naypyidaw is meant to symbolize the power of the military and its desire to build a new state based on the tradition of Burma’s precolonial warrior kings. But underground facilities were apparently deemed necessary to secure the military’s grip on power. Additional tunnels and underground meeting halls have been built near Taunggyi, the capital of Burma’s northeastern Shan state and the home of several of the country’s decades-long insurgencies. Some of the pictures, taken in June 2006, show a group of technicians in civilian dress walking out of a government guesthouse in the Naypyidaw area. Asian diplomats have identified those technicians, with features distinct from the Burmese workers around them, as North Koreans.
This is quite a turnaround as Burma severed relations with Pyongyang in 1983 after North Korean agents planted a bomb at Rangoon’s Martyrs Mausoleum, killing 18 visiting South Korean officials, including the deputy prime minister and three other government ministers.
Secret talks between Burmese and North Korean diplomats began in Bangkok in the early 1990s.The two sides had discovered that despite the hostile act in the previous decade they had a lot in common. Both had come under unprecedented international condemnation, especially by the United States, because of their blatant disregard for the most basic human rights and Pyongyang for its nuclear weapons program. Burma also needed more military hardware to suppress an increasingly rebellious urban population as well as ethnic rebels in the frontier areas. North Korea needed food, rubber and other essentials — and was willing to accept barter deals, which suited the cash-strapped Burmese generals. “They have both drawn their wagons in a circle ready to defend themselves,” a Bangkok-based Western diplomat said. “Burma’s generals admire the North Koreans for standing up to the United States and wish they could do the same.”
After an exchange of secret visits, North Korean armaments began to arrive in Burma. Reports of this were met with skepticism, especially because of the 1983 Rangoon bombings. But when North Korean-made field artillery pieces were seen in Burma in the early 2000s, it became clear that North Korea had found a new ally — several years before diplomatic relations between the two countries were restored in April 2007.
“While based on a 1950s Russian design, these weapons [the field guns] were battle-tested and reliable,” Australian Burma scholar Andrew Selth stated in a 2004 working paper for the Australian National University. “They significantly increased Burma’s long-range artillery capabilities, which were then very weak.” Since then, Burma has also taken delivery of North Korean truck-mounted, multiple rocket launchers and possibly also surface-to-air missiles for its Chinese-supplied naval vessels.
Then came the tunneling experts. Most of Pyongyang’s own defense industries, including its chemical and biological-weapons programs, and many other military as well as government installations are underground. This includes known factories at Ganggye and Sakchu, where thousands of technicians and workers labor in a maze of tunnels dug under mountains.
The export of such know-how to Burma was first documented in June 2006, when intelligence agencies intercepted a message from Naypyidaw confirming the arrival of a group of North Korean tunneling experts at the site. Today, three years later, the dates on the photos published today confirm the accuracy of this report.
By now, the tunnels and underground installations should be completed, as would those near Taunggyi. This well-hidden complex ensures there is no danger of irate civilians storming government buildings, as they did during the massive pro-democracy uprising in August-September 1988. Sources say that the internationally isolated military junta may also consider these deep bunkers as their last repair in case of airstrikes of the kind that the Taliban in Afghanistan or Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq endured.
It is not clear how much, or what, Burma has paid for the assistance provided by the North Korean experts, but it could be food — or gold, which is found in riverbeds in northern Burma. Or some other mineral. Burma, of course, is not the only foreign tunneling venture by North Korea.
In southern Lebanon following the 2006 war, Israel’s Defense Forces and the United Nations found several of the underground complexes, which by then had been abandoned by Hezbollah militants. By coincidence or not, these tunnels and underground rooms — some big enough for meetings to be held there — are strikingly similar to those the South Koreans have unearthed under the Demilitarized Zone that separates South from North Korea.
Under small, manhole cover-sized entrances hidden under grass and bushes were steel-lined shafts with ladders leading down to big rooms with electricity, ventilation, bathrooms with showers and drainage systems. Some of the tunnels are 40 meters deep and located only 100 meters from the Israeli border. North Korea’s possible involvement in digging these tunnels is, however, difficult to ascertain.
Beirut sources suggest that it is likely that Hezbollah has used North Korean designs and blueprints given to them by their Syrian or Iranian allies — both of whom are close to the North Koreans. Either way, North Korean expertise in tunneling has become a valuable commodity for export. And Pyongyang is flexible about the method of payment as long as it helps the international pariah regime.
Bertil Lintner is a Swedish journalist based in Thailand and the author of “Great Leader, Dear Leader: Demystifying North Korea under the Kim Clan.”
YaleGlobal
Thursday, June 11, 2009
North Korea Helps Burma’s Junta Dig In Against Perceived Threats
Myanmar: Suu Kyi says trial 'political'
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090611/wl_asia_afp/myanmarpoliticssuukyi_20090611081723;_ylc=X3oDMTB0ZzI2ODJyBF9TAzIxNTExMDUEZW1haWxJZAMxMjQ0NzA5MTk1
Thu Jun 11, 4:17 am ET
YANGON (AFP) – Myanmar pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi believes the junta's charges against her are "politically motivated", her lawyer has said, as he lodged an appeal over a witness ban at her trial.
The opposition leader met with her legal team in prison on Wednesday to discuss her defence against charges that she broke the rules of her house arrest when an American man swam to her lakeside property in May.
"Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said yesterday when we met that the trial is politically motivated," Nyan Win, one of her three lawyers and the spokesman for her National League for Democracy (NLD), told AFP.
The 63-year-old Nobel laureate faces five years in jail if convicted, which would keep her locked up far beyond national polls scheduled to be held next year.
Critics have dismissed the planned elections as a sham designed to entrench the military's hold on power as Aung San Suu Kyi is barred from standing.
Her legal team submitted a high court application on Thursday seeking an appeal to allow two banned defence witnesses to be heard at her trial.
"The high court will hold a hearing for admission on the coming 17th (June)," Nyan Win said, adding that if the court decided to admit the complaint, it would then schedule a further date for a formal appeal hearing.
A lower court on Tuesday overturned a ban on her having a second defence witness to testify -- one legal expert has already given evidence -- but a ban on two other witnesses was upheld.
The two barred witnesses are Win Tin, a dissident journalist who was Myanmar's longest serving prisoner until his release in September, and Tin Oo, the detained deputy leader of the NLD.
Aung San Suu Kyi is dissatisfied that her lakeside home is still guarded by authorities despite her house arrest's having officially ended in May, Nyan Win said.
The democracy leader is currently held in Yangon's notorious Insein prison and said friends had been denied access to her residence, despite the fact that police told her in May that her house arrest was over.
"She is not very satisfied," said Nyan Win.
"She said that her house arrest ended on May 26, but her friends are not allowed to go into her house for cleaning. Security staff said they are still waiting for permission from their superiors," he told AFP.
Aung San Suu Kyi has spent 13 of the last 19 years in detention since Myanmar's military junta refused to recognise the NLD's landslide victory in the country's last elections, in 1990.
She has spent most of that time in virtual isolation at her house, where the regime has allowed her to receive visits from only a handful of people, including her doctors and lawyers.
The trial, which has drawn a storm of international protest, is due to resume for a procedural hearing on Friday.
Data shows Japan's economy shrank less than thought in Q1
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world_business/view/435264/1/.html
Posted: 11 June 2009 1625 hrs
TOKYO: Japan's economy shrank less than initially thought in the first quarter, data has shown, as hopes grew of a recovery from its worst recession since World War II.
The world's second biggest economy contracted 14.2 per cent in the first three months of 2009, according to revised government figures, an improvement on the 15.2 per cent shrinkage reported last month.
Improved sentiment for a rebound in the economy was reflected in the stock market, where shares broke the 10,000 point barrier for the first time in eight months.
"Optimism about a recovery is increasing," said Ryuta Otsuka, strategist at Toyo Securities. "Risk money which had fled to bond markets is beginning to return to stocks and commodity markets."
The new data also said the Asian powerhouse shrank by 3.8 per cent in the January-March period against the previous quarter, less than the initial estimate of a 4.0 per cent fall.
However, the annualised 14.2 per cent drop was still Japan's worst on record.
Tokyo voiced optimism at the performance in the Nikkei, which touched 10,022.23 in the morning, breaking the psychologically important 10,000 mark for the first time since October 8.
"The cabinet of Prime Minister Taro Aso has implemented a number of economic stimulus packages, which are kicking in throughout the nation," Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura told a news conference.
Japan, Asia's number one economy, entered recession in the second quarter of 2008 as demand slowed sharply for its autos and big-ticket export items, and the downturn has since become Japan's worst since World War II.
Recent economic data, including gains in industrial output, have brought rays of hope of a budding recovery.
But they have been tempered by rising unemployment and a drop in wholesale prices that threatens deflation. Wholesale prices fell 5.4 per cent year on year last month, their sharpest drop in 22 years.
Shinko Research Institute economist Norio Miyagawa shrugged off the revised economic data and said: "Japan remains in a weak growth trend."
He also said consumption would likely stay lacklustre while still piled-up inventories could weigh on industrial production.
On a more hopeful note, he said that "on-quarter figures in the April-June period may turn to positive as strong demand from China and other countries could help push up" Japanese exports.
Daisuke Uno, chief market strategist of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., was sceptical about the stock market's recent optimistic sentiment.
"The real economy is not improving, with capital only flowing into speculative markets," he said. "Demand needs to improve first... Optimism and pessimism will likely come in turns for a while."
- AFP/so
Obama nominee indicates possible change on Myanmar
http://www.reflector.com/news/nation/obama-nominee-indicates-possible-change-on-myanmar-655486.html
The Associated Press
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's choice as top U.S. diplomat for East Asia said Wednesday the United States is interested in easing its long-standing policy of isolation against military-run Myanmar.
Kurt Campbell, however, told U.S. lawmakers at his Senate confirmation hearing that Myanmar's heavy-handed treatment of detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi hinders any U.S. effort to change course and engage the ruling junta in Myanmar, also called Burma.
"As a general practice, we're prepared to reach out, not just in Burma but in other situations as well," Campbell said.
But, he said, the junta's trial this week of Suu Kyi on charges that could put her in prison for five years is "deeply, deeply concerning, and it makes it very difficult to move forward."
Expectations are that the 63-year-old Nobel laureate will be found guilty by a court known for handing out harsh sentences for political dissidents.
The outcome of Suu Kyi's trial, Campbell said, will be a major consideration as the Obama administration reviews U.S. policy on Myanmar.
The United States has traditionally relied heavily on tough sanctions meant to force the generals to respect human rights and release thousands of imprisoned political activists. Those sanctions are widely supported among both senior Democratic and Republican lawmakers.
Campbell emphasized that greater engagement with Myanmar would not mean the removal of sanctions.
But his comments indicate that the State Department is considering seriously a change in policy.
While Campbell has not yet been confirmed as assistant secretary of state for East Asia, he is close to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who he said views Myanmar as a priority. Campbell said he has had intense talks with Clinton about how best to bring change to Myanmar, which has been ruled by military juntas since 1962.
Clinton, on a trip through Asia in February, addressed the administration's dilemma with Myanmar. Neither tough U.S. sanctions nor engagement by neighbors, she said, have persuaded the junta to embrace democracy or release Suu Kyi. Clinton said the U.S. planned to work closely with the region on ideas on "how best to bring about positive change in Burma."
Campbell told lawmakers that previous U.S. policy on Myanmar clearly had "not borne fruit."
"In the past, there has been a determination that, 'Not much can be done; let's live with our sanctions,'" Campbell said. "I think there's a very high-level degree of interest in seeing what's possible going forward, and a deep sense of disappointment in the recent steps that the junta has taken toward Aung San Suu Kyi."
Jeremy Woodrum, co-founder of the U.S. Campaign for Burma, said regional talks similar to the six-nation North Korean nuclear disarmament negotiations could be used with Myanmar.
If the generals were to make substantial changes, Woodrum said, then pressure could be lifted. But he said sanctions have been important tools in confronting the junta.
Campbell's comments came in response to repeated questions from the Senate Foreign Relations Asia subcommittee's Democratic chairman, Sen. Jim Webb, who suggested that "affirmative engagement" would bring the most change toMyanmar.
It has been 19 years since Suu Kyi's party won a landslide victory at the ballot box but was prevented from taking office. She has been detained without trial for more than 13 of the past 19 years, including the last six.
Suu Kyi is charged with violating terms of her house arrest because an uninvited American man swam secretly to her closely guarded lakeside home last month and stayed two days.
The trial has drawn outrage internationally and from Suu Kyi's Myanmar supporters, who say the junta is using the bizarre case of the American swimmer as an excuse to keep Suu Kyi detained through next year's scheduled elections.
___
June 10, 2009 - 6:19 p.m. EDT
Copyright 2009, The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thai army reinforces Burma border
http://www.abitsu.org/?p=4976
June 11, 2009
By Jonathan Head, BBC News: Thailand has sent heavily-armed troops to reinforce positions along the Burma border after an influx of ethnic Karen refugees fleeing an army offensive.
More than 4,000 people have fled Burma for Thailand in the largest influx of refugees in the area for a decade.
Karen rebels have been fighting for an independent state for 60 years, in the world’s longest-running civil war.
Over the last three years the Burmese military has driven the rebels back to a few small bases along the border.
The long war along Burma’s forested eastern border has caused immense human suffering, with an estimated 500,000 ethnic Karen forced from their homes.
Most of those who fled into Thailand over the past week had already been displaced, and were living at a camp inside Burma when it was repeatedly shelled by Burmese army mortars.
Squalid camps
Fighters from the Karen National Union (KNU) say they are holding their ground - but they are heavily outnumbered by the joint forces of the Burmese army and a Karen splinter group which is allied to the government.
The KNU has steadily retreated over the decades, from its position of greatest strength right after Burma’s independence in 1948 when it came close to capturing Rangoon, to its situation today, with just a few bases along the border.
Its strength has been sapped recently by a string of defections, and by the assassination of its most charismatic leader in Thailand last year.
The Thai government has tried to start a dialogue between the two sides this year, so far with little success.
The 4,000 new arrivals will join around 100,000 other Karen who have sought shelter in Thailand.
Most are confined to squalid camps, which the Thai authorities do not allow them to leave. Some have lived in these camps for more than a decade.
Topics: Daily News |
【再送】第57回PFB例会のご案内『アウンサンスーチー不当起訴のゆくえと背景（仮題）』スピーカー：根本敬・秋元由紀
みなさま、
開催日が近くなりましたので、再度、ご案内させていただきます。
ぜひお越しください。
ビルマ市民フォーラム
事務局 宮澤
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第57回 ビルマ市民フォーラム例会のご案内
<6月13日（土） 18時～/ 東京・池袋>
￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣
『アウンサンスーチー不当起訴のゆくえと背景 （仮題）』
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◆資料代＝ 200円（会員）・500円（非会員）
◆定 員＝ 80名 （事前申込み不要／先着順）
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先月5月14日、ビルマ軍政は湖を泳ぎ渡り突然スーチーさん宅を訪れた
米国人男性をスーチーさんが自宅に入れたことが自宅軟禁の規則に反するとして
国家防御法を適用し、スーチーさんを起訴しました。
国民民主連盟（ＮＬＤ）を率い、母国の自由と民主化を求めて闘いつづける
アウンサンスーチーさん。
1991年にはノーベル平和賞も受賞しています。しかしながら、この間軍政は
過去19年間のうち13年以上もの間、スーチーさんを自宅軟禁下においてきました。
2003年5月から今日までつづく三度目の自宅軟禁の期限は今年5月末で
きれることになっており、今回の事件はビルマの人々はもちろんのこと、
国際社会が同氏の解放を待ち望んでいた矢先の出来事でした。
今、世界中がスーチーさんの裁判のゆくえに注目しています。
今、ビルマはどうなっているのだろうか？
アウンサンスーチーさんとは、どんな人物なのだろうか？
国際社会は何をすべきか？
次回例会では、お2人のビルマ専門家から、この事件の経緯と
日本政府を含む国際社会の動きなど最新のビルマ情勢をお話
いただきます。
また、アウンサンスーチーさんの思想・行動・おかれている状況に
ついても改めて振り返りたいと思います。
初めての方も、ぜひご参加ください。
---------------------------------------------
【プログラム】
---------------------------------------------
17:45～開場
18:00～19:00（60分）
「事件の経緯と国際社会の反応について（仮題）」
・・・・秋元 由紀（ビルマ情報ネットワーク ディレクター、米国弁護士）
19:00～19:10（10分）
休憩
19:10～20:10（60分）
「アウンサンスーチー その思想と行動を振り返る（仮題）」
・・・・根本 敬（上智大学教授、ビルマ市民フォーラム運営委員）
20:10～20:20
PFB事務局からのお知らせ他
＊在日ビルマ人のみなさんも参加されますので、ビルマ語逐次通訳が
入ります。ご了承ください。
---------------------------------------------
【スピーカー プロフィール】
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●秋元 由紀 （あきもと ゆき）
ビルマ情報ネットワークのディレクターとしてビルマ民主化問題に関する情報提供、
調査、提言を行う。2008年夏には参議院ODA調査派遣団のビルマ難民キャンプ視察な
どに同行した。特定非営利活動法人メコン・ウォッチでもビルマへの開発援助につい
て調査や政策提言を継続中。著書にPost-Nargis Analysis: The Other Side of the
Story (Burma Medical Association et al., 2008)、Opportunities and Pitfalls:
Preparing for Burma’s Economic Transitions (Open Society Institute, 2006)、
「ビルマ（ミャンマー）の開発と人権・環境問題」（季刊「公共研究」第2巻第1号、
2005年）。米国弁護士。
ビルマ情報ネットワーク http://www.burmainfo.org/
きょうのビルマのニュース http://d.hatena.ne.jp/burmainfo/
●根本 敬 （ねもと けい）
1957年生まれ。上智大学外国語学部教授。専門はビルマ近現
代史研究。著書に『アウンサン：封印された独立ビルマの夢』（1996年、岩波書
店）、『ビルマ軍事政権とアウンサンスーチー』（田辺寿夫と共著、2003年、角川新
書）、「（第6章）アウンサンスーチー：真理の追究」（共著『現代世界の女性リー
ダーたち』所収、2008年、ミネルヴァ書房）ほか、論文多数。ＮＨＫはじめテレビ・
ラジオのニュース解説（ビルマ関係）も随時担当。
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