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Groups worried about end to Myanmar relief flights
Myanmar ratifies ASEAN charter: Singapore minister
Burmese opposition ready to escalate pro-democracy fight
UN Food Agency Issues Appeal for Burma's Farmers and Fishermen
Japan Monitoring Aid Distribution to Burma
Nargis refugees exploited to rebuild entire areas of Burma
Meena the flower girl finds hope at last

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Groups worried about end to Myanmar relief flights
AP
18 July 2008

Humanitarian groups say the ending of United Nations aid flights in Myanmar next month could slow a relief effort that already has come under fire for leaving many of the 2.4 million survivors without adequate food and water.

The U.N. plans to end an air link between Thailand's Don Muang airport and Myanmar Aug. 10 as well as withdrawal five helicopters that have ferrying relief supplies to the hard hit Irrawaddy delta.

The U.N. claims the move is a routine step in the relief efforts as Myanmar begins to shift into reconstructing villages, schools and the agriculture sector in the delta where 84,537 were killed and 53,836 more are missing.

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Myanmar ratifies ASEAN charter: Singapore minister
Reuters
18 July 2008

Military-ruled Myanmar has ratified a charter by Southeast Asian nations that aims to create an economic bloc of half a billion people, Singapore's foreign minister said in remarks published on Friday.

"Myanmar has recently ratified it and will be announcing it next week officially," Singapore's Foreign Minister George Yeo told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview published on the ministry's website http://www.mfa.gov.sg.

Representatives from ASEAN's 10-member countries will meet in Singapore next week to discuss the early ratification of the charter and the creation of a human rights body.

Often dismissed as a talking shop, ASEAN signed the charter last November with the aim of creating an economically, socially and politically integrated bloc by 2015.

Only Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia have not ratified the charter, whose soft deadline is in December. Some members of the Philippines senate have threatened to block the ratification of the charter unless Myanmar releases democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.

But Yeo said he was confident the charter would be fully ratified by the end of the year.

"I'm not pessimistic about the Philippines, I fully expect that the charter would be fully ratified by the time of the next summit at the end of the year."

ASEAN's members are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

(Reporting by Melanie Lee; Editing by Jan Dahinten)

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Burmese opposition ready to escalate pro-democracy fight
* Clancy Chassay in Rangoon
* guardian.co.uk,
* Friday July 18, 2008

Clancy Chassay reports from inside Burma on plans for a new uprising against the military regime, and hears some monks calling for more western intervention and an an armed insurrection

Members of Burma's battered and disparate opposition are growing disillusioned with the old methods of the pro-democracy movement and are seeking ways to escalate their armed struggle with the help of covert western support.

"There is a very real debate among us about how to begin a more sustained armed struggle," an organiser of last September's failed uprising told the Guardian. "We are ready for that kind of action, if we can get the supplies and training that we need."

Speaking from exile in Thailand, Soe Aung, the chief spokesman for the National Council of the Union of Burma (NCUB), an umbrella group representing nearly all facets of Burma's disparate opposition, said he was witnessing a significant shift in the public attitude across Burma.

"After the September uprising and then the terrible cyclone response, the anger is surging. Some are considering violent means … the Burmese people are not that kind of people, there has been a real change."

Soe Aung spoke openly of how covert Western support, primarily from the US state department-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its subsidiary the International Republican Institute (IRI), had been fundamental to the success of the uprising.

"The US is certainly doing the most for the opposition. There has been real success in training and forming an underground movement through religious organisations and monastic organisations. These provide the best cover inside Burma. The monks can spread their training very effectively."

The NED describes itself as a private organisation but was created by, and remains accountable to, the US Congress. Set up under the Reagan administration in 1983, it has since played a leading role in influencing civil society and electoral processes in countries around the world unfriendly to US interests.

According to Brian Joseph, the man in charge of the group's Burma project, the NED gave $3m (£1.5m) to Burma in 2007. "We would send more, but there is a limit to what you can do in Burma," said Joseph.

Opposition activists both inside and outside Burma largely describe the improvements in political awareness and spread of information as a result of NED-funded projects, but also attribute them to the introduction of the internet to Burma in 2003.

"We could see in September how the advances were utilised. It wasn't just the monks but a massive increase of awareness among Burmese of all types. This was thanks largely due to media organs, the Democratic Voice of Burma, satellite TV, and, of course, the internet," said Soe Aung.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/18/burma

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UN Food Agency Issues Appeal for Burma's Farmers and Fishermen
By VOA News
17 July 2008

A farmer in the Irrawaddy Delta region west of Rangoon, Burma, ploughs a field with a home made machine, 03 Jun 2008

A United Nations food agency is appealing for more money to help fishermen and farmers in Burma who were hard hit by Cyclone Nargis.

The Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization issued an appeal Thursday for $33.5 million to help. Nargis hit the Irrawaddy Delta in early May, affecting more than 50,000 small-scale farming households and twice as many fishermen.

The U.N. agency says the cyclone flooded close to 800,000 hectares of rice fields and destroyed up to 85 percent of seed stocks in the country's agricultural belt.

It says three-quarters of farmers in Burma lack sufficient seed to plant next years' crops.

The FAO says another 99,000 landless rural households in the Asian country need immediate assistance.

Rice and fish constitute key components of the Burmese diet.
Some information for this report was provided by AP.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-07-17-voa52.cfm

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Japan Monitoring Aid Distribution to Burma
By LALIT K JHA / UNITED NATIONS
Friday, July 18, 2008

Japanese aid to Burma for the reconstruction phase in the cyclone affected areas of the Irrawaddy Delta will be determined based on an assessment of how effectively emergency aid has been delivered, a top Japanese official at the United Nations said on Thursday.

Japanese officials are waiting for next week's relief assessment report to be delivered in Singapore by the tri-partite group made up of the UN, Asean and Burma before deciding on its next aid installment.

When asked if Japan would continue financial aid to Burma during the reconstruction phase, Ambassador Takahiro Shinyo, the deputy permanent representative of Japan to the United Nations, told journalists, "It depends."

The UN has issued a revised fundraising appeal for an additional $300 million, to be used on emergency relief and the reconstruction phase which could last for a year or more. Cyclone Nargis swept through Burma on May 2-3.

"After the humanitarian phase is over, somebody must declare that we are entering into the reconstruction phase,” he said. “Then the relevance of the aid would be discussed—whether or not to help in reconstruction," Takahiro said.

Asked for clarification, Takahiro told The Irrawaddy that it does not mean imposing any conditions on Burma in lieu of any financial aid it would provide.

"This [imposing conditions for aid] is not our culture," he said, but he indicated that financial assistance to Burma beyond the post-humanitarian phase would depend on conditions in the Irrawaddy delta, how the money would be implement and also the progress made towards the political reform process.

The Japanese ambassador said thee must be an aid monitoring process even during humanitarian relief work phase.

"We are very much keen to see if the aid is distributed rightly or not, and that it has been distributed to the people,” he said. “So the checking mechanism is very necessary."

Japan is also dispatching its own missions to Burma to see that its aid is properly distributed and reaches those for whom it is intended.

"When we extend financial assistance to international organizations, we are always asking for monitoring and assessment because we would like to assure our Parliament [that the money is being used properly]," he said.

"There have been some cases when the implementation of Japanese aid has been questioned in the Parliament so we are very keen on this," he said.

Takahiro said relief work cannot continue indefinitely. Based on previous international experience, he said it normally last from six months to one year.

"If it is longer than one year, it is no longer an emergency phase. So we can confine the time element and of course the project," he said.

Japan, previously one of the Burma’s largest donors, has not made any new funding commitments in the last few years, Takahiro said.

He said Japan has dispatched a mission to Burma to investigate how to salvage sunken ships as a result of the cyclone. There are a large number of sunken ships in the Bay of Burma, whose removal, he said, is essential to the reconstruction phase.

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article1.php?art_id=13405

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Nargis refugees exploited to rebuild entire areas of Burma
07/17/2008 16:46
MYANMAR

The military junta uses the work of adults and children to rebuild roads, homes, and bridges, without paying anyone. Those who do not give in to coercion are forced to pay a tax, and are accused of "opportunism".

Yangon (AsiaNews) - The Burmese military junta is exploiting the work of thousands of refugees in the camps, in order to rebuild the areas of the Irrawaddy delta struck by the passage of cyclone Nargis. The charge is made by the opposition newspaper The Irrawaddy News, citing anonymous sources in the area: according to the newspaper, the inhabitants of Laputta, Pyapon, Bogalay, and Dedaye - including children - are forced to work for free, carrying out the lowliest and most burdensome tasks. The Burmese council for peace and development, accompanied by military troops, is making the refugees work as porters, cut bamboo and trees, and clean up roads and villages, all without the slightest economic compensation. Others are used on construction sites, preventing them from working first of all to rebuild their own homes destroyed by the passage of the cyclone, or to bring normality back to their villages of origin.

Those who do not want to submit to the exploitation are forced to pay a tax equal to 1,500 kyat (about a dollar and a half), an enormous sum for a population still struggling for everyday survival, and whose average income is below the poverty level. Those able to pay are charged with the infamous accusation of acting as "lazy opportunists", watching others work while they wait to receive a free new home.

Witnesses also affirm that the refugees are beaten and forced to abandon the barracks where they have found refuge, while the authorities make up flimsy excuses to drive them out. The supervision of the work of rebuilding the areas struck by the cyclone, moreover, has been entrusted to the 66th light infantry division headed by brigadier general Maung Maung Aye, famous for forcing the population to construct roads when he was the head of the 70th infantry battalion in 2000.

The Burmese regime has been repeatedly condemned by the international community for the exploitation of labour during the construction of military bases, roads, and bridges, and for imprisoning, torturing, and executing those who refuse to cooperate.

http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=12789

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Meena the flower girl finds hope at last
Bangkok Post
18 July 2008
WASSAYOS NGAMKHAM

Fate has played cruel tricks on her throughout the past six years, but a 10-year-old Burmese girl finally had some luck when she was rescued from a Burmese couple who treated her as slave labour.

Meena is luckier than many other Burmese children who fall into the hands of child abusers. She was freed from involuntary servitude by a good Samaritan on May 19.

Police from the Children, Juveniles and Women Division say the couple forced Meena to hawk roses around the Victory Monument and at nightspots on Ratchadaphisek road from 8pm to 6am every day for over six years.

A Burmese woman was arrested on Monday on charges of child exploitation and human trafficking. Her husband is still at large.

Meena, who called her abusers "Pa and Ma", said she was taken from her hometown in Phraya Tongzu, or Three Pagoda Pass, in Burma, opposite Kanchanaburi's Sangkhlaburi border checkpoint, at the age of four.

Since then, she had lived in abject misery, without any of the simple pleasures of childhood.

Meena said she was forced to sell roses at nightspots on Ratchadaphisek road and around the Victory Monument area for 10 hours every night. This brought in 300-400 baht a day, but it was not enough. She was also made to beg for money and buy sweets for the couple's six-year-old daughter on her way home.

"If I didn't sell all the flowers I would get slapped in the face and smacked. It hurt and I cried every day," she said.

Sometimes luck was on her side, the roses sold out and she returned home with bulging pockets. Her reward was 5-10 baht and no smack.

For over six years, her daily fare was a plate of rice with one fried egg.

"I love eating shrimps. I remember a day when a farang man bought me a big shrimp with sauce. It was very delicious. I ate it all, except the head part," Meena said in a jolly voice and sparkling eyes.

Now under the care of the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security and the Prachabodi Centre she dreams of learning to read and write, but above all wants to go home to Burma and help her real mother.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/180708_News/18Jul2008_news08.php

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