Daily News-January 22 - 2001- Monday

  • A Swiss underware company operating in Burma
  • Free Min Ko Naing Campaign in Canada
  • God's Army kids look to a new life
  • God's Army twins say they just want to be like ordinary boys
  • Thai police arrested Ex-wife of Burma's drug lord on heroin charges
  • Suu Kyi Wins Burma Court Battle to Keep Her Home

    • A Swiss underware company operating in Burma

    The Clean Clothes Campaign has been informed that Triumph International, the Switzerland-based garment company, is operating a factory in Burma.

    The exiled trade union federation of Burma, the federation of Trade Unions - Burma (FTUB) has called for support of a campaign to demand that Triumph pull out of Burma.

    This is also the demand of Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Burma's struggle for democracy. Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 and still under house arrest for her ongoing efforts in defiance of the country's brutal military regime, supports this strategy, as does the National League for Democracy.

    On January 19th the CCC is organizing demonstrations in support of this demand-- Let Triumph and retailers that sell Triumph products in your country know that you support this campaign.
    Free Min Ko Naing Campaign in Canada

    Information Department
    Burmese Students' Democratic Organization (Canada)
    January 19, 2001

    A seminar focusing on student prisoners in Burma was ended with success on January 18, 2001 at the University of Alberta, Canada.Fifty student members of Amnesty International attended that event.

    Dr. Khin Saw Win, a leading Burmese activist in Canada, was presence there and gave a speech about Burma. She exposed the lives of political prisoners including the situation of student leader Min Ko Naing.

    She also pointed out a range of cruel practices that the ruling authorities are systematically committing upon political prisoners. In addition to presenting inhumanity of military, she handled some questions raised from students regarding imprisoned students and the sustenance and maintenance of military power for so long.

    At the end of the event, students formed two action groups; one is for Min Ko Naing and another is for Myo Min Zaw in order to facilitate campaign for their release and pressure the military to set them free.

    With these two action groups they will draw attention from students on their campus as well as from secondary schools. Canadian student activists will also carry out a letter writing campaign for their deliverance.
    God's Army kids look to a new life

    source : Straitstimes

    The Thai authorities caring for the teenage soldiers are wondering how to make it a better one for the twins after their surrender last week

    By James East
    STRAITS TIMES THAILAND BUREAU

    BANGKOK - The emergence of God's Army from the jungles and dusty hills of the Thai-Myanmar border until their surrender to the authorities last week has highlighted the impact that ethnic strife and warfare has had on the region's troubled children.

    For years, teenage soldiers of God's Army lived like the child characters of William Golding's Lord of the Flies, sleeping rough, eating insects and smoking cheroots - pungent Myanmar cigarettes - while the world gawped at the terrorist acts they were supposedly behind.

    Up and down the 2,400-km border, there are some 46,000 children aged under 12 whose lives, like Johnny and Luther's, have been turned upside down by Yangon's drive to control its ethnic border regions.

    They, just like the two 13-year-olds touting M-16s on Thursday for a police reconstruction of the shooting of six Thais, know all too well the power of the gun.

    Most of those living in the 11 border camps have fled onslaughts against their villages by Myanmar's heavily armed soldiers.

    Myanmar's State Peace and Development Council also stands accused by the United Nation of bolstering its own 500,000-strong military with hundreds of child soldiers whose fate is thought to be more traumatic than that of the children who end up in the camps. Those who have escaped have talked of forced portering and landmine work.

    Meanwhile, following their surrender this week, 13-year-old twin leaders of God's Army Johnny and Luther Htoo can now look forward to a new life. Authorities caring for them are wondering how to make it a better one. The twins must be on Yangon's 'most wanted' list.

    Their mini-army not only successfully fought off junta forces for years but endured artillery bombardments and provided refuge to student rebels who seized Myanmar's Bangkok embassy in 1999.

    But refugee agencies fear that if sent to a camp, they could then be seized by a junta snatch squad.
    God's Army twins say they just want to be like ordinary boys

    SUAN PHUNG, Thailand, Jan 22 (AFP)

    God's Army boy-leaders Johnny and Luther Htoo Monday debunked the myths surrounding them and said they would like to return with their parents to Burma and go to school like ordinary children.

    Speaking for the first time since they surrendered to Thai authorities last week along with a rag-tag band of supporters, the boys gave shy, halting replies to reporters' questions.

    Through a Karen language interpreter they downplayed their followers' belief that they possessed magical powers that made them and their fighters invincible in battle against Burmese troops.

    "No," they replied when asked whether the stories that they were impervious to gunfire were true.

    But when asked whether they wanted to go back home to Burma where they once lived with their parents, the more outspoken brother Luther gave an emphatic: "Yes, if we can."

    The elfin-faced pair, who say they are 13 but look years younger, also said they would like to go to school one day.

    The brothers gave themselves up to Thai troops after their mystical anti-Burma rebel movement was hunted down over a bloody New Year's Eve raid on a village in western Ratchaburi province.

    Since then the twins and some dozen supporters, mostly women and children, have been held at this border police headquarters, living together in a small cottage where authorities have been feeding them up.

    Only a week after coming in from the jungle where a Thai offensive had left them on the brink of starvation, the painfully thin Htoo brothers already appeared to be much healther and brighter.

    Provincial governor Komes Daengthong-dee said the boys would be kept at the Suan Phung police headquarters until experts decided their fate.

    "The committee will decide whether they are illegal immigrants or refugees and we are currently collecting together all the facts," he said.

    Concerns that they will use their stay in Thailand to reunite their gang, which has been all but destroyed after being targeted by the Burma and Thai security forces, "will be one factor that we will take into account."

    If the boys are found to be displaced persons they will be sent to a temporary shelter where they could live and study with other Karen refugee children, Komes said.

    Investigators are trying to determine if the boys were involved in the seizure of a major Ratchaburi hospital last year, carried out by God's Army fighters and rebels from another militia band.

    Meanwhile local villagers in Ratchaburi are breathing a collective sigh of relief now that God's Army -- which has caused them considerable disquiet in the last year -- is a thing of the past.

    Three men among the God's Army group of 17 who turned themselves in last week have been charged with murder and robbery over the New Year's Eve attack that left six Thais dead.

    However, the remainder of the God's Army members being held at this border town look set to escape punishment over the raid and previous attacks staged by the anti-Burma militia.
    Thai police arrested Ex-wife of Burma's drug lord on heroin charges

    BANGKOK, Jan 22 (AFP)

    The former wife of Burma's drug warlord Khun Sa and five accomplices have been arrested on charges of smuggling nearly 60 kilos of heroin into the United States, Thai police said Monday.

    Peng Hui-Lan, the 54-year-old former common law wife of the ailing drug baron, was detained here Friday along with two other Burmese nationals, one Chinese and two Thais, the Narcotic Suppression Bureau (NSB) said.

    NSB Commissioner Lieutenant General Preophan Dhamapong said the arrest was a joint operation by Thai anti-narcotics police and the US Drug Enforcement Agency.

    US embassy officials said the investigation began last October when a probe into a major heroin trafficking operation resulted in the seizure of 1.4 kilos of Southeast Asian heroin in New York City.

    Earlier this month, US agents there uncovered another haul of about 57 kilos of top-grade heroin.

    The embassy officials said the probe was not related to Operation Tiger Trap, which earlier this month netted Khun Sa's former private secretary Yang Wan-Hsuan.

    Yang, known by his alias Lao Tai, will be sent to the United States to face trial on drug trafficking charges after being arrested in the northern province of Chiang Rai.

    Thai police said Lao Tai maintained close links to his former boss, who was until recently the most powerful figure in the notorious golden triangle opium producing area that straddles Burma, Thailand and Laos.

    Khun Sa ostensibly withdrew from the drugs business in 1996 after the signing of a ceasefire between Burma's military junta and his Mon Tai Army, which had been waging a separatist rebellion for two decades.

    Also wanted by the United States, Khun Sa, 64, now lives in Rangoon, apparently with total immunity and the protection of the secret services.

    He is believed to have laundered his drug profits through Rangoon hotels and other business interests, and to still be an influential figure in the narcotics trade despite his failing health.

    Burmese government officials do not deny that Khun Sa lives freely in Rangoon, but argue that the deal with him was necessary to restrict the production of opium in Shan state, the biggest producer-region.

    Khun Sa lives alone in Rangoon but is thought at one time to have at least one legal wife and another common law partner or "minor wife".
    Suu Kyi Wins Burma Court Battle to Keep Her Home

    Rangoon (Reuters)- - A court in Burma has dismissed a suit by the estranged brother of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi over ownership rights to her home, in another sign the military is easing its crackdown on the pro-democracy figurehead.

    ``I hereby dismiss the suit as the plaintiff side filed it in the wrong form,'' Judge U Soe Thein said in a judgement on Monday.

    Suu Kyi's brother Aung San Oo, who lives in the United States, filed a suit last year claiming the right to half of the large lakeside house in central Rangoon, which local real estate agents have valued in the neighborhood of $2 million.

    Analysts speculated the court case would give the military government the chance to put more pressure on Suu Kyi, who has been kept confined to the house since September with access to her tightly controlled.

    But there have been recent signs of a thaw in the military's treatment of Suu Kyi.

    The United Nations announced earlier this month that senior government leaders had held secret talks with her, and cartoons and editorials in the official media attacking Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) have suddenly ceased.

    Legal sources in Rangoon said the case would probably now be settled out of court.

    Awaiting Instructions

    Han Toe, the official agent of Suu Kyi's brother, said he would await instructions on whether to file another suit.

    ``I still have to contact Aung San Oo about further action -- whether to settle the case out of court or to file the suit again,'' he said.

    The court ruled that Aung San Oo should have filed for administration rights to the house, instead of seeking to partition it by gaining a share of half the property.

    Suu Kyi's lawyer, Kyi Win, said he was happy with the ruling.

    A government source told Reuters that Burma's rulers had not interfered in the case as it was purely a family affair.

    Suu Kyi and Aung San Oo are children of Burma's independence hero General Aung San, who was assassinated in 1947 when the country was on the threshold of independence from Britain.

    The Rangoon house was owned by Suu Kyi's family.

    She has lived there -- much of the time under house arrest -- since returning from Europe in 1988 to nurse her ailing mother.

    The NLD won elections by a landslide in 1990 but has never been allowed to govern.

    Burma's government insists it is committed to building democracy. But it says this will take time, and has frequently accused the NLD of trying to destroy the country.

    The military government has faced stinging criticism from Western nations for its treatment of Suu Kyi and the NLD.

    Burma's government has given permission for a European Union delegation to visit the country later this month and meet Suu Kyi, in another sign it is trying to offer concessions.