News & Articles on Burma-Wednesday, 13 April, 2011

News & Articles on Burma
Wednesday, 13 April, 2011
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EU opens door to diplomacy with Myanmar by easing sanctions
EU will temporarily lifts visa ban on some members of Myanmar government
Human Rights Abuses Reported in Shan State Clashes
Always looking for an excuse to get rid of refugees
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EU opens door to diplomacy with Myanmar by easing sanctions
Apr 12, 2011, 18:15 GMT

Luxembourg - European Union foreign ministers on Tuesday moved to ease diplomatic sanctions on Myanmar, two months after the southeastern Asian nation's main opposition requested a review of the restrictive measures to encourage democracy.

Although the core sanctions are to be extended for another year, travel bans and asset freezes on some Myanmar officials - most notably the foreign minister - will be lifted during that time.

High-level Western officials will now also be allowed to visit Myanmar, although they are expected to be given 'access to senior levels of the government and to key opposition figures,' the conclusions of the EU ministers' meeting in Luxembourg say.

They also encourage Myanmar to make democratic changes, noting that it is willing to 'respond to improvements in governance and progress.'

'The EU will assess the ... government by its deeds and review the set of restrictive measures accordingly,' the document notes.

Myanmar has been under the rule of a junta since 1988. The international community began implementing sanctions in the wake of an army crackdown on a pro-democracy movement in 1988 that left an estimated 3,000 people dead.

Debate on lifting the sanctions has increased since Myanmar held a general election on November 7, and freed opposition icon and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi on November 13.

Suu Kyi's influence over Western democracies in persuading them to lift sanctions is deemed one of her few remaining political trump cards in dealing with the regime.
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/asiapacific/news/article_1632520.php/EU-opens-door-to-diplomacy-with-Myanmar-by-easing-sanctions
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EU will temporarily lifts visa ban on some members of Myanmar government

By Associated Press, Tuesday, April 12, 1:41 PM

BRUSSELS — The European Union has eased sanctions on Myanmar’s government, with the lifting of a visa ban on some civilian members of the regime.

EU foreign ministers decided Tuesday to lift the ban on its Myanmar counterpart for a year to maintain diplomatic channels.

Foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations had appealed for the lifting of the sanctions.

Myanmar held its first elections in two decades in November. After the elections, democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/eu-will-temporarily-lifts-visa-ban-on-some-members-of-myanmar-government/2011/04/12/AFrMZDRD_story.html
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Human Rights Abuses Reported in Shan State Clashes
By SAI ZOM HSENG Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Large-scale human rights abuses occurred during recent fighting between Burmese government troops and the Shan State Army-North (SSA-North), which has left hundreds of thousands of local people in fear for their lives, according to a Shan human rights organization.

The Shan Human Rights Foundation (SHRF), a Thailand-based organization, issued a statement on Tuesday regarding human rights abuses committed by the Tatmadaw (Burmese armed forces) during clashes between the Tatmadaw and the SSA-North.

According to the SHRF statement, villagers are being tortured and killed on suspicion of supporting the Shan resistance. In addition, women are being targeted for sexual violence—three women were gang-raped in separate incidents in the conflict area, the statement said.

SHRF spokesperson Kham Harn Fa said, “Northern Shan State is being plunged into war and new atrocities inflicted on our people. Now is definitely not the time to lift sanctions against the regime.”

The conflicts started on March 13, when the 22-year-old cease fire agreement between the SSA-North and the Tatmadaw was broken. The SHRF statement said that the Tatmadaw mobilized 3,500 troops from over 20 battalions to attack the headquarters of the SSA-North in Mong Hsu Township, which is near the border between northern and southern Shan State.

Namp Lao village, located in the northeastern part of Mong Hsu, is where the first clash broke out. According to the SHRF statement, four novices were killed and two villagers injured by the Tatmadaw in that clash, and fighting then spread to Tang Yan, Kesi, Mong Yai, Hsipaw, Lashio and Kyaukme townships, with 65 battles taking place in the last three weeks.

A source close to the SSA-North from Lashio, the capital of northern Shan State, told The Irrawaddy that the SSA-North is using guerrilla warfare tactics to fight the Tatmadaw.

“When the Burmese Army attacked the Namp Lao and Wan Hai bases, which are the strongest bases of the SSA-North, the troops were spread into different areas. But the SSA-North troops are fighting back against the Burmese troops,” a local source said.

On March 31, SSA-North troops launched a bomb attack on an army convoy from the No 291 Light Infantry Battallion based in Nam Paung village, which is about 25 miles from Lashio. A villager from Nam Poung said that no one was injured in the bomb attack, but the vehicles were destroyed.

Over 100 local people from five to seven villages near Nam Paung were then forced to relocate to an area which has been controlled by Burmese army troops since the end of March.

A villager who formerly lived in Nam Hma Mauk Tong village, where SSA-North troops are also based, said that they were ordered by the No 291 Light Infantry Battalion based in Nam Paung to move to the new location. If they refused to do so, they would be arrested and their village burned, he said.

“About 50 soldiers came into the village after several gun fights occurred. Then they told every villager to get outside of the house and started looking for SSA-North soldiers inside. When they saw a picture of someone in an olive green suit like an SSA uniform, they seized the whole family without asking anything and took the electronics. After that they destroyed the rest,” said a local source who has moved to a new village.

“At that time I just prayed to the Lord Buddha to escape from such a terrible moment,” he continued. “Everything was okay when the SSA-North troops were based in our village. They even solved some problems for us.”

A source close to the SSA-North said that Col Yang, the leader of the SSA-North troops based in Nam Hma Mauk Tong, has fled but is still ordering his troops to fight back against the Tatmadaw.

Military observers said that Tatmadaw attacked the SSA-North, which has at least 3,000 troops, because it refused to transform into a border guard force under Burmese military command.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21119
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Always looking for an excuse to get rid of refugees
Editorial Desk
The Nation (Thailand)
Publication Date : 13-04-2011

Something is seriously out of tune here. Thailand's National Security Council (NSC) is calling for the repatriation of refugees along the Thai-Burma border, but the Shan community, in its latest report, denounced the ongoing Burmese offensive against civilians, including the shelling of Buddhist temples, gang-rape and using women as cannon fodder.

At least 65 battles have taken place over three weeks in the central region of Burma's Shan State, where a 22-year-old ceasefire agreement between the Burmese regime and the Shan State Army-North (SSA-N) ended last month when the Burmese military mobilised some 3,500 troops from twenty battalions to attack the ethnic army.

"Over 100,000 civilians in the conflict zone now fear for their lives. The Burmese army has deployed mortars throughout the area and shelled indiscriminately at populated villages. The initial attack on March 13 involved the shelling of a Buddhist temple at Wan Nam Lao, killing four novices and injuring two villagers," the Shan report said.

"Villagers are being tortured and killed on suspicion of supporting the Shan resistance, and women are targeted for sexual violence. Three women were gang-raped in separate incidents in Wan Nam Lao, including a 30-year-old woman who had given birth only one month earlier, and died after being raped by numerous troops," the report said.

The latest wave of assaults has displaced an additional 3,000 villagers from their homes. Although the Burmese government rarely grants visas to journalists, many reporters and aid workers have sneaked across the border to get eye-witness accounts of these incidents. Western governments back these reports by human rights groups as credible.

In the case of "License to Rape", a report compiled by the Shan Human Rights Foundation and the Shan Women's Action Network, the US State Department in 2002 dispatched a team to verify such claims and came up with the same horrific conclusion about the use of rape as a military weapon by the Burmese junta.

Report after report, in a multitude of languages, spells out the appalling conditions in Burma, and the best the Thai government can do is to look for a convenient excuse to send these people back to uncertainty, fear, harassment and the high possibility of death. All the millions of baht spent on educating our officials and diplomats domestically and internationally, and this is the best we can come up with?

NSC Secretary-General Tawin Pleansri told reporters after his meeting with Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, foreign minister Kasit Piromya, the armed forces chiefs and other security agencies at Government House on Monday (April 11) that the 100,000-plus refugees in Thailand should return to Burma because Burma has just concluded its general election and a new government is in place.

Never mind the validity of the junta's sham election, does the NSC chief and the rest of the Thai security establishment think that such a bogus poll is a cure-all remedy?

Burma's military government officially dissolved the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) and inaugurated General Thein Sein as the country's new president in Naypyidaw on March 30. It's ironic - or sad, to be more accurate - how we forget the good times we had with Thein Sein when he was leading the "Triangle Command" out of Kengtung between 1997 and 2001. Scores of Burmese raids and the shelling of refugee camps well within the Thai side of the border were carried out during his watch.

If he didn't give a hoot about Thailand's sovereignty back when he was commanding his troops to shell and attack camps inside Thailand, does anyone think he will give a damn about the ethnic people Thailand plans to repatriate back to Burma?

Perhaps this is just something this administration can conveniently point to so it can send the refugees back: technically they are "displaced people" and the places they reside in are not "refugee camps" but "temporary shelters". So let's send them back to the war zone they fled from. We come up with such terminology - displaced people and temporary shelters - so we can distance ourselves when atrocities happen. Do the authorities honestly think the conflict will stop just because of the election? If that's the thinking and logic of the country's top security chief, perhaps he needs to find another job.

But then again, when was the last time the NSC gave the government an independent assessment of anything? If it is going to pay lip service to the government's wishes, perhaps the NSC itself is just a big waste of money. Any Mickey Mouse agency could do that.

http://www.asianewsnet.net/home/news.php?id=18442&sec=3