News & Articles on Burma-Monday, 13 December, 2010

News & Articles on Burma
Monday, 13 December, 2010
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Than Shwe Begins Year-End Tour of Burma
Burma: A Pariah Nation With Lots of Friends
Propaganda in the News
Ethnic Rebels Resist Junta’s March Toward Final Frontier
Rights Groups Call for Better Protection for Refugees
Military Take Over Traditional Kachin Festival
Foreign tourists banned traveling to Mongla
Myanmar's military sights ethnic victory
Myanmar's opium production up 76 per cent
Myanmar: A pariah nation with lots of friends
Make Roads Safe ambassador to be ‘The Lady’
$2m bounty for Wa druglord
Let Rangoon defend itself
US diplomats broke laws by sending uranium on commercial flight, says leaked cable
Burma army retreats from Karen flashpoint
Weekly Business Roundup (December 13, 2010)
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Than Shwe Begins Year-End Tour of Burma
By WAI MOE Monday, December 13, 2010

Burma’s junta supremo Snr-Gen Than Shwe began his year-end tour around the country at a military graduation ceremony in Maymyo with senior officials, while his deputy, Vice Snr-Gen Maung Aye, played golf with other top generals in Naypyidaw.

The country's top generals commanded front page space from Saturday until Monday in state-run newspapers. Saturday's papers reported that Than Shwe and members of his family members visited the Defense Services Academy (DSA) in the resort town of Maymyo (also known as Pyin U Lwin) on Friday.

In recent years, Than Shwe started his year-end tour attending the DSA graduation ceremony as the commander-in-chief of the Tatmadaw (Burma’s armed forces). As in previous years, he brought close family members, including his favorite grandson Nay Shwe Thway Aung.

Members of Than Shwe’s family appeared in the state media alongside the junta secretary-1 ex-Gen Tin Aung Myint Oo, joint Chief of Staff (Army, Navy, Air Force) Lt-Gen Min Aung Hlaing, Minister of Science and Technology U Thaung and other senior military officials.

Than Shwe addressed to graduated cadets inside the DSA’s convocation hall, not outdoors like last year. Observers said the ceremony was held indoors because of bad weather and Than Shwe’s recent bout of bad health.

“Maymyo’s weather in December is quite cold,” said a military source. “Officials of the DSA arranged heaters around Snr-Gen Than Shwe while he spoke to the cadets for about 30 minutes. Organizers were concerned about the general’s health.”

Than Shwe is officially 77, but former intelligence officials say he is actually 80, and suffering from hypertension. Than Shwe’s two family doctors, Kyaw Myint and Paing Soe are currently minister and deputy minister of health.

As in previous speeches, Than Shwe enumerated development projects completed since 1988, when the current military regime took power.

“He [Than Shwe] is good at memorizing details of state projects,” said an official source in Naypyidaw. “He has often referred to how many bridges and dams were built during the rule of the military government.”

In his DSA graduation speech, Than Shwe hailed “the milestones in the two decades of nation-building history where no sector remains without development” in Burma.

According to official sources, Than Shwe is reportedly scheduled to tour Mandalay Division and Rangoon Division this week.

Than Shwe's deputy, Maung Aye, and other top junta officials such as Shwe Mann, Prime Minister Thein Sein and Tin Aye played golf instead of accompanying their chief to Maymyo. They competed for the State Peace and Development Council Chairman’s Trophy.

State-run-newspapers carried photos of Maung Aye, who is 73, Shwe Mann, Thein Sein and Tin Aye playing golf, indicating they are in good health.

The newspaper report on the Naypyidaw golf tournament included the names of two generals, Lt-Gen Myint Aung and Lt-Gen Ko Ko, who were reported in August to be in line for the posts of commander in chief and vice commander in chief if Than Shwe and Maung Aye retire from the army.

Their appearance in the state media was the first mention of them since the August reshuffle.

A report on the golf tournament on Monday showed Than Shwe’s favored Industry 1 Minister Aung Thaung, teeing off with the opening shot.

Sources in Naypyidaw and Rangoon said hardliner Aung Thaung expanded his influence within the ruling hierarchy during the election period, winning the favor of both Than Shwe and Maung Aye.

On behalf of the junta-back Union Solidarity and Development Party, Aung Thaung recently met two key ethnic parties which participated in the 2010 election, the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party and the Shan Nationalities Democratic Party. The two separate meetings were said to have focused on co-operation within parliament.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=20309
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Burma: A Pariah Nation With Lots of Friends
December 13, 2010

Rangoon, Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi has long proclaimed her love for India. Myanmar's pro-democracy icon went to college in New Delhi, her mother was the ambassador there and she spent some of her happiest times with her late husband and two sons in the Himalayan foothills of northern India.

But India's government, she says, has been a disappointment.

"It saddens me," she said of New Delhi's ties to the army generals who run her country.

"It saddens my heart that the peoples of India and Burma, who went through the battles of independence as comrades to fight and get out from under the British empire, that the old ties have given way to the new ties of commercialism."

Things have changed since Suu Kyi rose to prominence in the late 1980s, and India joined the clamorous international outcry against the military crackdown on the democracy movement.

Today, security and commerce are New Delhi's foremost concerns in Burma — echoing how realpolitik governs Rangoon's relations with a string of powerful regional allies.

Burma's repressive government is cut off from much of the international community by travel restrictions on the elite and trade sanctions from many western countries.

But the nation wedged between India, China and Thailand also has enormous energy reserves, thousands of miles of coastline and long borders that make it strategically important.

As a result: in its own neighborhood, the pariah is pretty popular.

"Thailand, China, Singapore, India, Malaysia, South Korea, Indonesia," said Maung Zarni, an exiled dissident and research fellow at the London School of Economics, listing Yangon's regional allies.

"All treat Burma as nothing more than a resource brothel and a strategic location for their national interests."

It is India, though, that Suu Kyi has singled out — in her own quiet way — for criticism.

"I would like to have thought India would be standing behind us," she told the Indian Express newspaper in late November.

New Delhi is neither the largest investor in Burma, nor has the deepest ties to the junta — China is widely thought to hold both positions.

But India's political system — it is the world's largest democracy — and its one-time support for the pro-democracy movement has sparked a backlash.

"India has not only abandoned its supposed democratic values but also discarded any pretensions to ethics," Zarni said.

For years, New Delhi had been a champion of Burma's pro-democracy movement.

Dozens of dissidents fled to India, and a number of anti-junta media organizations set up offices there.

But the policy began to change in the early 1990s, as a bloody insurgency took hold in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

The outbreak of violence forced India to shift soldiers from its troubled northeast, where it had long fought a series of small ethnic militant groups.

Many of those groups had bases across the little-guarded 1,600-kilometer border with Burma.

At the same time India's long-dormant economy began to blossom, leaving the energy-hungry nation searching for new supplies.

Finally, there was the rise of China — which India increasingly sees as its major economic and political rival — which had allied itself closely to the junta.

For India, all that made reaching out to Burma impossible to resist.

Deals were made for trade, for natural gas, for Burma to expel the Indian militants.

"It's the way of the world," Suu Kyi said in a November interview, days after she was released from house arrest.

For India, the decision did not come lightly.

Shyam Saran was India's ambassador in Rangoon in 1999 when Suu Kyi's husband, the British scholar Michael Aris, died of cancer in England.

The couple had been unable to see one another in the months before his death. She feared that if she left Burma, she would not be allowed to return.

Saran, who later became India's foreign secretary, paid a condolence call on her in Yangon after Aris died.

She greeted him graciously, then became overcome by grief as she described how Aris and their two sons had been unable to get visas to see her in Rangoon.

"Here was an individual of extraordinary fortitude and strength of character," Saran wrote in the Indian Express after Suu Kyi's November release, admitting that he felt some guilt after that meeting because of his government's policy shift.

Still, he knew India had made the right decision: "Our overriding national interest necessitated working together with the military government."

Associated Press http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/burma-a-pariah-nation-with-lots-of-friends/411474
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Propaganda in the News
By SAI ZOM HSENG Monday, December 13, 2010

Burma's press censorship board, the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division (PSRD), has forced all local journals to print propaganda articles again starting this week, according to Rangoon-based journalists.

Speaking anonymously, a journal editor said the PSRD ordered local journals to print an article called “Don’t Trivialize the National Cause.”

The article is about the junta's seven step road map to democracy and states that holding a second Panglong-style conference is impossible.

Another local journal editor told the Irrawaddy on Monday that: “We haven't had to print this kind of article for three months. This new order might have happened because they [the junta] liked a story critical of Aung San Suu Kyi written by Ngar Minn Swe that was voluntarily published by three journals.”

In his article called “From Ngar Minn Swe to Daw Suu Kyi,” Ngar Minn Swe claimed that pro-democracy leader Suu Kyi had done nothing to help the people, saying they needed regular income more than democracy. The article blamed Suu Kyi for calling on the Americans to impose sanctions on the country.

Ngar Minn Swe is well-known as a propaganda writer for the junta and writes articles to get favors from the regime. His articles, which always insult people who support Burma's democracy movement, are sometimes published by the State-owned newspapers, a reader said.

A local sports journal editor said the propaganda articles will have to replace other stories that are of greater interest to their readers, who find propaganda of little interest and tend to skip it.

“The most important sections in our journal are pre-match analysis of football games, printing final results and feature stories. Recently, we have been able to increase the content in these sections but now will have to cut back again,” he said.

Speaking to the Irrawaddy on Monday, a military officer currently studying in Russia who also blogs on the internet said: “the government can control the country in any number of ways without detracting from the style of the journals and the pleasure readers get from articles. We should have freedom of speech in our country.”

When Aung San Suu Kyi was released on Nov. 13, local journals were temporarily banned because they printed articles the PSRD had not approved.

The PSRD is a junta tool for censoring more than 200 weekly journals, 250 monthly magazines and other privately published material in Burma. http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=20308
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Rights Groups Call for Better Protection for Refugees
By SAW YAN NAING Monday, December 13, 2010

More than 20 community-based organizations called for better protection for Burmese refugees who are on Thai soil due to clashes between Burmese government troops and breakaway Karen rebels on the Thai-Burmese border.

The rights groups also released an appeal letter to international governments calling for more support to refugees on Thai soil who fear to return to their homes in an area where fighting has broken out repeatedly since Nov. 8, one day after the Burmese general election.

According to intelligence sources with the rebel Karen National Union (KNU), the Burmese regime is reinforcing its troops in Palu village in Myawaddy Township and more fighting is expected.

Five people reportedly have died and at least 27 have been injured, according to rights groups, since the most recent fighting broke out.

Many villagers have repeatedly fled to safety in Thailand, while others have gone into hiding in the jungle.

On Nov. 8, during the conflict in Myawaddy Township on the border opposite Thailand’s Mae Sot, more than 25,000 refugees sought temporary shelter on Thai soil. The refugees were forced by the Thai army to return home the following day, however.

Due to repeated conflicts, some 10,000 refugees in Three Pagodas Pass and about 2,500 from Waw Lay village also fled separately to other parts of Thailand in Tak Province. Hundreds of villagers are still being displaced on the Thai-Burma border along the Moei River, said the rights groups.

The letter, signed by Dr. Cynthia Maung, the founder of Mae Tao Clinic in Mae Sot, said that there is a strong likelihood of continued or increased armed conflicts not only in Karen State but also in other ethnic areas along the border.

The letter called for a concrete plan for Thai authorities and nongovernmental organizations to provide the necessary protection and assistance to a civilian population fleeing armed conflicts until it is determined that it is safe for them to return home.

The umbrella group also called on the Burmese government to ease all hostilities and provocative actions against ethnic communities and to engage in tripartite dialogue with ethnic and opposition representatives.

In the Thai parliament, Kraisak Choonhavan, the director of the Asean Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus (AIPMC), said, “I am deeply concerned about the situation of these refugees on Thai soil. According to information received, the provision of humanitarian aid and the process of repatriation of recent refugees from Burma do not abide by international humanitarian and human rights standards.”

Despite the Thai government's statements that there will be no enforced repatriation of refugees until the situation stabilizes, it has been reported that refugees in Mae Sot and Pop-Phra, in Tak Province, have been pressured by the Thai Army to return to Burma and were told that the fighting has ended, according to a statement released by the AIPMC on Dec. 8.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=20305
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NEWS ANALYSIS
Ethnic Rebels Resist Junta’s March Toward Final Frontier
By MARWAAN MACAN-MARKAR / IPS WRITER Monday, December 13, 2010

BANGKOK — An ongoing clash along the Thai-Burma border, pitting Burmese troops against ethnic insurgents, is raising the spectre of more violence in areas that the Burmese military sees as the final frontier to putting the country under the grip of one army for the first time in over six decades.

The fighting that erupted in early November, when a brigade from the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) attacked and occupied the Burmese border town of Myawaddy, has already seen some 35,000 civilians from the Karen minority flee across the Thai border for safety.

Reports of the death toll remain unclear in the wake of the Burmese troops retaliating and taking back areas from the DKBA. Some Burmese activists monitoring the fighting from the Thai border town of Mae Sot say as many as four people have been killed in the intensive fighting.

"The situation is serious and the (Burmese) regime seems to be very angry," says Win Min, a Burmese national security expert currently living in exile. "It is a show of force that they can fight all (ethnic insurgent) groups at the same time and pressure other armed groups not to make coordinated attacks against the regime."

This latest trigger to simmering tensions in an area where a civil war has raged for decades is a plan Burma’s military regime unveiled in April 2009 to bring the patchwork of ethnic insurgent troops along its borders under the command of the ‘Tatmadaw’, as the Burmese military is called.

But not all the armed ethnic groups have agreed to join the ranks of the planned Border Guard Force (BGF), which will come under Tatmadaw’s direct command. Among those resisting the Burmese monopoly of military power is the DKBA.

"The regime is going to fight smaller or weaker groups that have resisted the border guard transformation, and the DKBA fits the regime’s target," Win Min explained during an IPS interview. "The regime has tried to control all of Burma by occupying the ethnic areas bit by bit every year."

Signs of possible clashes in areas that are home to the Kachin and Shan ethnic communities are being reported in the Burmese exile media. The rebel groups from these minorities were among the 17 ethnic armed groups that signed ceasefire agreements between 1989 and 1995 with the junta in Burma, or Myanmar as it is also called.

An area near Chinese border is currently in the grip of an uneasy peace, states Human Rights Watch (HRW), the New York-based global rights lobby. "The tension with the ceasefire groups is set to continue in 2011, as fighting has also flared in parts of Shan State … (due) to the BGF scheme."

The military, which has held political power since a 1962 coup, is dominated by the Southeast Asian nation’s Burman majority. Arrayed against them are 135 registered ethnic groups, which account for nearly 40 percent of the country’s 56 million population.

Yet ever since Burma got independence from the British colonialists in 1948, it has been divided along ethnic fault lines that have prevented Burman domination over the entire country. In the early years of post-independence, over half the country was beyond the reach of the central government in Rangoon.

The balance has shifted dramatically since then, with the Tatmadaw now 400,000-strong and controlling substantial parts of the country, and some 45,000 ethnic rebel troops standing in the way of the Burman army’s total domination.

Such a feat over past two decades has left the Burmese military with the thinking that soldiers are the only force to unify the country. "When the men in uniform looked to the past, they saw a country that tended to fall apart into little pieces and that had always needed to be melded together by force," writes Thant Myint-U, a respected Burmese historian, in ‘The River of Lost Footsteps’.

"They saw themselves in a long line of national unifiers and saw their task as unfinished," added Thant in his book, which charts the story of the country during and after British colonization. "In their imagination, there remained the challenge of nation building, of creating and promoting a new Myanmar identity."

Burma’s 2008 constitution, which was approved in a referendum plagued with irregularities, personifies this military vision for the country more than the two previous charters, 1947 and 1974.

Following the general election on Nov. 7, the country’s first poll in 20 years won by a pro-junta party under questionable circumstances, the military regime is marching to reach new heights through the enforcement of the 2008 charter in early 2011.

This constitution is unequivocal about the military’s place in power, stating that the country can have only one army—the Tatmadaw.

"The Burmese junta has already given an ultimatum to the ethnic rebel groups to join the BGF under the command of the Burmese army, otherwise these groups will be declared illegal," says Kheunsai Jaiyen, editor of the Shan Herald Agency for News, a media outlet covering Burma from northern Thailand.

The military regime will use its twin weapons—a parliamentary majority and the constitution—to place the issue of the BGF on the agenda of the new government, he told IPS. "They will submit a motion to make all groups come under the Tatmadaw."
Copyright © 2008 Irrawaddy Publishing Group | www.irrawaddy.org
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=20302
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Military Take Over Traditional Kachin Festival
By KO HTWE Monday, December 13, 2010

Military authorities are to take over the organization of next month's traditional Kachin Manau festival from the Kachin Culture Committee (KCC).

KCC sources said the Commander of Northern Command, Brig-Gen Zeyar Aung, had appointed his deputy, Brig-Gen Soe Win, to lead celebrations of the festival on Jan. 10 in the Kachin State capital, Myitkyina. Kachin State Day falls on Jan. 10.

The military takeover of the Kachin festival has angered local people and the KCC. “The members of the festival's celebrations committee are not satisfied,” said Aung Wa, chairman of the Kachin Development Network Group.

Aung Wa claimed the military organizers of the festival were ignorant of Kachin culture.

The government's Posts and Telegraphs Minister, Brig-Gen Thein Zaw, a successful Union Solidarity and Development Party candidate in Myitkyina in the Nov. 7 election, raised 50 million kyat (US $50,000) for the festival.

Mar Khar, who contested the Nov. 7 election as a Myitkyina candidate for the National Democratic Force (NDF), said Kachin Independence Army (KIA) soldiers were barred from taking part in the festival. Uniformed KIA soldiers were also banned from participating in last year's festival.

Meanwhile, the Burmese army has deployed more troops and weapons near the headquarters of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) in Laiza and at other locations across Kachin State.

Tension hit a new pitch last Saturday when Burmese forces and troops of the KIA—the KIO's armed wing—fired warning shots near Lwaigyai, one of Kachin State's border crossings into China. The crossing is closed to all traffic, but on Monday trucks carrying bananas into China were allowed to pass after Burmese authorities held talks with Chinese local officials.

Bananas are an important export in that region of northern Burma.

Kachin State Day commemorates the date the state joined the Union of Burma after Burma won independence from Britain in 1948. The Kachin ethnic group numbers about 1.3 million people.

Entire Kachin communities celebrate Manau festivals and participate in the traditional Manau dance, a large communal dance that unites the Kachin community and affirms their cultural identity. In addition to the Kachin, many ethnic groups come together and dance at the Manau.

The Manau festival is traditionally held to mark various important community events—weddings, funerals, declarations of war and victory celebrations.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/highlight.php?art_id=20304
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Foreign tourists banned traveling to Mongla
Monday, 13 December 2010 15:27 Hseng Khio Fah

In accordance with the Burma Army's directive, foreign tourists have been banned from visiting Mongla, under the control of National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA), 3 days after passage of goods were banned at Taping checkpoint, between Mongla and Kengtung, according to local sources.

"Now it is not only goods from Thailand but also tourists coming from Thailand have been banned," a local resident said.

Taping checkpoint on the Lwe that divides Mongla, under the control of National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA) and Burma Army controlled Kengtung, was ordered closed for trade by the Burma Army's Triangle Region Command (TRC) since 23 November. The directive to close Mongla for tourism came on 26 November.

Regarding the closure, Colonel Khin Maung Htwe, Military Affairs Security (MAS) chief in Kengtung, was quoted as saying that the order to close Taping checkpoint on the Lwe came from the top as Chinese goods coming through Mongla side were considered illegal since the junta's immigration and customs officials were no longer in Mongla, which is located opposite China's Daluo. He however refrained from giving the reason for banning the Thai products even though they had gone through legal procedures at Tachilek.

Since then, prices of commodities especially those from Thailand have increased and have hurt the local villagers than the NDAA, said a Shan tourist who just came back from participating in the NDAA's Shan New Year celebrations held from 1-7 December.

According to him, the NDAA's revenue derives from the group-owned sugar industry that produces 1,500 ton of sugar per day, banana plantations, rubber plantations and taxes from motor road checkpoints and motor boats on the Mekong.

"Every truck and car gets checked even if the license plate is issued by Mongla," he said.

Vehicles are reported to have been classified by the serial number SR-4 (Special Region #4) SR-4- 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 are the numbers of vehicles from Mongla, SR-4- 7 from Hsalue area, SR-4- 8 from Namparn and SR-4-9 are vehicles of top ranking officials.

"Only SR-4-9s are not checked," he said.

Moreover, the group also generates income from coal mining located at Kengkhang between Mongla and Nampan, and transported to China every day. It is a joint venture with a Chinese company.

"There are about 300 six-wheel trucks carrying the products to China each day," he explained.

The NDAA officially known as Shan State Special Region #4, has 3 brigades: Central, 369th (mostly Shan) and 911st (mostly Akha). Estimated strength is 4,500. It has been at loggerheads with the Burma Army over the Border Guard Forces (BGFs) program since April 2009.

The group, together with its allies, United Wa State Army, Kachin Independence Army and Shan State Army (SSA) North, have refused either to become a BGF or disarm itself as long as its self rule call is ignored by the junta. http://www.shanland.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3362:foreign-tourists-banned-traveling-to-mongla&catid=93:general&Itemid=291
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Dec 14, 2010
Myanmar's military sights ethnic victory
By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK - An ongoing clash along the Thailand-Myanmar border, pitting government troops against ethnic insurgents, is raising the specter of more violence in areas that the military sees as the final frontier to putting the country under the grip of one army for the first time in over six decades.

The fighting that erupted in early November, when a brigade from the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) attacked and occupied the Myanmar border town of Myawaddy, has already seen some 35,000 civilians from the Karen minority flee across the Thai border for safety.

Reports of the death toll remain unclear in the wake of the regime troops retaliating and taking back areas from the DKBA. Some Myanmar activists monitoring the fighting from the Thai border town of Mae Sot say as many as four people were killed in the intensive fighting.

"The situation is serious and the [Myanmar] regime seems to be very angry," says Win Min, a national security expert currently living in exile. "It is a show of force that they can fight all [ethnic insurgent] groups at the same time and pressure other armed groups not to make coordinated attacks against the regime."

This latest trigger to simmering tensions in an area where a civil war has raged for decades is a plan Myanmar's military regime unveiled in April 2009 to bring the patchwork of ethnic insurgent troops along its borders under the command of the Tatmadaw, as the military is called.

But not all the armed ethnic groups have agreed to join the ranks of the planned Border Guard Force (BGF), which will come under Tatmadaw's direct command. Among those resisting the Myanmar monopoly of military power is the DKBA.

"The regime is going to fight smaller or weaker groups that have resisted the border guard transformation, and the DKBA fits the regime's target," Win Min explained during an Inter Press Service (IPS) interview. "The regime has tried to control all of Burma [Myanmar] by occupying the ethnic areas bit by bit every year."

Signs of possible clashes in areas that are home to the Kachin and Shan ethnic communities are being reported in the Myanmar exile media. The rebel groups from these minorities were among the 17 ethnic armed groups that signed ceasefire agreements between 1989 and 1995 with the junta.

An area near the Chinese border is currently in the grip of an uneasy peace, states Human Rights Watch (HRW), the New York-based global rights lobby. "The tension with the ceasefire groups is set to continue in 2011, as fighting has also flared in parts of Shan State [due] to the BGF scheme."

The military, which has held political power since a 1962 coup, is dominated by the Southeast Asian nation's Burman majority. Arrayed against them are 135 registered ethnic groups, which account for nearly 40% of the country's 56 million population.

Yet ever since Myanmar got independence from the British colonialists in 1948, it has been divided along ethnic fault lines that have prevented Burman domination over the entire country. In the early years of post-independence,over half the country was beyond the reach of the central government in Yangon.

The balance has shifted dramatically since then, with the Tatmadaw now 400,000-strong and controlling substantial parts of the country, and some 45,000 ethnic rebel troops standing in the way of the army's total domination.

Such a feat over past two decades has left the Myanmar military with the thinking that soldiers are the only force to unify the country. "When the men in uniform looked to the past, they saw a country that tended to fall apart into little pieces and that had always needed to be melded together by force," writes Thant Myint-U, a respected Myanmar historian, in The River of Lost Footsteps.

"They saw themselves in a long line of national unifiers and saw their task as unfinished," added Thant in his book, which charts the story of the country during and after British colonization. "In their imagination, there remained the challenge of nation building, of creating and promoting a new Myanmar identity."

Myanmar's 2008 constitution, which was approved in a referendum plagued with irregularities, personifies this military vision for the country more than the two previous charters, 1947 and 1974.

Following the general election on November 7, the country's first poll in 20 years won by a pro-junta party under questionable circumstances, the military regime is marching to reach new heights through the enforcement of the 2008 charter in early 2011.
This constitution is unequivocal about the military's place in power, stating that the country can have only one army - the Tatmadaw.

"The junta has already given an ultimatum to the ethnic rebel groups to join the BGF under the command of the army, otherwise these groups will be declared illegal," says Kheunsai Jaiyen, editor of the Shan Herald Agency for News, a media outlet covering Myanmar from northern Thailand.

The military regime will use its twin weapons - a parliamentary majority and the constitution - to place the issue of the BGF on the agenda of the new government, he told IPS. "They will submit a motion to make all groups come under the Tatmadaw."

(Inter Press Service) http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/LL14Ae01.html
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Myanmar's opium production up 76 per cent

Dec 13, 2010, 7:49 GMT

Bangkok - Myanmar's opium production increased 76 per cent this year, accounting for 16 per cent of the world's current supply of the illicit crop, the United Nations revealed Monday.

'This represents a significant increase in light of last year when Myanmar's share was only 5 per cent,' said the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)'s South-East Asia opium survey for 2010.

The report estimated Myanmar's opium production this year at 580 tons.

Neighbouring Laos also saw a 58-per-cent rise in opium production this year, although its overall production at at 18 metric tons was still insignificant compared with Afghanistan and Myanmar, the world's two leaders in production of opium and the drug derived from it, heroin.

Afghanistan, which has been the world's leading opium and heroin producer for more than a decade, witnessed a decline in production this year due to a fungus epidemic.

The UNODC has been conducting crop substitution programmes in north-eastern Myanmar and northern Laos since 1996, with the main funding coming from the European Union and governments of Australia and Germany.

Although the programme has succeeded in reducing opium production in South-East Asia from a peak of 1,760 tons in 1996 to 312 tons in 2006, production has been on the rise ever since.

One factor may be weather patterns and declining food supply in the areas, forcing more families into growing opium as a cash crop to buy food.

'Food security has deteriorated in almost all regions where the survey took place,' the UNODC report said. 'The erosion of food security is of particular concern because it could trigger a further increase in opium cultivation.'

Deforestation in these remote areas of Myanmar and Laos may be another reason for the decline in food production.

'Certainly the removal of forest cover has had an impact on the soil, erosion and water retention,' said Gary Lewis, UNODC representative for the Asia-Pacific region.

'There has been massive depletion of forest coverage, and with that comes problems of retaining your top soil, and water retention,'

Opium is a notoriously hardy plant, capable of growing in mountainous terrain with arid soil.

Ongoing conflicts between the Myanmar military regime and various insurgencies based in the Shan States in the east of the country, where the majority of Myanmar's opium is grown, are another reason for a lack of progress in the area.

Myanmar's general elections on November 7 are unlikely to resolve the security threats, observers say.

'I think in terms of the post-election environment, the issues remain,' said Jason Eligh, UNODC's representative in Myanmar. 'We need a resolution in terms of the conflict in those areas,' he said.

The UNODC crop-substitution programme is one of the only international aid programmes in the Shan States.

'I would like to think that our partners in the donor community do not wait for a perfect environment to be in place before they engage, because a lot of this can happen even while there is a lot of insecurity,' Lewis said. http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/asiapacific/news/article_1605236.php/Myanmar-s-opium-production-up-76-per-cent
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Myanmar: A pariah nation with lots of friends

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- Aung San Suu Kyi has long proclaimed her love for India.

Myanmar's pro-democracy icon went to college in New Delhi, her mother was the ambassador there and she spent some of her happiest times with her late husband and two sons in the Himalayan foothills of northern India.

But India's government, she says, has been a disappointment.

"It saddens me," she said of New Delhi's ties to the army generals who run her country, also known as Burma. "It saddens my heart that the peoples of India and Burma, who went through the battles of independence as comrades to fight and get out from under the British empire, that the old ties have given way to the new ties of commercialism."

Things have changed since Suu Kyi rose to prominence in the late 1980s, and India joined the clamorous international outcry against the military crackdown on the democracy movement.

Today, security and commerce are New Delhi's foremost concerns in Myanmar - echoing how realpolitik governs Yangon's relations with a string of powerful regional allies.

Myanmar's repressive government is cut off from much of the international community by travel restrictions on the elite and trade sanctions from many western countries. But the nation wedged between India, China and Thailand also has enormous energy reserves, thousands of miles of coastline and long borders that make it strategically important.

As a result: in its own neighborhood, the pariah is pretty popular.

"Thailand, China, Singapore, India, Malaysia, South Korea, Indonesia," said Maung Zarni, an exiled dissident and research fellow at the London School of Economics, listing Yangon's regional allies. "All treat Burma as nothing more than a resource brothel and a strategic location for their national interests."

It is India, though, that Suu Kyi has singled out - in her own quiet way - for criticism. "I would like to have thought India would be standing behind us," she told the Indian Express newspaper in late November.

New Delhi is neither the largest investor in Myanmar, nor has the deepest ties to the junta - China is widely thought to hold both positions. But India's political system - it is the world's largest democracy - and its one-time support for the pro-democracy movement has sparked a backlash.

"India has not only abandoned its supposed democratic values but also discarded any pretensions to ethics," Zarni said.

For years, New Delhi had been a champion of Myanmar's pro-democracy movement. Dozens of dissidents fled to India, and a number of anti-junta media organizations set up offices there.

But the policy began to change in the early 1990s, as a bloody insurgency took hold in Indian-controlled Kashmir. The outbreak of violence forced India to shift soldiers from its troubled northeast, where it had long fought a series of small ethnic militant groups. Many of those groups had bases across the little-guarded 1,000-mile (1,600-kilometer) border with Myanmar.

At the same time India's long-dormant economy began to blossom, leaving the energy-hungry nation searching for new supplies.

Finally, there was the rise of China - which India increasingly sees as its major economic and political rival - which had allied itself closely to the junta.

For India, all that made reaching out to Myanmar impossible to resist. Deals were made for trade, for natural gas, for Myanmar to expel the Indian militants.

"It's the way of the world," Suu Kyi said in a November interview with The Associated Press, days after she was released from house arrest.

For India, the decision did not come lightly.

Shyam Saran was India's ambassador in Yangon in 1999 when Suu Kyi's husband, the British scholar Michael Aris, died of cancer in England. The couple had been unable to see one another in the months before his death. She feared that if she left Myanmar, she would not be allowed to return.

Saran, who later became India's foreign secretary, paid a condolence call on her in Yangon after Aris died. She greeted him graciously, then became overcome by grief as she described how Aris and their two sons had been unable to get visas to see her in Yangon.

"Here was an individual of extraordinary fortitude and strength of character," Saran wrote in the Indian Express after Suu Kyi's November release, admitting that he felt some guilt after that meeting because of his government's policy shift.

Still, he knew India had made the right decision: "Our overriding national interest necessitated working together with the military government."

© 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_MYANMAR_POPULAR_PARIAH?SECTION=HOME&SITE=AP&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
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Make Roads Safe ambassador to be ‘The Lady’

13/12/2010

Aung San Suu Kyi wears the road safety Tag in support of the Decade of Action.
Michelle Yeoh addressed the UN General Assembly in her capacity as road safety ambassador.

Michelle Yeoh, the global ambassador for the Make Roads Safe campaign, is to portray the Burmese political activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in a new movie.

Michelle, who led the Make Road Safe campaign’s successful ‘Call for a Decade of Action’, met with the recently released Aung San Suu Kyi, known to her Burmese supporters as ‘The Lady’, at her home in Rangoon, Burma, on 7th December. As well as discussing her role in the forthcoming biopic, Michelle discussed global road safety with Aung San Suu Kyi, and presented her with a road safety Tag, the symbol of the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety.

The new movie about Aung San Suu Kyi’s life, by French director Luc Besson, is filming on location in Thailand, the UK and France. Michelle Yeoh, who has starred in blockbuster movies including the James Bond film ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’; ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’; ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’; and ‘Sunshine’, also remains committed to her role as the world’s leading road safety advocate.

“Aung San Suu Kyi has experienced such great injustice and struggle in her life, so she recognises the global injustice, particularly to the young, poor and vulnerable, caused by the failure to provide safe roads”, Michelle Yeoh said. “I was so proud to present Aung San Suu Kyi with our road safety Tag, the symbol of our Decade of Action, and to welcome her to our international campaign to make roads safe.”
News Home
http://www.fiafoundation.org/news/archive/2010/Pages/MakeRoadsSafeambassadortobeTheLady.aspx

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$2m bounty for Wa druglord
By PETER AUNG
Published: 13 December 2010

Wanted posters are being placed in Bangkok bars and nightclubs advertising a $US2 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Wa druglord Wei Hsueh-kang.

Thai anti-narcotics authorities have launched the joint ‘Operation Hot Spot’ with the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to track Wei Hsueh-kang, also a senior commander in the powerful United Wa State Army (UWSA), once the world’s biggest heroin producer.

Their eagerness to catch the ethnic Chinese kingpin, thought to be in his early 60s, has prompted the use of unorthodox tactics, such as printing his face on beer mats and on the sides of bottles in popular Thai nightspots.

He had been sentenced to death in absentia by the Thai government for his involvement in the 1987 trafficking of 860 kilograms of heroin into Thailand, but has evaded arrest and remains in Burma, reportedly moving between Rangoon, Mandalay and Shan state. His Thai citizenship was revoked in 2001.

The Thai government has also put out arrest warrants for 20 other top UWSA officials with close ties to Southeast Asia’s sizeable drugs trade.

The DEA also want him on charges of smuggling more than 400 kilograms of heroin into the US in the 1980s. The agency describes its attempt to capture Wei Hsueh-kang as an “aggressive community outreach initiative” that draws on information provided by the public, and also targets the UWSA and “other high level drug trafficking organisations within Asia”.­­­­­­­

Information about Wei Hsueh-kang has been translated into 10 languages and is being “distributed in areas with a high propensity for drug trafficking”, the DEA said. “These Hot Spots include known trafficking routes, border crossing points, entertainment venues, shipping ports, transportation stations, and other locations used by drug traffickers.”

While the US now appears to be hot on the trail of the druglord, historian Alfred McCoy claims in his landmark 1972 book, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, that Wei Hsueh-kang had previously worked as a CIA operative when the Agency was backing the anti-Mao Kuomintang (KMT) forces in Burma in the 1950s and 1960s.

He had fled to Wa state after the communist takeover in China and lived with his two brothers in the Wa Hills, all of whom worked for the KMT-CIA network along the Shan-Yunnan border. He then began to work as treasurer for the notorious Khun Sa, who led the Mong Tai Army and in his heyday from the 1970s to the mid-1990s was known as the ‘Opium King’, at one point heading the FBI’s most wanted list.

In recent years Wei Hsueh-kang has moved into Burma’s booming methamphetamine trade, for which Thailand has become a key market. Tolerance of the drug in Thailand is zero, and drug enforcement officials launch regular crackdowns on suspected traffickers.
http://www.dvb.no/news/2m-bounty-for-wa-druglord/13376
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EDITORIAL
Let Rangoon defend itself

* Published: 13/12/2010 at 12:00 AM
* Newspaper section: News

It was good of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to defend the Burmese government against yet another charge of secret nuclear projects. But Mr Abhisit's attempt at rebutting the latest WikiLeaks memo on the subject was weak. He quoted statements by Burmese leaders, who hardly are good examples of openness and virtue. The six-year-old document from the US embassy in Rangoon certainly provided no proof that Burma has lied to the world about its nuclear ambitions. Neither did Mr Abhisit's good-natured trust of propaganda statements from the military junta.

The once confidential document was found in the WikiLeaks trove of purloined diplomatic cables. It may have been the first such clue that Burma had entered into secret negotiations and trade deals with North Korea _ which it has done since that August 2004 cable was sent to Washington. It is scant on details and heavy on unverified reports from a foreign businessman. He told US diplomats in Rangoon that he had seen suspicious cargo on a barge, and heard that up to 300 North Koreans were working on a site near Minbu (also known as Sagu), some 350km northwest of Rangoon. Diplomats said the report might be exaggerated.

But since that cable published by WikiLeaks, events have become more interesting. After deeply secret negotiations, Burma and North Korea agreed to restore diplomatic relations in 2007. They had been severed in 1983 after a North Korean terrorist attack in Rangoon. In the more than three years since relations were resumed, the two countries have grown friendly _ quickly. Their cooperation in trade, military and other matters is opaque.

The two rogue hermits, at opposite corners of East Asia, have caused great concern _ singly and jointly. In 2008, North Korea published photos of a visit by the Burmese junta's No.3, Gen Shwe Mann. According to the official media, he toured secret tunnel complexes built to protect North Korea's military firepower including warplanes and missiles _ and the regime's nuclear weapons.

Within months, an unknown number of North Koreans were seen by many witnesses working on massive tunnel complexes in Burma. They have been photographed by satellites, seen by local people. The Burmese government has refused to acknowledge the presence of the huge tunnels, let alone state their use. This, despite Mr Abhisit's apparent readiness to credit the dictators as transparent in their private denials of nuclear projects.

But it is no secret that Burma has nuclear ambitions _ although for peaceful purposes on the surface. Russia has often confirmed approaches by the military junta to build a reactor. Whether it is for medical purposes like the Bangkok nuclear reactor, or for power generation is unclear.

In fact, almost everything about Burma and nuclear power is unclear. Does the tunnel complex store North Korean weapons or equipment? That is a good question, and one that the regime never has answered. Mr Abhisit and all of us do not know the answer.

What is needed from Burma, as from North Korea and Iran, is a clear accounting of the nuclear questions. By international law, Burma and all countries must declare their nuclear ambitions, including research and electricity generation. The International Atomic Energy Agency is the clearing house. No nation including Thailand would protest if Burma planned to use nuclear power in peaceful ways. As it stands, Mr Abhisit cannot deflect the suspicion, when Burma itself refuses to be clear about what it is doing. http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/211021/let-rangoon-defend-itself
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US diplomats broke laws by sending uranium on commercial flight, says leaked cable
* Richard Lloyd Parry, Philip Pank
* From: The Times
* December 13, 2010 9:22AM
* 26 comments

AMERICAN diplomats secretly sent uranium on a commercial airliner, in violation of US government rules about the abuse of the diplomatic bag system, and laws governing the air transportation of hazardous materials.

The metallic powder was sent from the US Embassy in Burma, according to a cable published by WikiLeaks.

The document, signed by a senior US official in Rangoon, states that Burmese authorities were unaware of the shipment.

Under international agreement, cargo sent in a “diplomatic pouch” cannot be opened, or even X-rayed, by host countries. But the shipment violated State Department and Federal Aviation Administration rules, that bans the transportation of most radioactive materials on passenger flights.

In June this year, the FAA fined two Indian companies $430,000 for transporting depleted uranium on British Airways flights from Mumbai to Boston in 2008.

Even on cargo flights, radioactive materials must be packaged, marked, declared and labelled according to strict regulations.

End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar.

The US embassy in Rangoon refused to answer questions on the matter but, according to the cable signed by Larry Dinger, the charge d'affaires, the nature of the cargo was concealed from Burmese authorities.

“Embassy Rangoon assesses that the host nation is currently unaware,” Mr Dinger wrote. “Burmese authorities would likely seize any additional samples or stocks of the material if aware.”

The sample was obtained as part of embassy investigations into suspected nuclear activities by the regime, that have been a subject of speculation since 2002. Other cables recount reports of the junta's alleged attempts to obtain nuclear technology from Russia and North Korea, which reportedly sent workers to excavate a vast secret military bunker in the Burmese jungle.

In September 2008, a Burmese man approached the embassy offering to sell it uranium-238.

“The subject brought with him a small bottle weighing 1.8 ounces (50g) and measuring 70mm long by 26mm in diameter, which was half-filled with a grey metallic powder,” the cable records.

“He claimed the material was uranium-238 in powder form. The subject claims to represent a small group that wants to sell uranium to the US.

“He estimates there are at least 2,000kg more that could be dug up from the site in Kayah State.”

The embassy sent the sample for analysis in the US. “The sample was wrapped in several layers and placed inside multiple containers, including glass, lead, and wooden boxes/crates,” Mr Dinger wrote.

The State Department Foreign Affairs Manual explicitly forbids radioactive substances from being sent in a diplomatic bag.

The Times http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/wikileaks/us-diplomats-broke-laws-by-sending-uranium-on-commercial-flight-says-leaked-cable/story-fn775xjq-1225970009126
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Burma army retreats from Karen flashpoint

By MAUNG TOO
Published: 13 December 2010

Fighting between the Burmese army and Karen rebels has eased around Hpalu village and government troops are reportedly retreating to higher positions.

It comes after a month of heavy clashes in the Hpalu area close to Myawaddy in eastern Karen state. Burmese troops are looking to rout a breakaway Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) faction whose strength has been bolstered in recent days by the support of the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) and hundreds of former student rebels.

Khin Kyaw, secretary of the Military Commission of the All Burma Students’ Democratic Front (ABSDF), said that his troops were clearing the area and “searching for enemy soldiers who retreated from the battlefield yesterday”.

Reports have emerged that the Burmese army has been forcibly using civilians as porters to carry equipment through the rugged border terrain. Up to 20,000 people fled the area when fighting first broke out on 8 November and have since been pouring back and forth across the border with Thailand.

It was close to Hpalu where the bodies of six KNU/KNLA Peace Council troops who had been fighting alongside the DKBA were found last week after they had been abducted during a raid on a nearby outpost by Burmese soldiers.

Khin Kyaw added that Karen and ABSDF forces had destroyed seven bridges in the area to block supply lines for Burmese troops “disrupt and delay the work of the enemy”.

Clashes have also occurred between Burmese troops and the opposition Shan State Army which has refused demands by the government to transform into a Border Guard Force (BGF). The refusal by the DKBA faction to make the transformation was a key catalyst for the recent fighting.

At the weekend an ambush by the KNLA on a Burmese army battalion in Mae Kathar village near Payathonzu, which lies around 150 kilometres south of Myawaddy, injured one soldier. Reports also surfaced from the area of a friendly fire incident between two Burmese columns after one mistook the other for a KNLA brigade.

Around 400 Mae Kathar residents have fled the village, many to Payathonzu, while the village head, Saw Wah Lay Say, has been taken by the Burmese army and placed in custody.
http://www.dvb.no/news/burma-army-retreats-from-karen-flashpoint/13372
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Weekly Business Roundup (December 13, 2010)

By WILLIAM BOOT Monday, December 13, 2010

India Puts Burma on its Export Target List for Nuclear Reactors

India’s state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation says it is forming a commercial joint venture with private Indian firms to export small nuclear reactors to Burma and similar “emerging economies.”

A consortium of companies working with the NPC and financial institutions will seek to export and install pressurized heavy water reactors, reports Mumbai’s Business Standard newspaper.

The reactors will have electricity generating capacity ranging from 220 megawatts to 540 megawatts, said the paper.

The planned consortium would provide the technology, construction and management of nuclear power plants. It is aiming to sell its reactors to Burma, Kazakhstan, Indonesia and Malaysia, said the newspaper.

The Indian development comes amid new revelations concerning alleged North Korean aid to the Burmese military junta to establish nuclear reactor capability.

The ongoing leak of United States’ diplomatic messages by WikiLeaks claims that the US embassy in Rangoon had been monitoring possible Burmese nuclear ambitions for several years.

China Plans New Railway Links to Rangoon, Burma Coast

China plans to build a new railway line linking Rangoon with Kunming, the capital of neighboring Yunnan Province, according to Chinese media reports.

Construction of the new line will begin in the first quarter of 2011, the 21st Century Business Herald reported.

The paper named an official at Burma’s embassy in Beijing, Hlaing Myint Oo, as the source of the report, which said the Chinese are planning a railway link between Kunming and the oil port being developed at Kyaukphyu on Ramree island on Burma’s west coast.

Kyaukphyu as planned by the Chinese will become a major crude oil transshipment point for imports from Africa and the Middle East.

An oil pipeline is currently being constructed through Burma, also linking the port with Kunming. It’s due to be completed in late 2013.

The paper said the new railway route to the port will not be ready before 2015.

China has recently supplied train engines and passenger and freight cars to Burma, said the official news agency Xinhua.

India ‘Bungled’ Efforts to Beat China in Burma Gas Competition

India lost several big business opportunities in Burma due to “bungling and procrastination” by government ministries and state-owned companies, said the influential leading English language newspaper The Hindu.

India’s business opportunities in Burma have now been hindered by China’s monopoly on the junta’s favors, the paper said, referring to the Chinese deal to buy virtually all the gas in the huge offshore field in Burmese waters of the Bay of Bengal.

“What we should ensure is that the Chinese presence [in Burma] does not threaten our maritime security or become a source of concern in our northeastern states,” The Hindu warned, while conceding that it would be “pointless to blindly compete with China.”

India’s engagement with Burma has to be constructive and not perceived as interference in its internal affairs. The effort should be to encourage the national reconciliation Aung San Suu Kyi has spoken of, without intrusive involvement or unsolicited public “advice,” The Hindu said.

Asian Buyers ‘Undermine’ American Jade Act Sanctions

Asian buyers are making a mockery of US attempts to undermine the Burma junta’s gems trade, which reportedly is earning more money than ever.

Two-thirds of more than 6,000 traders who visited the junta’s latest gems fair came from abroad, mostly China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, according to official figures.

The two-week fair in November in Naypiydaw recorded turnover in excess of US $1 billion, according to unnamed government officials quoted by Reuters news agency.

The figures cannot be independently verified but the London-based human rights campaign group Network Myanmar said: “These results highlight the absurdity of the US Jade Act which seeks to sanction the trade, but has very little effect.”

The October 2007 U.S. Jade Act prohibits the sale in America of jade, rubies and other gems mined in Burma and imported via third countries.
Network Myanmar and others argue that Western sanctions have hurt ordinary Burmese more than the country’s military leaders who are the target of the trade curbing laws.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=20303

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