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ビルマ市民フォーラム メールマガジン 2009/11/4
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本日付の新聞記事をご紹介します。
東京新聞 2009年11月4日朝刊 こちら特報部
「ミャンマー軍政『開発』で弾圧 少数民族居住地にダム」
ビルマ（ミャンマー）軍政が、同国の少数民族居住地域で大型ダム建設計画を進めて
おり、大量の「ダム難民」が発生する可能性があることを指摘しています。
ビルマ情報ネットワーク秋元由紀のコメントも入っています。
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Thursday, November 5, 2009
Fw: [BurmaInfo] 東京新聞11月4日「ミャンマー軍政『開発』で弾圧 少数民族居住地にダム」
US envoy in landmark talks with Suu Kyi
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US envoy in landmark talks with Suu Kyi
Agence France-Presse | 11/04/2009 8:16 PM
YANGON - A top US official held talks with Aung San Suu Kyi Wednesday after Myanmar's ruling junta gave the democracy icon a rare break from house arrest during Washington's highest-level visit here for 14 years.
Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell also met Myanmar Prime Minister Thein Sein as part of efforts by the Obama administration to re-engage with the hardline military regime.
Nobel Laureate Suu Kyi met Campbell for two hours at a luxury hotel in Yangon -- the first time she had appeared in front of the media other than at her home or in prison since her current period of detention began in 2003.
Dressed in a pink and maroon traditional outfit, the 64-year-old smiled but did not answer questions as she headed into the talks with the US diplomat and his deputy, Scot Marciel.
"Am I beautiful when I smile?" Suu Kyi joked with the media after the talks, adding: "Hello to all of you."
Suu Kyi has spent most of the last two decades in detention and the junta gave her an extra 18 months of house arrest in August, effectively ruling her out of elections due in 2010 that critics say are a sham.
The opposition leader was sentenced after being found guilty of harbouring an American man who swam to her lakeside house earlier in the year. Journalists saw her in prison at the trial but were not allowed to take pictures.
Campbell and Marciel held talks earlier on Wednesday with Premier Thein Sein in the remote administrative capital Naypyidaw, Myanmar officials said on condition of anonymity, without giving details.
Myanmar officials said the US delegation was not expected to meet reclusive junta leader Than Shwe. State media said that when the US envoys arrived he was in southern Myanmar inspecting aid efforts after last year's Cyclone Nargis.
The US duo also met with senior members of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), which won Myanmar's last elections in 1990 but was prevented from taking power by the army. They were due to leave Wednesday night.
"The meeting was positive," NLD spokesman Khin Maung Swe, who attended the talks at party headquarters in Yangon, told AFP.
"We discussed the transition to democracy and focused on the dialogue between Aung San Suu Kyi and Senior General Than Shwe. From their side they didn't say much, they just listened," he said.
Campbell is the highest ranking US official to travel to Myanmar -- formerly known as Burma -- since Madeleine Albright went as US ambassador to the United Nations in 1995 during Bill Clinton's presidency.
The two-day trip is a follow-up to discussions in New York in September between US and Myanmar officials, the highest-level US contact with the regime in nearly a decade.
President Barack Obama's administration in September announced a dramatic change in US policy because isolating Myanmar had failed, but said it would not ease sanctions without progress on democracy and human rights.
US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly overnight described the visit as a "fact-finding mission" and said it was the "the second step in the beginning of a dialogue with Burma."
Asked what Campbell discussed on Tuesday in talks with the information minister and local organisations, Kelly said: "They laid out the way we see this relationship going forward, how we should structure this dialogue, but they were mainly in a listening mode."
September's talks had called for free and fair elections and the release of Suu Kyi, but also dealt with US concerns about Myanmar's possible military links with nuclear-armed North Korea.
The first major sign of a thaw came in August when Than Shwe held an unprecedented meeting with visiting US senator Jim Webb, which yielded the release of John Yettaw, the American detained for swimming to Suu Kyi's house.
Suu Kyi then said that she would be ready to help the junta get sanctions lifted and she was allowed to meet foreign diplomats in October.
as of 11/04/2009 8:16 PM http://www.abs- cbnnews.com/ world/11/ 04/09/us- envoy-landmark- talks-suu- kyi
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Not So Great Expectations for U.S. Diplomats in Burma
Not So Great Expectations for U.S. Diplomats in Burma
By Robert Horn / Bangkok Wednesday, Nov. 04, 2009
The first high-level team of U.S. diplomats to visit Burma in 14 years met with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Rangoon on Wednesday in what some hope may signal the first steps towards breaking the political deadlock that has gripped Burma for more than 20 years. But Burma analysts said any positive developments from the mission would depend upon the man the Americans did not meet — Burma's reclusive military leader Gen. Than Shwe.
Instead, Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and his deputy Scot Marciel met with Prime Minister Thein Sein, who wields little actual political power, in the inland capital of Nyapyidaw on the second day of their two day visit. They later flew to Rangoon to confer with 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner Suu Kyi, who was allowed to travel from the home where she has spent 14 of the past 20 years under arrest, to a downtown hotel where the diplomats were staying. (See pictures of Burma's slowly shifting landscape.)
"Our expectations are modest,'' says Aung Zaw, editor of The Irrawaddy, an influential Thailand-based magazine on Burma affairs. "We've seen these on-again, off-again discussions many times before with the United Nations and the European Union, among others.'' Real change, he said, could only come from Than Shwe, the supreme leader since 1992 of the military committee that rules the country and calls itself the State Peace and Development Council. Describing Burma as an oligarchy, he says that if Than Shwe had the political will, "He could solve 40 years of Burma's problems in four hours.''
The visit is the second meeting between the nations' diplomats since President Barack Obama announced in September that his administration would pursue a policy of engaging the generals who rule the country, rather than rebuffing them. The first meeting took place several weeks ago in New York City. Burma has been under military rule since 1962, and since the bloody suppression of a democracy uprising in 1988, the U.S. has incrementally reduced contacts with the regime and increased sanctions against it for its record of human rights violations and quashing democracy. Larry Dinger, thecharge d'affairs at the U.S. embassy in Rangoon, was quoted in the state-run Myanmar Times this week as saying that Washington wanted to make progress on "important issues" but would maintain sanctions "until concrete progress is made." The State Department has referred to the trip as a "fact-finding mission."
The regime blames Suu Kyi for having called for sanctions in the past. She has said she is open to rescinding the call if the regime agrees to engage in a genuine dialogue with her, her party and ethnic minorities. The junta is planning on holding elections next year for the first time since 1990, when they lost to Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy, by a landslide, and then ignored the results. Suu Kyi has been barred from participating in the upcoming poll, and unless she is pardoned, will still be under house arrest when it takes place. Thein Sein recently told Southeast Asian diplomats that the terms of her could be eased if she "behaved." (See the world's top 10 contested elections.)
The Obama Administration has said it has changed its approach because sanctions alone have not worked in bringing about change in the isolated and impoverished nation. For their part, the generals are interested in improving relations because they are overly reliant on China, which has major investments in Burma, as an ally. The junta wants sanctions removed and their upcoming elections to be regarded as legitimate.
Debbie Stothard, executive director of ALTSEAN, an activist network involved in Burma issues, urged the two American diplomats to stand firm on democracy and human rights during their visit this week. "The regime won't like it, but they will respect the U.S. more for it. They will know that the U.S. can't be pushed around or fooled like the Association of Southeast Asian nations,'' she says. ASEAN, which admitted Burma as a member in 1997, has advocated a course of "constructive engagement" as a way of moderating the regime's behavior, including expanding economic and business ties. Stothard says that policy has failed, as evidenced by what she calls "an all-time high in the number of political prisoners and a spike in military aggression against the country's ethnic minorities.' '
Aung Zaw credits Campbell, who specializes in East Asian and Pacific affairs for the White House, with being well-informed on Burma issues. It was unlikely the regime could pull the wool over his eyes, as it has done with other prominent visitors, he says. "Campbell met and listened to everyone, whether they were Burman, ethnic minorities, pro-regime or anti-regime. Everyone was pleased with that."
Read more: http://www.time. com/time/ world/article/ 0,8599,1934441, 00.html?xid= rss-world# ixzz0VtVfn6Et
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