For those of you reading this article you take for granted that I can write this article and you can receive it.  However, this isn’t the case in Burma, where I could be imprisoned for up to 15 years for reporting material that the state doesn’t want you to read, and you could get the same for accessing banned material over the internet.  If, like many of the people of Burma you want to read the truth you find a way around the draconian censorship laws that pervade every aspect of life.  The report by the Open Net Initiative last year highlighted the level of blocking that the SPDC carries out via the 2 Internet Service Providers (ISP) – Myanmar Post & Telecoms and Bagan Cybertech – both of which are either fully or partly run by the SPDC.  The 25 page ONI report concludes that Burma operates one of the most restrictive internet censorship regimes in the world (Ref 1).  Open Net should know, as they have prepared similar reports on China, Iran, Bahrain, Singapore, Tunisia and the UAE.

The Asia Europe Project Webcasts

Harn Yawnghwe, the Director of the Euro-Burma Office of the Development of Democracy in Burma talking with David Fouquet about the current situation in Burma.

Harn Yawnghwe has been living outside his native Burma for decades and is the Director of the Euro-Burma Office of the Development of Democracy in Burma organisation he also founded. He and several dozen other stakeholders in the international Burma/Myanmar aid and reform movement participated in a major conference in late March in Brussels. He spoke with David Fouquet of the Asia-Europe Project on the situation in that troubled Southeast Asian country and the international reaction.

a poem by Feraya

What have they ever done to deserve such suffering?
Haven’t they been through enough in one lifetime?
Why such anger and hatred toward them?
Is it your fear of them that drives you to be so cruel?
By robbing, persecuting, torturing, raping and killing?

by Saw Weldone & Naw Ger Htee Paw

Insight into Burmese Oppression of the Karen

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Attached is a report of Karen Levies/Force 136 activities on the Mawchi Road, 1945, which were important to the early capture of Toungoo and of Rangoon.  The taking of Toungoo removed a threat to the advance on Rangoon, whose port facilities were required for supply of 12th and 14th Armies and in preparation of the planned invasion of Malaya. Rapid conclusion of the campaign was essential to avoid the advance becoming bogged down in monsoon mud.  Appendices omitted from the Report.  E. H. Peacock, its author, had before the war served as a Forestry Officer in Burma.  His wife was later to write a book about him.

The AIDS virus thrives on ignorance and powerlessness. People who don't know how to protect themselves... or don't have the means to do so... often fall victim to HIV. What's true for individuals is also true for nations. And one nation in Southeast Asia provides a lesson in how silence and oppression can spread AIDS. That nation is Myanmar -- formerly called Burma.

The illicit drugs industry worldwide is valued at US$322billion, greater than the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of over 88% of the world’s economies. Opiates account for around US$65bn (20%) of that market, and the ATS markets together (methamphetamine, amphetamine and ecstasy) amount to US$44 bn (13%). About 26million people use Amphetamines, and 16million opiates. (Ref 1). The title of this article comes from the opening statements of the US Department of State’s report on worldwide narcotics related to Burma (Ref 2). Although Burma only produces 8% of the amount produced by Afghanistan, the volumes of opiates and ATS, and the money involved are staggering. This article draws on the report findings covering the situation in Burma.

Fresh evidence has emerged that Burma's military government, which seized power in 1962 and has since waged a brutal war against rebel ethnic groups, has been carrying out acts of genocide against its own people.  There have been allegations that in the past decade, soldiers have burnt to the ground as many as 3,000 villages and raped, looted or killed many of their inhabitants.  Now, a Thai intelligence officer has uncovered what he believes is proof that these were systematic atrocities ordered by the state.

Since 1962, Burma, with an estimated population of more than 52 million, has been ruled by a succession of highly authoritarian military regimes dominated by the majority Burman ethnic group. The current controlling military regime, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), led by Senior General Than Shwe, is the country's de facto government, with subordinate Peace and Development Councils ruling by decree at the division, state, city, township, ward, and village levels. In 1990 pro-democracy parties won more than 80 percent of the seats in a generally free and fair parliamentary election, but the junta refused to recognize the results. Twice during the year, the SPDC convened the National Convention (NC) as part of its purported "Seven-Step Road Map to Democracy." The NC, designed to produce a new constitution, excluded the largest opposition parties and did not allow free debate. The military government totally controlled the country's armed forces, excluding a few active insurgent groups.

(US Department of State)

Burma is the world’s second largest producer of illicit opium, accounting for more than 90 percent of Southeast Asian heroin. Even so, Burma has just a small share of worldwide heroin, given Afghanistan’s exceptionally large opium/heroin production. Burma is also a primary source of amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) in Asia. Annual production of opium has declined over the past ten years and is now at less than 20 percent of mid-1990 peak levels. In 2005, Burma produced an estimated 380 metric tons of opium, less than eight percent of the opium produced in Afghanistan. Burma’s opium poppy is grown predominantly in the "Golden Triangle" border region of Shan State in areas near the borders of China, Laos, and Thailand that are controlled by former insurgent groups (less than one percent of Burma’s poppy crop is grown outside of Shan State).

by Feraya

For centuries humans have used religion as an excuse to wage wars between peoples and nations.  Why?
It is because we all have beliefs and we all think we are right.  We also need to prove that others are wrong.

The ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) has been working in Kengtung for many years since 1999, but since January 2006, their movements are under restriction, causing some staffs to quit, according to Pegasus from the border.

(Young Tai)

All human beings started from the beginning of nature, then passed Stone Age, one era to another era, one generation to another generation, one place to another place, one occasion, event, happening to another, one experience to other experiences, one thought, thinking, idea, cognition, doctrine to another, one civilization, one tradition to another, one habit, character, behaviour to another, assimilation, association, division, split and studies, learning, inventing, etc., became more and more, nearer, closer to each other and at last cannot be rid of each other. So, one group and another, one race, nationality, one ideology, religion, faith, believing, implementation and another became rivals, and so they beat, killed, hunted, cleaned, fled, robbed each other. And some became winners, losers, masters, slaves, who insulted or respected each other.

(February 2006)

Confusion has spread among United Nations and international humanitarian aid groups in Burma over new operational guidelines released by the Ministry of National Planning and Economic Development.

(February 2006)
Report of the Special Rapporteur, Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro

Throughout the six-year period of his mandate, the Special Rapporteur received substantiated reports of grave human rights violations on an ongoing basis. Little evidence was available of the existence of a serious commitment by the Government to addressing the culture of impunity for State actors, with the vast majority of his communications to the authorities not receiving a response.

As Myo Myint tells it, his torturers opened the door to a large room heaving with naked prisoners, some moaning, others unconscious, all lying soaked in their own blood and faeces, and screamed at him: "If you don't tell us everything, you will be joining them."

The forty years of atrocious human rights violations perpetrated by the SPDC on the innocent citizens has a horrendous effect on the lives of thousands of people in the Shan State; it has completely disintegrated Shan Society and it will be a long time before it can become normal again. Many Shan have seen their parents, husbands, relatives or friends being tortured in the most inhumane way and in most cases killed. Many are internally displaced in the jungle, scavenging for food or have to flee to neighbouring countries where they become illegal immigrants with no identity. Many children are also being orphaned and have to be cared for in orphanages.

Thaung Htun hasn't seen his homeland in 17 years. But the 49-year-old former doctor hasn't abandoned hope that one day democracy will come to Burma and it will be safe for him to return. In 1988, he participated in a student-led uprising against Burma's military regime and then fled to Thailand when the generals crushed the movement. Two years later, the generals purged the National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, after it won a landslide victory in the 1990 elections, and Thaung Htun joined other fleeing democrats in a government-in-exile. Today, he remains cloistered among stacks of dusty papers in a one-room office across from the United Nations in New York City, wooing delegates to his cause.

Many Burmese political operatives like to make fun of Burmese generals as uneducated idiots and some intellectuals take pleasure in characterizing them as unsophisticated rednecks of Burma. Older generations of Burmese who took the brunt of oppression in the early days of Ne Win’s rule loved to claim that adding 3 Burmese military officials did not add up to 4^th grade education and find consolation on all the failures of Ne Win experimentation with Burmese way to Socialism by blaming their lack of education. Ne Win himself was a dropout from the University and was working as a postal clerk before he joined the 30 comrades, the first batch of Burmese trained by Imperial Japanese army with Maj Gen Aung San as its leader during WWII from which the Burma army was formed.

(article by Sai Wansai)

Generally speaking, the outcomes of implementing the Right to Self-determination fall roughly into two categories. It could be understood in a strong or a weak sense. While the strong sense insists that a nation be given statehood, the weak sense only requires that a nation be given some form of self-government. Weak national self-determination is thus compatible with a multinational state in which nations are given some political autonomy. It is clear that the weak notion of self-determination can encompass differing degrees of self-determination, including confederations, federations, convocational democracies, and unitary states with sub-national autonomy – that is, regional parliaments, local governments and so on.

Shan Democratic Union (SDU), on behalf of the people of Shan State, would like to bring the attention to the recent surrender of Shan State Army South (SSA-S) – part of the Brigade 241– on January 2, 2006 to the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) or the Burmese military regime.

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The focus on Burma today centres on the National Convention which was reconvened on 5 December 2005. People want to know if this process can be used to bring about democratic change. Given the frustration over the absence of any other political alternatives, some are advocating that we embrace the National Convention and work within the limited confines it seems to afford. Is this a possible avenue that we should explore? Before we make any decisions, it may be helpful to examine some of the factors surrounding the issue.

We, on behalf of civil society of ASEAN, express our appreciation of the response of the SPDC and Myanmar government with respect to the issues concerning Myanmar discussed during the 11th ASEAN meeting held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia,from 12 –13 December 2005. The initiative of ASEAN to send a representative (Mr. Sayed Hamid Albar) to assess the political developments in Myanmar and the acceptance by SPDC and the government of such initiative is a crucial and positive step towards establishing democracy in the country.

US President George W Bush expressed serious concern about the deteriorating political situation in Burma after a one–hour discussion on Monday with a female Shan activist, fighting for the rights of minorities in the military–ruled state. Charm Tong, 23, who co–authored the report “License to Rape”, said she met Bush and his four–member advisory team at the White House, briefing them on conditions inside Burma.

The first–ever discussion on Burma came almost three months after the release of a report commissioned by Havel and Tutu calling for the UN Security Council to act. The 125–page report, prepared by global law firm DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary, compared the situation in Burma to other countries in which the Security Council has previously intervened in internal conflicts because of the transnational issues implicated.(...)

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