Wired News on Jan.17-19, 1995

[FreeBurma@xxxxxxx]

Attn: Burma Newsreaders
Re: Wired News on Jan. 17-19, 1995
-------------------------------------------------------

Casino at Thai-Burmese border attracts hundreds   

    BANGKOK, Jan 20 (Reuter) - A regular casino has begun operating in the
Burmese border town of Tachilek, offering punters from both countries a
chance to gamble at baccarat, dice, poker and other card games banned in
Thailand, Thai officials said on Friday. 

    The casino, which differs from the numerous small gambling dens in Burma
by offering large premises for up to 300 gamblers, is in the centre of
Tachilek, opposite Mae Sai in Thailand . 

    One source who witnessed the casino's opening last week estimated the
daily turnover at up to 10 million baht ($400,000). Only U.S. dollars and the
Thai currency are accepted, he added. 

    ``This casino is the latest of the many gambling dens that have been
operating freely on the Burmese side of the border,'' a senior official said,
speaking to Reuters by telephone. 

    Many Thai gamblers cross the border into Burma because authorities there
are less rigid in enforcing the official ban on gambling in both Burma and
Thailand. 

    The ruling body of the Burmese junta denied a report early last year that
Thai businessmen had been given permission to build a huge casino on Burmese
territory. 

    ``Gambling is prohibited in Burma, as the country is a Buddhist state,''
official media said at the time. 

REUTER
Transmitted: 95-01-20 00:43:46 EST
********

Thailand seeks improved ties with Burma   

    RANGOON, Jan 19 (Reuter) - Thai Foreign Minister Thaksin Shinawatra met
Burmese officials on Thursday for talks aimed at improving economic and other
ties between the two countries, a Thai Embassy official said on Thursday. 

    Thaksin had talks with General Than Shwe, the chairman of the Burmese
junta, and powerful military intelligence chief Lieutenant-General Khin
Nyunt, officials said. 

    The Thai foreign minister was greeted upon arrival in Rangoon on
Wednesday by his Burmese counterpart, Ohn Gyaw. 

    The two ministers held cordial discussions on bilateral relations later
that day, Burmese newspapers reported. 

    The Bangkok newspaper The Nation reported on Thursday that one of the
main purposes of Thaksin's visit was to invite Than Shwe to a summit meeting
of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Bangkok in December.


    Ohn Gyaw became the first Burmese official to attend an ASEAN meeting
when he travelled to Bangkok in July for the annual gathering of foreign
ministers from the six-member grouping as a guest of host Thailand. 

    ASEAN comprises Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore
and Thailand but there are plans to eventually bring Burma, Cambodia, Laos
and Vietnam into the group. 

    Earlier on Thursday, Thaksin and his delegation visited Rangoon's
Shwedagon Pagoda. He was due to return to Bangkok later in the day. 

REUTER 
Transmitted: 95-01-19 05:24:32 EST
******

Burma to hold Aung San Suu Kyi until charter done   

    BANGKOK, Jan 19 (Reuter) - Burma's military government said it would not
release detained dissident Aung San Suu Kyi until it finished drawing up a
new constitution, Thai Foreign Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said on Thursday. 

    ``They will not release her until the constitution is complete,'' Thaksin
told reporters on his return from a visit to Rangoon. 

    He said he had asked Burma's ruling generals about the detained democracy
leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and had been told a constitutional
convention must finish its work before she could be freed. 

    That convention, which has been meeting under the junta's aegis since
January, 1993, has so far completed only three of the 15 sections the
constitution is to consist of. 

    Earlier on Thursday, Thaksin had talks in Rangoon with the Burmese
junta's chairman, General Than Shwe, and with the powerful head of Burma's
military intelligence, Lieutenant-General Khin Nyunt. 

    Last September, Than Shwe and Khin Nyunt met with Aung San Suu Kyi for
the first time, and she had a second meeting with Khin Nyunt in Ocotober,
fueling speculation her release might be imminent. 

    Aung San Suu Kyi, 49, was first detained in July, 1989, on charges of
endangering the state. The previous year, she had emerged as a charismatic
leader of a pro-democracy uprising that swept the country and was only put
down by the military with the deaths of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
people. 

    The military established a junta, called the State Law and Order
Restoration Council (SLORC), which has ruled the country since. 

    The National League for Democracy Aung San Suu Kyi co-founded swept more
than 80 percent of the seats in May, 1990, elections, but the SLORC ignored
the results, claiming a new constitution had to be drawn up before any
transfer of power to a civilian government could occur. 

    Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been offered her freedom on condition she leave
Burma -- she has refused -- was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her
non-violent campaign for democracy in her homeland. 

    The majority of the constitutional convention's 600 delegates are junta
hand-picked, and they have orders to draw up a document that will guarantee
the military a ``leading role'' in politics. 

    The convention has already approved provisions that would bar Aung San
Suu Kyi, who is married to a British academic, from ever becoming Burma's
leader. 

    Exiled Burmese dissidents dismiss the convention as a sham, and Aung San
Suu Kyi told a visiting U.S. congressman last February that the convention
was a farce. 

REUTER
Transmitted: 95-01-19 11:25:07 EST
******

Thais threaten dissident Burmese with deportation   

    BANGKOK, Jan 19 (Reuter) - Thai police on Thursday placed in detention 55
dissident Burmese asylum-seekers who walked out of a holding centre in
Thailand earlier this week. 

    The 55 have been charged with illegal immigration and will be held in a
special police detention centre in Bangkok until a decision has been made on
whether to deport them back to Burma, police said. 

    ``These people have lost their right to temporary asylum in Thailand
because they broke camp rules,'' a police officer told Reuters. 

    The 55 will be soon be joined by another 13 people who managed to
temporarily escape police custody as they were being transferred to Bangkok
on Thursday, police said. 

    The two groups were among more than 100 Burmese who marched out of the
holding centre in Ratchaburi province southwest of Bangkok on Tuesday in
protest at what they said was a lack of security at the facility following a
fight a day earlier between some inmates and camp guards. 

    Half of them later agreed to return to the so-called ``safe camp'' but
the 68 now facing possible deportation refused to go back. 

    Thousands of Burmese fled to Thailand after a bloody crackdown on
pro-democracy demonstrations in their homeland in 1988. 

    While Thailand has refused to grant them refugee status, the Burmese were
allowed to remain temporarily in Thailand and assurances were given that they
would not be forced back to Burma. 

    But Thailand has forbidden them from campaigning against Rangoon's
military government and ordered them to go to a ``safe camp,'' which was
opened in late 1992. 

    Inmates at the safe camp are provided with a subsistence allowance from
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. 

REUTER 
Transmitted: 95-01-19 05:17:22 EST
********

Thais deport more than 400 illegal Burmese workers   

    MAE SOT, Thailand, Jan 19 (Reuter) - More than 400 illegal Burmese
workers were rounded up and deported back to Burma on Thursday as part of an
effort to prevent illegal workers entering Thailand, immigration department
officials said. 

    A combined task force of border patrol police and immigration officials
launched a pre-dawn round-up at various sites in and around this Thai border
town and promptly sent 427 illegal workers back across the border to Burma. 

    The move was part of a continuing campaign to prevent illegal workers
from entering the country, immigration officials said. 

    There are hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from Burma and
other neighbouring countries such as Cambodia and Laos in Thailand, Thai
officials estimate. 

REUTER
Transmitted: 95-01-19 00:45:40 EST
******

Japanese war veterans donate funds in Burma   

    RANGOON, Jan 19 (Reuter) - A 16-member group of Japanese World War Two
veterans have donated $30,000 worth of medicines and medical equipment to
Burma's Red Cross Society, state newspapers reported on Thursday. 

    The group, led by old soldier Kotara Honda, said the donation was a
gesture of gratitude to the people of Burma. 

    The newspapers quoted Honda as saying at the handover on Wednesday that
he and his comrades were treated with compassion and kindness during the
Japanese army's retreat from Burma towards the end of the war. 

    Japan invaded and occupied Burma, then a British colony, in late 1941,
sending ill-prepared British forces into retreat to India. 

    During the Japanese occupation, 100,000 Asian labourers, including many
Burmese, and 15,000 Allied prisoners of war died building a railway line
linking Thailand and Burma. 

    The ``Death Railway,'' as the prisoners called it, was intended for
resupplying Japanese forces in Burma ahead of a planned invasion of
British-ruled India. 

    British forces re-entered Burma from the north and retook the country in
early 1945. 

REUTER
Transmitted: 95-01-19 06:24:07 EST
*****

Despite failures, China to use forced drug detox   

    By Jeffrey Parker 

    BEIJING, Jan 19 (Reuter) - Beijing on Thursday mandated forcible
jailhouse detoxification for China's mushrooming ranks of drug addicts,
ignoring glaring local and foreign evidence that such treatment does not
work. 

    A regulation called ``Provisions for Compulsory Narcotics
Detoxification'' was signed by Premier Li Peng and published in the official
People's Daily, effective immediately. 

    The rules increase the authority of public security agencies to carry out
China's war on drugs, mandating that police -- not judges or doctors --
determine which drug-addicted defendants must undergo forced detoxification. 

    Anti-drug task forces and jailhouse detox centres have sprung up across
China in response to a steady rise in drug abuse, an unfortunate by-product
of paramount leader Deng Xiaoping's 16-year-old open-door policy and economic
reforms. 

    Many of the detox centres are in Yunnan, where the opening of China's
long, rugged border with Burma has enabled heroin traffickers from Southeast
Asia's poppy-growing Golden Triangle -- the border area where Burma, Thailand
and Laos met -- to use south China as a major route to tranship drugs to the
West. 

    Increasingly, their heroin and opium are being consumed across south
China by curious youth, wealthy but poorly educated entrepreneurs, peasants
and the traffickers themselves. 

    Yunnan alone has more than 30,000 registered heroin addicts, 20,000 of
them in the capital Kunming, although local officials estimate the actual
number is well over 100,000. 

    Heroin and opium -- and the associated menace AIDS -- have spread to many
major cities, especially in the economically vibrant south where law
enforcement is lax. 

    Addicts arrested for drug use or other crimes are jailed and forced to
undergo three to six months of rehabilitation, anti-drug education and strict
military discipline. 

    The problem, Chinese and Western doctors say, is that the forced
detoxification system, in which users are forcibly weaned from the drug, is a
near-total failure. 

    ``We've spent four years writing reports and talking to Yunnan provincial
leaders, trying to persuade them that the coercive measures do not work,''
Yunnan Institute of Drug Abuse psychiatrist Li Jianhua said in a recent
interview. 

    ``Force has never worked overseas and it is not working in China,'' Li
told Reuters in Kunming. 

    ``The minute these addicts get out, they return to their friends, to
their old drug-using environment. There is no after-care, no counselling for
them at all. Almost all return to drugs. Some relapse into heroin abuse on
the first day.'' 

    Li and a handful of colleagues are spearheading efforts to introduce
behavioural approaches such as group counselling, therapeutic communities and
Narcotics Anonymous pioneered in the United States and Europe and
successfully used in many Asian countries, such as Thailand, Taiwan and Hong
Kong. 

    But officials are sceptical, he said, seeing drug abuse through the lens
of crime and social order rather than health and prevention. 

    Addicts themselves say no amount of police enforcement can return China
to the drug-free days that followed the 1949 communist takeover, when the
whole population was mobilised against China's pre-revolutionary national
scourge -- opium. 

    ``Police work has been vigorous, especially in the areas near the
(Burmese) border, but this has really only driven up the price of heroin,''
addict Wang Feng said in a bedside interview at a Kunming detox clinic run by
the army. 

    ``But they can't stop drugs from coming in. The profits are too high for
the traffickers and there are far too many people taking drugs. Drugs are
everywhere,'' he said. 

REUTER
Transmitted: 95-01-19 04:07:24 EST
*****

Burmese dissidents march out of Thai camp   

    BANGKOK, Jan 17 (Reuter) - More than 100 dissident Burmese asylum seekers
on Tuesday marched out of a Thai government camp to protest against what they
said were unsafe conditions there, dissidents said. 

    A local government official in Ratchaburi province, southwest of Bangkok,
told Reuters the Burmese had been detained at a town called Pak Tor, 20 km
(15 miles) from the so-called ``safe camp,'' and were not being allowed to go
to Bangkok as they had intended. 

    The mass walk-out followed a fight between asylum seekers and camp guards
on Monday night in which three of the Burmese were injured, a dissident
Burmese student based in Bangkok said. 

    Police confirmed that a disturbance had taken place at the camp on
Tuesday but declined further comment on the walk-out. 

    The Thai government opened the ``safe camp'' in late 1992 and ordered
several thousand Burmese dissidents to go and live there. 

    Most dissidents refused go to the camp even though the local office of
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) encouraged them
move there. 

    The Burmese said they preferred to stay in Bangkok and continue
campaigning for democracy in Burma even though they faced the threat of
arrest on illegal immigration charges in the Thai capital. 

    Thousands of Burmese dissidents fled to Thailand in the wake of a bloody
crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in their homeland in 1988. 

    Thai authorities have said the dissidents can remain temporarily in
Thailand and will not be deported but has forbidden them from campaigning
against the Rangoon junta and ordered them to go to the ``safe camp.''

REUTER
Transmitted: 95-01-17 11:29:41 EST
******

Thai foreign minister to visit Burma   

    BANGKOK, Jan 17 (Reuter) - Thai Foreign Minister Thaksin Shinawatra will
meet Burma's ruling generals during a 24-hour visit to Rangoon on Wednesday,
a Thai Foreign Ministry official said on Tuesday. 

    Thaksin will fly to Rangoon and is scheduled to meet his Burmese
counterpart, Ohn Gyaw. 

    He will meet the head of the Burmese junta, General Than Shwe, and
powerful military intelligence chief Lieutenant-General Khin Nyunt on
Thursday before returning to Thailand, the official said. 

    Thailand has been a leading proponent of a policy of ``constructive
engagement'' with Burma as opposed to more isolationist stances adopted by
some Western countries in an effort to force democratic change and
improvements in human rights. 

    Thailand invited Burma to attend for the first time the annual meeting of
foreign ministers of the six-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN) in Bangkok last July. 

    Thai Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai, in talks with Ohn Gyaw when he came
for the ASEAN meeting, suggested to him that the regime should release
leading dissident Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been held under house arrest in
Rangoon since July, 1989. 

REUTER
Transmitted: 95-01-17 09:34:58 EST
*****

Fm: Zz (Free Burma)
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