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BurmaNet News: September 17, 1995





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The BurmaNet News: September 17, 1995
Issue#230


Noted in Passing:
The main purpose of the government designating 1996 ``Visit Myanmar
Year'' is to let the world know our political stability and to let foreign
visitiors enjoy our unique culture and beauty. - Lt. Gen. Kyaw Ba, 
Minister for Hotels and Tourism (quoted in REUTER: FOREIGN MEDIA
BLAMED FOR HURTING BURMA'S TOURISM)


Headlines:
ABSDF: STATEMENT ON THE 7TH ANNIVERSARY OF MILITARY COUP
ABBESU: STATEMENT ON THE 7TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SUPPRESSION
NATION: BURMA MOVES TO CURB RAPID SPREAD OF HIV AT BORDER
REUTER: FOREIGN MEDIA BLAMED FOR HURTING BURMA'S TOURISM
REUTER: BURMA-INDIA TRADE RELATIONS SEEN IMPROVING
VANITY FAIR: THE LADY TRIUMPHS (Part 1)

----------------------------------------------------------
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[Feel free to suggest more areas of coverage]
*******************

ABSDF: STATEMENT ON THE 7TH ANNIVERSARY OF MILITARY COUP
________________________________________________________
                  
	     ALL BURMA STUDENTS' DEMOCRATIC FRONT

                 STATEMENT ON THE SEVENTH-ANNIVERSARY OF
		MILITARY COUP D'ETAT IN BURMA


                                                 Date. September 18, 1995

September 18, 1995, is the seventh-anniversary of the day when the SLORC military
junta seized state power from the people of Burma and crushed the peaceful
democracy uprising of the people, at that time demanding nation- wide democracy
and human rights in Burma.

The people were protesting the 26 years of the so-called "Burmese way to socialism"
created by the military and although unarmed, the people of Burma in coordinated
demonstration throughout the country were ruthlessly suppressed by the military on
that day.

At present in Burma, despite the release in July of opposition democracy leader Daw
Aung San Suu Kyi, 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, little has changed. Over 3,000
political prisoners are still detained in different jails in Burma. In addition, political
activists have been arbitrarily arrested and sent to jail since the release of Nobel
Peace laureate, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

Burma remains firmly in the grip of the military dictators. 

On this anniversary of the suppression of the people of Burma by the military, we
would like to urge the international community to join with us to demand:

1. Unconditional release of student leader Min Ko Naing and all political 
prisoners in Burma.

2. Cancellation of all SLORC's unjust laws and orders.

3. Abolition of the SLORC's sham National Convention.

4. Dialogue with democratic forces led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi for national
reconciliation.

Central Leading Committee
ABSDF
Headquarters
88 Camp        

For more information Contact : Zaw Min Joint Secretary of Foreign Affairs 
E-mail : lurie@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
************************

ABBESU: STATEMENT ON THE SEVENTH-ANNIVERSARY OF THE 
BLOODY SUPPRESSION

__________________________________________________________________________
           ALL BURMA BASIC EDUCATION STUDENTS' UNION(Thailand)
__________________________________________________________________________
                                    
     Statement on the Seventh-anniversary of the bloody suppression
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
             of  democracy uprising on 18.9.88 by the SLORC
    -----------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                         

     Today, September 18, 1995, is the seventh anniversary of the day when the
peaceful demonstration for the restoration of democracy in Burma was ruthlessly
crushed by the Ne Win's military under the name of State Law and Order
Restoration Council(SLORC), announcing a military coup d'etat and brutally killing
thousands of unarmed people. It is unforgettable for the people of Burma as a bloody
historical event.   

     In 1962, the military junta led by Gen. Ne Win had also staged a coup d'etat,
under the name of Revolutionary Council, against the first and only elective
democratic government of Burma led by Premier U Nu. Then, the military
established the Burmese Socialist Program Party(BSPP) and ruled the country for 26
years under one-party dictatorial system, committing human right abuses.

     People of Burma walked into the streets, starting on August 8, 1988, and asked
for the restoration of democracy in Burma and dissolution of the BSPP and, as they
can be no more tolerable to the oppression by the military-run BSPP which
mismanaged the resources-rich country to the least developed country. The military
junta led by Gen. Ne Win attempted different ruthless ways to crack down the
nationwide general uprising and continue to firmly grip the state power.

     After brutally crushing the peaceful demonstration on September 18,  1988,
Senior Gen Saw Maung, then Chairman of the SLORC promised that the military
will hold an election and transfer state power to the elected representatives of 1990
May General elections, but the military did not honour the election results, refusing
to transfer the power to the National League for Democracy party (NLD) which won
over 80 percent of votes and arresting the elected MPs.

     1990 Nobel Peace Laureate and national leader of Burma Daw Aung San Suu
Kyi was released on July 10, 1995, as it is impossible for the SLORC to continue the
detention of her, even in accordance with the unjust laws of them. Other political
prisoners are still detained in the different prisons in Burma. 

     The SLORC has not yet scheduled a time-frame for the genuine dialogue with
democratic forces led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and ethnic forces for the sake of the
country, but rather attempting to hold their sham national convention to continue to
firmly grip their military power.

     The ABBESU strongly denounces the SLORC who is preparing to continue to
oppress the people of Burma, having longlives the military dictatorship in Burma.

     The ABBESU demands the SLORC:
     1. To unconditionally release the political prisoners in Burma including        
            prominent student leader Min Ko Naing.
     2. To abolish the SLORC's sham National Convention.
     3. To cancel all of SLORC's unjust laws.
     4. To immediately start a genuine dialogue with democratic forces led by Daw  
                 Aung San Suu Kyi and ethnic leaders.


Central  Committee, ABBESU(Thailand)                     Date: September 18, 1995
**********************************

NATION: BURMA MOVES TO CURB RAPID SPREAD OF HIV AT BORDER
September 17,.1995                        Agence France-Presse

RANGOON_ Health authorities here are concerned about the rapid
spread of HIV, harbinger of the dreaded Aids, at the Thai-Burmese
border and have called for "urgent intervention measures" to
contain it.

An official study ahead of a regional Aids conference in
Thailand's northern city of Chiang Mai has pinpointed socio-
economic and cultural factors as causes HIV infection at the
border.

Burma is participating in the Third International Conference on
the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (Aids) in Asia and the
Pacific which opens in Chiang Mai today.

The spread of HIV among drug addicts is rising in border towns,
especially on the Thai-Burmese border where a "considerable"
number of people of both sexes are believed to have been
infected, it said.  No specific numbers were mentioned.

Recent figures for Burma are hard to come by, but the World
Health Organization (WHO) estimated that the epidemic here was
comparable to that in Thailand and India. Thailand has some
800,000 known HIV cases.

Available figures till June last year showed that 8,191 persons
tested HIV positive, three per cent of them children.
The number of full-blown Aids cases was put at 261 in a Health
Ministry report issued last September.

The study said that in recent years, the predominant mode of HIV
infection in border towns had changed from drug injections to
heterosexual activity.

The socio-economic conditions prevailing at the Thai-Burmese
border were said to have created a large number of cross border
migratory workers.

Field observations at four border towns  Kentung, Tachilek,
Myawaddy and Kawthaung  showed that between 200 and 3,000
persons cross the border daily, to work as farmers, carpenters,
masons or prostitutes in Thailand.

************************************************************
Typed by the Research Department of the ABSDF(MTZ)   17/9/95
************************************************************

REUTER: FOREIGN MEDIA BLAMED FOR HURTING BURMA'S TOURISM
September 16, 1995

      RANGOON, Sept 16 (Reuter) - A Burmese government minister has blamed
incorrect information ``concocted'' by some foreign media for impairing the
tourism industry, which authorities are hoping will develop into the
country's most thriving business. 

    Lieutenant-General Kyaw Ba, minister for hotels and tourism and a member
of the ruling miltiary body, said in a speech on Friday that Burma would have
more visitors if the foreign media told the truth about the politcal
situation in the country. 

    ``Because of the misinformation that exaggerates the insurgency, many
foreigners still hold to the impression that Myanmar (Burma) is politically
unstable and unsafe to travel,'' he said. 

    On the contrary, people who visit feel that peace and stability prevail
and they accept the fact that Burma is safer than any other part of the
world, he said. 

    The military government has in recent years reached ceasefires with more
than a dozen ethnic minority insurgent forces though some anti-government
guerrillas still operate in remote areas. 

    ``We are fully confident that once we can eradicate the negative images
created by some foreign media our tourism industry will boom and reach new
heights,'' Kyaw Ba said. 

    ``The main purpose of the government designating 1996 ``Visit Myanmar
Year'' is to let the world know our political stability and to let foreign
visitiors enjoy our unique culture and beauty,'' he said. 

    Authorities originally hoped for 500,000 tourists in 1996 but some
government officials now say the number is unlikely to come up to expectation
because of insufficient infrastructure. 

    Tourist arrivals increased from 26,000 in 1992-93 to 61,000 in 1993-94
and nearly 100,000 so far this year, according to official statistics. 

    Burma's hotel and tourism industry has attracted foreign investment worth
$788 million, the second largest amount after the oil and gas sector. 

**********

REUTER: BURMA-INDIA TRADE RELATIONS SEEN IMPROVING
September 15, 1995

      RANGOON, Sept 15 (Reuter) - Business relations between  Burma and its
western neighbour India are likely to expand  soon, the leader of an Indian
trade delegation said. 

    "There is now tremendous scope for larger Indo-Myanmar  (Burma) business
and trade, particularly with the eastern and  northeastern region of India
under the cross-border trade  agreement," said Bhaskar Sen, leader of a
business delegation  from Bengal National Chamber of Commerce and Industry,
on  Thursday. 

    The seven-member Indian trade delegation arrived in  Rangoon on Tuesday
to look for business opportunities in Burma  which opened its market to
outside investments in 1988. 

    Border trade between the two countries was formally opened  in April. 

    During their visit Indian delegation members met with  government
officials including most of the economic ministers. 

    Burma said it would welcome Indian private sector  investment in areas
including energy, cement, financial  services, agro-industries,
infrastructure development and  textiles. 

    "The Trade Minister told us his government wanted to  further strengthen
the cordial relations with India,  particularly in trading and industrial
cooperation," Sen said. 

    He said Burma was considering setting up a consulate in  Calcutta.
***********************

VANITY FAIR: THE LADY TRIUMPHS (Part 1)
October 1995

SIX YEARS UNDER HOUSE ARREST MADE AUNG SAN SUU KYI, 
WINNER OF THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE, A LEGEND.  HER RELEASE 
IS A VICTORY OVER BURMA'S BRUTAL STRONGMAN.
>
by Edward Klein           pp. 120-144
>
"Call me Suu."
>Aung San Suu Kyi was showing me around the grounds of her lakeside villa
>in Rangoon, where she been held under house arrest for six years. I had
>made a number of attempts to see her since she won the Nobel Peace Prize
>in 1991.  But it was only after her release this past summer by the
>generals who rule Myanmar--as Burma is now known--that I was finally able
>to meet the world's most famous political prisoner.
>        Pictures don't capture her special aura.  She was wearing a
>lungyi, the traditional Burmese sarong, which hugged her hips and gave her
>slender figure a sinuous grace. A sprig of yellow flowers dangled from the
>bun at the nape of her neck. Though only five feet four, she possessed a
>commanding presence.
>        "It's hard to think of you as just plain Suu," I said.
>        "Perhaps you'll change your mind when you get to know me better."
>        I took out my note book and asked," Where shall we begin?"
>        She looked around and said," Right here. On the day when they
>placed me under arrest, this garden was still quite beautiful. There were
>lots of white Madonna lilies, fields and fields of them, and frangipani,
>and frangrant yellow jasmines, and gardenias--all highly scented
>flowers--and a flower from South America that changes its color as it
>matures and is called 'yesterday, today, and tomorrow.'
>        "In the beginning," she continued, "I'd go out and work in the
>garden and talk with the guards.  There were 15 soldiers, all of them
>armed.  But a garden like this requires a lot of money to keep up, and I
>couldn't afford to take care of it.  Of course, I refused to accept
>anything from the military."
>        She spoke with a British accent, which she had acquired while at
>Oxford University.  When she wanted to exphasize a point, she curled her
>hands into fists and hammered them against her sides.
>        "Sometimes I didn't even have enough money to eat," she went on.
>"I became so weak from malnourishment that my hair fell out, and I
>couldn't get out of bed.  I was afraid that I had damaged my heart.  Every
>time I moved, my heart went thump-thump-thump, and it was hard to breath.
>I fell to nearly 90 pounds from my normal 106.  I thought to myself that
>I'd die of heart failure, not starvation at all. Then my eyes started to
>go bad. I developed spondylosis, which is a degeneration of the spinal
>column."  She paused for a moment, then pointed with a finger to her head
>and said,"But they never got me up here.  However, I did have to let the
>garden go. When they released me, one of the first things I did was have a
>team of gardener come and clear it out.  It was full of snakes, and had
>become dangerous."
>        The garden was now nothing more than a mud pile, for her release
>had come at the height of the monsoon season, when drenching rains turn
>vast expenses of Burma into a vaporous waterworld that stretches from the
>shores of the Andaman Sea nearly to the foothills of the Himalayas.  Her
>freedom had also coincided with Wa-zo, the advent of Buddhist Lent, a
>season for fasting and penitence when teenage boys shave their heads and
>temporarily enter the monastic orde, and the country's hundreds of
>thousands of monks retreat from the outside world in search of Nirvana,
>the ultimate deliverance from suffering and misery.
>        We apporached her two-story villa.  Like most buildings in
>Rangoon, it was in a state of ruin.  Its crumbling stucco walls were
>stained black with mildew, and it looked as though it hadn't seen a coat
>of paint since the British granted Burma its independence in 1948.  The
>quaint decay of Rangoon made me feel as though I had stepped back in time
>into a novel by Somerset Maugham.
>        I took off my shoes as I entered the foyer, and was confronted by
>pages of handwritten political statements which she had posted in defiance
>of her captors.  To raise money during her years of confinement, she had
>sold all her valuable furniture, keeping only a dining-room table and a
>piano, which she had stopped playing after a string snapped during one of
>her temperamental poundings.  One of the family photos on the wall showed
>her as a baby with her father, the founder of modern Burma, who was
>martyred by an assassin's bullet in 1947, when she wastwo.
>        All her life she has been obsessed with the father she never knew.
>She adopted his famous name, Aung San (pronouced Awng Sahn), and added it
>to her given name, Suu Kyi (Sue Chee).  A heroic statue of her father
>stands in the middle of a park in Rangoon, and it is easy to see from its
>expression that Aung San Suu Kyi is his spitting image.
>        "I always felt close to my father," she said. " It never left my
>mind that he would wish me to do something for my country.  When I
>returned to Burma in 1988 to nurse my sick mother, I was planning on
>starting a chain of libraries in my father's name.  A life of politics
>held no attraction for me.  But the people of my country were demanding
>for democracy, and as my father's daughter, I felt I had a duty to get
>involved."
>        As she spoke, a crowd was gathering in the stagnant afternoon heat
>outside her iron gate on University Avenue.  Millions of her countrymen
>had learned of her release from the Burmese-language shortwave broadcasts
>of the Voice of America and the BBC.  Neither the state-controlled
>television station nor the regime's daily mouthpiece, The New Light of
>Myanmar, had summoned up the nerve to acknowledge her freedom.
>        The junta's nervousness was understandable.  In the minds of her
>countrymen, AUng San Suu Kyi had become a legend.  Friends and foes never
>referred to her by name; they called her the Lady.  The only other Burmese
>who inspired such awe was Ne Win, the country's longtime strongman, who,
>though now 84 and in the twilight of his rule, was referred to as the Old
>Man.
>        An aide came to tell her that it was time to address the crowd.  I
>followed her outside, where I saw a team of her supporters lugging two
>huge Peavey speakers up the driveway to the gate.  They lifted the
>speakers onto the limbs of trees and attached the wires to an amplifier.
>A desk was placed against the verdigris-covered gate, and Aung San Suu Kyi
>climbed on top and greeted the crowd outside.  It roared its approval.
>        There were perhaps 500 people standing on both sides of the
>street, including a large number of students, as well as monks in saffron
>robes and nuns in pink vestments.  Many of the women and children had
>coated their faces with *thanaka*, a pale-yellowish paste made from the
>bark of a tree, which turns to powder and is used as makeup and sunblock.
>They looked like the gathering of an African tribe.
>        I was struck by the courage of the people; after all, the last
>time they had turned out en masse to support leaders demanding democractic
>reform, the army had met them with tanks and machine guns, murdering far
>more people than were killed in the bloody massacre of Chinese students in
>Beijeing's Tiananmen Square a year later.
>        When I stepped back from the gate, I found myself standing next to
>one of her closest political associates.  He had been imprisoned several
>time in the notorious Insein Prison, in the northern suburbs of Rangoon,
>which is, appropriately enough, pronounced "Insane" Prison.
>        "I knew her father, and she reminds me so much of him," he told
>me.  "The way she smiles and tilts her head--all her gestures are similar
>to his.  When she came back to Burma, she had no intention of becoming
>celebrity.  She was inexperienced in politics.  It was a hard destiny.
>But she had the gift.  And she matured in six years of house arrest."
>        He looked up at Aung San Suu Kyi, who was exhorting the crowd.
>"We must avoid having extreme ideas," she told them. "Think before you do
>anything!" Since her release, she had struck a conciliatory tone.  But it
>was possible that a real test of her leadership would come the next day,
>Martyr's Day, a national holiday commemorating the assassination of AUng
>San and six of his colleagues.  EVeryone in Burma was wondering whether
>AUng San Suu Kyi's plans to lay a wreath at her father's mausoleum would
>set off a fresh round of clashes between teh forces of teh Lady and those
>of the Old Man.
>        That night I sat in the dining room of the Inya Lake Hotel, a mile
>north of Aung San Suu Kyi's villa, and watched as searching lights played
>over the murky water and boats patrolled the shore in front of the
>residence of Ne Win.  The Old Man's compound is ringed by a steel fence
>and protected  by landmines. Two thousands troops were reportedly
>stationed nearby.
>        In his younger days, Ne Win was a frequent traveler to the West.
>On a whim, he would collect a contingent of his ministers and fly to
>Vienna, where he consulted a famous psychiatrist by the name of Hans Hoff.
>Many of his trips were bankrolled with bags of rubies and other precious
>stones, which are found in profusion in Burma.  In April 1987 he made a
>secret, seven-day trip to Oaklahoma City to visit Ardith Dolese, a wealthy
>American woman, whom he credited with having helped save his life almost
>40 years earlier in England by referring him to a doctor when he was ill.
>
>End Text Part I.