News & Articles on Burma-Tuesday, 22 February, 2011

News & Articles on Burma
Tuesday, 22 February, 2011
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Could Burma's Next Uprising Begin on the Internet?
Burma’s '15-Minute' Parliament
Wa, Shan disclaim responsibility for shelling junta border base
Sanctions aren't working in Burma
Farmers Fear More Land Seizures
Bomb suspect lawyer ‘denied case report’
Burma’s report to UN ‘is fictional’
Army seizes 30,000 acres of farmland
New Alliance fast becoming the only game in town
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Could Burma's Next Uprising Begin on the Internet?
By BA KAUNG Tuesday, February 22, 2011

“Since last year, we have trained over 120 laborers from the countryside on how to use the Internet,” said Ko Win, a middle-aged political activist in Rangoon. “I taught them how to use Gmail and Gtalk, though I myself have yet to learn how to use Facebook and Twitter.”

Ko Win said that he hopes some of these students will become politically active and revolt against Burma's military rulers.

“We hope we can use the Internet to initiate an uprising this summer like those that took place in Tunisia and Egypt,” he said. “Because we cannot rely on the leadership of the mainstream opposition to topple the regime.”

Ko Win, who for security reasons does not want his full name identified, said he and his friends used their own money to give students free Internet lessons in Rangoon Internet cafes.

Many other Burmese activists are also excited by the nationwide uprisings in North Africa that have already ousted two entrenched dictators. But some have said that to use the Internet to organize and rally a political protest in Burma, they must overcome challenges such as the country's slow Internet speed, the junta's restrictions on Internet access and the small number of Internet users in the country of nearly 60 million people.

One-third of Burma's population is thought to be between the ages of 15 and 24—and analysts have said that the youthful demographics in Egypt and the Arab world have played a major role in recent events. But Burma has only 400,000 Internet users, most of whom are in Rangoon and Mandalay, the country's two major cities. In fact, there are only 10,000 users in other parts of the country, according to official data.

“Compared to China and countries in the Middle East, there is a small number of Internet users inside our country,” said Dr. Lun Swe, a well-known Burmese blogger based in Thailand's border town of Mae Sot, a hotbed of Burmese dissident groups.

“It remains a major challenge for activists inside Burma to get proper Internet access. Those who have direct and unrestricted access to the Internet are regime-affiliated,” he said.

Lun Swe's personal anti-government blog is one of a handful of active Burmese political blogs, all of which are based outside Burma. The blog, which compiles all the day's news stories published by Burmese exiled media and even posts videos of the world's major political events, is popular among Burmese people.

He said that an average of 8,000 people visit his blog daily—but most of them are from Singapore and the United States rather than from inside Burma, where the press is heavily restricted.

A member of the Vigorous Burmese Student Warriors, a militant dissident group based in Thailand, also expressed his dismay at the lack of success in recruiting members and raising the political tempo inside Burma through the Internet.

“On important political anniversary days, I used to send political messages to 7,000 email users who I confirmed to be inside Burma by looking at their IP addresses,” he said. “But I got only four positive responses—some e-mail users even replied and requested me not to send this kind of political e-mail again.”

Many people inside Burma do not have their own personal computers and few of those who do have access to the Internet. Hence, they heavily depend on Internet cafes to get online.

“They would instantly order the closure of Internet cafes if protests broke out this time around,” Ko Win said. “So we must be well-organized.”

The regime is suspected to have already ordered Internet cafe owners to install spying software, such as “key-logger,” and screen reading software on their computers to record anti-government online activities. In addition, under government pressure some Internet cafes reportedly installed CCTV cameras in their shops since last year.

“Please do not visit the banned websites,” reads a notice posted on the wall of an Internet cafe near a major shopping mall in Yankin Township in Rangoon. The regime has banned access to several Internet websites critical of it, include those run by The Irrawaddy and BBC Burmese radio station.

Twitter, the micro-blogging website which opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi desires to use, is also banned. And even if Twitter was not prohibited, Burma's slow Internet connection speed would preclude its use at this time.

But Facebook, which is the second most popular site after Gmail in Burma, is accessible.

The Burmese are no strangers to revolution. They still vividly remember the regime's brutal crackdown on the mass anti-government protests that went on for weeks in 2007, and Burmese dissidents were even among the earliest trainees of Gene Sharp, the American intellectual whose non-violent, anti-dictatorship methods partly influenced the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, according to the New York Times.

Sharp's “From Dictatorship to Democracy,” a 93-page guide book which describes “198 methods of non-violent action,” was originally published by Burmese exiled groups in Bangkok in 1993.

Dr. Naing Aung was one of the first Burmese who received direct training from Sharp in Marnepalaw, the former stronghold of Karen ethnic rebels located in the jungle of Karen State on the Thai-Burmese border. Naing Aung was the former chairman of the All Burma Students' Democratic Front, an armed group of students who fled to the border in the aftermath of the major anti-government uprising in 1988.

“What I most remember is Gene Sharp's method of creating disorder in a government's mechanism and planning during the revolutions,” he said. “Burma will have another revolution as long as repression continues to exist, whether initiated by technology or otherwise.”

However, a Burmese dissident in Rangoon said the people inside Burma are so traumatized by the 2007 regime crackdown that it will take time for the people to launch a similar one.

“The question is how we quickly overcome the sense of fear we are left with. The 2007 event was very recent,” he said. “When was the last major government crackdown on opposition in Egypt and Tunisia or Libya?”

Given the regime's continued tight control of the country despite its self-declared transition to democracy, analysts say that Burma's next revolution would likely be met with the type of deadly response handed out by Libya's Gaddafi rather than the more tempered response from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Copyright © 2008 Irrawaddy Publishing Group | www.irrawaddy.org
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=20804
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Burma’s '15-Minute' Parliament
By WAI MOE Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Before Burma’s elections last year and the opening of the Hluttaw (Parliament) at the end of January, some Burmese politicians, journalists and scholars on the military-ruled nation expected the transition to a quasi-civilian government to create some much-needed political and economic space.

However, just three weeks after Parliament convened for the first time in more than two decades, it has become obvious to all that Burma's post-election politics is struggling not only for space but also for time.

Lawmakers and military personnel sit in Parliament in Naypyidaw on Jan. 31. (Photo: MRTV)
Since Jan. 31, the Pyithu Hluttaw, or Lower House, has met just three times, for a total of 8 hours and 20 minutes, while the Amyotha Hluttaw, or Upper House, has held three meetings totaling just 6 hours and 35 minutes. The Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (the Union Parliament, a combination of both Houses) has held 11 meetings so far, adding up to just 9 hours and 5 minutes.

None of the Union Parliament meetings held since Feb. 11 has been more than 20 minutes long, with the meetings on Feb. 15 and Feb. 17 lasting a mere 10 minutes each—surprising observers and a few members of Parliament from non-military-backed parties.

Khin Maung Swe, a leader of the National Democratic Force (NDF), which won four Upper House seats and 12 Lower House seats, said the reason for the short meetings could be that the ruling junta and parliamentary officials want to delay the creation of a new government until late March.

“Although the Parliament has been meeting for the past three weeks, the president-in-waiting and his cabinet have still not been sworn in yet,” he said, attributing the slow pace of progress to the brevity of meetings.

“Each meeting is just a few minutes long, allowing only enough time to make one or two appointments,” he said. “We really should have done more by now.”

This protracted approach to dealing with affairs of state comes at a cost. The government spends 3.7 million kyat (US $41,000) each day on meals for parliamentary members, said Khin Maung Swe.

Over the past three weeks, there has been precious little for the Burmese press to report about the proceedings in Parliament. It is perhaps just as well, then, that the only media allowed to cover Parliament is the state-run Myanmar News Agency.

There was, however, one brief episode that might have attracted some outside attention. On Feb. 10, Myat Nyana Soe, an NDF member of the Upper House, proposed reducing the number of ministries from 34 to 25.

This suggestion was soon quashed, however, when Minister of Information Kyaw Hsan stood up to scold Myat Nyana Soe, reminding him that China has 22 ministries and 20 ministerial-level boards and India has 35 ministries and 21 ministerial-level boards.

In Rangoon, the former capital, journalists are still trying to figure out what to make of the trickle of information coming out of Naypyidaw.

“In the past three weeks, the only significant thing the Hluttaw has done is elect the president and vice-presidents. The government is still not formed yet,” said a political reporter for a Rangoon-based news journal, speaking to The Irrawaddy on condition of anonymity.

“For the past ten days, most Hluttaw meetings have lasted just 15 minutes. So now people have started calling it the 15-minute Hluttaw,” he added.

While outside observers may find the situation in Naypyidaw odd, however, it seems to be perfectly in keeping with the regime's desire to keep Burma's democracy strictly “disciplined.”

In his first speech as the Upper House speaker on Jan. 31, ex-Maj-Gen Khin Aung Myint urged MPs not to debate, but to “discuss any matters in unison.”

“It is not important not to have a sense of contradiction,” said the junta hardliner, who also serves as the minister of culture and speaker of the Union Parliament.

“The truth may disappear because of the eloquence of a person in a debate-like situation,” he warned his fellow parliamentarians.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=20803
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Wa, Shan disclaim responsibility for shelling junta border base
Tuesday, 22 February 2011 17:28 S.H.A.N.
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Plan for the inauguration of the new sub-township in Mongton township, opposite Chiangmai’s Wiang Haeng district, today has been postponed following shelling by an unknown armed group on Friday night (18 February), according to sources from the border.

The shelling between 21:00-22:00 local time had killed and injured an unspecified number of Burma Army soldiers.

The United Wa State Army’s 171st Military Region, whose transport line between 772nd Brigade in Mongjawd in the east and 778th Brigade in Khailong in the west, has been threatened by the Burma Army base in the middle, has denied any responsibility outright.

The other belligerent the Shan State Army (SSA) ‘South’, whose main base Loi Taileng lies further west was also vehement in its denial. “It’s not our communication links that have been severed,” responded Lt-Gen Yawdserk, the SSA South leader, to SHAN’s query. “We are in no urgency to attack it.”

The Monghta sub-township which came into being last month used to be part of the stronghold of the Mong Tai Army (MTA), the SSA South’s predecessor, until 1996 when its leader Khun Sa surrendered.

Junta authorities have invited people far and near to resettle in Monghta, 44 km north of Wiang Haeng border, offering privileges such as “permission to grow anything without official interference for 6 years”, according to one of informed source.

Monghta will also serve as a railroad link between Mongpan, west of the Salween, and Mongton, east of the Salween, according to an unconfirmed report. http://www.shanland.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3481:wa-shan-disclaim-responsibility-for-shelling-junta-border-base&catid=86:war&Itemid=284
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Sanctions aren't working in Burma
By Andrew Cohen, Citizen Special February 22, 2011 8:02 AM

Today, Carleton University will confer an honorary doctorate on Aung San Suu Kyi, the lioness of Burma. It is another accolade for Suu Kyi, the courageous Nobel laureate who, as always, will be unable to accept it in person.

Since she was released from house arrest last November, Suu Kyi has been careful not to provoke the regime. She has said little in public and declined to travel even within Burma beyond Rangoon, where, until last autumn, she had been a prisoner in her crumbling lakeside villa for 16 of the last 21 years.

Yet earlier this month, her prodemocracy party reaffirmed its support for the sanctions imposed on Burma by western nations, including Canada. It insisted that the sanctions are hurting the government, not the people.

"Recently, there have been calls for the removal of sanctions," said the National League for Democracy. "Targeted sanctions serve as a warning that acts contrary to basic norms of justice and human rights cannot be committed with impunity even by authoritarian governments."

Although the declaration did suggest "modifying" sanctions, it was unlikely to endear Suu Kyi to the junta that released her. And it put to rest, at least for now, speculation that Suu Kyi was preparing to ask the West to reconsider its longstanding policy.

And that's too bad, really, because evidence suggests that sanctions are not working. If they are hurting the regime, whose greed, ineptitude and brutality are beyond question, it is not clear where and how.

A recent report by Mark MacKinnon in The Globe and Mail describes a country in which the military and commercial elite has found ways to circumvent the trade and travel restrictions that have been imposed in varying degrees by Canada, the United States, Australia and the European Union since 1988.

Just last year, Canada tightened the sanctions it had already strengthened after the uprising in 2007, when the junta crushed the dissident movement, led largely by the monks. Canada's sanctions have been called the harshest in the world.

MacKinnon, who spent a revealing two weeks undercover in Burma, sees an elite that has become rich turning the sanctions to its advantage. His view of the moneyed class working in lockstep with the military reflects an emerging consensus that, after 23 years, sanctions are no longer effective, if they ever were.

Worse, in limiting the volume of western aid to one of the poorest countries in Asia, sanctions have hurt the most vulnerable people in Burma. Certainly that's the view of critics of sanctions among the aid community.

This general criticism of sanctions isn't new; the same was said of the sanctions imposed on South Africa in the 1980s. Despite the opposition of Margaret Thatcher, who was on the wrong side of history, they were decisive in bringing down apartheid.

The trouble is that Burma isn't South Africa. It has neighbours like Thailand, India and China who ignore the sanctions. They are happy to buy the hardwoods, natural gas, minerals and precious gems that the junta is happy to sell, enriching itself and perpetuating its illegitimate rule.

None of this suggests that Burma's leaders are anything but the ruthless thugs they are. This is the crowd that sent soldiers into the hospitals in 1988 to kill pro-democracy protesters, pioneering the techniques the Chinese would use to crush their dissidents the next year in Tiananmen Square.

This isn't to say that last fall's elections in Burma were not a sham, as they were in 1990 (when Suu Kyi's party won and was denied power) and that the elite is not among the most corrupt in the world. They were and it is.

But what do you do with a policy that is failing? How do you retreat from an orthodoxy?

You explore other ways. After almost a quarter century of sanctions and the isolation they bring, Burma has slipped beyond western influence. It now takes its cues mostly from China, which disdains liberal democracy. India, which is a bona fide democracy, now worries more about protecting its own strategic and economic interests in the region than liberalization in Burma.

Some observers see a generational shift coming in Burma, particularly among the military, and argue that we should engage younger Burmese. They also suggest that a Burma that has ostensibly moved to civilian rule may be no more impervious to democracy than countries like Indonesia that were once thought irredeemably authoritarian.

While sanctions did work in South Africa, they failed to contain Saddam Hussein in Iraq. More pointedly, sanctions have not dislodged Fidel Castro and his successors in Cuba after some 50 years.

It is time to look at new ways to address the enduring atrocity called Burma. Awful as it may be to see the generals crow, it may also be that trade, tourism and political engagement -and the seeds of change they carry -are now the only way to unseat them.

Andrew Cohen is a professor of journalism and international affairs at Carleton University.

e-mail: andrewzcohen@yahoo.ca

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Sanctions+aren+working+Burma/4324317/story.html#ixzz1EgzoH5lF
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Farmers Fear More Land Seizures
By KO HTWE Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Farmers in Kyaikmayaw Township in Mon State say they are worried about further land confiscations in the area after nearly 600 acres of land were confiscated by the Zay Gabar Company to make way for construction of the largest cement factory in Burma.

Rumors are rife that Zay Gabar—which is owned by junta crony Khin Shwe, an elected Union Solidarity and Development Party candidate representing Twantay Township in Rangoon Division—will soon seize 200 more acres of land in the vicinity.

Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Monday, Khin Shwe said that lands which bordered the roads in and out of the projected cement factory will need to be listed for seizure.

Meanwhile, locals whose land was confiscated have complained that compensation for land seizures has been completely inadequate.

“We haven’t received enough compensation,” said a farmer who lost land to the seizures. “It is too little. There is nothing we can buy with it.”

Representatives of the Zay Gabar company have reportedly paid out 300,000 kyat [US $300] per acre seized, although some 30 farmers have already refused the compensation.

The farmers said they had sent letters of complaint to Burmese junta chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe, but to no avail.

The 1963 Safeguarding Peasants' Rights Law, Section (3), states that: “A Civil Court shall not make a decree or order for: a warrant of attachment for or confiscation of agricultural land; neither for employed livestock and implements, harrows and implements, other animate and inanimate implements, nor the produce of agricultural land; prohibition of work upon or entry into agricultural land; prohibition of movement or sale in whole or part or use of employed livestock and implements, harrows and implements, other animate and inanimate implements, or the produce of agricultural land.”

Many land confiscations have taken place across Burma under the authority of the military junta and in collusion with private companies. Some 600 farmers in Kachin State were evicted from their farms between 2006 and 2008 without full compensation and displaced to areas far from their ancestral lands while the state granted 1,338 acres of the seized property to the Yuzana Company.

Approximately 8,500 acres of land belonging to 800 farmers in Rangoon Division have been confiscated by the Burmese authorities in the past two years and distributed to private companies.

There have been no less than 381 land seizure cases in Rangoon Division alone where private companies have confiscated lands belonging to farmers with the help of local authorities.

Meanwhile, at least seven lawyers and farmers' representatives have held a meeting to discuss the issues and the rights of farmers and workers, according to Pho Phyu, a lawyer who has previously represented Rangoon farmers in land seizure cases.

“The Burmese government has recognized the right to organize and to form a workers' or peasants' union,” he said. “To do that, we have to be ready to put it into action.”
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=20802
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Bomb suspect lawyer ‘denied case report’
By KHIN HNIN HTET
Published: 22 February 2011
Eleven Karen youths appeared in court yesterday for their first hearing after being charged in October last year under the Explosives Act.

The hearing was held at the closed court inside Rangoon’s Insein prison, where media is banned. They are accused of plotting a bomb attack, but their lawyer Kyaw Ho, who claims not to have been given a copy of the case report, says it is unclear which specific incident the court is referring to.

Amongst the eleven are a brother and sister, Saw Naing Win and Aye Aye New, who are also alleged to have breached Burma’s strict Immigration Act and Unlawful Associations Act.

Delays over the handing of case reports to defence teams are commonly reported in Burma, where critics regularly question the independence of the courts.

That concern was heightened last week after the appointing of Tun Tun Oo to the position of chief justice, the most senior-ranking judicial post in Burma. He was personally nominated by President Thein Sein, a close ally of junta chief Than Shwe, and is on the EU visa ban and asset freeze list.

Kyaw Ho said meanwhile that Insein prison had released a statement qualifying its reasons for placing Phyo Wei Aung, who has been charged with murder for his alleged role in a series of grenade attacks in Rangoon in April last year, in solitary confinement.

“The prison’s jailer showed me the notice which said Phyo Wei Aung had violated the prison’s regulations, interfered with the prison’s management, incited other inmates and wrongly accused prison officials,” he told DVB.

As a result, he was placed in solitary on 4 February for the duration of one month and is denied prison visits, he continued, adding however that his client had denied all accusations against him.

“He said he only had a problem with one prison official, the director who ignored his request to meet with him to report about senior inmates bullying the regulars [common criminals]… He mentioned this to his wife and they overheard him and punished him for that.”

Phyo Wei Aung is facing a raft of charges for the 15 April 2010 grenade attacks on revellers in Rangoon on that killed nine and left hundreds injured. As well being accused of murder, he is being charged under the Unlawful Association Act, the Immigration Act, the Explosives Act and the Electronics Act.
http://www.dvb.no/news/bomb-suspect-lawyer-%E2%80%98denied-case-report%E2%80%99/14357
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Burma’s report to UN ‘is fictional’
By FRANCIS WADE
Published: 22 February 2011

Legal experts have accused the Burmese junta of submitting a “fictional” report to the UN that details a superficially rosy picture of its human rights record.

Known as the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), the report was compiled by the Myanmar Human Rights Committee, led by home affairs minister Maung Oo, and sent to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) earlier this year.

But a scathing analysis of the report by the Hong Kong-based Asia Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) claims it contains “deliberate misrepresentations”, and that the junta’s record of abuses has not improved.

“Despite the meticulous and professional documentation submitted from numerous credible sources to the UPR process, the Government of Myanmar persisted with its usual approach, treating the process not as an opportunity for dialogue but as an opportunity for the making of fiction,” it said.

Among the many falsities are its evaluation of the 2010 elections, as well as the treatment of people in northern Arakan state and sexual violence by Burmese troops.

While Burma is not technically a member of the UNHRC, it has been given ‘Special Procedure’ status by the Council to address human rights violations in the country.

As part of this it was assigned a UN special rapporteur, Tomas Ojea Quintana, to investigate rights abuses in the country. He filed a high-profile report to the Security Council last year calling for a UN investigation into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Burma.

But during an attempted visit to the country in august last year, Quintana was denied a visa. His assistant, Hannnah Wu, the UN’s human rights officer in Bangkok, told DVB at the time that “the [Burmese] government was busy at the time he requested. It’s not good to speculate – they had their reasons”.

What impact the recent UPR will have on policymakers within the UN is unclear, but the director of ALRC, Basil Fernando, thinks there is a way to go before Western governments and politicians really understand the gravity of Burma’s human rights situation.

“The part they don’t understand very much is that Myanmar [Burma] doesn’t have a judicial system; this doesn’t exist in the mind of Myanmar,” he told DVB.

The fabrication of so-called facts in the UPR was, he said, an attempt by the junta “to show they have changed” and garner some respect from the UN after years of isolation.

“But it’s just a showpiece and there is no freedom for anybody – no one is allowed to speak or organise themselves around an issue, and in terms of [access to] food, water, and so on, Burma’s situation are among the worst in Asia.”
http://www.dvb.no/news/burma%E2%80%99s-report-to-un-is-%E2%80%98fictional%E2%80%99/14378
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Army seizes 30,000 acres of farmland
By NANG KHAM KAEW
Published: 22 February 2011

Farmers in central Burma have filed a complaint to the UN’s International Labour Organisation (ILO) after troops there confiscated more than 30,000 acres of arable land.

The reasoning behind the seizure in May last year was that the land was needed to expand on an ordinance production factory, said Than Soe, one of the affected farmers. Now, however, those behind the confiscation are preparing the land to grow wet-season crops.

“Farmers from all 13 villages filed reports to the ILO,” he said, adding that the chief of the factory, Major Nyo Myint, was “preparing the land by force”.

Some 500 acres of land in the same area of Magwe division’s Aunglan district were seized in 1999 to make way for the early stages of the factory project. Back then, farmers were forced to help with the construction, Than Soe said, adding that the latest confiscation has left them with no land to till.

Than Soe was among a group farmers who in 2009 were sentenced to a minimum of four years in jail for filing complaints to the ILO, which is the only international body in Burma with a mandate to tackle issues of land confiscation and forced labour.

A lawyer representing the farmers, Pho Phyu, was also handed a four-year sentence after being charged under the Unlawful Associations Act, while one of the farmers was given five years in a remote hard labour camp.

They were given early release in 2010 however, following pressure from the ILO and international media, despite being warned by the government not to make contact with overseas press.

Government authorities in Aunglan are now said to be issuing threats against a group of around 50 residents who complained to the ILO that they were forced to work on a teak plantation owned by the son of Shwe Mann, one of the Burmese regime’s top officials and now a parliamentary speaker.

Kyaw Linn is one of those who was forced to work on the land. He told DVB that “not a penny” was paid to the men, who were threatened with eviction from their village by staff from the Zay Kabar company, headed by Toe Naing Mann, if they refused.

“[Toe Naing Mann] is accompanied by [Burmese army] soldiers and policemen when he comes here,” Kyaw Linn said.

After filing complaints in mid-January this year, the residents were summoned to a meeting with former army sergeant Tin Maung Swe, who is coordinating Zay Kabar’s teak project, where one man claims they were threatened with a gun.

Burmese authorities have a history of heavy-handedness towards complaintants of land confiscation and forced labour. In December last year a Rangoon man was threatened with jail after allegedly “trespassing” on land that had been seized from him by the army.
http://www.dvb.no/news/army-seizes-30000-acres-of-farmland/14351
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