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Drug case sends bank scare
Seeds of further uprising amid the fear and intimidation
Poverty fuels anger
Burmese Guards Accepting PrePay TopUp Cards As Bribes
61st.Anniversary of Burma's Martyr Day-July 19th 2008.
Martyrs
The return of Mr Nyet

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Drug case sends bank scare
19 July 2008

The controversial double standard applied by Senior General Than Shwe over the Maung Weik-Aung Zaw Ye Myint drug scandal has caused tension among the junta’s top generals which in turn has prompted panic-stricken customers to withdraw their bank deposits, Chai Sayam reports from the border:

The bank in question is the Kambawza Bank owned by Aung Ko Win, better known as Saya Kyaung, one of the two godsons of Deputy Senior Maung Aye, the junta’s #2 man, who has reportedly been in bitter dispute with Than Shwe, when the latter had taken swift and decisive action against business tycoon Maung Weik in connection with drugs but letting off Aung Zaw Ye Myint, Maung Weik’s colleague, a son of Lt-Gen Ye Myint, easily by sending him off to a drug treatment center.

“People are in panic,” said a trader in Rangoon. “They are afraid the next guy to be axed may be Maung Aye. If he falls, so will all his business interests.”

According to Mizzima News, upon learning his favorite grandson Nay Shwe Thwe Aung was addicted to Ecstasy, known in Thailand as Ya E and headshaker, the senior general flew into a rage and ordered the crackdown. The first suspect to be taken into custody was Aung Zaw Ye Myint, on 29 May. Two days later, Maung Weik, 35, managing director of Maung Weik and Family Co.Ltd, was arrested. The trial of Maung Weik and 6 others, including a Malaysian national, began on 14 July. Meanwhile, Aung Zaw Ye Myint, whose involvement had cost his father his job as a powerful overseer of three regional commands, had returned from Wettikan, where his addiction was treated, to his Rangoon home, reported Mizzima.

“Everybody who has a gun is involved,” a Palaung leader was quoted as saying by Bangkok Post.

www.shanland.org

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Seeds of further uprising amid the fear and intimidation
New wave of opposition activists wants extreme, even armed, action
* Clancy Chassay in Rangoon
* The Guardian,
* Saturday July 19, 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 armed insurrection

'If we have guns we will shoot back'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2008/jul/17/burma.military.regime

In Rangoon, Burma's former capital, an atmosphere of fear and intimidation smothers the city. Since September's failed uprising, when thousands of people were beaten and arrested, security has been tightened. The ruling junta's vast network of informants and plain-clothes police officers watch everything.

But the crackdown has not extinguished the flame of protest. 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 struggle.

Out of earshot, in the back of a taxi hurtling through the city's crumbling streets, one of the organisers of last year's protests spoke freely. "There is a very real debate among us about how to begin a more sustained armed struggle," he said. "We are ready for that kind of action, if we can get the supplies and training that we need."

The destination was a teahouse on the outskirts of the city, frequented by opposition activists - "one the government hasn't discovered yet", he said with a hollow laugh. After checking that all the adjacent rooms were empty, the activist began to talk in detail about the desire among a new wave of opposition activists to intensify their actions beyond protest and civil disobedience.

He had been an organiser during the September uprising, training monks in how to mobilise. Now he is looking for a reliable way to get arms into the country. With the opposition in tatters, younger groups, affiliated to the 88 Generation group which initiated the fuel and food price riots in August and September, are looking for new ways to bring down the regime.

"The problem for us is that this regime has too many options. When China doesn't defend them, they begin trade deals with India. And the Asean nations, despite what they say in public, are always willing to deal with them. It's all about trade. It's difficult to see how international pressure can have any effect here," he said.

Some 200 miles away on the lush Burma-Thailand border, Soe Aung, the chief spokesman for the National Council of the Union of Burma, an umbrella group representing nearly all facets of Burma's opposition, echoed the change in mood. Speaking from exile, he said he had witnessed a significant shift in 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," he said.

Like many in the opposition, Soe Aung favours a non-violent strategy, and believes an uprising like the one last September could easily happen again.

A lean, bespectacled intellectual, he 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 key to the success of the uprising. "The August/September protests were a real test of the training, and we were able to see how effective it has been," he said.

Soe Aung described mobilisation through Burma's monasteries and religious institutions. "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," he said.

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

Opposition activists inside and outside Burma said improvements in political awareness and spread of information were thanks in large part to NED-funded projects, but also 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 to media organs, the [NED-funded] Democratic Voice of Burma, satellite TV and, of course, the internet," said Soe Aung.

Some are more cynical about the support from Washington. "They use their funds to manipulate the situation, they want a situation they can control - not too much independence. They're just interested in limiting the spread of China's power," said the organiser on the outskirts of Rangoon.

The old guard of Burma's official opposition, which is allowed to operate tightly monitored offices in Rangoon, is also wary of talk of violence. "Armed struggle can't be successful because the army is very well trained and the people are not," said Nyan Win, senior spokesman for the National League of Democracy. Nyan Win, in his mid-sixties, voiced widely held frustration at the lack of political progress. "We're exhausted; we have been struggling for democracy and human rights for 20 years and we have nothing to show that things are improving," he said.

He said the party had received no message from their leader and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. "The generals won't let us talk to her, to find out if she's okay." Last month a group of younger generation NLD activists were imprisoned for protesting outside the home of Suu Kyi on her 63rd birthday.

Despite the harsh sentences that answer any dissent, Nyan Win remains optimistic about fresh protests.

Anger has been boiling across Burma since Cyclone Nargis, the worst natural disaster in Burmese history, struck on May 2, leaving more than 140,000 people dead or missing. Many Burmese believe the regime grossly mishandled the immediate relief effort.

Its aftermath also revived some of the national fervour of the September protests and gave new life to a long dormant civil society through widespread private relief efforts.

In Rangoon, a western diplomatic source said the increase in private activities had weakened the regime. But the military government of Than Shwe remains in firm control of the country. Under the 400,000-strong army's rule, brutal campaigns against ethnic minorities continue in most of the border states, and the military continues to manipulate the political situation to ensure its control.

Frustrations have sharpened after a fresh series of arrests in the aftermath of Nargis decimated what was left of the opposition leadership.

"We lost a lot of activists during Nargis. They didn't want to hide any more, they had to try to help the people, so they rushed to the areas, and many never came back," said Aung Kyaw Oo, a former student leader of the famed uprising of 1988, who campaigns for the release of Burma's political prisoners.

Many of them are now in Burma's notorious Insein prison, according to Aung Kyaw Oo, who spent time there.

The mass arrests since September have spurred a new radicalism among some of Burma's monastic community. It is the only viable national institution after the army and the only organised force in the country that remains relatively intact after opposing the regime.

Buddhist monks are at the core of Burmese society. Most Burmese men spend at least a year in monastic training and many re-enter the monastery later in life. Since September's uprising, monks in Rangoon are reluctant to speak. But in Mandalay, Burma's religious capital and home to more than 70,000 monks and novices, they are quick to express their anger.

"We feel very angry when we see what they did to the monks," said one Buddhist student activist. "If I had had a gun I would have shot back at all the ones who shot at us."

In one of the largest of Mandalay's 100 Buddhist monasteries, the monks say they are preparing for a new uprising. "There is so much anger here. We are preparing, we hope, for an uprising in the coming September. We are ready," said a senior instructor.

He described how Americans and Europeans have been training groups of core monk activists in basic civil disobedience tactics, as well as advising them in crafting an overall strategy.

Since the cyclone, the monks have played a central role in the private relief effort, defying the government's ban on unsanctioned assistance by funnelling in aid from Thailand across the south.

In hiding in the lush green hills along the Thai-Burmese border, Abbot Nat Zaw, the last remaining of the six leaders of the September uprising, described running regular trips into Burma from Thailand to coordinate the opposition monks' relief effort. The abbot, in his early forties, was responsible for drafting the now famous September 17 statement demanding the reversal of fuel and food price rises, the release of Suu Kyi, and the start of a dialogue to end military rule.

"An uprising is coming soon. The root causes haven't gone away, if anything they have been aggravated. We cannot talk about the details now but preparations are under way," he said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/19/burma.humanrights

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Poverty fuels anger
* Clancy Chassay
* The Guardian,
* Saturday July 19, 2008

Under the heavy monsoon sky, the rusted shades of Rangoon's dilapidated buildings seep into one another like murky stains. Decay is everywhere in Burma's crumbling capital.

Only the great golden pagodas, and the occasional marble-pillared hotel puncture the violet haze hanging over the city.

It has been eight months since a widespread popular uprising against the military dictatorship was brutally suppressed.

Security has been stepped up across all major cities and Burmese face arrest for even the smallest acts of dissent.

Away from preying eyes, Burmese from all walks of life voice anger and frustration at the military junta.

"After the uprising, and what they did to the monks, we could not forgive the government, but after the way they handled [Cyclone] Nargis, nobody can trust them to do anything good," said a doctor in her early sixties.

She described how in Burma everyone has to pay for schooling and that since the hikes in food and fuel prices last August, which sparked the uprising, many children are unable to attend any form of school for lack of funds.

The gulf between the haves and have-nots is visible across the city. While many Burmese go without proper meals, palatial five-star hotels lavish luxury on their wealthy foreign guests - many of them businessmen from neighbouring countries happy to reap the trade benefits of western sanctions.

Burma is rich in natural resources, and the people are well aware of their country's wealth.

"We know that we have diamonds and rubies and oil and gas and teak wood, but the people can barely feed their families," said a tour guide near one of the city's many golden Buddhist temples."

He added in a hushed tone: "The generals put all the money this country makes into their own pocket."

But the Burmese are fighting back in their own way. Twelve-year-old Jeffery is a computer wizard who manages the computers at his uncle's hotel.

He described how he had set up a system of internet proxies via Taiwan to circumvent the government's censorship mechanisms. He spoke proudly of being able to give people access to anti-government websites.

Asked if he feared being found out, he replied: "There will not be any trouble, I make sure the government can't find them."

He said his father had disappeared three years earlier, but didn't give any more details.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/19/burma.humanrights1

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Burmese Guards Accepting PrePay TopUp Cards As Bribes

Security guards on the border between Bangladesh and Burma (Myanmar) are reported to be taking bribes of mobile phone PrePay top up cards from traders wishing to cross between the two countries. As mobile phones are tightly controlled in Burma, they use mobile phones connected to the Bangladeshi networks, which leak across the border for a short distance.

One trader told the Narinjara newspaper that "we have to pay 300 taka, 50 taka in a mobile prepaid phone card, two kilograms of rice, and one kilogram of cooking oil to the gate guards whenever we cross to the Bangladesh side through the border point."

The border guards do not want local currency due to continuous depreciation and take food as bribes due to the ongoing shortages.

It is illegal to use an unauthorised mobile phone in Burma, and certainly not to use one connected to an overseas network. The government is particularly keen to control the mobile phone supply as they are able to shut down the networks if political trouble arises, as occurred with the Monks last September.

The number of official mobile phones in Burma reached 265,912 at the end of 2007.

On the web: Narinjara
Posted to the site on 18th July 2008
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/32493.php

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61st.Anniversary of Burma's Martyr Day-July 19th 2008.

" We The 8.8.88 Generation Students Salute Martyrs who sacrificed their lives for Burma's independence "

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Martyrs
28 min - Jul 18, 2008
NLD(LA)JB Youth & Student - arrluelay.blogspot.com

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5840189205999434758&hl=en

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The return of Mr Nyet
Russia and the UN
Jul 17th 2008 | MOSCOW AND NEW YORK

An abrasive Russian veto is prompting fears at the UN of a new diplomatic logjam that recalls the bad old days

Corbis

IN THE corridors of the blue-tinted building on the East River, the shock is still palpable. Despite the recent insistence of Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary-general, that human rights and security are intertwined, Russia and China have blocked an effort to isolate and punish the despots of Zimbabwe, in a move that seems to bode ill for action by the Security Council in other places.

Especially disappointing for many Westerners was the abrupt way in which Russia vetoed sanctions against President Robert Mugabe—only a day after Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s new head of state, had joined his partners in the Group of Eight, a rich-country club, in deploring Zimbabwe’s rigged and violent elections. The G8 statement had included a warning of “financial and other measures against those individuals responsible for violence”.

As many UN-watchers noted, Western governments were calculating that China—despite its substantial economic interests in Africa—would not want to exercise a sole veto. But Russia’s apparent U-turn spared China the awkwardness of standing alone. “I have never seen so much frustration,” said Warren Hoge of the International Peace Institute, a think-tank. “The Americans and British… thought the [Zimbabwe] resolution would at the most get abstentions from the Russians and Chinese.” By the time the vote took place on July 11th, Western governments had realised (at least for a few hours) that a Sino-Russian block was unavoidable; but they let the vote proceed, if only to test the nay-sayers’ resolve.

For Western governments that now face the prospect of working with Mr Medvedev over global hot spots from Iran to North Korea, the Zimbabwe veto raised several hard questions. Was there a failure of judgment by the new Russian leader? Was he overruled by other people, such as his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, who is now prime minister and was given formal responsibility this week for implementing foreign policy? Did Russia’s sour mood reflect other gripes, say over America’s vocal support for Georgia, or its missile-defence deal with the Czech Republic?

Other questions: was Russia boosting its own interests in southern Africa, or just acting up? And is the UN heading for a rerun of the cold war, when Soviet leaders like Nikita Khrushchev and his envoy Andrei Gromyko (pictured above) sparred with the West over almost everything?

The Kremlin, for its part, reacted peevishly to the West’s dismay. Russian officials said there had been no change in their policy, and that the West was once again distorting their position maliciously. The G8 statement had indeed carried Russia’s signature, but it made no mention of UN sanctions. The main point, they added, was that Zimbabwe’s travails posed no threat to regional or global stability; they were outside the Security Council’s remit.

Such talk is consistent with a foreign-policy style that has altered little since Mr Medvedev took power. He may avoid Mr Putin’s belligerent tone, but there is no sign of the Kremlin becoming friendlier to the West. Just to quash any doubts, Mr Putin has stressed that Mr Medvedev is “just as much a Russian nationalist, in a positive sense, as I am.” Mr Medvedev has done his best to prove that point, repeating Mr Putin’s warnings about American unilateralism. And even if Mr Medvedev wants to repair Russia’s relations with the West, it seems unlikely that he has carved out any real power to make independent decisions, at least so far. This week, he told diplomats to be “more aggressive”.

But none of this quite explains why Russia picked a fight with the West for the sake of a country in which it has no obvious interest. One reason, say Russia-watchers, is that punishing Mr Mugabe for stealing the elections and suppressing human rights sounded a bit close to the bone.

Indeed Russia’s foreign ministry hinted at this when it said that punishing Mr Mugabe would “set a dangerous precedent, opening a way to the Security Council interfering in countries’ internal affairs over various political events, including elections.” Given the dictatorial nature of many of Russia’s friends—like Belarus—and its own spotty record on human rights and elections, it is hardly surprising that Russia was unhappy about punitive sanctions against Zimbabwe.

In this climate, Western illusions that Russia might side with America against the regime in Zimbabwe betray a basic lack of understanding of what makes Russia tick, says Dmitri Trenin of the Carnegie Moscow Centre, a think-tank. These days, Russian thinking divides the world into America and its docile friends on one hand, and “sovereign” countries, like China, India and South Africa on the other. Given Russia’s aim to speak for the second camp, its veto was logical—and as Russian officials stressed, it reflected the African Union line.

But Russia’s move doesn’t indicate that it has any constructive aim in southern Africa—other than exploiting whatever vestigial ties may linger from the era when Soviet arms (like the Kalashnikov, a national symbol in Mozambique) helped to overthrow white rule.

Ties that don’t bind

Igor Sechin, one of Mr Putin’s toughest aides, was once a Soviet “interpreter” in Mozambique, when it was in the grip of Marxist fervour. But even in those days, the Soviet attitude to Africa was ambivalent; as they dished out the rifles, its envoys used to mutter racist predictions about the likely effects of black rule.

And at the height of its involvement in southern Africa, the Soviet Union was often frustrated that its largesse did not translate into influence, says Georgi Derluguian, a professor at America’s Northwestern University who worked as a Soviet adviser in Mozambique. But much more recently, a semi-official Russian foreign-policy report said Africa was still a zone of competition with the West. Western countries wanted “control over natural resources, dominance in consumer markets and decisive influence in [the region’s] economic and political evolution,” it thundered.
Compared with China, Russia’s efforts to counter the West in Africa have so far been feeble; China’s trade with Zimbabwe is ten times that of Russia. Although (or possibly, because) it has more interests at stake, China has seemed somewhat more amenable than Russia to arguments about the need to behave responsibly in Africa.

To many observers, it seems that the Kremlin’s determination to play geopolitical games on every front could end up benefiting China, which is happy to let Russia take the blame for coddling dictators. But if Russia overplays the role of spoiler-in-chief, that could easily backfire. Mainly because of their veto rights, Russians are deeply attached to the UN as the only legitimate forum for solving geopolitical problems. Anatoly Gromyko (son of Andrei and a former head of the Soviet Union’s Africa Institute) still speaks of the Security Council as the world’s “greatest organ for maintaining stability”.

But if Russia makes a habit of saying nyet to everything, in the churlish way that was a hallmark of the older Mr Gromyko, then the Security Council itself will lose effectiveness and prestige. And all its permanent members (especially the weaker ones) would then lose out too.

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11751311

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