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Releif Web-Burma: mapping the challenges and opportunities for dialogue and reconciliation
VOA-Burma Jails More Dissidents
Reporters Without Borders-Burma : Female journalist gets two years for taking photos of Nargis victims
Asin Mettacara-Burma, Myanmar: Today Imprisonment List
BBC-Burma court jails more protesters
IHT-Burma's junta scorns world opinion
Seoul Times-'Suspend Burma from BIMSTEC'
TIME-Burma Crackdown Reflects Junta's Insecurity
Guardian-Aung San Suu Kyi and western intervention in Burma
SFgate-In Burma, business ventures start with military
Irrawaddy-US Imposes Sanctions on Burma Drug Cartel
Irrawaddy-Burma’ s Best Given Brutal Prison Sentences

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Burma: mapping the challenges and opportunities for dialogue and reconciliation
Source: Crisis Management Initiative
ReliefWeb-Date: 14 Nov 2008

I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Union of Myanmar (Burma) has suffered political and ethnic conflict for more than half a century, which continues to hamper the country's social, political and economic development. The present report, prepared by the Crisis Management Initiative for the European Commission, seeks to map the conflict landscape, including its history, the actors involved, and the main obstacles and opportunities for dialogue and reconciliation. It assesses the change processes currently underway in the country and considers relevant comparative experiences from similar transitions elsewhere in the world. The final section contains specific recommendations to the EU and its member states, with particular attention to the possible role for a private (track-2) facilitator.
Section I: Overview of the Conflicts

Since Independence in 1948, the central government has faced armed rebellion from several dozen ideological, ethnic and economic groups, including the Communist Party of Burma (1948-89), the Karen National Union (1949-) and the All-Burma Students Democratic Front (1988-). According to the Uppsala Conflict Dataset, the number of direct battle deaths reached more than a thousand in most years from 1948- 1994 with gradually receding peaks in 1948-1954, 1963-74, 1985-88 and 1990-94.

Since t he mid 1990s the number of battle deaths has fallen to a few hundred per year, reflecting the spread of ceasefires and gradual weakening of the remaining insurgent forces. By contrast, political opposition at the heart of the state has substantially increased since the 1988 uprising and the take-over of power by the State, Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), later renamed the State, Peace and Development Council (SPDC).

The consequences of these continuous conflicts has been cumulative and devastating for the country and its people, resulting in a chronic social, political, economic and humanitarian crisis. Since 1948, Burma has seen:

- 1,000s of political activists murdered, tortured or jailed;
- 10,000s of combatants and non-combatants killed in war;
- 100,000s of mainly ethnic minority villagers displaced from their homes in conflict zones; and 1,000,000s of people from all nationalities suffering poverty or illness as a consequence of conflict and resultant emergency governance.

Clearly, peace is vital for Burma to progress. And peace is needed now, before the country's institutions and conditions of life deteriorate to a point from which recovery will be impossible.

Full_Report (pdf* format - 2 Mbytes)
(*) Get Adobe Acrobat Viewer (free) 
http://www.reliefwe b.int/rw/ rwb.nsf/db900SID /VDUX-7LDRL4? OpenDocument

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Burma Jails More Dissidents
By VOA News
14 November 2008

Courts in military-ruled Burma sentenced at least 14 members of the opposition party to prison terms Friday, bringing to more than 60 the number of pro-democracy activists jailed this week.

Spokesman for the National League for Democracy (NLD) party Nyan Win said the prisoners sentenced Friday received jail terms between two and 16 years.

On Thursday, at least 20 activists were sentenced to between two and 12 years in prison.

The U.S. State Department and the United Nations expressed concern about the crackdown on political prisoners. They were concerned about some who earlier this week were ordered to spend 65 years behind bars.

Some of the activists had participated in last year's rare pro-democracy protests. Others joined a peaceful march calling for the release of detained democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.

Many of the jailed dissidents are youth members of the opposition party or the 88 Generation Students -- Burma's most defiant activist group. Others sentenced this week include Buddhist monks and a blogger.

The fate of Burma's two most prominent student leaders is still unknown. Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi of 88 Generation Students have been transferred from Insein prison to the Maoubin prison outside Rangoon and are awaiting their sentencing.

New York-based Human Rights Watch says Burma's military government is using lengthy prison terms to silence dissent ahead of its 2010 elections.

The last time Burma held general elections, in 1990, the opposition party won a major victory. The military government refused to recognize the results and has kept opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for 13 of the past 19 years.

At least 2,000 other political prisoners are jailed in Burma.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters. 
http://www.voanews. com/english/ 2008-11-14- voa47.cfm

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Burma : Female journalist gets two years for taking photos of Nargis victims
Reporters Without Border, 14.11-08 –

Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association are outraged by the two-year sentence passed today on Ein Khaing Oo, a 24-year-old woman journalist employed by the weekly Ecovision Journal, for taking photos of Cyclone Nargis victims. She was arrest in Rangoon last June.

“This unjust sentence comes amid a wave of unprecedented sentences for journalists and activists,” the two organisations said. “We appeal to Burma’s military authorities to free Ein Khaing Oo, whose only crime was to cover the humanitarian disaster in the Irrawaddy delta.”
According to Mizzima, The sentence was handed down today by a Rangoon court at the end of a trial held behind closed doors with no defence lawyer. She was accused of taking photos that could be used by foreign news media. Arrested on 10 June while covering a demonstration by Nargis victims outside a UN building in Rangoon, Ein Khaing Oo has already spent five months in Insein prison.

Another journalist, Zaw Thet Htwe, and a blogger, Zarganar, are also being held for helping Nargis victims. Zarganar was arrested after giving an interview to a BBC television reporter. Verdicts are expected in their cases in the coming days. The toll from Cyclone Nargis’ passage across Burma in May was around 130,000 people dead or missing.

Ein Khaing Oo

http://www.rsf. org/article. php3?id_article= 29295

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Ashinmettacara- Friday, November 14, 2008
Burma, Myanmar: Today Imprisonment List

11 years imprisonment:
Kyaw Zin Win, (husband of Kyi Kyi Wah)

9 years and 6 months imprisonment:
Thant Zaw Myint, (for involvement in protests against a fuel price)

9 years imprisonment:
Thant Zin Myo, Thant Zaw Myint, Than Win(for involvement in protests against a fuel price)

8 years imprisonment:
Ko Saw Moe Zet

7 years and 6 months imprisonment:
Htike Min, Kyaw Soe, Daw Ma Nge (for involvement in protests against a fuel price)

6 years imprisonment:
Kyi Kyi Wah(wife of Kyaw Zin Win)

5 years imprisonment:
(Dawbon Township NLD member)
Nay Zar Myo Win, Kyaw Kyaw Linn, Aung Kyaw Oo, Kyaw Zin Win

4 years imprisonment:
(Mandalay NLD member)
Ko Shwe Aung, Ko Wanna Aung and Ko Zaw Win

2 years and six months imprisonment:
Tin Myint, the chairman of Thar Kay Ta Township NLD party

2 years imprisonment:
Nyi Nyi Min and Ko Tin Win, members of the South Dagon Township NLD party

Ma Eint Khaing Oo, Econ Vision Journalist (for covering Nargis cyclone news)
http://www.ashinmet tacara.org/ 2008/11/burma- myanmar-today- imprisonment- list.html

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Burma court jails more protesters

BBC, 11-14-08

At least 11 more Burmese activists have received jail sentences for taking part in anti-government protests last year.

It brings the total number sentenced this week to more than 60.
A special court set up by the military government handed out jail terms of up to nine-and-a-half years to activists, mainly from the opposition NLD party.

Fourteen student leaders were given 65-year sentences earlier this week and monks and labour activists have also been given long spells in prison.

It is unclear why the authorities have acted against the opposition now.
However, human rights groups say the government is intensifying efforts to curb dissent ahead of elections in 2010.

The exact numbers of those who have been jailed is also unclear as no official figures have been released by the government.

Nyan Win, a spokesman for the National League for Democracy (NLD) which is led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, said that on Thursday four monks were each jailed for eight years.

He said that 11 NLD members from Rangoon were jailed for seven-and-a- half years each and another three were given sentences of four to 10 years.

Dialogue call

On Tuesday, five monks were jailed for six-and-a-half years and at least 23 activists were each sentenced to 65 years in prison.

Fourteen of those are former students who were members of the "88 Generation", which led a major uprising 20 years ago that the military regime also suppressed.

A leading blogger and a poet who wrote a coded criticism of junta leader Than Shwe were among six people sentenced to up to 20 years in jail on Monday.

The protests in August last year began as small rallies against the rising cost of living.

However, they escalated into huge protests led by Buddhist monks that posed the biggest threat to the junta's rule in nearly two decades.

At least 31 people died when security forces cracked down on the protesters, according to the UN. Human rights groups say that hundreds more activists remain in jail.

The US led Western condemnation of the sentences on Wednesday and called for the regime's leaders to begin "a genuine dialogue" with opposition groups.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for the release of all political prisoners in Burma, saying they should be allowed to take part in a national reconciliation process.

The junta says that it will hold elections in 2010 as part of its "road map to democracy".

But opposition figures and governments, including the European Union, say the elections will be meaningless if much of the opposition is behind bars.

http://news. bbc.co.uk/ 2/hi/asia- pacific/7730026. stm

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Burma's junta scorns world opinion
International herald tribune-Published: November 14, 2008
 
Any hope that the military dictatorship in Burma might be mending its vicious ways was crushed this week when the regime handed out 65-year prison sentences to 14 nonviolent democracy activists, and sentences of up to 26 years for 25 others. These are some of the men and women who took part in the Saffron Revolution in September 2007. In many cases, their long terms in Burma's horrific prisons spell a death sentence.

With this display of cruelty, the junta kingpin, General Than Shwe, showed his scorn for the world's good opinion. He was defying innumerable resolutions and statements from the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and human rights organizations. They have called on him to release the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and all other political prisoners; to engage in serious dialogue with her National League for Democracy; and to move toward reconciliation and genuine democracy.

The right response for the UN Security Council is to impose an arms embargo on the junta. This means persuading Russia and China to stop blocking such meaningful sanctions.

But there is also something simple and straightforward that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee should do, and that is to confirm President Bush's highly qualified nominee, Michael Green, to the recently created post of special representative and policy coordinator for Burma. His mission - to work for the restoration of democratic governance in Burma - is more pressing than ever.

The Senate currently is in lame-duck session, but if Green is not confirmed quickly, the long list of new appointments coming early next year could delay his confirmation indefinitely. That would be tantamount to telling the gentle idealists rotting in Burma's Insein Prison that, in America, senatorial languor trumps democratic solidarity.

Today in Opinion
Global action on a global crisis
Burma's junta scorns world opinion
Doing nothing as Congo burns

http://www.iht. com/articles/ 2008/11/14/ opinion/edburma. php

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'Suspend Burma from BIMSTEC'
Asia-Pacific
Seol Times- 11-14-08
Special Contribution
By Nava Thakuria

Nava Thakuria, who serves as a freelance writer for The Seoul Times, is based in Guwahati of Northeast India . He works as an independent journalist for many media outlets and can be contacted at navathakuria@ gmail.com
http://theseoultime s.com/ST/ ?url=/ST/ db/read.php? idx=7582

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Burma Crackdown Reflects Junta's Insecurity
By Hannah Beech Thursday, Nov. 13, 2008 TIME

Monks protected by a 'human fence' of citizens holding hands walk in protest against the Burma's military regime on Sept. 25, 2007, in Rangoon
Christian Holst / Getty Images

The years piled up fast. Sixty-five years in prison each for 14 former student activists. Twenty-and-a- half years for a blogger. Twelve-and-a- half years for a labor leader. Six-and-a-half years for five Buddhist monks. Two years for a poet. In the space of just three days this week, more than 30 Burmese were sentenced to prison or hard labor by the country's ruling junta, a chilling legal onslaught that sent a clear message to other potential dissidents: speak out, and get used to life in a prison cell.

Burma Frees Democracy Fighter
ASEAN Turns Blind Eye to Burma Rights
Asian Relief: The Sharon Stone Effect
Burma's Woes: A Threat to the Junta

More Related
The UN Envoy Trying to Save Burma
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Even for a notoriously repressive regime, the jail sentences were unusually harsh. Last year, the generals who control Burma, also known as Myanmar, violently crushed a peaceful, monk-led protest movement calling for economic and political reforms. Hopes that an influx of foreign aid — dispersed after Cyclone Nargis devastated the Irrawaddy Delta last spring — would convince the junta to take a softer approach were dashed by the rash of detentions that accelerated in late October. Last week, two journalists were jailed, while three lawyers representing political activists have also been sentenced to prison. "These last few weeks show a more concentrated crackdown on dissent clearly aimed at intimidating the population," said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, in a statement from the New York-based rights group. "These peaceful activists should not be on trial in the first place, let alone thrown in prison for years after unfair trials."

Burma has scheduled multi-party elections in 2010. The polls are considered a charade by many international observers, who note that the leader of the main opposition party, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, is under house arrest and is barred from participating. But even after locking up a woman whose National League for Democracy won the 1990 elections that the junta then ignored, Burma's ruling brass still appears spooked by the power of the people. "Burma's leaders are clearing the decks of political activists," says Pearson, "before they announce the next round of sham political reforms." Overall, one Burmese exile group based in Thailand estimates that 2,120 Burmese now languish in jail for their political activism, nearly double the number who were in prison before last year's anti-government demonstrations.

Despite the predictable expressions of condemnation issued this week by countries like the U.S. and Britain, there's little that the West appears able to do to convince the junta, which has ruled since 1962, to treat its citizens more humanely. Economic sanctions by the U.S. and the European Union are undercut by the eagerness with which China and other Asian countries do business with Burma's generals. Although one of Asia's poorest nations, Burma holds a wealth of natural resources like timber, natural gas and precious stones.

The country's leaders have grown rich from the land's bounty, even as most Burmese struggle just to feed themselves. Roughly one-third of civilians live below the poverty line. Last month, many Burmese, who get their news from clandestine radio broadcasts, were shocked by a BBC Burmese service report that claimed a daughter of junta leader Than Shwe had spent more than $80,000 on a gold shopping spree in the city of Mandalay. Than Shwe himself brooks no dissent. The offense of Saw Wai, the poet who was sentenced to two years in prison? Writing a love poem published in a weekly magazine in which the first words of each line spelled out a brazen message: "Power Crazed Senior General Than Shwe."

(See pictures of Cyclone Nargis' devastation in Burma here.)
http://www.time. com/time/ world/article/ 0,8599,1858720, 00.html?xid= rss-world

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Aung San Suu Kyi and western intervention in Burma
guardian.co. uk, Thursday November 13 2008 00.01 GMT
The Guardian, Thursday November 13 2008

Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy are to be commended for their unusually frank reporting on Aung San Suu Kyi's weak leadership of Burma's democratic opposition (G2, November 11).

The role of western intervention must not be forgotten. It was western backing that emboldened Suu Kyi in adopting a confrontational stance against the military in 1990. Her attempt to wield western power against the generals, including her calls for sanctions and disinvestment, has only entrenched the military's suspicion of her. The west's insistence on peaceful change, combined with Suu Kyi's own religiosity, led her to demobilise an enraged population that had managed to overthrow the Burmese Socialist Programme party regime in 1988.

While Suu Kyi remains popular, the resulting passivity has disillusioned many, while the hoped-for western rescue has, unsurprisingly, never come.

Western NGOs have used Suu Kyi's iconic status to impose counterproductive policies on Burma, locking western states with no better ideas, and no courage to face down activists' shrill demands, into a course of confrontation and sanctions. The failure of these policies has been manifest for a decade. They may assuage the consciences of western liberals, but have a cost: sanctions have harmed only the poor, while the military remains entrenched in power.

Western policy needs a rethink. Sanctions should be ended immediately and normal aid relations restored. A political approach based on a realistic appraisal of the balance of domestic forces must be substituted for doctrinaire democracy promotion: only a process acceptable to the military and Burma's powerful neighbours has any chance of success.

Lee Jones
Rose research fellow in international relations, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford

What qualifies Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy to write their morally and journalistically disgraceful condemnation of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's democratically elected leader, who has demonstrated for two long decades the kind of courage unseen in our times? Would they have attacked the incarcerated Nelson Mandela in the same cowardly terms? They sneer at Suu Kyi for her "failure" to speak out while suppressing the known facts that (1) she is mostly prevented from communicating with the outside world by her jailers and tormentors and (2) when she has spoken out, she has been acutely aware of the personal consequences for her allies and supporters within the nightmarish tyranny that is Burma. Do they not feel any compassion for a woman kept in such extreme isolation for so long? What do they know of the pressures upon her? Have they talked to her, as I have, looking over our shoulders at the steel helmets at her gate? Along with this odious article, the headlines - "The myth of Aung San Suu Kyi" and "Not such a hero after all" - belong in the gutter.

John Pilger
London

http://www.guardian .co.uk/world/ 2008/nov/ 13/letter- burma-suu- kyi

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In Burma, business ventures start with military
Daniel Pepper, Chronicle Foreign Service
SF Chronicle Thursday, November 13, 2008

View Larger Images

The northern town of 20,000 residents is connected to the outside world by a single crumbling road, a bone-crushing 16 hours to the closest transport hub during the rainy season. Ancient hulking trucks putter along in the mud, some stuck for days. Like a cruel joke, red road signs announce: "The Government has arranged for road repair from each company in Hpakant," meaning companies with lucrative government contracts are expected to pay for highway upkeep even though the military regime takes a hefty profit from each venture.

In Burma, residents call this business as usual.

More than 450 private companies and some 100 joint ventures operate in the area, the majority of which are owned by Burmese with Chinese heritage, according to Sai Joseph, 34, a gregarious family man and manager of a midsize jade company.

"There are only a few wealthy people in Burma - those who get in with the political people, the authorities who have power," said Joseph. "This is a good chance to get rich."

All of Burma's big-ticket industries are based around natural resources, including oil, natural gas, timber and mining. In essence, the country is run like a mafia, from the languid tea shops of Rangoon to this remote jungle area of Kachin state, where the mining town of Hpakant is located and provides much of the world's jade.

In 2007, sales of natural gas brought in some $3 billion, while teak and other lumber earned about $480 million. The jade industry earned an estimated $400 million.

"You name it and they (military) have figured out a way to flip it and make money out of it," said a former Western diplomat who asked not to be named. "If a businessman wants to do something - build a hotel, import cards, export lumber or get a government contract - he hooks up with an army officer who can influence the decision. There are some outright cash payoffs, but mostly it works on favors in kind."

Shining a light

Uncovering information about the regime's business deals is notoriously difficult. But in September, Earth Rights International (ERI), a Thailand-based environmental and human rights organization, released a report detailing the investments of 68 Chinese multinationals in 88 hydropower, oil, natural gas and mining projects.

Pieced together from a range of Chinese companies and government Web sites and news sources, the report aimed to raise awareness for the nation's 48 million inhabitants, who are kept in the dark on government's dealings and a global movement to pressure the military into making reforms.
"The Burmese regime has successfully convinced these companies that nothing will compromise its grip on political power," said Matthew Smith, a project coordinator with ERI. "This is a conviction the regime doesn't hesitate to demonstrate, as we've seen through its political imprisonments and violent treatment of dissent."

The report showed that Burma's generals continue to thrive off their relationship with China, evidenced by new air-conditioned supermarkets and shopping malls, packed with Chinese-made goods in major cities like Rangoon and Mandalay - products only a few Burmese can afford. Signs of conspicuous consumption are evident by a small group of multimillionaires whose wealth stands in direct relation to their proximity to junta leader Senior Gen. Than Shwe and other top generals.
Many pro-democracy exiles regard China as the linchpin for meaningful change, which may be hope prevailing over logic. China is the largest supplier of military equipment to Burma and is a crucial veto on the U.N. Security Council to stifle harsher economic sanctions by the international community.

In Hpakant, jade businessman Joseph estimates that there are as many as 3,000 mines set among a series of denuded hills slowly eaten away by heavy machinery. Green plant life bursts forth where it can, but most earth is an excavation site, undulating for miles into the distance.

What was once depicted as a scene out of "Dante's Inferno" - the few outsiders who had visited jade quarries here described thousands of half-naked men, women and children clawing at rocks - is now a largely mechanical process characterized by large yellow Caterpillar and Volvo backhoes and industrial-size dump trucks. A few mines still employ human diggers, and weeks before I visited Hpakant, one mine collapsed killing 20 people.

The jade trade

Just before the start of the Beijing Olympic Games, President Bush signed into law the Burma Jade Act, adding Burmese jade and rubies to a long list of restricted goods. Even though such prominent jewelers as Bulgari and Tiffany & Co. have gone along with the ban, jade sellers in the crowded outdoor markets of Rangoon told me they are doing landmark business thanks to China, India, Thailand, Singapore and Arab gulf states.

Like many business activities, the military junta takes a hefty percentage - 50 percent of profits from private companies and 80 percent from joint ventures - leaving jade miners destitute and diseased (HIV is believed to be rampant among miners, though exact statistics are impossible because international aid groups are not allowed in Hpakant).

But jade mines are a prime example of how the military regime co-opts even its enemies. Burma is home to more than 130 ethnic groups, and some continue to fight for an independent homeland. For years, some of these rebel groups financed their armed struggle through the sale of opium and jade.
Militants to middlemen

Kachin rebels, one of the most formative armed forces and mostly an animistic hill people, once mined jade illegally to buy guns. But after signing a cease-fire with the military regime in 1994, they have become "middlemen for the state's revenue generation, much of it semi-legal and all designed to prop up military rule," said David Matthieson, a researcher for Human Rights Watch.
Engaging in business rather than war with the military junta is tacit acknowledgement that real power is determined by proximity to the ruling generals.

"Without having personal ties with high-ranking personnel in one way or another, no businesses could survive or expand," said Win Kyaw Oo, a former journalist who is now in the private import business.

Change comes, if slowly, to Burma

Despite an economic growth rate of 5.5 percent in 2007, resource-rich Burma remains one of the world's poorest nations. The country ranks 132 out of 177 countries in the United Nations' Human Development Index. It is tied with Somalia for being the world's most corrupt country, according to Transparency International' s 2007 rankings.

Burma is also known around the globe for government repression.

The military junta's use of detention and torture has been denounced even by the neutral International Committee of the Red Cross. The nation's most famous champion of democracy, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, has been under house arrest for most of the past 19 years, and more than 2,500 political prisoners languish in prison, according to Amnesty International. At least 900 have been locked up in the past year, and 14 pro-democracy activists were given harsh prison sentences on Tuesday.

Yet, Burma is also a nation where change is occurring - albeit at a snail's pace.

In recent years, Internet cafes have more than tripled in major cities and are even sprouting in backwater towns carved out of the jungle. In the afternoons, young people gab on G-talk and check their profiles on Orkut, Hi5 and Friendster. Signs posted openly explain how to circumvent government censors through proxy servers and Web sites such as www.yoyahoo. com and www.bypassany. info.

The music of Zayar Thaw, a well-known hip-hop artist who was jailed this year, is an increasingly dominant genre of choice among many young Burmese.

Access to the Internet and to satellite TV is further eroding the regime's monopoly on information, a giant step in a nation where people once solely relied on crackling shortwave radios for a connection to the outside world.

E-mail Daniel Pepper at foreign@sfchronicle .com.
This article appeared on page A - 17 of the San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate. com/cgi-bin/ article.cgi? f=/c/a/2008/ 11/13/MNNU12SBS8 .DTL

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US Imposes Sanctions on Burma Drug Cartel
By LALIT K JHA
Irrawaddy-Friday, November 14, 2008

NEW YORK — The United States on Thursday named 26 individuals and 17 companies as “specially designated narcotics traffickers” and imposed new economic sanctions, including the freezing of assets held in the US.

The individuals and companies are associated with Wei Hsueh Kang and the United Wa State Army (UWSA), both of whom have been designated as trafficking in illegal drugs under the Kingpin Act.
Pao Yu Hsiang, Ho Chun Ting and Shih Kuo Neng are the other key individuals designated by the Treasury Department on Thursday. Pao Yu Hsiang, indicted in 2005 with Wei Hsueh Kang, is the commander-in- chief of the UWSA. 

Ho Chun Ting and Shih Kuo Neng also have been charged by a New York court for money laundering and narcotics trafficking. 

"In October 2007, Hong Kong authorities arrested Ho Chun Ting, a partner of Wei Hsueh Kang, but Hong Kong later released him for unknown reasons. Shih Kuo Neng is the manager of the Hong Pang conglomerate of companies, many of which are also designated today," the Treasury Department said.

The United Wa State Army is the largest and most powerful drug trafficking organization in Southeast Asia and is a major producer and exporter of synthetic drugs, including methamphetamine, said Barbara C. Hammerle of the US Treasury Department Office of Public Affairs (OFAC).

"Today OFAC is targeting the Wa's lieutenants and the financial holdings of this massive drug trafficking organization, " she said, while calling on other nations to take similar actions.
The latest round of sanctions imposed on individuals and companies associated with these drug traffickers are expected to have an impact on the drug trade in the region where the Wa army operates.

On June 1, 2000, the US identified Wei Hsueh Kang, a senior commander of UWSA, as a significant foreign narcotics trafficker under the Kingpin Act. In May 2003, the UWSA was identified as a significant foreign narcotics trafficker. 

Federal prosecutors in New York in 2005 unsealed a criminal indictment charging Wei, along with his brothers, Wei Hsueh Lung and Wei Hsueh Ying, who were both designated as narcotics traffickers in the latest action. The US is offering a reward of up to $2 million for information leading to Wei Hsueh Kang's capture.

The action is part of ongoing US effort under the Kingpin Act to apply financial measures against significant foreign narcotics traffickers worldwide. 

Internationally, 419 businesses and individuals associated with 75 drug kingpins have been designated by OFAC pursuant to the Kingpin Act since June 2000.

http://www.irrawadd y.org/article. php?art_id= 14631

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Burma’s Best Given Brutal Prison Sentences
By KYAW ZWA MOE
Irrawaddy-Tuesday, November 11, 2008

The family members of 39 Burmese dissidents have tears in their eyes today.

Fourteen leading activists of the 88 Generation Students group, including five women, were given 65-year prison sentences in a court in Insein Prison. At the same time, 25 other activists, including five monks and women who took part in the September 2007 uprising, were sentenced to up to 26 years imprisonment. The well-known labor activist Su Su Nway was sentenced to 12 and half years.
The lengthy sentences demonstrate that the oppressive regime is determined to crack down on pro-democracy groups in keeping with its slogan “annihilation of destructive elements and foreign stooges.” It also shows that the regime is simply ignoring calls from the international community for the release of political prisoners. 

Among the 14 activists were Min Zeya, Jimmy (known as Kyaw Min Yu) and his wife, Nilar Thein, and Mie Mie, another prominent female activist. Most had also served lengthy imprisonment following the 1988 pro-democracy uprising.

Jimmy and Nilar Thein served 15 years and seven years imprisonment respectively. Many readers are familiar with the couple and have great sympathy for them and their young daughter, who remains with her grandparents ever since her father was jailed last year and while her mother was in hiding before her arrest in September.

Many of the activists are in their late 30s and 40s. If they have to serve their full sentences, many will die in prison. After 1988, the ruling regime generally gave dissidents three to five years as a basic sentence. In 1990s, the junta handed down longer imprisonment, such as up to 10 years. Now it’s different, and the future seems to be harsher and longer sentences.

How about Min Ko Naing, the leader of the 88 Generation Students group? Min Ko Naing and eight other members of the group were transferred to Maubin Prison in the Irrawaddy delta on 31 October as punishment two days after the group was sentenced to six months imprisonment for contempt of court. It’s expected that they will soon receive sentences of 65 years or longer.

The longer sentences are designed to discourage dissent. And the new, harsher policy is also being directed at attorneys who are brave enough to represent activists. In October and November, three lawyers who represented dissidents also were sentenced to from four to six months for contempt of court.

Just before his arrest, attorney Aung Thein told The Irrawaddy that justice would win in the end—and he quoted Buddhist teaching. “Ah-dhhamma (injustice) is winning now, but one day dhamma (justice) will win.”

Three lawyers Aung Thein, Khin Maung Shein and Nyi Nyi Htwe, are now being detained in Insein Prison. Four other defense lawyers who are representing several dissidents have also been barred from representing their clients since early November.

But even such a harsh policy hasn’t stifled the spirit of dissent.
After hearing his sentence this morning, Min Zeya, a leading member of the 88 Generation Students group, loudly ridiculed the sentence, “Only 65 years!”

Mie Mie, one of the female activists, shouted, “Never frightened!” Their determination and courage is beyond words.

Sadly, however, the history of the 20 year uprising has proved that spirit alone can’t achieve the democracy movement’s goal. All dissident groups have been seriously beaten down by the military regime. The government plans to hold an election in 2010 but many dissidents are very likely to be serving sentences in prison by then. 

The international community has pushed the regime to reconcile with pro-democracy groups, especially Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy which was the winner of the 1990 election. But the regime simply ignores the pleas.

The military leaders understand well that the world is divided into at least two camps: a sanctions-oriented policy versus engagement-oriented .

The world is divided and the junta has benefited. If the world united behind a single policy that combined elements of both strategies, some progress might be possible, using a combination of economic sanctions, engagement and other creative approaches. 
 
New ideas and tactics are needed. Otherwise, the leading activists who were just sentenced to 65 years will languish in prison. Thet Win Aung, 34, died in Mandalay Prison in 2006 while serving his 59-year imprisonment. His elder brother, Pyone Cho, a leading member of the 88 Generation Students group, is now in Maubin Prison and is expecting a long sentence, together with his colleagues including Min Ko Naing.

It’s clear the regime is getting even tougher.

It’s past time for the international community to come up with new policies designed to counter such inhuman, brutal treatment of freedom-loving activists.

http://www.irrawadd y.org/opinion_ story.php? art_id=14615

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

“The government of Myanmar reveals its true intentions by sentencing these dissidents for nothing more than peacefully expressing their views during last year's demonstrations.”

— Benjamin Zawacki, Amnesty International' s Burma researcher
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