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The BurmaNet News: September 22, 19 (r)



Subject: The BurmaNet News: September 22, 1999

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 Catch the latest news on Burma at www.burmanet.org
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The BurmaNet News: September 22, 1999
Issue #1364

Noted in Passing: "This developing international norm in favor of
intervention to protect civilians from wholesale slaughter will no doubt
continue to pose profound challenges to the international community." - UN
Sec.-Gen. Kofi Annan (see NEW YORK TIMES: UN CHIEF WANTS FASTER ACTION TO
HALT CIVIL WARS AND KILLINGS)

HEADLINES:
==========
TIMES (LONDON): LIFE IN INSEIN
MYANMAR EMBASSY (U.S.): U.S. CRITICISM UNWARRANTED
BKK POST: VITAL LIFELINE HITS SKID ROW
NYT: UN CHIEF WANTS FASTER ACTION TO HALT KILLINGS
ANNOUNCEMENT: BURMA BENEFIT BUTTON AT AMAZON.COM
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TIMES (LONDON): LIFE IN INSEIN
20 September, 1999 by Andrew Drummond

Bribery is key to life in Burma's death jail

Protestors call off mass arrests

ON THE outskirts of Rangoon stands Insein prison. Burma's oldest jail, built
by the British, has wings branching out like the points of a star from a
central octagon. It is a striking monument to the cruelty and oppression of
a military Government that cracks down brutally on dissenters.

Rachel Goldwyn, 28, who was led through the three sets of steel doors into
Women's Hall No 1 last week, will have been given a taste already of what
life will become as she starts a seven-year sentence for her protest against
the country's State Peace and Development Council.

Although the title sounds benign, she will learn at first hand that
political prisoners in Insein are treated below the level of rapists and
murderers. Only the fact that she is British and her predicament is subject
to international scrutiny will weigh in her favour.

Insein is a place of death: by beating, by deprivation and by lack of
medical facilities. Many political prisoners have lost their minds,
according to Win Naing Oo, an organiser of the All-Burma Students Democratic
Front, who survived to write a report entitled Cries from Insein.

In the prison instruction cell, inmates are taught how to act and behave.
During roll call, they have to sit cross-legged with their arms straight,
fists on the knees and face down. When an official walks by they must show
obeisance by squatting, with their arms straight on the knees, the back held
straight back and head down. To show respect when standing in front of an
official, inmates must stand with their hands crossed in front and hold
their heads down.

When punishment is meted out, prisoners stand on tip-toes, knees bent at 45
degrees with back straight, hands clasped behind the head and face raised.
Inmates are beaten and kicked into this position. Prisoners can also be sent
to the "dog cell", formerly a kennel, where they are kept in total darkness
and forced to lie in their own excrement.

Prisoners receive two meals a day: breakfast comprises rice, pea curry -
usually without any peas - and fish paste. In the evening they get vegetable
soup, fish paste and rice. The quality of the rice is poor. Inmates are
allowed to bathe once a day and wash their clothes once a week. Prisoners
bath by scooping water out of a trough and pouring it over themselves.
Unless they can bribe a guard, they are allowed only nine shallow dinner
plates of water.

Everything in Insein runs on bribes. Political prisoners are despised
because they refuse to pay the guards and are subject to beatings. Bribes
are paid for extra water, food, medicine and also for access to the prison
hospital, which is occupied not by the sick but by drugs syndicate bosses
who book the beds for the better food and lifestyle. Bribes are paid to gain
seniority and to become hall "trusties", jobs which usually go to the most
hardened criminals in the prison's 10,000 population. Political prisoners
are not given any books and no one is allowed to own a pen. When political
prisoners went on hunger strike to protest at the harsh conditions, all were
 beaten, several to the point of death, according to Win Naing Oo.

More than 40 political prisoners have died in Insein since 1988; the most
notorious was the case of Leo Nichols, the consul for Scandinavian countries
in Burma, who died in 1997. He had been jailed for possessing an illegal fax
machine.

Ms Goldwyn may draw some comfort from the fact that, while political
prisoners are hated by the authorities, they are respected by other
prisoners, who understand that they are fighting for the rights of the
Burmese people.

Yozo Yokota, the United Nations special rapporteur, who visited the jail in
1996, was banned from talking to the prisoners. But according to his
information, prisoners were routinely tortured by "near-suffocation,
burning, stabbing and rubbing of salt and chemicals into wounds". They were
also sent as punishment to work in chain gangs.

* About 30 Western activists have cancelled plans to be arrested in Burma
this week (Helen Rumbelow writes). Rachel Goldwyn's mother, a GP, her father
and two other daughters met at their southwest London home yesterday to
launch a campaign to win her release. The family have not been granted visas
to visit her in prison and will appeal today to the Burmese Ambassador.

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MYANMAR EMBASSY (U.S.): U.S. CRITICISM OF LACK OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN
MYANMAR UNWARRANTED
20 September, 1999

EMBASSY OF THE UNION OF MYANMAR
2300 S STREET, NW, WASHINGTON, DC 20008-4089
TEL; (202) 332 9044 FAX: (202) 332 9046
13/99 20 September 1999

Press Release

U.S. Criticism of Lack of Religious Freedom in Myanmar Unwarranted

Myanmar May Be Regarded As a Model Society With Regard to Religious
Tolerance

The 1999 Annual Report on International Religious Freedom issued by the
United States Department of State is inaccurate and misleading. If the
section on Myanmar is any indication of the quality of research and analysis
that went into the preparation of the report, it cannot be considered a
serious piece of research. It is subjective and can in no way be regarded a
reliable basis for evaluating religious freedom in Myanmar or elsewhere
around the globe.

The report on Myanmar is glaringly inconsistent. While it acknowledges that
"most adherents of all religions duly registered with the authorities
generally enjoyed freedom to worship as they chose," it attempts to dilute
this by stating that the government systematically restricts efforts by
Buddhist clergy to promote human rights and political freedom, and that
government authorities in some ethnic minority areas forcibly promote
Buddhism over other religions. Nothing can be further from the truth. Anyone
with a rudimentary knowledge of Buddhism and Myanmar culture should know
first and foremost that Myanmar Buddhists are not concerned with zealous
missionary work. They are more concerned with trying to gain ultimate
release from dukkha (suffering): impermanence, imperfection and
unsatisfactoriness. Throughout his or her life, every devout Buddhist exerts
efforts to gain kusala (merit) by observing sila (following the precepts of
the Buddha), does as much charitable work (dana) as he or she can, and spend
as much time as possible at the meditation retreat (bhavana). Buddhists will
therefore happily contribute to charity, contribute to building pagodas,
monasteries, rest houses (zayats) and pay for lavish religious festivals.
They do not seek remuneration for what they regard as acts of merit.

The researchers' lack of understanding of Buddhist culture and beliefs is
apparent when they claim that government officials and security forces
compel persons, especially in rural areas, to contribute money, food, or
uncompensated labour to state-sponsored projects to build, renovate, or
maintain Buddhist religious shrines or monuments. The fact is that Myanmars
are a deeply religious people and do not need to be coaxed into contributing
labour. They willingly donate money and labour to gain kusala in order to
eventually attain Nirvana, the state of supreme bliss, free of all
attachment and rebirth. No words can adequately describe the joy and ecstasy
felt by Buddhists when they earn kusala. To the uninitiated, it may seem
farfetched that people would contribute labour without seeking remuneration,
but the majority of Myanmar do so nonetheless.

Any disinterested person who has spent time in Myanmar can attest to the
tolerant nature of the people of Myanmar. In every city, town or village it
is not uncommon to see places of worship of different religions co-existing
with one another. While Buddhists make up more that 80 % of the population,
there are Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Animists. In regard to mutual
understanding among practitioners of different religions, Myanmar can
justifiably be regarded as a model society. The team of Father R. W . Timm
(U.S. Christian Priest) and Justice K.M. Subhan from Bangladesh who visited
Myanmar in January 1998 had this to say about the remote area they visited;
" There is marked religious and ethnic harmony which makes it possible for
all religious and ethnic groups to live and work freely together."

Myanmar shares the view that everyone has the right to pursue one's faith
without interference. At the same time it feel that everyone also has a
responsibility to foster a better social order both at home and abroad.
Under the circumstances, it does not believe that any report on religious
freedom that lacks objectivity can contribute to peace and harmony among
nations. If religion is to be a transnational vehicle of conflict prevention
and post conflict reconciliation and not a tool of division, those who would
assume the role of leaders need to be more sensitive to the traditions and
cultures of other people.

*****************************************************

THE BANGKOK POST: VITAL LIFELINE HITS SKID ROW
22 September, 1999 by Patrick McDowell

The Burma Road, crucial to the Allies during the Second World War, now the
main route for people and drug smuggling between Burma and China

Lashio, Burma, AP -- In the early years of the Second World War, the dusty
outpost of Lashio was a key junction on the Burma Road; the intravenous drip
that fed Allied supplies to the beleaguered government of China.

The mountainous route in northeastern Burma retains a whiff of danger and
mystery, but these days it's because the old road is one of the world's
biggest smuggling routes.

The cargo moving up and down treacherous switchbacks and over rickety
bridges in smoke-belching truck is a lifeline for the bankrupt military
regime of Burma. But it also is fanning ethnic tensions and feeding the
world's drug habit.

"The border is completely wide open now," says Sterling Seagrave, who
endured Japanese bombing raids five decades ago as a boy living along the
road, when Burma was a British colony.

"It's become like the border between Texas and Mexico. There's a tremendous
amount of people coming across. They're going to change Burma very quickly,"

Burma is one of Asia's poorest nations and commerce is badly needed. The
country has been hammered by the region's economic crisis, which has choked
off investment from its neighbours, and by Western sanctions supporting
Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's persecuted pro-democracy opposition.

But the traffic also includes heroin and amphetamines from Southeast Asia's
Golden Triangle region. It goes to China's Yunnan province, where drug use
has mushroomed in recent years, and elsewhere for transshipment to the
United States and Europe.

>From overpopulated China come illegal immigrants seeking cheap land and
opportunity in a relatively empty country. Many are settling in Mandalay,
Burma's second-largest city, and alarmed citizens fear northeastern Burma
will become a Chinese colony.

More innocuous traffic includes gems, teak, farm produce and raw materials
heading to China and electrical goods, fuel and auto parts coming out.

This has never been an ordinary road.

Hacked out of the mountains by Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek's
forces in the late 1930s, it connected besieged China with a rail network
and seaport in Rangoon after China's ports fall into Japanese hands.

The main junctions - Rangoon, Mandalay, Lashio - were taken by the Japanese
in their steamroller victories after Pearl Harbour. Reopening a land route
to China became America's objective for the rest of the war so Chiang could
pin down a large part of the Japanese army.

Mr. Seagrave, a Burma expert and author who writes about Asia's power
structures, is the son of a missionary doctor whose wartime border hospital
treated the Allied wounded and the road laborers.

"The joke was that the road was two lanes wide - one for each wheel," Mr.
Seagrave says.

"You had to be careful. The drivers coming from China would turn off their
engines to save gas and ride their brakes to slow down.

"The brakes would give out, of course, and you'd drive by these curves where
they didn't make it and see the wrecks in the ravine. Sometimes, the wheels
were still spinning."

Today's trucks are mostly rugged Japanese Hinos that don't look much
different from models a half-century ago - big-fendered, low-geared, goods
piled above the cab and held down by a tarp. A dozen or more passengers
might ride on top.

Trucks still miss turns, rolling into a ravine or teetering precariously on
a cliff edge, front wheels hanging in space.

Wartime Americans described the road as a trail of corruption, where
bribe-hungry official would hold up convoys for weeks. A modern trucker,
Wang Lee, says only the goods have changed.

Heading to Mandalay from the frontier, Mr. Wang, a border Chinese, is
stopped at on of four customs checkpoints along the route. His Nissan diesel
awaits inspection while he sips a soda outside a dusty gas station where
hill-tribe girls sell freshly cut fruit.

Mr. Wang asks a Westerner - a rarity in Lashio - if he is with Burma
military intelligence, the omnipresent branch of the regime that has ruled
through fear and bloodshed since 1962.

Convinced that isn't the case, Mr. Wang begins talking about how bribery and
smuggling are the way of life on the road.

In confirmation, the owner of the station slips him a payment for four drums
of smuggled gasoline.

"This is a trafficking road," Mr. Wang says.

"I've been doing this kind of work for 15 years and I have only one truck.
If I was engaged in other kinds of activities - narcotics, or people - I'd
have 10 or 20 trucks and be rich."

Pointing to mammoth customs docks across the road, Mr. Wang zeros in on the
big boys. Their trucks and shiny four-wheel-drive utility vehicles get the
required five stamps - narcotics, immigration, customs, police and
forestry - within an hour.

*****************************************************

THE NEW YORK TIMES: UN CHIEF WANTS FASTER ACTION TO HALT CIVIL WARS AND
KILLINGS
21 September, 1999 by Barbara Crossette

UNITED NATIONS -- Secretary-General Kofi Annan sounded a warning Monday to a
frequently paralyzed Security Council, urging it to act faster and more
effectively to meet the challenge of a world engulfed in civil wars that
quickly descend into the slaughter of helpless civilian populations.

In an address to world leaders at the opening day of debate in the General
Assembly, Annan also said that countries which have resisted international
intervention will no longer be able to hide behind protestations of national
sovereignty when they flagrantly violate the rights of citizens.

"Nothing in the charter precludes a recognition that there are rights beyond
borders," he said, on the day an Australian-led force landed in East Timor
to help complete its separation from Indonesia. A Western diplomat called
the speech "courageous and very important."

Annan did not single out the United States, the Security Council's most
powerful member, or any other major nation, but his unusually strong
criticism of the Security Council's initial failures to deal with genocide
in Rwanda in 1994 and to agree on responding to Serbian atrocities in Kosovo
over the last year pointed obliquely at American policy decisions.

President Clinton, who would normally speak on the first day of the general
debate in the assembly, postponed his appearance until Tuesday out of
respect for Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism.

Annan spoke Monday as officials of the council's five permanent members, who
have veto power -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States --
were preparing to meet again to try to end another Security Council
deadlock, this one over Iraq.

For nearly a year, since the American bombing of Baghdad in December, there
have been no arms inspections in Iraq, which must be certified as disarmed
before 9-year-old sanctions can be lifted. The council is sharply divided on
how to devise a new monitoring system, while Iraq has used the time to
harden its position against any kind of renewed inspection program.

In Rwanda, the United States blocked council action while tens of thousands
of Tutsi and their moderate Hutu neighbors were massacred. Annan, who was
then in charge of U.N. peacekeeping, has borne a lot of criticism for what
was essentially a political decision made in Washington, where memories of
American soldiers killed in Somalia in 1993 were still fresh. The
secretary-general has called for an investigation in response to charges
that the United Nations knew about the imminent genocide but did nothing.

In Kosovo, the Clinton administration, fearing a veto of military action
from Russia or China, circumvented the United Nations and went directly to
NATO.

 "While the genocide in Rwanda will define for our generation the
consequences of inaction in the face of mass murder," Annan said, "the more
recent conflict in Kosovo has prompted important questions about the
consequences of action in the absence of complete unity on the part of the
international community."

To those who hailed the NATO bombing of Kosovo as a new era of quicker
action outside the United Nations, Annan asked two questions that reflect
the concerns of many nations uneasy with the prospect of unbridled American
power.

"Is there not a danger of such interventions undermining the imperfect, yet
resilient, security system created after the second World War, and of
setting dangerous precedents for future interventions without a clear
criterion to decide who might invoke these precedents and in what
circumstances?"

But the secretary-general had no consolations for the countries,
particularly in the Third World, that argue that the United Nations has no
right to overstep national borders. That case was presented Monday by
President Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria who said in his speech that
"interference can only occur with the consent of the state concerned."

Algeria, where violence by Islamic militants and government forces has left
thousands dead in recent years, has refused to allow international human
rights monitoring.

"We do not deny the right of northern hemisphere public opinion to denounce
the breaches of human rights where they occur," said Bouteflika, who is also
chairman of the Organization of African Unity and spoke on its behalf.

"Furthermore, we do not deny that the United Nations has the right and the
duty to help suffering humanity. But we remain extremely sensitive to any
undermining of our sovereignty, not only because sovereignty is our last
defense against the rules of an unequal world but because we are not taking
part in the decision-making process of the Security Council."

The United States has also been ambivalent about the trend toward
intervention by international organizations into a country's affairs.

Although the Clinton administration proposed a series of international war
crimes tribunals, it has stopped short of backing a permanent international
criminal court because of Pentagon objections. It has also failed to ratify
a number of international treaties including a convention banning land
mines.

The composition of the council, with its five most powerful members
unchanged since the end of World War II, rankles many nations.

Although the Security Council acted with relative speed in the case of East
Timor last week, as the secretary-general pointed out Monday, the council
did wait for an Indonesian invitation. The council had not been prepared to
take preventive action, although there were numerous reports reaching the
United Nations and government capitals about threats from the quasi-official
militias opposed to independence for the territory, threats that turned to
carnage after the East Timorese overwhelmingly rejected continued
association with Indonesia.

Nevertheless several leaders mentioned that the action on East Timor by the
council set an example of strong international support for people who have
made an important choice in a free vote and paid a terrible price.

"Whoever saw the images of the Timorese on voting day," said President Jorge
Sampaio of Portugal, the former colonial power in East Timor, "clutching
their registration cards, waiting in orderly lines for the long-awaited
moment to express freely their will, must have reacted with strong emotion,
and surely perceived in those faces and gestures, the universal appeal of
democracy, freedom and justice."

Half a century after the founding of the United Nations as a club of
countries whose national interests often overrode those of their own
populations or people in trouble in other nations, Annan said unambiguously
that countries can no longer cite sovereign rights when it is clear to the
world that they are committing abuses against their citizens.

"This developing international norm in favor of intervention to protect
civilians from wholesale slaughter will no doubt continue to pose profound
challenges to the international community," he said. He told the audience of
world leaders that the U.N. charter should not be misread.

"In response to this turbulent era of crises and interventions, there are
those who have suggested that the charter itself -- with its roots in the
aftermath of global interstate war -- is ill-suited to guide us in a world
of ethnic wars and intrastate violence," Annan said. "I believe they are
wrong."

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ANNOUNCEMENT: BURMA BENEFIT BUTTON AT AMAZON.COM
21 September, 1999 from info@xxxxxxxxx

There is now an effortless, and costless, way to donate money to aid
refugees. Simply buy all your future books, tapes, CDs and videos online
from Amazon.com by FIRST going to www.freeburma.org and hitting the Burma
Benefit Button.

If you type "www.amazon.com" into your browser. You can buy almost any book,
video, tape or CD there is, very easily (5 minutes), very quickly (usually
next day delivery), guaranteed secure, and cheaper than the store!

But if you FIRST go to www.freeburma.org and hit the Burma Benefit Button to
begin your search, everything is the same (including the price), but the
refugees get the commission. 100% of the commissions from items sold this
way are donated to a refugee group called The Computer Generation Network
(CGN) - Burma (see below). It's quick, great customer service, and free of
sales tax.

Feel free to post the Burma Benefit Button on your website too.

"Let me get this straight...."

Do I have to buy a specific book from you?

Nope. We are not selling anything. Amazon.com is selling. They simply pay a
commission for sales leads. Anything amazon sells might pay a commission.
However, the items listed on the Burma Benefit Page page pay the maximum
commission of 15%.

What if I want to buy a Rolling Stones CD and a Titanic video?

Buy it from Amazon - but go to www.freeburma.org and hit the Burma Benefit
Button first!

Does it cost more to buy it from this page?

Nope. Same price as Amazon.com, up to 40% cheaper than the store- and no
sales tax! The only difference between going straight to Amazon.com or
starting on this page is the amount of profit Amazon makes from the sale. If
you enter Amazon.com by using the search box on the Burma Benefit Page,
Amazon.com will pay this website a commission. We pass that entire amount to
the refugees. There is no reason to buy anything at Amazon.com without
entering via this page.

How does Amazon know that I came from this page?

If you enter Amazon.com from this page you can see our keyword
"freeburmacoaliti" in the URL. That tells Amazon.com that if you buy
anything there, then they owe this website a small percentage for sending
you there.

How do I know how much the refugees are getting?

If, for example, you buy Aung San Suu Kyi's book Freedom From Fear by
clicking the link above, you'll save 20% off the cover price, and $1.67 (15%
of $11.16) will be sent to the refugees. Email the webmaster anytime and
we'll let you know the latest total of commissions earned & donated.

What is CGN-Burma?

It is essential for Burma's opposition movement to keep up to date with the
latest advances in computer technology, particularly to ensure that their
communication and information networks are as effective as possible. While
individuals in some of the opposition groups have gained advanced computer
skills, there is no coordinating body to ensure that these skills are shared
amongst all the other groups. CGN-Burma was formed to fulfil this need and
ensure that the latest computer technology can be shared among the various
democratic and ethnic forces, and overseas compatriots who can use
this technology in their struggle to overthrow the SPDC military regime and
set up a new democratic Burma with equal rights for the ethnic peoples.
CGN-Burma's aims are:

1. To support Burma's opposition movement up to date with the latest
computer technology
2. To spread information about the movement using this technology
3. To train computer user for the new generation
4. To network with computer experts worldwide

P.O Box 191, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai 50202
Tel: 66 - 55 - 542 864
Web www.cgn-burma.org

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