Daily News-November-18-Saturday-2000

  • Protest muted as Burma woos India for investment
  • Burmese government said it achieved 7.2% GDP last year
  • Burma expresses bitter disappointment over ILO vote
  • Junta hits out at ILO sanctions
  • Bangladesh Alerts Border Guards Along Burma Frontier
  • By Deals With Burmese Junta, Minorities Thrive
  • 'Hands on' for new UNDCP chief
  • Anti-insurgent group levies poppy cultivation tax in Shan State
  • Burma shrugs off economic effects of ILO-led sanctions
  • Burma may face new international sanctions
  • ILO urges sanctions on Burmese junta

    • Protest muted as Burma woos India for investment
    source : Reuters

    NEW DELHI, Nov. 17 — India talked business and diplomacy with military-ruled Myanmar on Friday, undeterred by minor protests over its efforts to engage with a country buffeted by allegations of human rights abuses.

    General Maung Aye, vice chairman of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) and commander-in-chief of the army, told Indian business leaders in New Delhi that Myanmar was now a attractive place for foreign investment.

    ''We have changed our economic system to make it market-oriented and have allowed privatisation of the state sector,'' Aye said. ''Our efforts since 1988 have resulted in 17 out of 18 armed groups coming into the legal fold. We are a peaceful country and welcome foreign investment.''

    Aye, the most senior Myanmar government member to visit India since the SPDC took power in 1998, earlier met India's interior minister and discussed the question of separatist insurgents in states along the two countries' 1,600-km (1,000-mile) border. Relations cooled when India gave sanctuary to anti-government Myanmar exiles after the military bloodily suppressed a 1988 uprising in Yangon.

    But over the past decade New Delhi, driven by trade, investment, security and geostrategic considerations -- including checking China's influence on Myanmar's military regime -- has sought to put the bilateral relationship on a firm footing.

    STUDENTS PROTEST

    Some 100 Myanmar dissident students protested against Aye's visit in the Indian capital on Thursday, and some were briefly detained by police. They plan further protests before the end of the week-long visit by Aye and his high-powered government delegation.

    ''The keeness of the Indian government to become hand-in-glove with the oppressive military junta in Burma (Myanmar) is damaging India's democratic credentials,'' Kyaw Than, president of Delhi-based All Burma Students League (ABSL), told Reuters.

    Than and about 20 other Myanmar dissidents live on the premises of Defence Minister George Fernandes' residence. Indian government officials said the socialist minister, who has been a supporter of Myanmar dissidents, was not scheduled to meet the visiting general.

    Aye, speaking at a meeting organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry, told his audience that Myanmar had received $7.3 billion in foreign investment and its economy was growing at 7.5 percent.

    Myanmar Commerce Minister Brigadier General Pyi Sone said India and his country would open a second border trading point, in the northeastern state of Mizoram.

    Bilateral trade between India and Myanmar was around $216 million in 1999/2000 (April-March). Most trade goes via Singapore because there are almost no shipping links between the countries.

    The neighbours are also building a 165-km (100-mile) road connecting India's national highway with Myanmar, opening the way for a boost to trade and linking the subcontinent to Southeast Asia.

    Press Trust of India reported that in a morning meeting with Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani, Aye said Myanmar would destroy camps on its side of the border of separatist insurgents from India's troubled north-eastern states.
    Burmese government said it achieved 7.2% GDP last year
    New Delhi, November 17, 2000
    Mizzima News Group (www.mizzima.com)

    After it switched over to a market oriented system from a centrally planned economic system in 1988, Burma was able to bring down the inflation rate from 30% in 1988-89 to 3.5% at present. The economic reforms implemented by the government had resulted in a strong GDP growth of 7.2% last year. This was stated by General Maung Aye, vice-chairman of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) at an interactive luncheon meeting held in Le Meridien Hotel in New Delhi, organized by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

    According to him, Burma laid down four-year economic plan beginning from the year 1992-93 to the year 1995-96. During this period, it had targeted a GDP growth rate of 5.1% and was able to achieve 7.5%. Following the first four-year plan, Burma promoted a five-year plan beginning 1996-97 and this year 2000-2001 is the last year of the of the five year plan. And it achieved 7.2% GDP growth upto last year.

    He also said that the total foreign investment till date amounted to around US $ 7.3 billion. Of this, 50% originated from ASEAN countries, 30% from Europe, 8% from the United States and India barely accounted for 1.1% only amounting to 4.5 US $ million. This figure, he said, needed to increase further.

    Speaking at the function, Burmese deputy prime minister Lt. General Tin Hla said that foreign investors could obtain land on long lease from the government in Burma to set up their projects. In his welcome address to the Burmese delegates, Mr. Arun Bharat Ram, President of the CII stated that India has emerged as the fourth largest export market for Burma accounting for US $ 163.4 million i.e. one-fourth of Burma’s total exports. He also proposed to have a target of US $ 2 billion for bilateral trade between India and Burma by the year 2003.

    The visiting Burmese General was accompanied by a high level delegation comprising Commander of the North Western Command Major General Soe Win, Foreign Minister U Win Aung, Finance and Revenue Minister U Khin Maung Thein, Science and Technology Minister U Thaung, Commerce Minister Brig. Gen. Pyi Sone among others.

    Speaking to the media persons after the meeting, foreign minister U Win Aung said that General Maung Aye’s visit to India is the beginning of better relationship between India and Burma. When asked what are the steps being taken by his government to bring for the democratically elected government in Burma, U Win Aung said that “the government is now trying to solve the fundamental problems which have existed in Burma since its Independence and then it will lay down concrete steps for the emergence of democratically constitutional government with the emergence of a new constitution which the government is writing”.

    General Maung Aye and Burmese delegates were given a ceremonial welcome this morning in New Delhi by the government of India. Later in the evening, Indian Home Minister Mr. L.K Advani and former Army Chief V.P Malik called on General Maung Aye at Maurya Sheraton Hotel in New Delhi.
    Burma expresses bitter disappointment over ILO vote
    YANGON, Nov 17 (AFP) - Myanmar expressed bitter disappointment on Friday over the ILO's decision to invite its members to bring sanctions against the military regime over the issue of forced labour.

    A senior spokesman for the junta said that efforts to stamp out the practice, and its willingness to cooperate with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) monitoring team which visited Yangon twice this year, had been ignored.

    "The ILO decision to activate measures against Myanmar proves that the ILO and the governing body in particular have already made up their minds and don't want to be confused with any facts," he said.

    "They have turned a blind eye on the efforts, positive developments, sincere cooperation and the political will the Myanmar government has taken to be in accordance with the ILO convention (on) forced labour."

    The spokesman said "big and powerful nations" were using labour rights as "a pretext to coerce, pressure and interfere in the domestic affairs" of poorer countries. The ILO had ordered Myanmar to comply with recommendations made by a 1998 committee of inquiry which found use of forced labour to be "widespread and systematic."

    Sanctions were recommended by the International Labour Conference in June but put on hold until the end of this month to give the junta time to adopt concrete action. The ILO team, which made a six-day mission to the country last month, found the government had made progress in changing its laws to end the use of forced labour, but far less in putting legislative changes into practice.

    In the months preceding the ILO's decision, Myanmar's generals had indicated they were extremely concerned about the action, which could lead to further sanctions from its member states and organisations. It now remains to be seen what action will be taken against the regime, which is already labouring under wide-ranging international sanctions that have helped cripple the economy.

    Sources in Yangon said the junta was anxious to avoid trade union bans that would see its agricultural exports turned away from ports around the world, particularly on the eastern seaboard of India.

    It is feared that any new trade bans would deal a mortal blow to the economy, which critics say is saved from complete collapse only by the thriving black market and profits from the drugs trade.

    Sources close to the negotiations between ILO team leader Francis Maupain and the government said the two sides developed a good working relationship during the mission's visits.

    Deputy Foreign Minister Khin Maung Win told AFP last week that Myanmar was "hoping for the best but prepared for the worst" ahead of the ILO's vote, but nevertheless the decision has come as a great disappointment.

    The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) says nearly one million people are currently subjected to forced labour in Myanmar.

    The Brussels-based organisation said this week it had also examined more than 400 labour requisition orders issued by members of the army and several dozen witness statements since June.

    ICFTU's general secretary Bill Jordan has welcomed the ILO's "firm position" and said it "not only sends a strong signal to the generals in Rangoon but is also a message of hope for Burmese democrats and for the hundreds of thousands of victims of inhuman exploitation."
    Junta hits out at ILO sanctions
    source : The Nation

    A NEW chapter on Burma began on Thursday after the International Labour Organisation's governing body voted overwhelmingly to slap sanctions on the country for its persistent use of forced labour.

    The punitive action, due to take effect on November 30, in a sense banishes the Rangoon junta from the international community. It also enforces a complicating ramification for many countries and United Nations agencies with a stake in the country.

    The governing body's resolution, in which 52 out of 56 members voted in support of the sanctions, put a cap on months of intense lobbying, including last-minute efforts by Rangoon to give a pretence of "complying".

    For opposition forces and trade unionists, it was billed as a victory for democracy and human rights and hopes are high that fresh sanctions would deal a serious blow to the economic base of the military government and hence precipitate its downfall.

    "This broadens the effort to get the government of Burma to meet its obligations under the ILO Convention against Forced Labour, which it has ratified," ILO spokesman John Doohan said.

    As anticipated, Rangoon reacted furiously, accusing the international community of turning "a blind eye" to positive developments and sincere cooperation undertaken by the regime after the June resolution of the International Labour Conference. It said such a measure would be counterproductive.

    Like many important punitive actions before, the devil is in the implementation. The ILO's decision per se is non-binding and subject to the judgement of individual UN bodies, states and companies as to what action they deem appropriate to prevent them from abetting compulsory labour in Burma.

    As a result, there is much doubt over how far countries with major commercial interests and an inclination to sympathise with the regime, such as China, India, Japan and Asean states - with the exception of Thailand, are willing to go.

    The activities of various UN agencies with projects inside Burma are now also subject to worldwide scrutiny. According to one Burma watcher, who requested anonymity, these bodies must now seriously review whether cooperation with Rangoon contributes to the use of forced labour.

    But multinational energy companies operating in Burma, such as Total-Fina and Unocal, are the ones most likely to be hit by the resolution.

    In the past their activities have drawn bitter protests and lawsuits from human rights activists. Now, the ILO vote means they are likely to face even more pressure to abandon business in Burma.

    All in all, the rules of the game have been amended and it will be interesting to see how these players react to avoid international criticism that they are abetting human rights violations. For Burma, shutting its door in retaliation, would do more harm than good since it would reinforce its pariah status.
    Bangladesh Alerts Border Guards Along Burma Frontier
    COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh (AP)--Bangladesh has put its border guards on alert Friday and warned villagers to keep away from frontier areas after officials said Myanmar began deploying soldiers along their common border.

    Myanmar began amassing troops and laying land mines on its side of the border after Rohingya insurgents attacked a border outpost on Nov. 10, according to Bangladesh border officials.

    Myanmarese officials have said they reinforced their border guards - but did not deploy the army - to prevent further rebel attacks. They denied they laid mines.

    The Rohingya insurgents, who are mostly Muslims, are fighting for independence in Myanmar's Arakan state, bordering Bangladesh.

    After a 1991 crackdown, at least 250,000 Rohingyas crossed over to Bangladesh, where nearly 180,000 still remain in refugee camps.

    At a meeting of border officials Tuesday in the frontier town of Teknaf, Myanmar officials said that the Rohingya rebels fled inside Bangladesh after the Nov. 10 attack. Bangladesh denied that.

    A Bangladeshi border official on condition of anonymity told The Associated Press that intelligence reports showed Myanmar was moving up regular soldiers. He said international law prohibits moving regular soldiers within 8 kilometers of a border.
    By Deals With Burmese Junta, Minorities Thrive
    The New York Times - November 17, 2000
    By BLAINE HARDEN

    KEKKU, Myanmar - Freedom's just another word for cutting a deal with the generals. That is what the business manager of the Pao National Organization explained over a lunch of spicy chicken and avocado salad here in the rebel outback of a country that is a perennial contender for the title of world's most repressive state.

    By agreeing to a cease-fire with the generals who run what used to be called Burma, the Pao, an ethnic minority of about 400,000 people in a country of 50 million, have won themselves civil rights and economic opportunities all but unimaginable to most Burmese.

    A look at the semi-good life in Pao land explains why, in the last decade, at least 15 armed ethnic minorities in Myanmar have been willing to end decades of bloodshed and do business with the generals.

    "It is not a perfect arrangement," said the Pao business manager, smoking a cigarette through a bamboo water pipe after lunch. "But it is better than war."

    The Pao are prospering primarily as hoteliers, garlic farmers and jade miners. But other ethnic minorities - the Wa and the Shan, in particular - have used cease-fires to expand their interests in the heroin and amphetamine trades, according to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. They have also been encouraged by the government to launder drug profits through the legitimate Burmese economy.

    For the generals, ceding "contingent sovereignty" to groups like the Pao, Shan and Wa has been a win-win deal.

    The agreements have, for the most part, ended a series of expensive insurgent wars that had become a way of life in the mountainous fringes of this country. Fighting continues against the Karen National Union, but that group has only 2,000 to 3,000 fighters, a fraction of its strength before the generals made deals with Karen subgroups.

    Probably more important, cease- fires have freed the generals to focus state resources on saving their own skins. Since killing hundreds of pro- democracy marchers in 1988 and ignoring an election they lost in 1990, the generals have used an ever-expanding web of repression as the key to their continued rule.

    The long, strong arm of that repression is an agency called Military Intelligence that locks up opposition leaders, spies on citizens and forces potential troublemakers like students out of cities.

    The general in charge of Military Intelligence is the one who came up with the idea of making peace with the Pao and other rebel groups: Lt. Gen. Khin Nyunt, who is often described as the brains behind the government. In its Orwellian argot, he is called Secretary One.

    Secretary One is widely feared by members of the Burman ethnic group. They live in the lowlands and make up about 65 percent of the country's population. But among the hill people, Secretary One is not considered to be such a bad guy.

    "He has a very sophisticated political mind, and he keeps his word," said the business manager of the Pao. Although he generally has good relations with Secretary One, he is somewhat afraid of him. To protect him, this article omits his name.

    The business manager, though, was more than happy to explain how life is better in a world where the generals are no longer your enemy. "The most important benefit for our people is that they are no longer being forced to work as slaves for Slorc's army," he said.
    'Hands on' for new UNDCP chief
    source : THE MYANMAR TIMES
    November 13-19,2000
    Volume 2, No.37

    THE new Yangon representative of the United Nations International Drug Control Programme (UNDCP), Jean-Luc Lemahieu, has assumed the office left vacant by the departure of his predecessor, Richard Dickins, in March this year.

    Mr Lemahieu, a Belgian who has worked for the UN for the past 10 years, six of them with the agency’s drug control program, said his posting to a country which encompassed part of the infamous Golden Triangle was “a fantastic challenge”.

    Mr Lemahieu has had strong experience dealing with drug production and trafficking control at the UNDCP’s Carribean office in Barbados, and said the job was one requiring political and practical nouse.

    “My spilt personality in political and technical hands-on management was the reason why they chose me to come down here,” he said.

    “In Myanmar here we’ve (need for) a nice mixture of political and hands- on management.“Technical hands on management to get a better feel or better control on what we’re doing in the Wa region, political because of the enormous sensitivity to the project,” he said.

    Mr Lemahieu said it would be premature for him to elaborate on the UNDCP’s likely future strategies in Myanmar, but that he saw the agency’s US$15.8 million Wa project as the “central piece” of the agency’s mission here.And he ruled out the possibility of any changes to the agency’s policies following his assumption of its senior role.

    “I don’t think there will be a drastic change in our policy, there will be continuation of what we have achieved here,” he said.The UN drug control body has been involved in a number projects in the northern and eastern parts of Shan state, with the cooperation of the Government and regional ethnic leaders, since it was commissioned to address the drug issue here in 1994.
    Anti-insurgent group levies poppy cultivation tax in Shan State
    Source: Democratic Voice of Burma, Oslo, in Burmese 1245 gmt 16 Nov 00

    Text of report by Burmese opposition radio on 16th November

    The Kachin Democratic Army, KDA, is levying opium tax on farmers who grow poppies in northern Shan State's Kutkai Township.

    A tax of 6,500 kyat [Burmese currency unit] is levied on a poppy field planted near and around Nanwin Village in Mu-se Township. As the KDA has issued an order stating that poppy could not be cultivated without paying tax, the villagers have been giving tax since 1st November.

    The KDA is a Kachin armed group that signed a cease-fire agreement with the SPDC [State Peace and Development Council] and is allowed to hold weapons.

    Furthermore, during October the anti-insurgent group formed under the auspices of the SPDC levied a poppy tax of kyat 14,000 per household on poppy farmers in Namhkam Township, northern Shan State. Besides, a poppy growing household has to pay 2,000 kyat per household for the Namphat Khan Village Tract fund.

    DVB [Democratic Voice of Burma] correspondent Myo Min Thant filed this report.
    Burma shrugs off economic effects of ILO-led sanctions
    YANGON, Nov 18 (AFP) - Myanmar Saturday downplayed the economic effects of an International Labour Organisation (ILO) decision to recommend its members impose sanctions over the issue of forced labour.

    "The resolution cannot hurt us too much as it does not carry much weight and individual countries are not obliged to comply with ILO's urgings," Deputy Foreign Minister Khin Maung Win told a press conference.

    "Trade patterns are mostly with neighbouring countries who are not obliged to follow the resolution," he said.

    In an unprecedented move, the ILO Thursday urged its member states and organisations to reconsider their relations with Myanmar because of its "widespread" use of forced labour.

    A majority of the 56 members of the ILO's governing body voted in favour of imposing sanctions, despite the opposition of several Asian countries including China, India, Japan, Malaysia and Pakistan.

    Thailand refused to join in a united Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) defence of Myanmar, which joined the bloc in 1997.

    Myanmar's foreign affairs ministry Friday said the decision was "most unfair" and ignored Yangon's efforts to cooperate with the ILO in stamping out forced labour.

    "The effects of this decision would have the negative impact on the very people it purports to protect and serve," it said in a statement.

    Khin Maung Win said the ILO decision was a political move by a small group of hostile Western countries intent on decrying its efforts to deal with the issue of forced labour.Myanmar's home ministry announced a new law banning forced labour in October after an ILO mission visited the country. The decree was reinforced on November 1 by a military directive.But the ILO judged the measures were "too little too late".

    Myanmar has been in the organisation's sights since 1998, when a commission of inquiry found the use of forced labour to be "widespread and systematic."

    According to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) nearly one million people are currently subjected to forced labour in Myanmar, particularly in building roads, railways and military installations.

    The army has been singled out as a main offender, due to its practice of using villagers as "porters".

    The ICFTU on Friday urged tour operators and multinationals working in Myanmar to apply the recommendations of the ILO.

    Any new sanctions, on top of those already imposed by the United States and the European Union, may seal the fate of the tottering Myanmar economy.

    Analysts believe that of all the sanctions imposed on Myanmar so far, the ILO's punitive action is the most humiliating and has the potential to cause the regime real damage.

    Trade union bans could see Myanmar's valuable agricultural exports turned away from ports around the world, particularly on the eastern seaboard of India.

    Behind the speeches and ultra-nationalist posturing, the generals in Yangon have made it clear they are loathe to see the ILO's door close completely on a regime that is already isolated and marginalised.
    Burma may face new international sanctions
    source : ABC

    Burma may face new interntional sanctions at the end of this month following a decision by the International Labour Organisation to condemn forced labour in the country.

    South East Asia correspondent Geoff Thompson reports the I-L-O will call on workers and employer groups to review their relations with Burma.

    CART: It is the first decision of its kind ever reached by the International Labour Organisation. A 1988 committee of enquiry into forced labour in Butrma had found the practice to be widespread and systematic. The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions estimates one-million people are subjected to forced labour inside Burma's borders. ILO's support for anti-Burma sanctions had been put on hold from June until the end of this month to give the country's military Junta time to address the problem. The Junta responded by issuing a directive declaring forced labour illegal. The ILO has described the Junta's response as too little too late. Burma has condemned the ILO decision.
    ILO urges sanctions on Burmese junta
    source :The Guardian
    Peter Capella in Geneva
    Saturday November 18, 2000

    Burma adopted a threatening posture yesterday in response to a landmark decision by the International Labour Organisation to urge that sanctions be adopted against the country because of its use of forced labour. It is the first time in the ILO's 81-year history that it has taken this step.

    The government in Rangoon declared in a statement that Thursday's decision would have a "negative impact on the very people it the ILO purports to protect and serve".

    The 174 ILO members, from the private and public sectors, are being asked to "review their relations" with Burma's military rulers from next month. They have been asked to ensure that they in no way abet its widespread use of forced labour.

    The decision was approved by an overwhelming majority of the ILO's governments and trade unions, and received the unanimous backing of its employers' associations. This will give legal weight to international boycotts as well as more traditional government-sponsored sanctions.

    The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions urged tour operators to cancel trips because Burmese workers are being forced to develop its tourist infrastructure.

    The move followed three years of ILO attempts to persuade Burma's military leaders to stop the "widespread and systematic" use of forced labour, during which workers have been raped, beaten and physically abused by soldiers, and porters have been sent out to test minefields.

    A mission last month concluded that, while some legal changes had been made, the practice, often called community service, had not stopped.