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Myanmar says democracy leader's detention is legal
Myanmar minister denies post-cyclone rice shortage: report
1st large-scale aid missions fan out across Burma's cyclone zone
In Burma, A Crime for Civil Society to Provide Relief?
Burma's forced labour

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Myanmar says democracy leader's detention is legal
AP
Wed Jun 11, 1:38 AM ET

A state-controlled newspaper said Wednesday that Myanmar's military rulers were breaking no laws by holding pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for a sixth straight year.

The junta's recent decision to extend Suu Kyi's detention by one year sparked international outrage, with her party and defense lawyers arguing the junta could only legally hold her for five years.

But a commentary in the New Light of Myanmar newspaper said detentions are allowed for up to six years under the 1975 "Law Safeguarding the State from Dangers of Subversive Elements."

Yearly extensions must be approved by the Council of Ministers and then by the Central Body, which includes the home, defense and foreign affairs ministers, the newspaper said.

Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in absentia in 1991 for her nonviolent efforts to promote democracy and Myanmar's ruling generals have long regarded her as the biggest threat to their power. Her party is the country's largest legal opposition group.

The military regime extended Suu Kyi's house arrest May 27, despite international pressure to set her free. She has been detained for more than 12 of the last 18 years at her home in Myanmar, also known as Burma.

Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party denounced the extension as illegal and urged the regime to open a public hearing on the case. Jared Genser, a U.S. lawyer hired by Suu Kyi's family to push for her release, also condemned her continued detention as illegal.

"Adherence to the rule of law is not their forte, and the junta remains deeply concerned about her appeal to the Burmese people," Genser said in May.

How the opposing sides interpreted the same 1975 law differently could not be immediately explained.

The extension came as the junta faced worldwide criticism for refusing to accept many offers of international assistance after Cyclone Nargis, which struck May 2-3.

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Myanmar minister denies post-cyclone rice shortage: report
AFP
Wed Jun 11, 1:36 AM ET

A Myanmar minister has denied that food shortages will hit the country, despite swathes of rice paddies being destroyed when Cyclone Nargis struck last month, state media reported Wednesday.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation has warned that national food security could be compromised unless the rice planting season urgently begins in the fertile Irrawaddy Delta region, which was pummelled by the cyclone.

But in the New Light of Myanmar daily, minister for national planning and economic development Soe Tha denied any such problem.

"Some organisations were spreading groundless information such as there was or would be shortage of rice in Myanmar," the newspaper reported him saying.

"The rice output in the storm-affected areas in Ayeyawady (Irrawaddy) and Yangon divisions made up only 2.3 percent of the nation's total rice output. The uncultivable acreage is barely 1 percent of that of the whole nation."

The figures contradict the official view of the FAO which released a statement last month saying the five states hit by the May 2-3 cyclone produce 65 percent of the country's rice.

It estimated that 16 percent of the 1.3 million hectares (3.2 million acres) of agricultural land in the delta has been seriously damaged.

Hundreds of thousands of the 2.4 million people affected by the cyclone in Myanmar are already going hungry because of ruined rice stocks and soaring food prices, the organisation said.

While planting should have taken place in early June to stave off a future food crisis, aid agencies say farmers have not yet returned to their land because of lack of shelter and food.

Paul Risley of the UN's World Food Programme warned last week that the next harvest was likely to be lost, which he said could be "catastrophic" and could force the formerly self-sufficient Myanmar to import rice.

The United States gave its backing Tuesday to a UN expert's report raising concerns about Myanmar's recent referendum and called on the military rulers to release all political prisoners.

US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack also called on the country's military rulers to uphold their pledge to give international aid access to victims of last month's Cyclone Nargis, which left 133,000 dead or missing.

"The US shares the conclusions of the UN human rights monitor in his sobering report that the referendum on the regime's draft constitution was far from credible," McCormack said in a statement.

Washington also agrees that the continuing detention of political prisoners, including democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, and the condition under which they are held is "appalling," he said.

"The United States continues to urge the Burmese regime to release all political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi, and to begin a genuine dialogue with democratic and ethnic minority leaders on a transition to democracy," he said.

McCormack added that Washington shares the conclusions that Myanmar "must respect the human rights principles of non-discrimination and accountability in the international effort to assist the victims of Cyclone Nargis."

In a report last week, the UN special rapporteur for Myanmar, Tomas Ojea Quintana, raised "significant concerns" over the referendum held in the wake of the devastating cyclone, and called for a public report on the event.

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1st large-scale aid missions fan out across Burma's cyclone zone
Authorities arrest women and children complaining of government neglect
Last Updated: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 | 2:34 PM ET
CBC News

Hundreds of foreign humanitarian relief experts began assessing the needs of Burma's millions of cyclone victims Tuesday as the country's military junta finally gave them access to storm-hit areas five weeks after the disaster.

Some 250 aid workers from United Nations agencies along with Burmese civil servants and officials from Southeast Asian countries headed into the Irrawaddy Delta by truck, boat and helicopter for a village-by-village survey, the UN said.

Over the next 10 days, they will determine how much food, clean water and temporary shelter the 2.4 million survivors need, along with the cost of rebuilding houses and schools and reviving the rice-based economy.

"It has taken quite a long time, but this shows the government is on board by its commitment to facilitate the relief operation and the scaling up that people are asking for," said Amanda Pitt, a UN spokeswoman in Bangkok.

Aid agencies estimate more than one million storm survivors, mostly in the delta, still need acute help. Cyclone Nargis killed more than 78,000 people in impoverished Burma, also known as Myanmar. More than 58,000 are still missing and unaccounted for.

The information collected will be released in a report next month by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and should motivate more countries to donate to the cyclone relief operation, Pitt said.

Helicopters delivering assistance

The assessment began a day after UN-chartered helicopters began ferrying food and emergency supplies to Irrawaddy Delta communities still cut off by washed-out roads and floods.

The reclusive military junta in Burma has been sharply criticized by foreign governments and aid agencies for its inept handling of the disaster. It also has come under fire for forcing survivors from camps and allegedly dumping them in their destroyed villages.

Repressive actions by the government continued Tuesday, even as the foreign aid experts went to the Irrawaddy Delta to begin their assessment mission.

In Rangoon, authorities detained 18 women and children as they walked to UN offices to complain about not receiving assistance, according to a government official who refused to be identified for fear of retaliation by the leadership.

The marchers were bundled into a waiting police car and remained in detention, witnesses said.
The UN's Pitt said she was unaware of the arrests.

Suu Kyi supporters released

The criticism of the junta's aid effort comes on top of long-standing concerns about its poor record on human rights, including its detention of Nobel Peace Prize laureate and pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

On Tuesday, the junta released 15 members of Suu Kyi's party who were detained last month for demanding her release, a party spokesman said.

Suu Kyi has been held under house arrest for more than 12 of the past 18 years. Last month, the government extended her detention by another year.

The notoriously xenophobic Burmese military regime has been resisting many outside efforts to help cyclone survivors, shunning assistance from the U.S., French and British navies because of fears of being invaded, state media said.

With files from the Associated Press

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/06/10/burma-aidworkers.html

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In Burma, A Crime for Civil Society to Provide Relief?
By Marwaan Macan-Markar, IPS News
Posted on June 10, 2008, Printed on June 11, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/87558/

BANGKOK, Jun 9 (IPS) - The detention of a prominent comedian in Burma points to an ominous turn of events in the military-ruled country. It has reportedly become a 'crime' for individuals and civil society groups to provide emergency relief to the hundreds of thousands of cyclone victims.

The bald, bespectacled Maung Thura -- or Zargarnar, as he is widely know -- led one such group of unsung heroes, who began raising funds and supplying aid to those who survived the powerful cyclone that lashed the Irrawaddy Delta and the Rangoon Division on May 3. His group was comprised of writers, artists, actors and comedians, among others.

"We started our [volunteer] emergency relief work on May 7, and we are still working," the 47-year-old said in an interview published in The Irrawaddy, a current affairs magazine run by Burmese journalists exiled in Thailand. "There are 420 volunteers in our group," he said.

"At the beginning, we took risks [to provide aid], and we had to move forward on our own. Sometimes we had confrontations with the authorities," Zargarnar said, explaining the challenges placed by the notoriously oppressive Burmese regime in the post-disaster relief effort. "For example, they asked us why we were going on our own without consulting them and wanted us to negotiate with them. They said they couldn't guarantee our lives."

But last week, Zargarnar's role as a good samaritan came to an end when the police took him from his home in Rangoon, the former capital, for a still-to- be-verified period of detention. The police also seized his computer files that contained images of the cyclone victims and the relief efforts.

Zargarnar has been detained and jailed before, beginning in 1988, when he spoke in support of university students agitating for change to a military dictatorship that had been in place since a 1962 coup. In August that year, the junta crushed a peaceful, pro-democracy uprising, killing over 3,000 activists. Zargarnar was jailed for one year soon after.

The last time he was arrested by the police was in Sep. 2007. The 'crime' he was detained for then was delivering food and water to some of the thousands of Buddhist monks who had marched through the streets of Rangoon in protests against rising food prices and the junta's oppression.

"What Zargarnar's arrest has shown is that the SPDC [State Peace and Development Council] is not happy with the network of civil society groups that responded promptly to the cyclone," says David Scott Mathieson, Burma consultant for Human Rights Watch. "[The junta] wants to contain the civil society response and take all the credit for the relief effort."

Zargarnar has been one of the many prominent artists, writers and entertainers who have led the relief effort, consequently revealing "the government's poor response," he added in an interview. "The effort Zargarnar led shows Burmese civil society trying to chart an independent course away from the regime, which only represents itself, and selected business elite."

The tireless work by ordinary Burmese citizens to help the cyclone survivors was witnessed by members of international humanitarian agencies who have flown into the South-east Asian nation since the disaster. "I saw lots of groups helping people to rebuild their homes. There were also businessmen who had come to the delta to help, but feared that they could be arrested for providing relief," said Dean Hirsch, president of World Vision International, a Christian charity that has worked for years in Burma.

Hirsch, who just returned to Bangkok after a brief visit to the cyclone- devastated areas, also praised the efforts of another group that has been in the forefront offering comfort and relief to the survivors -- the monks in the predominantly Buddhist country. "There was a great response by the monks. I was impressed with the connections they had in the communities to get relief goods to the delta," he told IPS. "They were able to access areas where the government and INGOs (international non-governmental organizations) could not reach."

In fact, one famous Burmese monk who has come to symbolise this aid drive is Sitagu Sayadaw Nya Nissara, head of a highly respected monastery in the Sagaing Division in central Burma, the seat of Burmese Buddhism. He led relief teams to the Bogale Township -- one of the worst hit areas -- soon after the cyclone, which has killed between 130,000 to possibly 300,000 people, and affected between 2.5 million to 5.5 million people.

"He has been the most prominent monk to help the victims. The monks have played a very significant role, beginning with the opening up of the temples in the delta to offer refuge for the victims," says Win Min, a Burmese national security expert teaching in a university in northern Thailand. "The temples were the strongest buildings in the area, so they remained standing. Ordinary people who wanted to help came with their relief goods to the temples for distribution."

"This has certainly brought the monks and people closer," he added during an interview. "The monks have won the hearts of the people."

And there is no surprise why. The junta not only failed to use its state machinery to help the victims, but the scale of the country's worst natural disaster, affecting over 80,000 square km, was beyond its capacity. Moreover, the regime continued to place bureaucratic roadblocks in the way of international relief efforts, resulting in over one million people still having to get basic relief.

The bond between the monks and the people is one the regime fears. The regime's brutal crackdown of last September's peaceful pro-democracy protests -- led by thousands of robed monks -- reveals the discomfort. Since then, the junta has turned the heat on any moves to strengthen a beleaguered people's increasing dependence on the clergy for help and hope.

A report last week by Amnesty International pointed to the junta's strategy, since the cyclone, to break the growing dependency cyclone victims have on the clergy. Hundreds of cyclone victims who had found shelter in four monasteries in Bogale were evicted by the regime, revealed the global rights lobby.

"The SPDC doesn't want monks to have close connections with the people," says Win Min. "This bond will be seen as a threat to the military regime."

© 2008 IPS News All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/87558/

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Burma's forced labour
The New Statesman
Carole Reckinger
Published 09 June 2008

The brutal Burmese government has for years forced citizens to work for free. Twenty per cent of those sentenced to prison with hard labour perish. Meanwhile, just who will rebuild the cyclone-hit country?

The Burmese military government has come under huge international pressure and criticism since cyclone Nargis destroyed large parts of Burma, killing at least 78,000 and leaving 56,000 more missing.

A month on, the UN estimates that 2.4 million people are in need of food, shelter or medical care, and more than a million have yet to receive foreign aid. Huge numbers of people are surviving in appalling conditions, with little or no help.

In the month since the disaster, only a small number of international aid workers have been granted access into the affected regions, and there is growing concern that the reconstruction effort will depend on forced labour - be it from children or migrant adult workers.

The International Labour Organisation's (ILO) liason officer in Rangoon, Steve Marshall, said there had not been any verified reports of forced labour linked to the disaster. But he added: "We're not saying it isn't happening."

Burma is well known for its use of forced labour. The Tatmadaw (Burmese military) routinely forces civilians to work on state infrastructure projects, such as the building of roads, bridges, military bases or even towns.

The military will typically demand labour from local villages, with the threat of fines if households are unable to supply the required amount of people. The ruling State Peace and Development Council's (SPDC) search for labourers is made easier by the existence of registration documents with details of the exact number of inhabitants, property and livestock within any given village.

Inhabitants have no choice but to apply for national identity cards and register their details or risk fines or arrest.

The military is increasingly relying on SPDC-appointed village chairpersons as intermediaries through whom to disseminate their demands.

One particularly brutal example of forced labour is SPDC’s use of villagers as human minesweepers to clear the way for the safe passage of soldiers.

Projects vary in length and intensity, but they always mean that people are taken away from their land and livelihoods without any remuneration in return.

Military personnel operate under blanket impunity, and know that they will not be held accountable for any mistreatment of civilians. Furthermore, low level officers and soldiers in charge of forced labour projects are under pressure to meet demands, quotas and timetables ordered by their superiors.

Threats, harassment, beatings and even killings are not uncommon, and women risk rape and other sexual abuses. Forced labour often means that villagers are unable to work on their own agricultural work for days or even weeks on end. Regular forced labour in Mon State (South-eastern Burma), for example, has been a primary factor leading to increasing food insecurity.

Prison Labourers

Human rights organisations have reported the continuous use of forced prison labour in Burma, and it is estimated that as many as 20 percent of prisoners sentenced to ‘prison with hard labour’ die as a consequence of the conditions of their detention. It has been reported that at least 91 labour camps operate in areas across the country and the thousands of prisoners in these camps are used to build highways, dams, irrigation canals, and to work on special agricultural projects. Prisoners are reportedly being forced to work 12 hours a day without rest, and the sick and weak are not exempted from work. Inmates who cannot afford bribes are condemned to the harshest labour.

The living conditions and the general treatment of forced prison labourers are widely reported to be far worse than for civilian forced labourers. The work is more dangerous, they have to work even longer hours and health provisions are non-existent. The prisoners are viewed as expendable labour and there are countless reports of their torture, beatings and killings. A constant supply of prison labour is ensured by the continuing arbitrary arrests, as well as the imposition of lengthy sentences for minor misdemeanours. Those arrested often do not receive due legal process and are told that they will be released on payment of a bribe. Those who are unable to bribe the police or the judiciary are automatically sent to prison, whether there is evidence against them or not.

Forced conscription and child soldiers

Human rights groups, meanwhile, believe boys as young as 12 are recruited to fight against ethnic minority rebels. Human Rights Watch (HRW) estimated that there may be more than 70,000 child soldiers in the SPDC Army.

The children are often kidnapped without their parents' knowledge while on their way home from school. They are then brutalised and physically abused during their induction and basic training before being shipped off to fight in the country’s ethnic states. “Child soldiers are sometimes forced to participate in human rights abuses, such as burning villages and using civilians for forced labour," said HRW. "Those who attempt to escape or desert are beaten, forcibly re-recruited or imprisoned."

Following the suppression in 1988 of the nationwide pro democracy demonstrations, the ruling military council initiated a dramatic effort to modernize and expand the armed forces. To tighten its control over its population, the SPDC Army instituted a dramatic expansion of military personnel throughout the country.

Service in the armed forces is for many a dangerous and gruelling experience, and soldiers are often subjected to mistreatment by senior officers. According to the junta’s military meeting minutes, there were about 9,000 desertions during 2006, whereas the army was only able to recruit 6,000. This trend continued in 2007, and the army is facing an acute shortage of trained personnel as a result.

Burma continues to have one of the highest numbers of child soldiers in the world - despite an official age of enlistment of 18.

According to Thein Sein, it is under-18s that are to blame for the problem because they lie about their true age or did not inform their parents that they had enlisted in the army.

Though, in a tacit admission that there remained underage soldiers in the armed forces, he further stated that soldiers with stunted growth were not sent to forward areas but were instead given light work duties at military bases, and that illiterate youth were sent to army schools to be educated.

With forced labour being such a common occurrence in the country, it is expected Burma will make use of it for the reconstruction process. Burma has a long history of ignoring the advice of International Organisations and actively hampering their freedom of movement and investment in the country, and is not about to change its stance.

Once again, the military junta will throw a spanner in the works and prevent ILO from monitoring the reconstruction process properly, adding further suffering to the devastated area and a population that has been through so much already.

http://www.newstatesman.com/asia/2008/06/forced-labour-burma-work

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