STOP PRESS
United Nations
flatters only to deceive - March 7, 2003
You only have to read the
following article by
Kanbawza Win to recognize how futile and puerile have been the efforts
of United Nations envoys to Burma, in particular Paulo Sergio Pinheiro,
the Special Human Rights Rapporteur, to achieve any progress towards democratic
reform in Burma. If the free world waited for the United Nations to act,
no one would be better pleased than the Burmese Dictator Generals, or the
many tyrants and bullies around the world who starve or murder their own
people in the cause of bogus "nationalism."
Crackdown
Despite Amnesty Visit
Irrawaddy February
10 2003
In a brazen show of
force, the Burmese regime arrested an estimated 20 Burmese democracy activists,
including a prominent ethnic politician, while human rights watchdog Amnesty
International was in Burma on its first ever fact finding mission.
Read
the full story to see how the Burmese Dictator-Generals ruthlessly
take advantage of the world's attention being focussed on a likely war
with Iraq.
Burma 'first
lady' defies military thugs
Read Al Neuharth in USA Today -
February 7 2003
The Current
Political Outlook as of January 25,
2003
Read all about it
here
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's Independence Day
message
Democratic Voice
of Burma - January 4, 2003
What I would like to say to the Burmese people is
that you must protect the spirit of Independence. You must protect a
valuable asset. If the things you possess are really valuable no one would
throw them on the road. In a similar fashion, Independence is not a thing
to be thrown on the road.
Our Independence will continue to flourish only if
you embrace, nurture, and protect it. That's the message I want to give on
Independence Day.
Another thing is I would like to thank especially the
youth of Burma. When I went on the tours I found out that the youth warmly
welcomed and supported me. When I saw the youth I was very encouraged and
hopeful for the future of the country. That is why I would like to thank
the youth and urged them to continue their efforts.
As an Independence Day gift I would like to ask for
blessings upon the youth so that they may be able to contribute more for
the benefit of the country.
Criticism fails to
deter French oil giant
An Opportunity in
Burma
Editorial (Washington Post) - Friday, December 27,
2002ONE OF THE
CHALLENGES for those seeking to promote democracy in tyrannies around the
world is the frequent absence of a peaceful opposition to work with. In
Iraq, the reception exiles might receive upon return is uncertain, and
Saddam Hussein's secret police have quashed any possibility of civil
society inside the nation. North Korea's people are beaten into submission
and starvation. In Iran, to complete the tour of President Bush's "axis of
evil," there is a vibrant opposition, but America's checkered history in
that country means that any support must be offered with delicate
sensitivity.
All of which
makes Burma all the more remarkable as an exception to the rule. It's a
lush and potentially wealthy nation with a population of close to 50
million, but its despotic regime (which calls the country Myanmar) would
fit comfortably on Mr. Bush's axis. The ruling generals enrich themselves,
protect drug lords and have imprisoned more than 1,000 people who
peacefully expressed a desire for freedom. And yet, amazingly, a
pro-democracy party survives.
Led by Aung San
Suu Kyi, the National League for Democracy enjoys legitimacy rare in a
dictatorship because it overwhelmingly won an election in 1990; the junta,
having wildly mistaken its own popularity, annulled the results. Aung San
Suu Kyi, though under house arrest for most of the past dozen years,
continues to enjoy enormous respect and popularity, judging by reports of
crowds that turn out to see her when she travels the provinces -- even
though her party is not permitted to publish any kind of newspaper and the
state-controlled press never reports on her travels.
You would think
this rare circumstance would be seized upon by the Bush administration as
an opportunity. Some officials do in fact seek to support the democrats.
But others are inexplicably tempted to consort with the dictators. There
was lately a misguided move to increase cooperation on drug control that
was derailed with difficulty, thanks in part to pressure from
pro-democracy Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), incoming chairman of the
Appropriations Committee's foreign operations sub- committee. More
recently, America's highest-ranking diplomat in Burma gave a cheery
interview to the junta's stooge newspaper. What could she have been
thinking?
Under pressure
from U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and others, the junta released Aung
San Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel peace laureate, from house arrest on May 6 and
promised to initiate a dialogue with her party. But no dialogue is taking
place; in fact, things seem to be moving in the wrong direction. A crowd
of 20,000 people who gathered to hear their democracy leader in a
provincial city recently was threatened with fire hoses; she climbed
aboard a fire engine to block such abuse, then persuaded the crowd to
peacefully disperse. President Bush should make clear that dialogue must
begin; a number of levers, including a possible import ban, remain at his
disposal. He'll rarely have a more unqualified chance to show U.S. support
for nonviolent democrats.
Close Shave on Burma
By Al Kamen
- Washington Post December 23 2002Who can forget
that fateful chat then-Ambassador to Iraq, April C. Glaspie, had with
Saddam Hussein in 1990, just before the Iraqi president invaded Kuwait? Of
course, it was policy then to kow-tow to Hussein.
But it appears she may have started a diplomatic
trend, for now we have our top official in Burma saying nice things about
the military thugs who run the country. Worse, chargé d'affaires Carmen M.
Martinez -- our top diplomat there -- did it in an "exclusive interview"
in the weekly Myanmar Times, a rag that makes the old Pravda look like a
hard-hitting investigative journal.
Word leaked out in November that the State Department
was considering recommending that Burma be certified as cooperating in the
war on drugs. Such a move would have given the military, once known by its
initials as SLORC, a major political and economic
boost.
Furious editorials and congressional protests, plus a
Time magazine Asian edition story detailing the repressive regime's links
to major drug dealers, helped persuade State to reverse course. The
department may have been in the process of that course correction Dec. 3,
when Martinez praised the regime for "a good job on counternarcotics
efforts."
Martinez, according to the paper, said Washington
supported democracy, but the Burmese have to find a solution in "their
style of government." A lot of Burmese probably thought they did just that
when they overwhelmingly elected Aung San Suu Kyi's party in 1990, just
before the military arrested her.
"We are not trying to impose our style on this
country," Martinez said. "We can under-stand how it is difficult to have a
democracy in a multiracial and multireligious society," she observed.
"There are similarities between our country and this country; we have
diverse ethnic groups, diversity of religions." It might be a whole lot
less difficult if the Burmese army would stop using rape as a weapon
against those minorities.
"We wish that foreign journalists could be permitted
to visit the country," she said, "because there are positive things going
on . . . and the story of this country will be written by the press."
There would be no need for foreign journalists, of course, if the pond
scum in charge would allow the opposition to publish a
newspaper.
Suu Kyi Stands Up
to Harassment on a Fire Truck
By Min Zin - The Irrawaddy December 19
2002In a defiant stand
against government forces, Aung San Suu Kyi surprised thousands of
onlookers yesterday by suddenly leaping out of her car and rushing aboard
a fire truck that had been called to disperse a crowd of supporters in
Arakan State. Once on the truck, Suu Kyi berated the security forces,
telling them that their real job is not to bully the people of Burma but
to serve them.
The incident
occurred yesterday in Mrauk-Oo Township, 535 kilometers west of Rangoon,
as riot police were about to clear the crowd with fire hoses after they
resisted government calls by coming out to welcome Suu Kyi. National
League for Democracy (NLD) spokesperson U Lwin told The Irrawaddy today
that an estimated 20,000 on-lookers gave Suu Kyi a roaring applause once
she boarded the truck. "The people faced the fire trucks and the police,
who were preparing to crack down," explained U Lwin. "Then Aung San Suu
Kyi intervened to settle the tension."
Details of
yesterday’s dramatic episode were given today at a press conference at NLD
headquarters in Rangoon. U Lwin noted that this is the most serious
harassment Suu Kyi has received from the government since September 2000,
when her entourage was barred from travelling to Mandalay. Suu Kyi was
placed under 19 months of house arrest following that incident. The NLD
also stressed the significance of government intimidation efforts aimed at
keeping supporters from welcoming Suu Kyi to Arakan
State.
Mrauk-Oo looked
like a ghost town when Suu Kyi first arrived on Wednesday, according to
NLD sources. Local government authorities also reportedly warned Buddhist
monasteries and temples not to permit visits by Suu Kyi. After leaving
Mrauk-Oo, Suu Kyi’s entourage stopped by at Kyauktaw Township and headed
to Ponnagyun where she planned to visit the famous Ponnagyun Temple.
Authorities, however, did not permit her party from entering Ponnagyun.
Yesterday evening, Suu Kyi faced even more harassment when she traveled to
Sittwe. Security forces had already been deployed and were lining the
city’s intersections. "There were around 25 soldiers guarding every
junction of Sittwe," said U Lwin.
According to the
NLD, they feel the harassment is being organized at the local level and is
not being dictated by Rangoon. They said local police, fire brigades and
active members of the Union Solidarity and Development Association [USDA],
the junta’s de facto political party, had been working together to
interfere with Suu Kyi's trip and intimidate locals.
"I am in regular
contact with the authorities in Rangoon to resolve these problems," U Lwin
said. "I don't think this is a sign of resuming confrontation between the
government and the NLD. Since the government claimed that they already
turned a new page in history, they should not return to the previous one.
They must have courage to go on positively."
Suu Kyi left
Rangoon Monday for a two-week tour of Arakan State and Chin State along
Burma’s western border with Bangladesh and India. Despite the harassment,
Suu Kyi said she would be continuing her trip. The NLD also expressed
dismay towards the government after completing a two-week political
organizing trip to Shan State in November. The NLD complained that there
had been excessive surveillance of their leader, with security officials
constantly snapping photos of her, even when she was
resting.
DAW AUNG SAN SUU
KYI
Talks to the
World
INSIDE BURMA - British
Broadcasting Corporation Friday December 13 2002
By Lyse
DoucetShe is a Nobel Peace Prize winner, a symbol of
her nation's hopes, a woman who has spent most of the past 15 years
under arrest in her house. But for a little more than a hour this week,
Aung San Suu Kyi was a voice at the end of our telephone line to Rangoon -
a voice so powerful, yet so calm. This was Talking Point with a
difference: Aung San Suu Kyi seemed to be dispensing advice to the world.
There was no mistaking her precise diction, that soft distinctive
lilt.
"I can only give
you 20 to 30 minutes," she cautioned in a most gracious way. That would
leave us with half a programme. We all worried whether the telephone line
would also fail. Either the connection to Burma would go down or the
military authorities would make sure it did. Advice But, somehow, I
believed that once Aung San Suu Kyi began to hear from people around the
world, she would not leave us.
And she did not.
Maybe it was because many did not just call or e-mail, as they do for our
guests every week, to seek her opinion or to challenge her. They wanted
her to tell them what to do.
Jeremy in London
asked whether he should travel to Burma - Myanmar as it is known - over
the holiday period. Neil Roberts e-mailed from Hanoi to ask if it was OK
to apply for a teaching job in Rangoon. Almost everyone who called began
by expressing admiration for her and her long struggle for democracy in
Burma. Frustration In our post-11 September world, when so much of our
political coverage uses words like militancy, violence and protest, Aung
San Suu Kyi's language was noticeably different.
She told Barbara,
who e-mailed from Sri Lanka, that violence sometimes seemed to win in the
short run but in the long run it would only destroy more than it created.
Political dialogue with the military government was the priority -
everything else had to wait including tourism and investment. Even
crackling telephone lines could not hide the sadness and frustration from
exiles far away.
"We hoped good
news would be on the way," said Tin Htun a Burmese national living in the
United States. "But there is nothing, only hope."
Aung San Suu Kyi
offered nothing specific except glimpses of her commitment and her calm
certitude that change would come - in its own time. Thanks For many
callers, there was clearly magic in just speaking to her. Ahmad Nasir
barely managed to express his excitement that he in the Maldives could
speak to Aung San Suu Kyi in Rangoon.
In the end, I
realised this was Aung San Suu Kyi's present to us for the 70th birthday
of the BBC World Service. She reminded us of what we have long tried to do
- give people a chance to speak and to speak to each other. That day, all
of us at talking point felt touched by the power of that thought and that
voice down our telephone line.
Before we said
goodbye, I also thanked the Burmese generals who may have been listening
in
.
Students support alum in Burmese
prison
U of Wisconsin asked to divest from
Burma
Capitol Times
(Wisconsin Newspaper) - By Aaron Nathans - December 6,
2002
UW students are supporting an alumnus imprisoned in
Burma by calling on the university to pull its investments in companies
with ties to that country.
Salai Tun Than, who activists say received his
doctorate in crop nutrition from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in
1959, was imprisoned by Burma's military junta in November 2001. Than, 74,
conducted a solitary protest in front of Rangoon City Hall, donning an
academic gown and reading a speech in which he called for freedom and the
end to 40 years of dictatorship.
He called for multiparty general elections within one
year, an interim civilian government and unconditional transfer of power
to the winner. He was sentenced to seven years in prison. Activists say he
has an eye condition that threatens to blind him without treatment, but he
is not getting that in prison.
The students are led by Kim Jacobson, president of
the Burma Refugee Relief Coalition at UW-Milwaukee. They have collected
200 signatures on a petition calling on the UW System to divest from such
companies as American Express, General Motors, McGraw Hill and Toyota. The
companies have ties to Burma, they said.
Jacobson said her group is still collecting
signatures and has not yet contacted the university; UW System trust fund
officials were not immediately available for comment. "I would think they
would want to do something to help out," said Jeremy Woodrum of the Free
Burma Coalition in Washington. Burma was renamed Myanmar by the military
junta.
Numerous human rights groups such as Human Rights
Watch, the Asian Human Rights Commission and Amnesty International, have
condemned Than's imprisonment. Amnesty International has named him a
prisoner of conscience. "By doing business with the military regime in
Burma, they're really supporting his captors," Woodrum said of the
university.
Than, the activists said, hardly fits the profile of
a hardened activist. He is an agronomist who has served farm communities
for his whole working life, they said. He even worked for the government
at its agricultural institute.
The Myanmar government is widely criticized as ruling
with an iron fist. The U.S. State Department and United Nations have
documented ongoing human rights abuses such as rape, torture, slavery and
killing outside of a judicial system. More than 1,300 political prisoners
remain imprisoned, according to the Burma Refugee Relief Coalition.
The UW-Milwaukee Student Association has already
passed a resolution calling for UW to divest its investments in the
country. "The people of Burma are suffering, and nobody knows about it
because there's no external media. I would like people in Wisconsin to
know it's happening," Jacobson said.
WHO IS AFRAID OF WHO?
Part of the speech Daw Aung San Suu Kyi gave in
Taunggyi November 21, 2002 We have to build our home. It is very tiring to build
own home, the home we want to live in. But, if we look at it another way,
we have an opportunity to build our own home where we want to live with
the form we want it. [applause] Therefore, rejoice in it. Therefore, draw
up your plan with architects; We want this design. This one is for our
father.
This one is for
our mother. This one is for our little sister.This one is for our old
brother and thus saying we have the right to build up a home for the
conveniences of all the members of our family. Don't misuse this
opportunity. Grasp it. Don't feel miserable because you have to build your
own home and don't think it as tiring because you have to build your own
home. Think of it as a special opportunity to build for several new
generations so that we can live peacefully together in the great union may
I plead you thus. [applause]
In this effort,
the Shan State plays a vital role. The reason is it has many ethnic
nationalities and they have many differences. And we could learn how to
harmonise different views from each other in many ways. May I call the
people of Shan State members of the union. Members of the union in Shan
State work hard. Always keep in your hearts that you are the forerunning
foot soldiers for the emergence of a democratic union and the survival of
the union. If you have this kind of spirit, we will surely achieve the
success quickly. I believe that we will achieve. The reason is the king of
union we want and the things we want are for the good of the majority. It
is not the kind of activity with the intention of harming people.
Therefore, it is a matter of wanting to help the people. It is also for
the interest of the people. Therefore, I believe that it will surely be
successful. [applause]
But here time
matters. The question is will we succeed quickly or slowly? We will all
have to work hard to succeed quickly. [applause]
If all work hard
together, we will succeed quickly. If most people just say that this
organisation will do the job, it will be slower. As I often said, like
rowing, everyone in unison. If there are 200 people and every one rows, we
will get to our destination sooner. But only two people rows and the rest,
198 people just sit then, It won't be easy. [applause] Row the boat as
best as you could. Only then we will reach our desired
destination.
Question from an
audience: But if someone says 'could you follow us for awhile' [words used
by military agents when they arrest people in Burma]?
You must not be
afraid of that kind of thing. [applause and cheers] That is just a
temporary matter. What we are talking is not a temporary matter. We are
talking about the future of our country. As long as this world exists it
is a matter of what kind of shape we want our country to be in. You can't
compare this matter with 'could you follow us for a while'. [applause and
cheers) If they asked you to 'follow' them for awhile, just do it. If I
have to mention that kind of thing, there are some people who 'followed'
them not for a while but many years. [laughs and applause] There is no one
standing around me haven't done that. What happens after 'following' them
is you become more mature? Wherever you are, if you have the will and
desire, this will help you achieve what you want to do. When you 'follow'
them, you have many opportunities to strengthen your spirit.
[applause]
This is not a
normal opportunity. In the end, it all depends on whether you are going to
strengthen your resolve or let your spirit shaken. Whether you are afraid
or not afraid it depends on yourself. It doesn't depend on the people who
threaten you. However they try to make you afraid, if you are afraid, you
will be afraid and if you are not afraid, you won't be afraid. [applause
and cheers.
Daw Aung San Suu
Kyi and group are planning to visit northern Shan State tomorrow. As they
are unable to go there directly, they will be travelling from Taunggyi
through Meikhtila, Kyaukse, Mandalay, Maymyo, Naungcho and Thibaw
[Hsipaw]. They are expected to be in Thibaw about noon tomorrow to open a
new NLD office. From Thibaw, they are continuing the journey to
Lashio.
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