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Wire News on Nov. 21 & 22, 1994



Attn: Burma Newsreaders
Re: Wire news on Nov. 21 & 22, 1994


	RANGOON, Burma (AP) -- An American oil company, Santa Fe Resources, will
begin drilling test wells in central Burma soon under a production-sharing
contract with the government, a state-owned newspaper said Monday. Santa Fe
is one of 20 foreign oil companies that had signed such contracts with the
government's Oil and Gas Enterprise for onshore and offshore oil and gas
exploration in Burma.	The New Light of Myanmar said the American company,
which has completed seismic surveys, would begin drilling soon in an area
about 200 miles (320 kilometers) north of Rangoon. American companies
continue to do business in Burma although the U.S. government cut off all aid
following a brutal military crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in 1988.

Source: Recorded on 21 Nov 1994.
**************

	PARIS (Reuter) - Nigerian Nobel literature laureate Wole Soyinka, who
sneaked out of his country to France to get around a travel ban, said Monday
he left after learning Nigerian authorities planned to keep him under house
arrest. Nigerian authorities ``planned to give me the Burmese treatment,''
Soyinka said, referring to 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi,
who has been under house arrest in her native Burma for six years. "Word of
this filtered down to us,'' he told a news conference in Paris. "The decision
to leave became inescapable.''	"Nigerians find themselves today in the grip
of a brutal dictatorship,'' Soyinka, an advocate of democracy, said. UNESCO
officials said the Nigerian writer arrived in France at the weekend and met
Frederico Mayor, director-general of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization, shortly afterward.  Soyinka, who won the Nobel prize
in 1986, is a goodwill ambassador for UNESCO.	Nigerian authorities had banned
him from leaving the country and confiscated both his passport and a United
Nations laissez-passer which he had planned to use to attend a writers'
conference in Strasbourg earlier this month.  The French Foreign Ministry
said Soyinka traveled to Paris with a laissez-passer delivered by France's
embassy in Benin which has a common border with Nigeria.	Soyinka, who is 60,
would not divulge the details of how he left Nigeria except to say that it
had ``wounded my sexagenarian dignity'' and he had crossed the border at an
unguarded spot. 	 He said he wanted to keep the escape route secret so he
could use it again in the future if he decided to return home. However he
acknowledged that if he did return, he would have to do so secretly to avoid
possible arrest or detention.  Soyinka, who has had to drop plans to attend
several conferences and other events because of the travel ban, said he plans
to travel for the next several weeks.	Among his planned stops are Strasbourg
in northern France, London and Atlanta, where he had been invited by the
Carter Institute for Human Rights, an organization founded by former
President Jimmy Carter.	 Soyinka denounced the Nigerian authorities as
``arrogant'' for having seized his U.N. laissez-passer about three weeks ago.
 Asked about support from the international community, he singled out the
British government for criticism, accusing London of continuing to deliver
tanks to the Nigerian authorities despite Lagos's record on human rights.
Source: Recorded on 22 Nov. 1994***********************

UN report accuses Burmese army of severe abuses
Evelyn Leopold

	 UNITED NATIONS (Reuter) - A new U.N. human rights report accuses Burmese
authorities of torture, rape, forced labor, destruction of property, looting
and summary executions despite years of international protests. The report to
the General Assembly, released Tuesday by the special rapporteur, Yozo Yokota
of Japan, shows scant improvement over the past year, although the government
has been willing to negotiate with U.N. officials over refugees and other
issues.	Burma, known as Myanmar, has been shunned by the world community for
its crushing of a democracy uprising in 1988 and its subsequent refusal to
recognize an election victory by a democracy party led by Aung San Suu Kyi, a
Nobel peace prize winner who has been under house arrest for five years.  The
1994 report again focuses on abuses by the armed forces, predominantly
against minority groups in areas where insurgencies have or had been taking
place.	These include summary executions, severe torture and random shootings
at groups of villagers without provocation.  "Such situations have frequently
been reported in the process of attempts by the army to arrest and detain
civilians for the purposes of forced portering and other labor,'' the report
said.	"In other situations, the army is reported to have killed civilians who
have disobeyed orders to relocate their homes, to supply goods or provide
labor for little or no compensation,'' it said, adding that sometimes
villagers were executed in reprisal killings for soldiers shot by insurgents.
According to Yokota's report, rape occurs on a wide scale and "so-called gang
rapes by entire groups of Myanmar military personnel are not uncommon.''	He
said that women serving as porters or forced laborers were especially
vulnerable. Rape was also used as a method of forcing women from ethnic
minorities to marry Burmese soldiers. His report said that over the past six
years more than one million people have been forcibly relocated without
compensation, to new towns, villages or camps because of insurgent uprisings.
If they refuse, they are usually forcibly evicted and their property looted.
About 75,000 refugees from Burma have fled to camps in Thailand and as many
as 100,000 are reported to have left their villages to hide from the army
inside Burma. About 200,000 Muslim refugees from the northern Rakhine state
are still in Bangladesh, despite attempts to repatriate them.REUTER

Transmitted: 94-11-22 07:53:20 EST
****************

U.N. official meets Burmese foreign minister

	BANGKOK, Nov 22 (Reuter) - An envoy representing United Nations
Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali met Burmese Foreign Minister Ohn Gyaw
and other officials of the military government for talks in Rangoon, Burma's
state media reported. Rafeeuddin Ahmed, associate administrator of the U.N.
Development Programme, had ``open and cordial discussions on matters of
mutual interest'' with Ohn Gyaw, Burmese television said in a broadcast
monitored in Bangkok late on Monday. Later on Monday, Ahmed, a U.N.
undersecretary-general, met Burma's deputy attorney general, Khin Maung Aye,
and chief justice, Aung Kyaw, the television said. Burmese media provided no
further details of the meetings. Burma has until recently been shunned by the
world community for its crushing of a democracy uprising in 1988 with heavy
loss of life, and its later refusal to recognise an election victory by a
democracy party led by Aung San Suu Kyi. 
	Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for more than five years. Last July Ohn
Gyaw told an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting in
Bangkok that the Burmese junta had accepted a U.N. Invitation to join in a
dialogue.  Ohn Gyaw said the junta had authorised him to engage in dialogue
on various issues with Boutros-Ghali or his representative. Ohn Gyaw met a
senior U.N. Official at the General Assembly in New York last month.  Ahmed
was at one time the U.N. Secretary-General's special  epresentative in
Bangkok. 

REUTER
Transmitted: 94-11-22 03:10:52 EST
*****************

Japan army operated Burma brothels, document shows

	TOKYO, Nov 22 (Reuter) - Japanese researchers said on Tuesday they had
obtained an official document proving Japan's army operated brothels in Burma
during World War Two, the first evidence of the existence of Burmese
 "comfort women.''  The document, found in the Imperial War Museum in London,
explains rules for the use of army-run brothels in Mandalay in central Burma,
said a spokeswoman for the Centre for Research and Documentation on Japan's
War Responsibility. 
	The rules, written by Japanese army headquarters in Mandalay and effective
from May 26, 1943, say military and paramilitary personnel were allowed to
receive services in the brothels. They also permitted Japanese working for
local offices of Japanese trading companies to obtain sex services at night
as long as they did not disturb the operations of the brothels. The
spokeswoman said the document was probably seized by the British military
during or soon after the war and taken to the British museum. Historians
believe Burmese women were a small part of the estimated 200,000 women forced
to serve in Japanese military brothels as sex slaves. Most of them were
Koreans and Chinese. 
	The Japanese government only admitted last year that it was the army, not
racketeers as it had always insisted, which abducted girls from streets in
Korea, China and other Asian countries and forced them into sex slavery.  The
Japanese government plans to help put together a private fund with donations
from companies and individuals to provide monetary compensation for former
comfort women. 

REUTER
Transmitted: 94-11-22 02:25:35 EST
**************************