News & Articles on Burma-Monday 6 June, 2011

News & Articles on Burma
Monday 6 June, 2011
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NLD Youth to Provide Security for Suu Kyi
McCain Cold to Warmer U.S.-Burma Ties
Fears over Myanmar’s $8bn development plans
Burma must allow political space for Aung San Suu Kyi
Small Statue a Big Victory for Arakanese
Two Killed, 4 Wounded in Three Pagodas Attack
Trial of ex-army captain nears end
Politician-led prisoner demo blocked
Burma-China alliance threatens ASEAN unity
Chinese plane maker to sell 2 jets to Myanmar
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NLD Youth to Provide Security for Suu Kyi
By LIN THANT Monday, June 6, 2011

Youth members of the National League for Democracy (NLD) and pro-democracy activists have called on the general public in Burma to pay particular attention to Aung San Suu Kyi's personal security during her forthcoming trips outside Rangoon.

“In the interests of security, Suu Kyi will let the government know about her trip and provide travel dates, places and times,” said Win Tin, a leading member of the NLD. “However, that does not mean that she is asking for permission to travel. She is not.”

Win Tin added that she will likely begin her provincial tour on June 22, just three days after her 66th birthday.

Although no itinerary has yet been announced, sources in the former capital said security for Suu Kyi's trips will be taken care of by members of the the NLD youth network, who intend to recruit local supporters to help provide security detail for Suu Kyi, Burma's pro-democracy icon and a former Nobel Peace prize winner.

The NLD Youth Network was formed earlier this year at Suu Kyi's request.

“We can only guard her with manpower, because we don't have any authority to act officially,” Phyo Min Thein, a leader of the Network, told The Irrawaddy.

Yar Zar, an NLD youth leader, said that although NLD youth members and the Network will take care of Suu Kyi's security voluntarily, they are yet to be systematically trained for security-related situations.

Even though NLD members are worried about Suu Kyi, government authorities must be held responsible for her safety, NLD sources said.

John McCain, the US senator who visited Burma last week, told reporters on Friday that the Burmese government should be responsible for security during Suu Kyi's trips. McCain echoed comments by Joseph Y. Yun, the US's Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, who visited Burma in May.

Fears for Suu Kyi's security are high after she was threatened and stopped by local authorities during her campaign trips in 1989 and 1996. In May 2003, when she was in Depayin in Sagaing Division, her entourage was attacked by up to 5,000 well-armed thugs allegedly backed by the military regime. At least 70 NLD supporters were killed in what has become known as the Depayin Massacre.


Thakin Chan Htun, a Burmese veteran politician, said he does not want to stop Suu Kyi from making trips, but she should be cautious about her security. “Any disturbance during Suu Kyi's tour must be regarded as an act aimed at destroying democracy,” he said. “In any case, she should travel during the daytime and not move from place to place after 4 pm.”

Whenever Burma's military authorities tried to repress political activists in the past, they were reported to have used not only armed security forces but also civilian thugs known as Swan Arr Shin.

After the new government led by President Thein Sein was sworn in, Swan Arr Shin was reportedly re-consolidated and formed as the People's Security Force (PSF). Aung Thaung, a secretary of the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party, is said to lead the PSF.

PSF members will reportedly wear green military uniforms and hold shields and batons if they are deployed.

A foreign embassy staffer in Rangoon said that several members of the diplomatic corps had suggested it would be safer if Rangoon-based diplomats and journalists joined Suu Kyi on the tour to the provinces. http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21438
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McCain Cold to Warmer U.S.-Burma Ties
By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Jun 6, 2011 (IPS) - If Burma’s quasi-civilian government was hoping for warmer ties with the U.S. government, Senator John McCain’s visit to this South-east Asian nation has placed such hopes on ice.

By the end of his three-day visit to the country, also known as Myanmar, the U.S. foreign policy heavyweight dropped hints he was giving Burma a failing grade over its supposed reforms toward democracy.

"Without concrete actions by this government that signal a deeper commitment towards democratic change, there should be no easing or lifting of sanctions," the leading member of the Republican Party, who lost to President Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential race, told an audience in the former Burmese capital Rangoon.

McCain’s warning on the last day of his visit to Burma from Jun.1-3, targeted the government of President Thein Sein, a retired general whose administration took power in March following a flawed general election last November that ended half a century’s rule by a military junta.

McCain’s trip to Burma followed a visit last month by senior U.S. diplomat Joseph Yun and comes ahead of the Senate hearings to confirm Derek Mitchell, poised to become the first U.S. special envoy to Burma.

In 2009, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Kurt Campbell visited Burma, the highest-ranking U.S. diplomat to do so in 14 years, helping set the tone of the Obama administration’s Burma policy. That policy offers the carrot of greater engagement while wielding the stick of economic sanctions.

Before that policy, U.S. administrations had been steadfast in punishing the resource-rich but impoverished nation through a raft of sanctions. Since the mid-1990s, they included bans on imports of Burmese products into the U.S., prohibiting new American investments in Burma, and stopping the transfer of funds between the two countries.

Midway through McCain’s visit on Jun. 2, his fellow lawmakers at the House of Representatives in Washington D.C. held a hearing and echoed his views on Burma. "This engagement policy appears to have borne little fruit," said Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, according to a story datelined Washington in The Irrawaddy, a current affairs website run by Burmese journalists in exile.

"Since its adoption, we have seen an American citizen imprisoned and tortured, Burmese generals engaged in possible nuclear proliferation with North Korea, a flawed election last year, and the continued imprisonment of over 2,000 political prisoners with only one, Aung San Suu Kyi, released," she added, referring to the Nobel Peace laureate and pro-democracy leader who was freed from seven years of house arrest last November.

But the message McCain takes home to Washington is not all the Obama administration has to grapple with. Another challenge comes from Tomas Ojea Quintana, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Burma, who wants a commission of inquiry (CoI) to investigate gross human rights violations committed by Burmese troops along the country’s eastern and northern borders which are home to ethnic minorities.

"The government must undertake an independent and impartial inquiry of human rights violations," the Argentine lawyer said in Bangkok recently, following a visit to Thailand to meet Burma’s ethnic minorities who have fled their country’s decades-long conflict.

"Systematic militarisation contributes to human rights abuses," added Quintana, who made his first call for a CoI in March 2009, a move that is now supported by 16 countries. "These abuses include land confiscation, forced labour, internal displacement, extrajudicial killings and sexual violence."

Among the recent victims are women from Burma’s ethnic Shan minority, whose accounts of suffering were shared with the U.N. envoy by the Shan Women’s Action Network (SWAN), a non-governmental group monitoring human rights violations in eastern Burma.

"Three Shan women were gang raped by soldiers from a Burmese light infantry brigade on Mar. 21," revealed Charm Tong, a SWAN spokeswoman.

But while such disturbing accounts may strengthen the case for sanctions, critics of the measures imposed by the U.S. and European governments offer an equally disturbing parallel. The combination of economic sanctions and pressure to limit international humanitarian assistance to Burma has resulted in tens of thousands of children under five years dying from "preventable diseases," including 1, they say.

The U.N. says Burma has the second worst child mortality rate in Asia, following war-ravaged Afghanistan. For every 1,000 babies born, an estimated 66 die before reaching the age of five, or one in every 15 children.

But humanitarian workers in Burma complain that such deaths – one estimate puts it at over 70,000 a year – have not triggered a rise in aid from the West. They point out that the country gets between five to six U.S. dollars per capita of aid, just one-tenth the amount Western donors spend per citizen in neighbouring and equally repressive Laos.

Western sanctions "have been incredibly counter-productive," says Thant Myint-U, a respected Burmese historian. "The argument was that providing aid through the government would only strengthen repressive structures. But in thinking of the future, we need to rethink this equation." (END) http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=55932
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Peninsula News Paper
Fears over Myanmar’s $8bn development plans
Monday, 06 June 2011 03:06

YANGON: Mechanical diggers on the pristine beaches near the sleepy fishing town of Dawei are a sign that change is coming to the remote corner of Myanmar -- but not necessarily for the better.

The area has been chosen for a vast port complex that is the latest example of how foreign investment from Asian allies like China and Thailand is transforming the military-dominated nation despite Western sanctions.

Some believe the 10-year, $8bn Dawei Development Project, led by a Thai industrial giant, could invigorate the country’s impoverished economy and revolutionise regional trade.

But hopes that the planned deep-sea port and giant industrial estate will inject much-needed investment have been tempered by fears about a potential influx of “dirty” industry and concerns that it will displace thousands.

“Myanmar still ignores environmental issues”, said Tanit Sorat of the Federation of Thai Industries, citing lack of regulation as a key advantage of Dawei.

“Dawei is the world’s solution for industry that affects the environment, heavy industry and the industry that is banned in other countries,” he said, adding the entire project could be worth $60 billion dollars or more.

A local aid worker and campaigner, who estimates 23,000 people will have to move, said the first phase of construction was already altering the quiet tropical town of his childhood.

“The shores are so beautiful, with their long white sands, but in a couple of years it will all be gone,” said the activist.

He said that because of a lack of regulation and entrenched cronyism in Myanmar the development is likely to be “very corrupt”, while soaring property prices are already putting pressure on local people.“The government does not consider the people, it just does what it does,” he said.

David Mathieson of Human Rights Watch said there were few details available on Dawei’s potential impact on communities, but previous experience of large scale developments was of misery for local people.

“Human rights abuses always accompany these projects, including displacement, land confiscation, forced labour and abuses related to increased military/security presence,” he said.

Rights abuses

Such abuses have already been linked to two of Myanmar’s major energy projects currently under construction -- pipelines to transport gas from the coast of western Rakhine state and oil from the Middle East and Africa across the country to China.

Dawei, on the Andaman coast facing the Indian Ocean, has long been a strategic prize -- it was one of Britain’s first colonial conquests in the country in the 19th Century. Somchet Thinaphong, who is managing the project for its developer, Italthai Group, said the port project could create up to 100,000 jobs.

“It will lift employment and education very much -- think about Thailand 30 years ago,” he said, adding that the Myanmar government sees the project as a link to the outside world.

Economic mismanagement and cronyism during half a century of army rule has left the country, also known as Burma, isolated and impoverished, despite abundant natural resources.

The handover to a nominally-civilian government, following last November’s controversial election, has raised tentative hopes among some for change.

But Sean Turnell, Myanmar economic expert at Macquarie University in Sydney, was sceptical over how much of the investment in the port project would trickle down to local people.

“The idea that there will be hundreds of thousands of jobs is absurd,” he said.

Indeed, the main beneficiary of Dawei looks likely to be Thailand.

Goods from Thai exporters are currently shipped from the Gulf of Thailand, around Singapore and through the Malacca Straits before heading west, but it is hoped a road and rail link to Dawei could end the costly detour.

Dawei would also provide a “short cut” for crude oil coming into Southeast Asia from the Middle East, according to an Italthai presentation, which also envisaged a train link to Kunming in southern China.

Plans for the 250 sq km site include a steel mill, fertiliser plant, a coal-fired power station and oil refinery -- potential boons for Myanmar’s energy-hungry neighbour.

It comes as resistance to large industrial estates grows in Thailand -- as seen in an ultimately unsuccessful but high profile case against the vast Map Ta Phut development on its eastern seaboard last year. AFP http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/s.-asia/philippines/154792-fears-over-myanmars-8bn-development-plans.html
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Burma must allow political space for Aung San Suu Kyi
By Zin Linn Jun 06, 2011 12:15AM UTC

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United States Senator John McCain warned Friday that Burma (Myanmar) could face a Middle East-style revolution if the new military-backed government fails to make serious democratic change and improve human rights.

McCain was in Burma to evaluate growth on transformation since a nominal civilian government took over from a military junta in March. Rights groups and critics say little has changed as the new government is merely a proxy for the military that has controlled power for decades.

However, McCain acknowledged that the new Thein Sein government has represented some change from the past, and one illustration of this change was their willingness to allow him to return to Burma after 15 years worth of attempts to do so on his part were rejected. But “without concrete actions by this government that signal a deeper commitment to democratic change, there should be no easing or lifting of sanctions,” Senator John McCain said.

Speaking to reporters at the end of a three-day visit, the Republican from Arizona said both countries want better relations, but that Burma’s government needs to take more steps toward democracy — including “the unconditional release of all prisoners of conscience.”

He also underscores the important of its human rights record in his press release. “But as I told the government leaders I met yesterday, any improvement in relations will need to be built not on warm words, but on concrete actions. I and other U.S. leaders, including in Congress, will evaluate this new government’s commitment to real democratic change, and thus the willingness of the United States to make reciprocal changes, based on several tangible actions, as called for by the United Nations Human Rights Council in its Resolution of March 18, 2011,” the Republican from Arizona said.

The release of 2,000 political prisoners has been a top demand of Western nations that criticize Burma’s human rights record and are maintaining long-standing political and economic sanctions against military-backed government until it carries out reforms. McCain called on Burma to let the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) “unfettered” access to all prisoners in the country.

The organization has been unable to visit inmates here since the former military junta halted access in 2006. The ICRC, whose offices were ordered to be closed in 2006, released a press statement on this issue for the first time, 29 June 2007. The statement denounced the military regime for committing human rights violations against detainees and civilians. ”The repeated abuses committed against men, women and children living along the Thai-Myanmar border violate many provisions of international humanitarian law,” said Mr. Jakob Kellenberger, ICRC president. ICRC also demanded that the Burmese government take urgent action to end its abuses: “We urged the government of Myanmar to put a stop to all violations of international humanitarian law and to ensure that they do not recur”.

Actually, political prisoners have been unilaterally thrown into jail under unfair laws and trials in the absence of their lawyers. The government’s penal code allows giving excessive sentences against political activists. For instance, article 5 (j) of the penal code allows authorities to impose 7 to 20 year prison terms on anyone who joined in peaceful protest or showing different opinion against the regime. Another article 505 provides an indefinite prison term for criticizing the authorities’ policies or behaviors.

Besides, the regime time and again prosecuted political prisoners under the Emergency Provision Act, Law to Safeguard the State against the Dangers of Those Desiring to Cause Subversive Acts, Television and Video Act, Unlawful Association Act, Electronic Transactions Law, and Law Relating to the Forming of Organizations. The worst is that the regime usually extended prison sentences under the Law Safeguarding the State from the Dangers of Subversive Elements.

According to international legal standard, all 2,000 political prisoners have committed no crime at all. So, releasing of political prisoners should be the first and foremost of the political reform. Subsequently, the above mentioned undemocratic laws must be done away with as a necessity for change.

According to critics and watchdogs, the 7 November election, won by the military-backed political proxies, was flawed by widespread complaints of vote rigging and the exclusion of the party led by Aung San Suu Kyi, who was released from house arrest shortly after the polls.

Remarkably, McCain urged the Thein Sein government to guarantee the security of Suu Kyi, who planned to carry out a tour around the country that will be a key test of her freedom following her release. In 2003, her convoy on a similar tour was attacked in an ambush apparently organized by a regime frightened by her popularity and she was arrested.

If Thein Sein government has capability and readiness to go along the political reform path, it must ensure the existence of the National League for Democracy and the essential role of Aung San Suu Kyi. To allow political space for Suu Kyi and starting a dialogue with her will be the concrete steps that needn’t take a lot of time for the new government.
http://asiancorrespondent.com/56696/burma-must-allow-political-space-for-aung-san-suu-kyi/
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Small Statue a Big Victory for Arakanese
By KHIN OO THAR and BA KAUNG Monday, June 6, 2011

The Arakan ethnic minority in western Burma scored a big moral victory over the new government by successfully preventing national officials from taking an ancient gold Buddha image recently excavated in their region to Naypyidaw.

On May 30, local authorities discovered nearly 40 Buddha statues from an old temple in the ancient city of Mrauk U in Arakan State, one of which turned out to be made of gold and weighing 6.52 kg. A local archaeologist said that the statue dates back to the eighth century A.D.

When government officials prepared to bring the golden statue to Naypyidaw, hundreds of locals came to the monastery where the statue was kept and protested against its transfer. The protests only subsided after the authorities agreed that the statue will not be moved.

Although the incident seemed minor, it reminded the Arakanese people of their loss of sovereignty to the Burmese majority over two centuries ago, when the Burmese king moved their giant Maha Muni Buddha image to his capital in central Burma as a war trophy.

The Maha Muni image is now a major religious landmark in Mandalay.

Following the protests on Saturday, the regional minister for cultural affairs said that the golden statue will be worshiped in the town, and many locals welcomed the news as a rare victory over the national government.

“It is not important whether it is gold or not. This is a win for us.” said a retired school teacher in the town. “This is Arakanese heritage, which we will defend with our life.”

She said that the Burmese authorities often took away local historical artifacts, saying they intended to study the items, but they were never returned.

Arakan people often express resentment of Burman majority rule and Arakan activists have often protested that their people are not benefiting from the billion-dollar oil and natural gas projects along the Arakan coast.

Dr. Aye Maung, the leader of an Arakan opposition party and MP in the national Parliament, said that just as the British returned Burma's royal throne to its former colony after the country's independence, so also the return of the Maha Muni image to Arakan State will be a good token for Burma's national reconciliation process.

Although the return of the Burmese royal throne was seen by some to be a British attempt to appease former Burmese dictator Ne Win, Aye Maung said, “The British did it because they have democracy. But with our country ruled by people with different ideas, it will be a long time before we get back our Maha Muni.” http://irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21432
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Two Killed, 4 Wounded in Three Pagodas Attack
By LAWI WENG Monday, June 6, 2011

One Burmese military intelligence officer and a nine-year-old girl were killed and four others were wounded when an unknown armed group attacked the Military Affairs Security (MAS) office at Three Pagodas Pass, close to the Thai-Burmese border, at around 3 pm on Sunday.

Eyewitnesses said that about seven people wearing masks threw hand grenades inside the office and the Buddhist assembly hall where Burmese government troops were resting.

Kyaw Kyaw Aung, an officer with the MAS, formerly known as the military intelligence service, was killed from the bomb blast. The girl, who has not been named, was shot by a spray of bullets from the attackers as she was walking in the street nearby.

Also wounded was Win Soe, an officer with the MAS, and Oung Chan, a member of the New Mon State Party (NMSP) who was visiting the office at the time of the attack. Two motorbike taxi drivers were also wounded in the attack.

“The attackers must have thought the NMSP member was a member of Military Intelligence because he was wearing a camouflage shirt. He was shot in the leg and shoulder while he was running out of the office,” said an eyewitness.

Witnesses said the group drove motorbikes into the town at 3:45 pm on the road from Taung Wine, an area predominantly inhabited by ethnic Karens.

One eyewitness said, “Seven people pulled up on their motorbikes about 10 feet in front of me. They took out their guns and began spraying the office.

“After that, they threw grenades in,” he said. “Then a car pulled up, they got in, and drove away.”

No witness or official said they could identify the gang, and no one has claimed responsibility for the attack. However, several residents in Three Pagodas Pass who asked to remain anonymous said they suspected that the attackers were members of DKBA Brigade 5, which is led by Brig-Gen Saw Lah Pwe.

According to one eyewitness, the attackers seemed very familiar with the geography of the town and spoke in Karen when they opened fire on the Military Intelligence office.

Sources said the Burmese authorities in Three Pagodas Pass have tightened security since last week after they received information that the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) had plans to attack the town.

However, at the time when the armed gang attacked, the security guards were in the process of rotating, and the office front was temporarily unguarded, said sources.

“I think the attackers had their own people in the town as they must have known the security was rotating,” said one eyewitness.

The town was attacked by the DKBA on Nov. 8, 2010, one day after Burma held a general election.

The area around Three Pagodas Pass has been a common ground for conflict between the government troops and Karen rebels in recent years.

The Burmese army has recently deployed three battalions to Three Pagodas Pass: Light Infantry Battalions No. 373 and 563, both under the control of the Western Command in Arakan State, and Infantry Battalion 283, which is under the control of the Regional Southeast Command in Moulmein.

There are three ethnic armed groups based near Three Pagodas Pass: the NMSP, the Karen National Union, and the DKBA.

Meanwhile, markets and gold shops in the town were closed on Monday, and hundreds of migrants did not go to work as much of the local population avoid the town center for fear of further attacks, sources said.

About 4,000 Burmese migrant workers live in Three Pagodas Pass, but go to work in textile factories or shoe factories on the Thai side of the border each day.

“The security in the town is still unstable,” said the father of a migrant worker. “Some people believe that members of the armed group are still lurking around the town, planning another attack.” http://irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21434
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Trial of ex-army captain nears end
By NAW NOREEN
Published: 6 June 2011

The separate compound outside of the main wall of Insein prison is where political trials normally take place (Google Earth)

Another witness has testified for the prosecution in the trial of a former army captain arrested after police allegedly found a document in his email inbox entitled ‘National Reconciliation’.

Nay Myo Zin’s family was barred from the closed court inside Rangoon’s Insein prison, where judges on Thursday last week heard a statement from deputy-police commander Swe Linn, who conducted the search at his house in early April that turned up the file.

Only three of the nine witnesses still have to testify, with the next hearing appointed for 9 June. He is being charged with the Electronics Act, although no detail has been given on the content of the document.

His mother, Khin Thi, said last month that the document, allegedly the only thing intelligence had discovered, was destined for a friend. Nay Myo Zin’s lawyer, Hla Myo Myint, said the defence team had questioned the legality of the prosecutors’ statements, as well as their demands that the 36-year-old had over his email password.

Shortly after leaving the army in 2005, Nay Myo Zin turned his attention to charity work, and volunteered for a Rangoon-based blood donor group run by a member of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD).

His mother earlier told DVB that he had left the army on his own volition because “he didn’t enjoy it there… He is a morally strong kid who is very devoted to charity work but [has] no involvement in politics”.

If convicted under the Electronics Act, which is often used to imprison opposition activists and which can carry a 20-year jail term, Nay Myo Zin will become the first so-called political prisoner since the new Burmese government came to power in March.

His family told DVB several weeks after his arrest that they feared he had been tortured during interrogation, although he reportedly appeared healthy when they were allowed access to him following Thursday’s hearing.
http://www.dvb.no/news/trial-of-ex-army-captain-nears-end/15982
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Politician-led prisoner demo blocked
By SHWE AUNG
Published: 6 June 2011

Prisoners seen leaving Insein jail during the recent amnesty in which only 55 jailed activists and politicians were freed (Reuters)

Coordinated protests for the release of political prisoners in Burma were blocked by authorities last week after they claimed organisers had failed to seek approval from the government.

Three separate demonstrations were due to be held on 5 June in Rangoon led by Nay Myo Wei, general secretary of the Peace and Diversity Party. But the November 2010 election hopeful was summoned to a local police station three days before and told the event would not be allowed.

The Burmese government tightly monitors any political organising, but Nay Myo Wei claims that police acknowledged protests were a “fundamental right”, as enshrined in the Burmese constitution. Their reasoning, however, was that amendments needed to be done to the new government and parliaments before such rights were brought into practice.

Several members of other parties, including the Democratic Party Myanmar and the National Democratic Force, signed the original letter requesting permission to stage the protests. The parties would now raise the ban in parliament.

The issue of the nearly 2,100 political prisoners behind bars remains an albatross around the neck of the Burmese government, whose amnesty last month was criticised after it commuted the sentences of only 55 jailed activists and politicians.

It remains unclear whether the government will follow through on its pledge to soften its stance on protests – during the 2007 monk-led uprising, gatherings of more than five people in public places were banned, a rule that is yet to be formally rescinded.
http://www.dvb.no/news/politician-led-prisoner-demo-blocked/15991
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Burma-China alliance threatens ASEAN unity

Burma is asking China to back its bid for chairmanship of partnership in 2014

By Jonathan Manthorpe, Vancouver Sun June 6, 2011 1:07 AM
Vancouver Sun

Burma has marked its unconvincing transition from military regime to civilian government by delivering a couple of slaps round the face to its nine long-suffering partners in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The actions by the Burmese regime raise serious questions over whether ASEAN will be able to achieve its objective of creating a fully integrated community by 2015 with a high degree of economic unification and common policies on key regional and global issues.

Burma's maverick activities come at a time when ASEAN is not only facing another internal friction with the Thailand-Cambodia border conflict, but is under pressure from China, which appears to be pursuing a divide-and-conquer strategy to disrupt association unity.

Burma's general-turned-President Thein Sein managed the one-two punch while leading a large delegation of ministers and officials from the new regime to Beijing last week.

First he announced that his government fully backs China in its long-running dispute with ASEAN members Vietnam, Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia over the ownership of clusters of islands and reefs in the South China Sea.

This craven piece of sycophancy was not only a gross act of disloyalty to Thein Sein's fellow ASEAN members, it flies in the face of a 2002 agreement between the association and China on how to manage their dispute.

Then Thein Sein added a further insult by asking China's President Hu Jintao to assist Burma to get the 2014 chairmanship of ASEAN.

The implication is that Thein Sein wants Beijing to use its regional economic and political muscle to press ASEAN to guarantee Burma the host status that has only been pencilled in at the moment.

Thein Sein's unequivocal siding with China will undoubtedly reinforce the qualms and misgivings several ASEAN leaders have about whether Burma has the political maturity and administrative capacity to play the roll of association figurehead in 2014.

ASEAN faced down much international criticism in 1997 when it admitted Burma, which its regime calls Myanmar, in a purposeful piece of intimidation aimed at the country's many minority groups, suggesting they have a junior and servile status to the majority Burmans.

The military regime was under multiple sanctions and embargoes for its appalling human rights record, and political suppression symbolized by the detention of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

But ASEAN leaders maintained the "constructive engagement" with the junta was the way forward.

It was not successful. Late last year elections were held in Burma on the basis of a new constitution that leaves all ultimate power in the hands of the military, which also has control of key ministries and an allocated block of seats in parliament.

Very many of the most senior positions, such as that of President Thein Sein, are held by military men who hung up their uniforms to join the "civilian" government.

Thein Sein took up office at the end of March.

Beijing has been lavishing attention on Burma in recent years to the extent that the country is often called an "economic colony" of China.

As well as investing heavily in Burma's abundant natural resources, China sees its southeast Asian neighbour as an important strategic partner in foiling what Beijing sees as efforts by the United States to contain China's growing regional influence.

China is in the process of building a pipeline from Burma's western coast in the Bay of Bengal to China's southwestern Yunnan province. This will allow China to import oil from the Middle East without tankers having to pass through the Malacca Strait choke point between Singapore and Indonesia.

Burma's expressions of loyalty to Beijing come as China is acting more aggressively toward other claimants to sovereignty over areas of the South China Sea than it has in years.

This coincides with evidence from ongoing exploration that there are much greater submarine oil and gas reserves than was previously suspected.

There was a serious incident early in March when the Philippine oil exploration ship, MV Veritas Voyager, was harassed by Chinese Navy patrol boats at Reed Bank off the coast of the Philippines.

Then, a week ago, Chinese patrol boats cut the sonar cable of an exploration ship, the Binh Minh 2, working for the state-owned Petro Vietnam company.

The encounter took place 120 nautical miles off the central Vietnamese coast and 600 kilometres south of China's Hainan island.

Beijing has sent curt warnings to both the Hanoi and Manila governments not to challenge China's maritime territorial claims, which are based on the view of imperial Chinese emperors hundreds of years ago that all surrounding countries were vassal states.

jmanthorpe@vancouversun.com
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Burma+China+alliance+threatens+ASEAN+unity/4898900/story.html#ixzz1OUv1YBzt
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Chinese plane maker to sell 2 jets to Myanmar
(Xinhua) Updated: 2011-06-06 16:10

BEIJING - The Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC), a state-owned aircraft manufacturer, has signed an agreement to sell two ARJ21-700 aircraft to the Myanmar Airways, a statement from the country's state-assets supervisor said.

The delivery time for the two models were also not disclosed, but the statement said the signing of the agreement has marked big progress made by COMAC in promoting the ARJ21 aircraft to the overseas markets.

The statement added the agreement has paved the way for the long-term cooperation between COMAC and Myanmar Airways in the future.

The ARJ21 is China's first homegrown commercial regional aircraft, which earlier made an international debut at the Zhuhai air show in November last year.

The 78- to 90-seat craft has a maximum flight range of 3,700 kilometers and maximum altitude of 11,900 meters. The statement said COMAC plans to deliver its first ARJ21-700 regional aircraft to its first client, the Chengdu Airlines. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2011-06/06/content_12645410.htm

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