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BI Weekly No. 321

October 6th - October 12th, 2007

The BI Weekly archive is available on our website: www.burmaissues.org

Journals face publishing challenges

Most of the weekly journals based in Rangoon have stopped publishing due to a lack of news to attract readers, difficulties with acquiring news on the streets and limited Internet access.

Several Rangoon-based journalists said that the business will not survive much longer because “the readers are not interested in the journals and periodicals here.”

Residents in Rangoon are “giving their attention and interest to the protests, but we can not report the story and provide the information the public wants, so we know that they won’t buy our news journals,” an editor said.

Another problem is a lack of Internet access. Most of the publications in Burma have relied on the Internet to track international news. The media businesses in Burma can no longer search for photos and information on the Internet as the military authorities cut access to it on September 28.

“News reporters cannot use the Internet, so they have been using satellite television as their main source for international news,” explained another editor.

In addition, photojournalists and reporters face danger while armed troops are deployed on the streets. Sources said soldiers are searching whoever they suspect of carrying a camera. If they find one, the soldiers confiscate the camera and sometimes arrest the person carrying it.

“Rangoon’s journals are paralyzed”, The Irrawaddy, October 2nd, 2007

Monks possibly face hard labour

Insein Township may be sent to a hard labour prison camp, according to a source at the college compound.

Around 1,900 people, including monks, nuns, students and civilians, have been detained in the college compound as part of the government crackdown on recent mass demonstrations.

Among those detained are young monks aged between 16 and 18, and novices as young as 5 to 10 years old. Nuns are also being held at the compound, along with 140 other women. All monks and nuns have been disrobed and made to wear civilian clothes.

According to a Swan Arr Shin member placed inside the compound, authorities are planning to send the detained monks to a hard labour prison camp in Sagaing Township.

The compound is being guarded by troops from battalion 77, who took part in the crackdowns. Swan Arr Shin members are also being paid 3,000 Kyat a day (about USD 2) to keep a close watch on the detainees inside the compound.

“Detained monks could be sent to hard labour camps”, Democratic Voice of Burma, October 2nd, 2007

Curfew Lifted

Burma's military junta eased a curfew on the main city of Rangoon as the security presence was scaled back slightly following the suppression of mass anti-government protests.

Loudspeakers mounted on trucks drove through downtown Rangoon and residential townships, announcing that the curfew would from now on run from 10pm to 4am, two hours shorter than the 9pm to 5am period announced a week ago.

People, cars and buses were returning to the streets of the former capital as residents tried to get back to work, but the atmosphere remained tense and key monasteries continued to be blockaded.

Although the security presence has dropped off, soldiers were still stationed at the main rallying points.

Soldiers stood guard outside the Shwedagon Pagoda, while at a nearby monastery, security forces could be seen within the compound.

In the northeastern township of South Okkalapa, one of the monasteries raided there last week remained under heavy security with six military trucks parked outside.

“Burma’s junta eases curfew”, The Nation, October 2nd, 2007

Soldiers conduct nighttime raids on homes

Soldiers announced they were hunting pro-democracy protesters in Burma's largest city and the top U.S. diplomat in the country said she heard that military police were pulling people out of their homes during the night.

Military vehicles patrolled the streets before dawn with loudspeakers blaring, "We have photographs. We are going to make arrests!"

Shari Villarosa, the acting U.S. ambassador in Burma, said that people in Rangoon were terrified.

"From what we understand, military police ... are traveling around the city in the middle of the night, going into homes and picking up people," she said.

The U.N.'s special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, declined to comment on his four-day mission to Burma, where the military junta last month crushed mass pro-democracy demonstrations led by the nation's revered Buddhist monks.

Villarosa said embassy staff had gone to some monasteries in recent days and found them completely empty. Others were barricaded by the military and declared off-limits to outsiders.

"There is a significantly reduced number of monks on the streets. Where are the monks? What has happened to them?" she said.

“People are terrified, and the underlying forces of discontent have not been addressed," Villarosa said. "People have been unhappy for a long time ... Since the events of last week, there's now the unhappiness combined with anger, and fear."

“US diplomat: Burma’s junta hunting protesters”, Associated Press, October 3rd, 2007

Protests continue in Arakan State

Over 10,000 people in the Arakan town of Man Aung staged another protest against the Burmese government's harassment of demonstrators.

The demonstrations took place despite threats from Man Aung authorities that anyone taking part in protests in the town would be arrested.

Villagers from around Man Aung Township began the protest at around 10am, and were later joined by town residents. The protesters were given food, water and cheroot by bystanders in a show of support.

"We shouted slogans calling for the release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners and demanding that the government stop harassing monks," said a person who joined the protest.

"We also went to Mahagyi pagoda in town and prayed for freedom for those who have been detained," added the protestor.

This follows a protest on Monday staged by residents of the town and nearby villages which was joined by over 5,000 people.

“Arakan protests continue despite threats from authorities”, Democratic Voice of Burma, October 3rd, 2007

Than Shwe’s family is yet to return to Burma

The family of Burma's junta chief, Snr-Gen Than Shwe, is still out of the country following the bloody crackdown on monks and pro-democracy demonstrators, according to a Western diplomat in Rangoon.

Than Shwe’s family, including his wife Kyaing Kyaing, appears not to be in the country, said a diplomat. He said he had no idea of the family's whereabouts.

So far, the rumor mill has covered a wide base: Than Shwe's family is said to be in Vientiane, Laos; Macau, China; or Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The family is believed to have left Rangoon on the day security forces opened fire on protesting monks and demonstrators.

The Bangkok-based newspaper The Nation earlier reported that Than Shwe’s wife had fled to Thailand. Then, she was reported to be in Dubai, where she was allegedly spotted by some Burmese who live there. That report said Burmese tycoon Tay Za was accompanying the family.

Tay Za is a close business associate of Than Shwe’s family and is the CEO of the Htoo Trading Company and the owner of Air Bagan.

“Junta leader’s family still out of Burma – says diplomat”, The Irrawaddy, October 3rd, 2007

All people in Burma, including ethnic groups, face brutality

While international attention has focused on the protests for democracy in Burma's cities, a hidden war has decimated generations of the country's powerless ethnic minorities, who have faced brutality for decades.

The Karen, the Shan and other minority groups who live along the Burma-Thai border have been attacked, raped and killed by government soldiers. Their thatched-roofed, bamboo homes have been torched. Men have been seized into forced labour for the army, while women, children and the elderly either hide out in nearby jungles until the soldiers leave or flee over the mountains to crowded, makeshift refugee camps.

The military junta has denied reports of atrocities and says the ethnic rebels are "terrorists" trying to overthrow the government.

Burma has more than 100 sub-tribes. Burma's diverse minority groups make up nearly a third of the country's 54 million population.

About two-thirds of the country belongs to the Burman ethnic majority. The other ethnic groups include the Shan, the Karen, the Chin, the Mon, the Arakan or Rakhine, and the Kachin.

Thousand of refugees, mostly from a Muslim minority known as Rohingyas, have fled over Burma's western border with Bangladesh over the years because of persecution by the military junta and economic hardship.

"Burma’s ethnic minorities endure decades of brutality”, Associated Press, October 4th 2007

Peaceful resistance movement still strong in Burma

The brutal crackdown on protests in Burma will not stop the growing movement for reform in the pariah state, pro-democracy leaders in exile said.

The unprecedented Buddhist monk-led protests ignited a fire among long-suffering Burmese that will not be easily extinguished, but the international community must pressure the military regime to avoid further bloodshed, the activists said.

"Many people are saying the Burmese revolt is over, but that is not true," said Naing Aung of the Forum for Democracy in Burma. "A movement that brought out 1 million people willing to defy bullets cannot easily disappear."

Leaders of several groups said the images thousands of monks marching peacefully, and finally being beaten, had brought together both Burma’s citizens and people around the world to stand up to the regime.

"Those two contradictory images of peace and brutality were powerful for the world to see, but this has been going on in Burma for the last 50 years, especially in the ethnic areas," said Salai Lian Sahkong of the Ethnic Nationalities Council.

"We have been suffering and dying and crying without the world knowing about it, but now the people of Burma are uniting, and we're saying: 'no more killing, no more beating.'"

The exiled pro-democracy leaders agreed that the moral authority of the country's monks has lent powerful impetus to the movement, and said the military regime is fearful because it has not been able to control the monkhood.

"People in the communities always give food to the monks, but now the people have started to go to the monks to ask them for food," said Naing Aung of the Forum for Democracy in Burma.

"The monks see how the people are suffering, and as the moral authority of the communities, they are now demanding to change the system."

“Exiled Myanmar leaders say protest movement strong despite crackdown”, Deutsche Presse-Agentur, October 5th, 2007

Grave concern for arrested protestors from former political prisoners

As Burma's security forces cracked down on demonstrators, former prisoners said they were sickened by televised images of Buddhist monks and students being chased down, bludgeoned with batons and loaded onto police trucks.

"I'm so worried for them," Thet Oo, a former political prisoner, said.

Thet Oo says his military interrogators in Burma kicked him in the head until he blacked out, shackled his polio-ridden legs, and then threw him in a tiny, dark cell where he spent much of the next 12 years.

"They treat people like animals," said the 46-year-old, one of dozens of former political prisoners who have fled across the border to Thailand.

He and others recounted this week how they were imprisoned and tortured by Burma's military regime for their pro-democracy activities.

Burma's military government has repeatedly denied using torture or abusing its prisoners.

A group of political prisoners is collecting evidence, including lists of jailers and torturers, to give to human rights organizations.

The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, comprised of around 100 former inmates, has already put out one report on torture in Burma.

It described homosexual rape, electric shocks to the genitals, partial suffocation by water, burning of flesh with hot wax, and being made to stand for hours in tubs of urine and feces.

The Burmese junta said 10 people were killed and nearly 2,100 arrested in the demonstrations, with 700 later released. Diplomats and dissidents say the death toll is likely much higher and up to 6,000 people were seized, including hundreds of monks who led the protests.

“Ex-Myanmar prisoners describe torture”, Associated Press, October 6th, 2007

UN Human Rights Commission demands investigation into Burma’s violent crackdown

For the first time, an outraged United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) has condemned the Burmese military junta for its violent crackdown on protesters and demanded it be allowed to immediately investigate the situation in Burma.

The Council, which held a special session on the human rights situation in Burma on recently, passed a resolution that demanded the junta allow a special Rapporteur to investigate it.

The resolution said it "strongly deplores continued violent repression of peaceful demonstrators in Burma, including beatings, killings, arbitrary detentions and enforced disappearances."

"The council calls on the government of Burma to allow Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights, to visit Burma and investigate the situation," Aung Myo Min, a Burmese human rights activists, attending the special session on Burma at the council's fifth meeting.

The HRC, in a rare criticism against a government, agreed to place the findings of the special Rapporteur to the UN General Assembly and to the Security Council, which observers say will give more evidence to discuss at the UNSC.

However, Aung Myo Min, director of the Thailand based Human Rights Education Institute of Burma (HREIB), expressed concern over the effectiveness of the council's resolution as it lacks enforcement should the Burmese junta flatly deny access to the special Rapporteur.

"The question is what if the junta denies entry to the special Rapporteur? We are also worried on reports that the junta is destroying evidence of human rights violations, so even if the junta agrees to let the Rapporteur in, can he find the true facts," Aung Myo Min asked.

Pinheiro has been denied entry into Burma over the past two years.

“UN Rights body wants Burmese junta to allow investigation”, Mizzima News, October 3rd, 2007

US and EU must lead new initiative

The United States or the European Union must spearhead an initiative with China, India, Japan and ASEAN states to prod Burma's ruling junta to end its brutal crackdown on dissent and embrace democratic reforms, experts say.

The West’s policy of imposing trade, investment and diplomatic sanctions and the Asian strategy of constructive engagement have failed to bring about reforms in the resource-rich Southeast Asian nation.

Experts say the time has come for an end to the sanctions versus engagement battle, and to build an international consensus aimed at giving incentives for the junta to reform and increasing the price it will pay if it fails to change.

Michael Green, a former top Asia adviser to President George W. Bush, and Derek Mitchell, an Asian expert at the Pentagon during the Bill Clinton administration, said this proposition had more potential today than in the past.

One way to proceed, they said, would be for Washington to lead a group that also included the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), China, India and Japan to develop a road map for Burma's junta with "concrete goalposts."

It should lay out development assistance and other benefits the junta will enjoy if it pursued true political reform and national reconciliation and the costs it would suffer if it continued to be intransigent, they said in a joint paper following the recent turmoil in Burma.

"The current approach -- with each party pursuing its individual policy with an eye as much toward competing with the others for its own advantage as toward promoting change in Burma (Myanmar) -- has clearly played into the junta's hands," Green and Mitchell said.

But Mohan Malik, an Asian expert at the Hawaii-based Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, said the European Union (EU) instead of the United States should play a lead role in such a diplomatic effort.

The Chinese and Burma's junta are reportedly suspicious of any Washington involvement, he said.

"The EU could take the lead and sponsor this with the involvement of China, Japan, India and Thailand or Indonesia because the EU won't invoke any concerns that the US participation involvement would invoke from the Chinese and the (junta)," he said.

“US or EU must lead new effort to end Myanmar crisis: expert”, Agence France Presse, October 3rd, 2007

Tougher Sanctions for Burma

European Union member states agreed to impose new sanctions on the Burmese junta while looking for ways to boost humanitarian aid to the country's population.

At a meeting of the ambassadors of the EU's 27 member states in Brussels, representatives "agreed to toughen EU sanctions against the regime in Burma" and "requested the European Commission to explore ways to increase humanitarian assistance," a statement announced.

They also called for further diplomatic action on all levels, including in the UN, the statement from the Portuguese government, which currently holds the presidency of the EU, said.

And they called for diplomats to engage "key players, especially in the region," in an apparent reference to regional superpower China, whose input is seen as crucial to any efforts to defuse the explosive situation in the troubled country.

Experts will now work on the details of the targeted sanctions, which are meant to punish members of Burma's ruling junta and their closest allies without harming the population, in time for a meeting of EU ministers later this month.

Current EU sanctions include an arms embargo, a ban on loans to companies and persons linked with the government, and an entry ban on 405 members of the regime, the military and their families.

“EU members agree on tougher sanctions on Myanmar, Deutsche Presse-Agentur, October 3rd, 2007

UN envoy tight lipped about his trip to Burma

A UN envoy remained tightlipped about his meetings with Burma's junta chief and democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, a highly watched mission that followed the regime's deadly crackdown on democracy protesters.

Ibrahim Gambari, the UN Secretary-General’s special envoy on Burma, was in Singapore after his four-day trip to Burma. He and the junta's reclusive leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe sat in the same room together for more than an hour in the remote capital of Naypyidaw. But neither side issued any comment that could satisfy the world's hopes for a halt to the junta's harsh crackdown on protesters.

After meeting the generals, Gambari flew to Rangoon to meet Aung San Suu Kyi, the detained Nobel laureate who has come to symbolize the yearning for democracy in Burma. It was his second meeting in three days with Suu Kyi, who has spent 12 of the last 18 years under house arrest.

Gambari was scheduled to meet Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, whose country currently chairs the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which has expressed revulsion at the junta's violent suppression of demonstrators. As he headed to the meeting, Gambari avoided reporters by leaving his Singapore hotel through the basement.

Gambari is expected to brief UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the UN Security Council on Friday on the outcome of his trip, diplomats said.

“No word on progress from UN envoy’s Burma mission”, Associated Press, October 3rd, 2007