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Changing The Futures Of Ethnic Minority Children From Burma Though Education
Burma's Cyclone Farmers Await Assistance
Rice praises China's post-quake recovery efforts
Dealers killed in gunfight
Recent Burma News (30-06-08)

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Changing The Futures Of Ethnic Minority Children From Burma Though Education
OPC : Vol. 17 No. 7 July 2008

"Aroon is a very unlucky boy." The words of Opportunity for Poor Children (OPC) Director Kham Chuen were still ringing in my mind after two weeks of volunteering at this orphanage/centre for disadvantaged children in Mae Hong Son. The first day I met Aroon, he was living on the streets in filthy rags and eating at a nearby temple once a day. The boy, who is estimated to be about 9 years old, told me that his mother had died of diabetes and his father was always drunk and beating him.

"My father tries to get me to steal but I don't want to," he explained, "I want to be a good boy, so I run away when I see him coming." Aroon cannot read or write, or even count past 20 - yet these simple words of a young boy quickly brought tears to my eyes. Aroon's father is still causing problems for him by trying to remove him from the care of OPC to sell him for 2,000 baht. One can't even imagine what the purchaser would have in mind for Aroon.

Despite all this, Aroon's luck is changing for the better. He is enrolled in a local Thai school, has a safe bed at night and three meals a day at OPC. When it comes time for donations and support in Thailand, children like Aroon are part of a forgotten - or perhaps entirely unknown to some - segment: minorities from Burma (Myanmar), including the Tai Yai (Shan), Wa and Karen.

The 43 children at OPC range in age from about 7 to 14 and are here for various reasons. Goong has lost both is parents to AIDS and is himself HIV positive. A bright and energetic boy, he loves to go swimming and get lots of hugs. Although one volunteer wanted to adopt him, his legal status makes that impossible. Mak is one of five children and his mother is unable to support him since being left by her husband. There are also two brothers at OPC who were brought to the centre to escape being taken from their homes and used as child soldiers by the Burmese army - the oldest of the brothers is only 11.

Parents have heard about OPC via word-of-mouth in their villages and come from across the nearby border with their children, hoping Kham Chuen will allow them to stay. The centre has reached maximum capacity and it pains the director to turn new children away, knowing they return to a life without education and full of poverty and uncertainty. At least 100 more children are waiting for a chance to get into OPC.

One woman arrived the day before school started to bring her two daughters to OPC for the first time. She explained there is no school in her village in Burma, and they had to pay off both the Burmese and Thai authorities to cross the border. She said, "I want my daughters to have an education for themselves, so that they can stand on their own." There are a hundred more households in her village with four to five children each who do not have the opportunity to go to school.

Education is the key to keeping children out of the hands of human traffickers seeking to exploit them sexually or otherwise. "We are changing the course of these children's lives by providing them with the opportunity to go to school and live in a safe environment," according to one OPC volunteer. Before starting OPC in 2002, Kham Chuen worked with an organisation against child trafficking through media and documentation. He wanted to help the children more directly though, and started with mobile teaching at construction and farm sites. An investor donated a building, the construction of which was completed in August 2003. With this and support from other donors including the Swiss Embassy in Bangkok, OPC was able to open a learning centre. In May 2005, the local Thai government began to allow all children (regardless of nationality) to receive a formal education; and the children at OPC began to go to Thai schools.

While OPC cares for the children to the best of their ability, lack of funding leaves them with a small dorm space, annual flooding on their land from monsoon rains, not enough beds and not enough rice. Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC) stopped funding monthly rice and cooking oil supplies for OPC and the shelter is now struggling to feed the children. "Since the beginning of 2008, TBBC has had a funding shortage and therefore we have had to look at ways to reduce our expenditures," explains Sally Thompson, Deputy Executive Director TBBC, "This has been made worse by the global food crisis."

Potential donors are welcome to visit the centre in person and should contact the office before arrival. If you'd like to make a donation of goods, please contact OPC to see which needs are most urgent.

Names of all children have been changed to protect privacy.

OPC

www.@opportunityforpoorchildren.com
k_zuen@hotmail.com
khamchuen@opportunityforpoorchildren.com
Tel 061-986-480 or 053-612-926
(evenings and weekends)

Opportunity for Poor Children
P O Box 91
Mae Hong Son Post Office
58000 Thailand

http://www.chiangmainews.com/ecmn/viewfa.php?id=2247

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Burma's Cyclone Farmers Await Assistance

By IRIN / KUNGYANGONE
Monday, June 30, 2008

A 24-year-old farmer lost most of his family, as well as his prized water buffaloes, to the cyclone but says he is still waiting for the power tillers local authorities promised to distribute in Kungyangone, one of the worst-affected townships in Rangoon Division.

He had come to Kungyangone from his village in the hopes of rebuilding his livelihood, only to return home empty-handed, after an announcement of a government scheme for farmers to purchase power tillers in three separate instalments over the next few years.

A farmer outside the village on Chaungtha beach in the Irrawaddy Delta region 157 km (98 miles) west of Rangoon ploughs a field with a home made machine. (Photo: AP)

According to a recent assessment by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), some 52,000 farmers will be unable to cultivate monsoon crops this year unless they receive help.

“If this is translated to hectares, based on the average farm size, and on the average paddy land size, we are roughly talking about 183,000 hectares of paddy land which would be lost for this particular season,” Albert Lieberg, mission leader for the FAO’s needs assessment, said.

Cyclone Nargis devastated Irrawaddy Delta as well as parts of Rangoon Division on 2 and 3 May. An estimated 120,000 water buffaloes and draught animals, vital to plough the agricultural heartland of Burma, were lost in the storm.

With the majority of cyclone survivors largely dependent on agriculture and having lost their production assets, including seeds, fertilizers, tools and draught animals, they will need outside support.

“They will remain dependent on external aid for a long time,” said Hiroyuki Konuma, the FAO’s deputy regional representative, in Bangkok.
Bleak prospects

Farmers fear they will miss this year’s rice planting season altogether.

“There is a silent Nargis waiting ahead,” said one. “We are sure to starve if we miss this season.”

The category four storm affected 60 percent of 1.3 million hectares of rice paddy; 16 percent “seriously”, the FAO reported.

According to Burma’s Agriculture Ministry, some 13,600 power tillers are needed in the cyclone-affected area, with each tilling machine expected to plough two hectares per day in the coming weeks.

So far, the government has distributed 5,000 power tillers, in addition to those tillers provided by private donors and the humanitarian community at large.

But with the end of the planting season fast approaching, even if farmers have the machines they need, it is unlikely they will be able to complete the task.

Buffalo vs. tiller

Many farmers complain they do not know how to operate the equipment. Others still prefer to use the more traditional water buffalo—if they survived the storm. Another factor is the rising cost of diesel fuel. Before Nargis, one gallon of diesel cost approximately US $4; now it is almost $6.

In addition, most farmers lack seeds, with some reports suggesting that up to 85 percent of seed stocks in the affected area were destroyed, leaving farmers dependent on seeds brought in from outside.

Another factor is an expected shortage of labor. Farmers said there would not be sufficient employees to work their fields since tens of thousands of landless farmers were killed in the storm.

However, the government is adamant there is no shortage. At a meeting with international relief agencies on 10 June, National Planning Minister Soe Tha said: “Some organizations were spreading groundless information such as there is or will be a shortage of rice in Myanmar [Burma]. We have enough rice and we can distribute sufficiently.”

The Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) is a news service that forms part of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). But this report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations.

http://www.irrawaddy.org/highlight.php?art_id=13047

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Rice praises China's post-quake recovery efforts
AP
By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press WriterSun Jun 29, 9:15 AM ET

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice praised China's earthquake recovery efforts during a visit to the disaster zone Sunday, contrasting Beijing's "attentive" response with Myanmar's reluctance to accept outside aid after a devastating cyclone.

Rice was the highest-ranking American to inspect damage from the May 12 quake that destroyed a wide swath of southwest China's mountainous Sichuan province. The magnitude-7.9 quake killed almost 70,000 people, including thousands of schoolchildren who died when their classrooms crumbled.

She stopped in Dujiangyan, a badly hit city of 250,000, where officials said 3,000 people died and 90 percent of the buildings are now uninhabitable.

"My goodness," she said as she surveyed a pile of rubble — once a gym — before heading to a community of thousands of temporary homes and a water purification facility that is run by an American charity.

"I can see that the Chinese government and officials have been attentive," Rice told reporters after the tour. "I can see how much effort has gone into the recovery. But with a disaster of this magnitude, no one can do it alone."

"We are very glad that the Chinese people have reached out for help," she added.

Rice said China's efforts contrasted with those of Myanmar's ruling junta after Cyclone Nargis hit in early May. Myanmar's government came under worldwide criticism for failing to speed aid to survivors and initially barring foreign aid workers from the hardest-hit Irrawaddy delta.

Two weeks after the cyclone, the reclusive government authorized the United States to use 10 helicopters inside the country. This past week, the government's official death toll topped 84,500.

"It has been sad that ... instead of making possible the international community's response to their people, that they have put up barriers to that response," Rice said.

"Many lives could have been saved and many more could still be saved if we can get that response," she said. "This is not a matter of politics."

Grieving parents in Dujiangyan, about an hour's drive from the provincial capital of Chengdu, have tried to file a lawsuit demanding compensation along with an explanation and apology from the government for the large number of students killed. Officials have refused to accept their papers.

On the one-month anniversary of the quake, hundreds of parents of children killed in a school in hard-hit Beichuan staged a protest. Rice's visit, however, went without incident.

At the camp of temporary homes, she spoke to parents of a young boy. "I wish you the very best," she said. "I'm sorry you lost so much but I know you are going to recover. You have a great spirit."

The community, one of hundreds that have sprung up across the quake zone, had about 7,000 white-and blue prefabricated homes; officials said the number could grow to about 25,000.

After the tour, Rice headed to Beijing for meetings with President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao and Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi.

Those sessions probably will focus on North Korea's destruction Friday of its nuclear reactor cooling tower at the Yongbyon facility — the end of the first phase of the country's denuclearization process — and what the next step will be.

So far, the United States and other countries have agreed to give North Korea the equivalent of 1 million tons of oil for disabling its main nuclear facility and providing a list of nuclear programs.

On Thursday, North Korea presented a 60-page accounting of its nuclear activities. As a result, President Bush said the U.S. was moving to ease some penalties against North Korea.

North Korea has 45 days to agree on procedures to verify its declaration. The U.S. plans to remove the country from a State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism within the same timing.

The next and far more complicated phase of the disarmament process is for North Korea to abandon and dismantle its nuclear weapons programs. So far, the other countries in six-nation negotiations — China, Japan, South Korea and Russia — have not said what they will give the North in exchange for doing so.

China is Rice's last stop on a trip that also took her to Germany, Japan and South Korea.

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Dealers killed in gunfight
Bangkok Post
THEERAWAT KHAMTHITA

Police killed two drug traffickers in a gunfight after luring them into selling crystal methamphetamine at a forest in Mae Sai district in Chiang Rai. The two were suspected of being members of a drug gang linked with Red Wa guerrillas in Burma, which is notorious for smuggling drugs into northern Thailand.

The dead men were identified as Amnuay Wiboonpoonsap and Aka hilltribe member Puengsue Laesur.

They were lured into selling 3.5 million baht worth of the drug, known as ice, near a gateway to Doi Pami mountain. The traffickers opened fire on police first and the gunfight lasted about 10 minutes.

In Nong Khai, officials arrested a Laotian woman at a checkpoint near the Thai-Lao Friendship bridge as she allegedly tried to smuggle 8,000 speed pills into the country.

Kampong Sukwilai, from Vientiane, said she was hired to take the drugs to a buyer in Chon Buri province.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/300608_News/30Jun2008_news05.php

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Recent Burma News (30-06-08)

Animal Disease Outbreak in Irrawaddy Delta
Today, June 30, 2008, 4 hours ago
An outbreak of animal foot-and-mouth disease is spreading in townships affected by Cyclone Nargis in the Irrawaddy delta and in Rangoon and Pegu divisions, according to sources in Rangoon. There was n...

Anwar Secure in Turkish Mission
Today, June 30, 2008, 4 hours ago
Malaysia’s main opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim remained in the Turkish embassy on Monday, seeking refuge from sodomy accusations he says were cooked up by his enemies in the government.The sensat...

Former Khmer Rouge Official Seeks Release
Today, June 30, 2008, 4 hours ago
The former Khmer Rouge foreign minister appeared before Cambodia’s genocide tribunal on Monday to press for his release from pretrial detention. The United Nations-assisted tribunal has charged Ie...

Won and Peso Fall on Higher Oil
Today, June 30, 2008, 4 hours ago
The South Korea won and the Philippine peso fell on Monday as investors fretted about the impact of high oil prices, while most other Asian currencies moved in tight ranges.The Philippine peso fell by...

China Thanks US for Sichuan Earthquake Help
Today, June 30, 2008, 4 hours ago
China’s top leaders said on Monday they were thankful for US help after Sichuan’s devastating earthquake, with Premier Wen Jiabao saying he was impressed that the first foreigners he saw provi...

Rice uses visit to quake-affected China to rap Myanmar
Yesterday, June 29, 2008, 10:39:03 PM
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Sunday rapped Myanmar for refusing international help after being hit by a devastating cyclone, drawing contrast with its close ally China whom she praised fo...

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