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BurmaNet News: Wednesday, September



Subject: BurmaNet News: Wednesday, September 21, 1994


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BurmaNet News: Wednesday, September 21, 1994

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Contents:

1: NATION: BURMESE STRONGMEN TALK WITH SUU KYI
2: KHRG: UPDATE ON THE SITUATION OF REFUGEES AT HALOCKHANI
3: BKK POST: ILLEGAL BURMESE CAN WORK PENDING DEPORTATION--MINISTER
4: BURMANET: BURMESE LABOUR IN THAILAND

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NATION: BURMESE STRONGMEN TALK WITH SUU KYI
Agencies

Burma's military rulers met opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi yesterday 
in her first high-level encounter with the ruling junta since she was 
placed under house arrest five years ago.

Burmese state television showed picture of Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace 
Prie winner, meeting junta leader Gen Than Shwe and military 
intelligence chief Lt Gen Khun Nyunt at an army guest house in Rangoon.

Suu Kyi, daughter of Burma's independence hero Gen Aung San and leader of 
the opposition National League for Democracy, has been under house arrest 
in Rangoon since July 1989.

In talks earlier this year with US Congressman Bill Richardson, she said 
she was always ready to meet leaders of the junta that seized power in 
1988 after killing hundreds of pro-democracy protestors.

Burmese television, which said the talks were cordial but gave no 
details, showed pictures of the three sitting around a flower-decked 
table and smiling.

Suu Kyi, 49, was dressed in traditional flowing Burmese dress and looked 
healthy and relaxed.

Radio Rangoon also reported the meeting between Suu Kyi and the two Slorc 
leaders yesterday.

In a dispatch monitored in Bangkok, the state-run radio said they had a 
"friendly discussion."

Political observers said yesterday's meeting could be the beginning of a 
further dialogue between Suu Kyi and the Slorc to work out a politcal 
solution between the juna and the pro-democracy opposition.

Yesterday's meeting in itself was very significant because it showed both 
sides willingness to compromise, they said.

The meeting took place two days after the sixth anniversary of the bloody 
coup in Rangoon in which thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators were 
killed.

A Buddhist monk, the Rev Revata Dhamma of Birmingham, England, had 
predicted such a meeting after serving as a go-between during a visit 
here on Aug 4-10.  He met separately with Than Shwe, Khin Nyunt and Suu 
Kyi during his stay.

The monk said both Suu Kyi and the junta leaders were eager for national 
reconciliation and agreed to meet for dialogue to settle the politcal 
stalemate in the country.

Members of the State Law and Order Restoration Council, the ruling junta, 
have said in the past that Suu Kyi would be released on condition she 
agreed to leave Burma.

Suu Kyi, who is married to British academic Michael Aris and has two 
children, has ruled out leaving her country voluntarily but said she was 
ready to discuss anything else.


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KHRG: UPDATE ON THE SITUATION OF REFUGEES AT HALOCKHANI
September 13, 1994

This is an update to information contained in the KHRG report "SLORC's Attack
on Halockhani Refugee Camp", 30/8/94, which reported that four to six
thousand Mon refugees had fled a Burmese Army attack on their camp at
Halockhani, just on the Burma side of the border, where they had been
forcibly repatriated by Thai authorities at the beginning of 1994.  The
refugees fled back to the Thai side of the border after #62 Infantry
Battalion of the Burmese Army attacked their camp on July 21 and were huddled
in shelters around a Thai Border Patrol Police post, while Thai authorities
used every trick they could think of to force them back across into Burma
again.  When the KHRG report was printed, the refugees were still refusing to
return and staying on the Thai side.  Thai authorities had cut off all
further food and medical supplies to them, and all foreigners and aid
officials had been barred from the area.  The refugees were surviving on
existing rice stocks in their rice store, which was just across on the Burma
side of the border (but at the end of the old camp closest to the Thai
border). 

The Thai Army has now forced the refugees back.  Reports leaking out of the
camp suggest that not being content with starving the refugees back by
cutting off further food supplies, the Thai authorities devised a faster
method:  on August 31, they notified the refugees that the borderline had
suddenly "moved", placing the refugees' rice storehouse on the Thai side of
the border.  Armed guards from the Thai Army 9th Division were then posted
around the rice storehouse - some reports say there were about 10 armed
guards.  The Army told the refugees that no more food would be distributed to
anyone until all the refugees had moved back across the border.  At first the
refugees survived on what little rice they had left in their shelters, making
watery rice gruel and mixing it with bamboo shoots.  However, on September 
7th many began moving back across due to hunger.  All of the refugees
reportedly moved back by September 9th.  The refugees from the Plat Hon Pai
section of the camp, whose homes had been burned by the Burmese Army, built
bamboo huts around the homes of the other refugees in the main section of
Halockhani on the Burma side of the border.  Now the Thais are allowing the
rice in the storehouse to be distributed to the refugees, but they still have
7 army guards on the rice store who are controlling the distribution.  They
claim that these guards will be removed on or about September 15th.  Now that
all the refugees have gone back, Mon refugee officials and foreign doctors
from Medecins Sans Frontieres are once again being allowed in, but all
journalists and others remain barred from the area.  The Thais claim this ban
will be lifted in a few days.  After impounding the rice supply, Thai
authorities also threatened to arrest all Mon leaders and refugee officials,
accusing them of encouraging the refugees not to go back.  This threat has
reportedly been lifted now that all the refugees have gone back.  Several of
the Halockhani camp leaders have asked to resign, reportedly in fear that the
Burmese Army will come for them again.

At the same time, Thai authorities have continued dumping about 400-500
people being deported from their Immigration Detention Centres (IDC) every
week in Halockhani, even after they had impounded the camp's food supply. 
The IDC deportees are given only enough rice for one day and told to get on
their way back into Burma.  Many of them are staying with the Halockhani
refugees and hoping to sneak back into Thailand.  On September 9th, Thai
authorities told Mon refugee officials they also want to deport 2 villages of
Mon refugees who fled the Three Pagodas Pass fighting in 1989/90 to
Halockhani - the villages of Song Kalia and Man Ba Koke near Three Pagodas
Pass.

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BKK POST: ILLEGAL BURMESE CAN WORK PENDING DEPORTATION--MINISTER
September 19

Burmese illegal immigrants are now able to seek temporary employment pending
deportation.

Labour and Social Welfare Minister Paithoon Kaewthong said yesterday that
businesses wanting to employ Burmese must seek a one-year permit from the
Interior Ministry.

The owners must prove Thai nationals were given first priority in applying
for a job.

If the vacancies were not filled within 45 days of being advertised,
businesses could ask provincial labour centres for approval to employ
Burmese.

But Burmese found to be undertaking employment, mostly in fisheries, would
not be allowed to take up any of eleven jobs exclusively reserved for Thais.

Mr Paithoon said a recent survey by the Interior Ministry revealed the number
of illegal immigrants, who mostly slipped into Thailand across the long
border, was estimated to exceed 100,000.

Rising demand for Burmese workers who are willing to accept lower money than
Thais runs contrary to the Government's attempt to deport them.

The Government's allowing employment of Burmese was to ease the nationwide
shortage of laborers, he said.

Labour Congress of Thailand president Panich Charoenpao called on the
Government to reconsider allowing Burmese to seek employment as they were
allegedly "responsible for crime and posed a threat to national security."

Mr Panich said the Government and business operators had weakened the unity
of labourers.

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BURMANET: BURMESE LABOUR IN THAILAND

The Bangkok Post story above carries at least one factual error.  Mr Panich
Charoenpao is chronically misidentified by the Post as the president of the
Labour Congress of Thailand, which is an large, independent grouping Thai
trade unions.  Mr Panich is instead the president of the Thai Trade Union
Congress (TTUC), which is neither particularly large nor to hear local labour
organizers tell it, independent.  One local union activists colorfully, if
uncharitably, characterized Mr Panich "a wholly-owned government whore." 
Panich is also a member of the Thai Senate.  He was appointed by former
dictator Gen Suchinda Kraprayoon, who was ousted after ordering troops to
fire on pro-democracy demonstrators in May, 1992.

The union organizer went on to deny that organized labour in Thailand views
illegal Burmese workers as either a national security threat or as criminal
elements, which are charges often repeated by the army and the National
Security Council spokesmen.  According to the organizer, most union leaders
tend to see the Burmese more as victims of exploitation than threats to their
jobs. There is however, some resentment that employing illegal workers drives
down the wage that employers must offer to attract workers.  This this
resentment seems to be focused on employers at least as much as on the
illegal workers.  Illegal Burmese workers will often earn far less than the
minimum wage of 132 baht per day (US$5.20).  

Once practice used reportedly common in the fishing industry which is
attracting notice from church groups is that of having Burmese workers sign
contracts written in Thai (which they cannot read) agreeing to work in
exchange for food and board only.  The workers receive verbal promises of
wages but when payday comes, the employers point to the signed contracts
which have clauses explicitly stating that the worker agreed to forego a
salary.

Church workers also alledge that fishing boat operators routinely promote
heroin addiction among their crews to keep them docile and dependent on the
ships'captains, who control the source of the drugs.

Panich and his Thai Trade Union Congress have earned the enmity of other
labour leaders for his quiescence on a number of labour safety and abuse 
issues, and especially for his silence after the Kader Doll Factory fire 
in 1993.  More than 200 workers, most of them young women, died after a 
fire broke out in Kader factory.  They were unable to escape in part 
because the factory managers kept the fire escapes locked.

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ABBREVIATIONS USED BY BURMANET:

 AP: ASSOCIATED PRESS
 AFP: AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE
 AWSJ: ASIAN WALL STREET JOURNAL
 BBC: BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION
 BI: BURMA ISSUES
 BIG: BURMA INFORMATION GROUP
 BKK POST: THE BANGKOK POST
 CPPSM: COMMITTEE FOR THE PUBLICITY OF THE PEOPLE'S STRUGGLE IN MONLAND
 DA:  DEPTHNEWS ASIA
 FEER: FAR EAST ECONOMIC REVIEW
 NATION: THE NATION (DAILY NEWSPAPER, BANGKOK)

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