Letter to Japanese Ambassador

[RANGOONP@xxxxxxx]

Nyi Nyi Lwin
P.O.BOX 64
Rockville, MD 20848
Tel/Fax. (301) 984-6271

03/05/98

His Excellency  Kunihiko Saito
2520 Massachusetts Ave, NW.
Washington, DC. 20008

Dear Mr. Ambassador:
With respect, I am writing this letter to express frustration over Japanese
Government resuming a $20 million aid to the most repressive regime of Burma,
State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), to repair a runway at Mingaladon
Airport in Rangoon. It is an outrageous and a wrong massage to our people and
to the world community. The aid so-called ODA to Burma or Myanamr, a
constitutionless state under the SPDC, is no way to benefit neither people of
Burma nor Japan. But it will just prolong the regime to repress its own
people. For that reason, I hereby request His Excellency to urge your
government to halt the $20 aid immediately and help Burmese refugees in
Thailand on humanitarian ground. 
According to officials from Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tokyo where Burmese
and Japanese pro-democracy activists met on March 3, 1998, the fresh
"resumption" of the aid is just considered about the safety of two Japanese
air lines, All Nippon Airways (ANA) and Japan Airlines (JAL). To do so, may I
ask you a simple question that how does Japanese government convince our
freedoms from the regime?
To rebuild the runway of the airport in Rangoon is an internal matter in terms
of the SPDC's home affair. As far as the regime was able to enlarge its size
of active-duty personnel in armed forces from 110,000 in 1987 to 500,000 in
1997, it should able to build the runway by itself. It has no need to
interrupt by the Japanese government at least from now. 
Compare to the $20 million aid from Japan to resume the runway is too small
amount of money for the regime because Ministry for Defense in Rangoon,
according to 1996 U.S. State Department report, spent at least 50% percent of
the central government (Government of Burma-GOB) expenditures. But the regime
did not use any money for it. Instead, the junta is remodeling its armed
forces with the Chinese made military equipment by spending of billions
dollar. 
The regime has illegally been ruling the country for a decade, but nothing has
been improved. Human rights abuses have been worsened. Thousands of political
prisoners remain in harsh prisons. Tens of thousands of Burmese are forced to
become refugees in their neighboring countries, especially in Thailand.
Universities and vocational colleges have been closed since 1996. Every letter
to Burma from abroad and to abroad from Burma is opened; all oversea calls are
tapped; and media are tightly controlled. No freedom at all. 
In order to democratize in Burma, only pressure works. The pressure imposed by
the United States and European Union is steadily moving forward the regime to
hold dialogue with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy,
NLD, which won 82% of the parliamentary seats in 1990 free and fair elections.
But the regime refused to honor the results. To support democratization in
Burma, Japanese government should wait until the dialogue between the
democratic forces and the junta is occurred. 


Sincerely,


Nyi Nyi Lwin

A Burmese student in exile and an editor of The Rangoon Post, pro-democracy
news paper. 

CC: U.S. State Department and National Security Council.