-- Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma

Highlights:

NE WIN’S FAMILY ARRESTED, ACCUSED OF PLOTTING A COUP

PARLIAMENTARIANS: "WE WILL NOT UNDERMINE TRANSITION

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE – MIG-29S AND MILITARY ADVISERS

MYANMAR QUASHES RUMOURS OF BANK NOTE WITHDRAWAL

THAI DEPORTATIONS TO GROW BY LEAPS AND BOUNDS

STUDENT AND COMMUNIST PARTY PRISONERS FREED

"MODEL VILLAGES" TO RECEIVE UNINVITED NEWCOMERS

TAX FREE MARKETS FLOP – WHERE ARE ALL THE EGGS?

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QCompiled from various news reports: Updated to March 9, 2002

RANGOON -- Burma's military authorities have arrested the son-in-law and three grandsons of former Burmese strongman General Ne Win on charges of plotting to overthrow the government

Major-General Kyaw Win, deputy chief of military intelligence, told a press conference here on Saturday afternoon that Ne Win's son-in-law, Aye Zaw Win, and three grandsons, Aye Ne Win, Kyaw Ne Win and Zwe Ne Win his had been taken into custody on Thursday evening. "We have arrested them for attempting to seize the state power and to split the armed forces," Kyaw Win said.

Kyaw Win said U Aye Zaw Win and his sons had been plotting the coup with a former military commander at a restaurant in the capital on Thursday evening when they were arrested. "In this conspiracy they had involved some of military units and some commanding officers. So the government took steps to prevent this conspiracy, which not only threatened military unity but also the peace and stability of the country. They were arrested in the nick of time."

Kyaw Win said that Aye Zaw Win had admitted under questioning to being dissatisfied with the loss of business privileges and with the business preferences being shown to some cease-fire groups. They were also unhappy with political and economic changes being undertaken by the ruling military council.

Kyaw Win denied reports that Ne Win – now in his 90s -- and his daughter, Sandar Win, were under house arrest. Diplomats and witnesses near Ne Win's house said that by Saturday army guards posted outside the residence after the arrests had been replaced with police. Barbed wire had been changed to wooden barricades at the gate of the lane leading to Ne Win’s lakeside home, where he lives with his daughter's family in the elite residential area.

Employees at the Nawarat Hotel said the hotel's business center, where Sandar Win maintains an office, had been shut down. They said she had not come to work Friday. An automatic message on the telephone of Aye Zaw Win said service had been suspended.

The capital has been abuzz with talk about the arrests. Residents have been glued to transistor radios, some of them tuned to foreign broadcasts. Informed sources said all the country's regional military commanders had been summoned to Rangoon for a meeting. But the city has been calm, and no beef up of security is in evidence.

Observers said it is likely that authorities will arrest more people including government officials and army officers. Late last year, the military junta sacked high-ranking generals including Lt Gen Win Myint, who was considered the fourth ranking member of the ruling junta known as the State Peace and Development Council.

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Based on a statement issued by Burma’s Parliamentary Union: March 3, 2002

BOMMERSVIK, Sweden – Exiled members of Burma’s elected but never seated parliament are steadfast in their aim of ending military rule and establishing a federal Union of Burma.

Meeting in Bommersvik, Sweden, last week, nineteen members of Burma’s Parliamentary Union, along with advisors and other key exile figures, hammered out a statement that declared they would "never ignore the will of the Burmese people expressed through the May, 1990 general elections" in the country.

Based on the results of that election, the parliamentarians said, "the NLD, led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, has the mandate to form the Government of the Union of Burma" and the "right to enter into dialogue with the SPDC and other, and to negoitate a transition to democracy".

Among their immediate objectives, the parliamentarians said, was that of ensuring "that the current talks between Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the SPDC do not break down". They were giving an undertaking, they said, "that our activities will not undermine the position of the NLD/ Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the ethnic nationalities".

The parliamentarians called on members of the European Union to incorporate into their common position measures aimed at "speeding up the talk process in Burma". They also appealed to the Japanese Government "to withhold resumption of Official Development Assistance until a transparent, accountable and responsive government of national reconciliation is in place".

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Bommersvik II Decaration (March 3, 2002): We, the representatives of the people of Burma, welcome the initiatives by non-Burma ethnic nationalities reaffrming their commitment to ensure the integrity of the Union and to reguild it on the basis of ‘Panglong Spirt’.

Lt-Gen Khin Nyunt at Phaung-gyi (March 8, 2002) -- According to the guidance of Head of State Senior General Than Shwe, Panglong region where unity of Union-born national races was evinced and the Union was conceived, has been recently designated as a development region. … Panglong University will be built in Panglong; Panglong Technological College and Panglong Computer College, near Loilem. The 16-bed hospital in Panglong will be upgraded to a 25-bed one; a 100-bed hospital in Loilem district, to a 200-bed one.

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Hisane Masaki in the Japan Times (abridged):: March 8, 2002

TOKYO -- Nearly a year has passed since Japan announced its controversial multibillion-yen aid plan to repair a hydro-electric power station in Burma, but not a single penny has been disbursed to get the project underway.

Has Japan dropped the aid plan due to a barrage of criticism from home and abroad?

"Absolutely not," one senior government aid official said. "We are continuing preparations for the aid plan quietly but steadily."

Under the aid plan, grants-in-aid worth between 3 billion yen and 3.5 billion yen are to be provided in several installments to help the Burma repair the ageing Baluchaung hydroelectric power plant in the eastern province of Kayah. The power plant, built four decades ago with Japanese economic aid extended as part of wartime compensation, is symbolic of the relationship between Japan and Burma.

Japanese officials explained at the time that the aid plan was intended to encourage dialogue between the SPDC and Suu Kyi and to bring about other favourable changes in Burma, particularly in the areas of human rights and democracy. Japan has also defended the Baluchaung aid plan as serving the basic human needs of ordinary people, saying it would help the country's acute power-supply shortages.

A senior Foreign Ministry official said: "This is not a simple ODA project. Of course, it is an emergency humanitarian project because any halt to power supplies from the Baluchaung plant would cause great troubles for many Myanmar citizens. But it has a strategic significance," said the official, requesting anonymity. "We want to encourage dialogue between Suu Kyi's NLD and the SPDC through ODA like this. In the case of Myanmar, we are keeping in mind democratization more strongly than in the case of any other Asian country when we use ODA."

However, the official refused to predict when the first installment of the grants-in-aid for the Baluchaung project will actually be disbursed. "We are still in the stage of studying the project," he said. "We cannot say for sure the timing of the first installment at this moment."

But another senior Foreign Ministry official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that the work on the "basic design" of the project is almost completed. The work has been conducted by the Japan International Co-operation Agency, a government-affiliated aid organ. The official said that after the work on the basic design is completed, the government will begin to consider the specific timing of the first tranche of the grants-in-aid money, which will come at least within the next several months.

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FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE – MIG-29S AND MILITARY ADVISERS

Win Htein in the Irrawaddy On-line: March 6, 2002

"Russian air force officials are ready to train twenty Burmese pilots at the base," defense analyst U Htay Aung told the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB). He added that Burmese Air Force Chief Maj Gen Myint Swe also visited Russia in late February for special training.

 
Burmese observers' have criticized Burma's cash starved regime for spending an estimated US $130 million on the jets.

Meanwhile, five Russian missile experts believed to be assisting Burma in the building of a Surface to Air Missile (SAM) Battery arrived in Burma's southern coastal region last week. An unknown member of Burma's ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) reportedly accompanied the group to Alechaung Village in the Tenasserim Division's Mergui District, according to the DVB.

"Since last year, they (Burma's government) have been reinforcing their air power and they have also built new air defense mechanisms along the Thai-Burma border," said U Htay Aung.

According to reports in the Thai media, Thai military officials and the United States are both concerned over the recent increase in military ties between Russia and Burma.

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Based on an AFP news story (with additions): March 6, 2002

RANGOON -- Myanmar's military junta Wednesday moved to quash rumours that it will introduce two high-denomination bank notes and withdraw all other currency in circulation.

"As we have already declared before, we have no intention of demonetizing the present currency in circulation and there will be no 5,000 kyat nor 10,000 kyat notes issued," said deputy chief of military intelligence Major General Kyaw Win.

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Editor’s note: The kyat continued to trade at 750 to the U.S. dollar this week down 3.33% since January 1. In contrast several other southeast Asian currencies have shown strength recently, with the Indonesian rupiah up a surprising 3.25%, the Thai baht up 1.4% and the Philippino and Singapore currencies up by about 1% since the beginning of the year.

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Based on news from AFP (with additions): Updated to March 8, 2002

BANGKOK -- Thai police on Thursday said they had arrested a married couple over the deaths of 13 Burmese nationals who suffocated while they were being smuggled through Thailand. Som Poonsombat and his wife Boonta were job brokers who doubled as the ringleaders of a human trafficking gang which brought illegal workers in from Burma, police said.

The pair were charged with smuggling illegal workers, and negligence causing the death of the 13, aged between 12 and 25 years, whose bodies were found dumped in sacks by the roadside in eastern Prachin Buri province. Forensic experts said they suffocated to death during their arduous secret journey to Thailand.

"They confessed that altogether there were 30 of them hidden in a pickup truck which was transporting roses to Bangkok," said deputy national police chief General Amnuay Phetsiri. "But as they arrived in Bangkok they found 13 had died and then they dumped their bodies in Prachin Buri."

In separate pre-dawn raids, Som was arrested in the western border province of Kampheangphet and Boonta was taken into custody in the nearby province of Phitsanulok. Police are tracing the 17 who survived the ordeal, and have mounted a close watch on all border checkpoints. They are also looking for four other members of the smuggling gang, including the truck driver who was hired to take the workers from Mae Sot to factories in the Bangkok suburb of Nakhon Pathom.

The migrants were put in rice sacks to evade detection by police at checkpoints along the way. They were then covered by sacks of fertilizer and buried beneath a load of roses and vegetables. When the driver arrived in Nakhon Sawan, he opened the truck's storage area and found 13 of the Burmese, including three children, had suffocated. The other 17 workers who survived were dropped off and the driver wrapped the dead in rice sacks and left them in the dump in Prachin Buri where they were found.

Results of autopsies showed that the victims died of suffocation. Bruises on their bodies were apparently inflicted as they tried to escape.

Police estimate that up to a million people a year are smuggled into Thailand, mostly from the poorer neighboring countries of Burma, Laos and Cambodia. Premsak Piayura, chairman of the labour committee of the Thai parliament said influential figures of the police could be behind human trafficking rings, from which huge profits are to be made.

Meanwhile, Thailand’s National Human Rights Commission is looking into the deaths of 17 Karen people found in a stream near the border last month. NGOs had demanded the commission look into the mass killings. The Karen were found with their throats cut in a stream near the border in Mae Ramat and Mae Sot districts.

Police told the commissioners they still did not know who the victims were but believed them to be connected to a drug trafficking network or a labour trafficking ring.

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Supamart Kasem in the Bangkok Post (edited and abridged): March 8, 2002

TAK -- Human trafficking in Thailand is a thriving business with smugglers getting 3,000-5,000 baht per head in brokerage fees for each person. Huge earnings have drawn many influential people to the business of smuggling workers from neighbouring countries to supply Thai factories, which are in dire need of labourers.

Sources said members of human trafficking rings included police, soldiers, government officials, defence volunteers and influential figures. According to these sources, the gangs have several tricks to get their human cargoes through border checkpoints without being detected. In some cases, alien workers disguised themselves as monks or used fake border passes to enter the country.

There are as many as 400 points along the Burmese border through which the migrant workers could be smuggled into Thailand. Among the most frequently used are routes in the Kawthaung-Ranong, Tachilek-Mae Sai, and Tavoy-Kanchanaburi corridors. Those wanting to go to southern Thai provinces are told to board a vessel to a pier in Ranong, where traffickers would send trucks to take them to factories in the south and Malaysia.

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Based on news from NLM, Kyodo and BKK Post: Updated to March 6, 2002

RANGOON – Thailand has deported over 800 migrant workers to Burma in the past month alone and the number can be expected to grow by leaps and bounds in the weeks to come, according to officials on both sides of the border between the two countries.

Maj-Gen Kyaw Win, deputy chief of military intelligence, told a press conference here Wednesday that the countries had arranged in "mutual friendship" a date for the reception of Myanmar citizens working in Thailand illegally. But some, he said, were "returning home before the scheduled date" and a reception camp had been opened in Myawaddy to accommodate them.

According to the general, 817 citizens had returned so far and been provided with a medical check-up and cash assistance to get them back home "safe and sound".

Thai police were not being quite as sweet with their words in describing the operation. Police Maj-Gen Ukrit Patchimsawat told reporters in Bangkok that another 35,000 aliens would be arrested and deported in the three-month campaign expected to last until May 9. Only about 10,000 of 560,000 registered workers from Burma, Laos and Cambodia registered for a renewal of their work permits during February. Over 90% of those applying were from Burma.

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Larry Jagan in the Bangkok Post (abridged and updated) : March 9, 2002

BANGKOK – Burma's military rulers have released 48 more women from jail on humanitarian grounds. Altogether 195 women have been freed in the past two weeks. All of them were either pregnant or had young children.

"These releases appear to be a response to UN rapporteur Paulo Sergio Pinheiro's visit,'' said a Western diplomat in Rangoon. When Pinheiro left Rangoon two weeks ago, he urged Burmese authorities to considering the release of prisoners who were elderly or ill, women who were pregnant or had young children, and juvenile offenders.

All the women released from prison over the last two weeks were classified as petty criminals. ``They'd been convicted of illegal activities, including prostitution, gambling, theft and acting as drug couriers,'' said a government spokesman.

"Many of the women that were freed shouldn't have been in jail in the first place," a Rangoon diplomat said, "Some of them may have been locked up simply for carrying a condom. The police often use this as proof of being a prostitute, whether they are or not.''

United Nations officials believe the process of giving an amnesty to these prisoners on humanitarian grounds is part of a broader strategy that could be applied to political prisoners in the future. International human rights groups believe there are still more than 1,300 political prisoners in jail, including 19 elected MPs.

The international community has been urging the Burmese regime to speed up the dialogue process and prove it is sincere in its claims to be serious about wanting to establish a multi-party democracy. To do this they must release more political prisoners.

UN officials believe that now that the Burmese regime has established the principle of an amnesty in the case of prisoners serving terms for petty offenses, it could be extended to cover political prisoners in future. But Burmese military officials have ruled out an umbrella release of all political prisoners, although they do say the generals are considering freeing activists in batches of up to 200 at a time. "There are security issues to be considered,'' said a spokesman for the military.

The Burmese junta still fears that releasing too many political prisoners at a time, or the more vocal ones, could spark street protests. This is something that neither the generals or the NLD leaders want.

UN officials have been suggesting to the junta that they release one or two so-called "trouble makers" with each group so that the authorities could keep control the situation. But it seems some prisoners, including student leader Min Ko Naing, are unlikely to be released soon. "The regime is paranoid about communists,'' said a UN official, ``and they will be the very last to be freed.''

The generals are also seriously considering lifting the restrictions on NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi, according to both UN and Burmese officials "We expect that Daw Suu will be free before the end of next month's Water Festival [Songkran],'' said a senior member of the NLD. But whether this is just wishful thinking or otherwise, only time will tell.

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Based on news from Reuters, DVB: March 4, 2002

RANGOON -- Burma's military junta has freed eight political prisoners identified as members of ''armed outlawed groups''.

DVB radio named three released on Monday as members of political youth groups who had been held in Thayawaddy prison about 65 miles north of the capital. They were Zaw Aung of the NLD youth wing, Yin Htwe of the ABSDF and ABSFU, and Thaung Hteik of Ya-ka-tha. All were student leaders who participated in December 1991 demonstrations at Rangoon University on the occasion of the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. They had all been held longer than the 10 years to which they originally been sentenced.

Two prisoners affiliated with the Burma Communist Party, named as Tint Swe and Kyaw Oo Nyo were also released on Monday from Myaungmya prison in Irrawaddy division.

Three more persons identified as being in jail for "unlawful connections with the outlawed groups" were released from various correctional facilities on Friday, a spokesman said in a statement. They were identified as Ba Htoo Maung, Min Hlaing and Hla Nyein. Other information about them was not immediately available

The release of the student and communist leaders is almost unprecedented since the military regime began to free political prisoners a year ago. Hundreds remain in jail.

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The US State Department labeled the military-run nation's rights record as "extremely poor", saying that extrajudicial killings, torture and arbitrary arrests and disappearances persisted.

"It is of utmost regret to learn that the US State Department has issued an annual human rights so-called report based again on repeatedly incorrect and outlandishly disoriented information regarding Myanmar," the junta said.

In a strongly worded statement, it said that "such a high-profile report" had an obligation to reflect the facts of the situation. Instead, it said, the report was "designed to find fault with others in its dismemberment of a nation".

The 2001 US report, part of a worldwide survey, singled out Myanmar along with Vietnam and China for censure in Asia. "The government's extremely poor human rights record and longstanding severe repression of its citizens continued during the year," it said, adding that they were subject to "the arbitrary and sometimes brutal dictates of the military".

The report highlighted "credible reports that army soldiers shot and killed many unarmed ethnic Shan villagers in several incidents in the country during the year" and that soldiers had raped and killed women.

It also cited forced labour, lack of religious freedoms, and arbitrary arrest and detention for expression of dissenting political views. "The government continued to restrict severely freedom of speech, press, assembly, and association," it said.

While acknowledging the regime had curbed intimidation of independent lawyers, it was criticised for continued infringement of citizens' privacy, with systematic monitoring of their movements and communications by security forces.

Zaai Oong Nyunt, aged 35, was taken from his home in Wan Lao the main village in a tract of the same name about fifteen miles south of Kunhing on December 12. The incident followed a skirmish between a column of soldiers from the battalion and resistance troops of the Shan State Army at a deserted village a few miles from Wan Lao.

After the clash, the Burma army troops searched Wan Lao village, the only inhabited village in the surrounding area following a massive forced relocation program in 1996-7. During the search, a note which the Shan soldiers had written asking for food from the villagers was discovered. The village was immediately accused of providing support to the resistance army and the troops seized Zaai Oong Nyunt for interrogation about the operations of the Shan soldiers.

They said he had committed a grave offence in not reporting the receipt of the Shan soldiers' letter and accused him of having provided rice and food for the Shan soldiers to fight the Burma army troops. Then they tied him up and beat him for some time and put him in an empty granary, and dripped drops of hot plastic from a burning plastic pipe over
his body, asking questions about Shan soldiers during intervals, until he lost consciousness.

When the headman regained consciousness, the troops put him in a gunny sack, closed and tied up the mouth of the sack and kicked him around. Finally they kicked him down a mountain slope. The sack rolled and rolled and when it stopped, Zaai Oong Nyunt was already dead.

Edited version of Network Media Group news item: March 6, 2002

As a result, a meeting with representatives of the KNPP had to be postponed, although an advance team of the full intermediary group did manage to get across the border and have a meeting with Karenni Prime Minister Aung Than Lay, Military Chief of Staff Be Htoo and and other members of the KNPP’s Central Committee.

Rimond Htoo, secretary of KNPP, said the advance team had not been authorized to carry on negotiations. All they could do was to send a report to the main group on their meeting. The KNPP secretary said that any discussions with KNPP alone were unlikely to bear fruit before a nationwide cease-fire that included other insurgent forces such as the Shan, Karen, Chin and Arakan ethnic groups.

The full intermediary group is reported to consist of 36 members, all representatives of their respective townships in Kayah state where the majority of the Karenni people live. These delegates have been putting pressure on KNPP to engage in a ceasefire with the military regime.

A previous meeting between the KNPP and the intermediary group team was held in December. Another meeting is expected, but the date has not yet been fixed, according to Rimond Htoo. The advance team returned to Kayah on the morning of March 5.

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Based on news from Narinjara (with additions): March 7, 2002

MAUNGDAW – Large numbers of carpenters have been engaged by the authorities in Maungdaw and Buthidaung townships to construct houses in a dozen "model villages close to the border with Bangladesh, Narinjara News reports.

According a construction department engineer in the area, plans call for the construction of homes for seventy families in the villages. Other sources in Maungdaw township said the houses have been assigned to newcomers to the area whose homes were sacrificed to make way for commercial developments in Rangoon and Mandalay and others suffering from leprosy or testing positive for the HIV virus.

The move to relocate families from urban areas to the "model village" project in the Arakan border area is nothing new. A report released by the U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labour this week pointed out that the villages which were first opened by the government two years ago are located on land originally seized without compensation from Rohingya farmers.

The Rohingyas were even forced to work on homes for the relocated settlers without being paid for their labour. Though Muslim in faith, the Rohingyas were also required to construct Buddhist pagodas for the new arrivals, the U.S. report said.

Carpenters working on the expansion project are at least receiving a wage, Naringjara reports, but not the standard rate prevailing in the area but one arbitrarily set up military supervisors.

Last December several of the "model" villages were visited by General Khin Nyunt of the ruling military junta who reportedly distributed bags and rice and clothing to impoverished villagers and a TV set, video deck and cassettes to schools in the area.

But the general’s generosity apparently was not ample enough to convince some of the settlers to stay on in the area. Narinjara reports that at least two families who were relocated from Rangoon to the model village of Aungthabray have reportedly fled to unknown destinations, taking with them most of their possessions, but leaving behind a bullock cart and two acres of paddy land.

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By Zarny Win in the Irrawaddy On-line: March 5, 2002

RANGOON -- Tax-free markets established by Burma's military government to decrease the cost of essential goods have failed to meet consumer demands despite private firms being forced to provide products to the government run markets, according to sources in Rangoon.

"People are queuing in front of the markets before 5:00 am to buy eggs and things," said a Rangoon resident. "But they do not have enough stock for the people."

The Rangoon City Development Committee (RCDC) opened the markets in March 2000 which sell products such as cooking oil, eggs and soap. They were created in hopes of easing the effects of Burma's continuing economic crisis on the local population by allowing them to sell their goods without having to pay a tax to the government, according to sources familiar with the markets.

"The growers or producers can sell directly to the buyers without paying tax to our department," said a RCDC spokesperson. "The tax-free markets have been opened with the aim of making vegetables, meat and fish available at reasonable prices for customers."

Sources say only restaurants and residents who live near the markets rely on them for goods. Local customers reportedly sell goods purchased at the tax-free markets for an inflated price at other markets, said another Rangoon resident.

The government has only been able to supply 500 eggs to each of the four markets and allows each person to buy ten eggs, causing many to leave empty handed. Tensions reportedly run high at the markets where fighting among customers is also commonplace.

Rangoon residents have told the Irrawaddy that the price of consumer goods has been skyrocketing and that the government needs to open more tax-free markets in order to offset the continuing economic downturn.

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Editor’s note: Somebody must be eating eggs in Rangoon these days, though they may not be "tax free". On Monday the New Light of Myanmar noted yet another visit by divisional commander Brig-Gen Myint Swe to the Special Zone for Vegetable and Poultry Farming near Nyaunghnapin Village in Hmawby Township. According to the state mouth piece, government ministries and private entrepreneurs have raised and distributed over 500,000 layers and over 200,000 broilers since the zone was first set up about three years ago. That must mean that a lot of eggs are ending up in other places than the dozen-or-so "tax free" markets that have set up around the city.

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RANGOON, Feb 18 (MTBR) – Construction has begun on Myanmar’s first mill to extract edible oil from the thit sein tree. The project is located on a 25-acre site in Seikpyu township in Magwe division about 370 miles north of Rangoon. A nursery and a plantation of 4,000 trees bearing thit-sein fruit has been established close to the mill site for over a year now and it is expected that the mill using oil extracted from the thit-sein fruit will be ready for commercial production in a year’s time.

Meanwhile, a poor harvest of groundnuts (peanuts) cause by weather damage to the crops in some areas of the country last year has resulted in short supply of the popular groundnut oil much used in food preparation. As a result prices have risen consumers have responded by switching to imported palm oil to meet their needs. The shortage has seen groundnut prices rise to about K600 a viss (3.6 pounds), up from about K350 a viss at the same time last year. Meanwhile, prices for groundnut oil have risen as high as K1,300 a viss, up from K700 a viss last June.

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The Burma Courier is a weekly digest of Burma news and commentary.

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