The Born-again Spy

Intelligence Feb'08
The Irrawaddy News
www.irrawaddy.org
February 1, 2008

Former Deputy Chief of Military Intelligence Maj-Gen Kyaw Win
Maj-Gen Kyaw Win, 63, a former deputy chief of military intelligence and once Burma’s No 2 spymaster, is now a consultant in the day-to-day operations of Burma’s security affairs and spying activities, say informed sources in Rangoon.

Sources say that the soft-spoken intellectual, a protégé of Snr-Gen Than Shwe, is believed to have been brought back into the fold for his vast experience and networking abilities, as well as to help transform the ailing intelligence services.

Kyaw Win joined military intelligence in the early 1990s and was actively involved in ceasefire negotiations with ethnic insurgents. He was also known to be one of the chief negotiators between opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and the government leaders. He was sacked along with former Prime Minister Khin Nyunt in 2004. However, he has enjoyed close and cordial relations with Than Shwe and escaped the purge that removed Khin Nyunt and his supporters.

However, at the same time, Kyaw Win has been denied a passport. Analysts believe junta leader Than Shwe and senior government officers suspect that Kyaw Win would seek political asylum if he left the country. Recently, however, the Ministry of Home Affairs allowed his wife to travel to Bangkok for medical treatment.

Kyaw Win has written several essays and articles under different pseudonyms and has published a book of his photographic work. Informed sources say he owns local businesses, including the manufacture of jeeps and operates an upmarket restaurant, “Signature Kandawgyi,” in Rangoon.

Fear Comes with the Job

By SHAH PAUNG The Irrawaddy News www.irrawaddy.org February 1, 2008

The grass is greener in Thailand for migrant workers, but it’s stained with blood

Thailand offers a greener pasture for many Burmese migrant workers, but for some it can be a very dangerous place indeed.

In the middle of a September night in 2007, Thein Aung and four other Burmese laborers were taken by three Thai men from the huts where they lived at a sweet corn plantation in the village of Ban Jaidee Koh near the Thai-Burmese border town of Mae Sot.

Burmese workers sorting the catch at a fish market in Phuket, Thailand [Photo: AFP]

The five Burmese were handcuffed and led to another village where the killing began. Four of the captives—Than Tun, 35, Kala Gyi, 27, Paw Oo, 28, and Naing Lin, 18—were shot in cold blood. The fifth man, Thein Aung, 58, feigned death and escaped.

Thein Aung made for a nearby village, where other Burmese migrants found him and took him to hospital in Mae Sot.

Thai police in Mae Sot have so far arrested four men suspected of involvement in the killings, including the migrants’ employer. Two of the suspects were Burmese migrants, who told police they had been instructed to burn the bodies of the murdered workers. The case is still being investigated.

Human rights lawyers and labor rights activists in Thailand say the murders were no isolated incident and that violence against Burmese migrant workers is on the rise. They accuse Thai authorities of doing too little to protect Burmese working in Thailand.

Complaints by Burmese workers of abuse by their Thai employers are increasing, according to Somchai Homlaor, a human rights lawyer with the Bangkok-based non-government organization Forum Asia. Thai police often accept bribes to close their inquiries, Somchai charges.

Burmese children stand behind bars with other detainees in a crowded detention cell in Mae Sot, Thailand [Photo: AFP]

Labor rights activists recall the high-profile case of an 18-year-old Burmese girl, Ma Su, who was brutally beaten and burned alive by her Lopburi employer, Col Suchart Akkavibul, a special group commander in the Royal Thai Air Force, in July 2002. He was convicted of the girl’s murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Somchai told The Irrawaddy that sometimes Thai employers kill their Burmese workers to avoid paying them. If discovered, they are often able with police assistance to buy their freedom by paying compensation to the victims’ families.

“Even if the victim’s family agrees to accept compensation the police should continue the investigation and bring the case to court,” Somchai said. “Killing is a very serious crime.”

Highly publicized cases of abuse and even murder don’t deter Burmese migrants from seeking work in Thailand, however. Ma Nge, a recent arrival in Bangkok, said: “I heard many reports of murder, and they scared me. But I have no choice.”

Ma Nge first came to Thailand in 2005, working long hours in a Bangkok food processing factory for 3,000 baht (US $90) a month. Now, on her second visit, she’s still looking for a job and is homesick, but hope and economic necessity keep her going.

“When you are starving you forget to be scared,” she said.

With the money she has saved in more than 10 years of working in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, Ma Ohn, from northern Shan State, has financed a two-storey house for her parents in Lashio. She doesn’t plan to return home any time soon, and has been followed to Thailand by a number of her relatives, who were smuggled in by a trafficking organization.

Nearly 20,000 registered Burmese migrant workers have jobs in the Mae Sot area of Thailand’s Tak border province, where cases of abuse are particularly prevalent.

Moe Swe, head of the Yaung Chi Oo Workers Association in Mae Sot, said many incidents remained unreported because migrant workers were reluctant to get involved with the police. Unregistered migrants fear deportation if they complain to the authorities about abuse by their employers, Moe Swe said.

A large Burmese migrant community also lives around the fishing ports of Thailand’s Samut Sakhorn Province, where nearly 800 cases of abuse, including murder and rape, were reported to the Seafarers Union of Burma from mid-2006 to November 2007.

Union member Ko Ko Aung said 30 percent of the reported cases involved murder.

“There’s no security and no protection for migrant workers,” he said.

“Neither the authorities nor employers can give them security.”

An estimated 300,000 to 400,000 Burmese migrants work in the fishing and seafood processing industries of Samut Sakhon Province, while less than 100,000 of them are legally registered.

Up to 2 million Burmese migrants are estimated to be working in Thailand, less than 500,000 of them legally. The numbers rise steadily—the lure of jobs is far stronger than all the uncertainty and threat of physical danger.

New Approach Needed for Aid to Burma

Editorial
The Irrawaddy News
www.irrawaddy.org
February 1, 2008

The implementation of any aid project in Burma faces untold obstacles and restrictions. Staff from foreign NGOs traveling to project sites in the countryside require special permits from the authorities; and that’s a bureaucratic song and dance. So much so that in 2005, the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria cancelled its program in Burma.

Burma urgently needs humanitarian assistance; the country’s HIV/AIDS sufferers are dying and require medical attention.

But the generals who rule the country are not ready to acknowledge the humanitarian crisis facing the country. Worse still, they prevent aid workers from delivering assistance to the needy.

Burma’s political prisoners—including Buddhist monks and nuns—are denied proper medication and food. The International Committee for the Red Cross ceased prison visits in 2005 due to persistent restrictions imposed on them by the regime.

Around the Thai-Burmese border area, more than 100,000 refugees continue to live in camps, facing food shortages, while hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons live deep in the jungle, hiding from military offensives.

In a move to help the poor and needy in Burma, Douglas Alexander, Britain’s secretary of state for international development, recently announced that his government will double its aid to the poorest people in Burma from £9 million (US $17.6 million) in 2007 to £18 million ($35.2 million) in 2008.

Alexander made the announcement after he visited refugee camps on the Thai-Burmese border and met with foreign experts and informed Burmese in Thailand.

Doubling aid to Burma, he said, “will allow us to help more children go to school, treat more people suffering from malaria, tuberculosis and HIV, and tackle humanitarian needs. We will also continue to support civil society groups addressing the development needs of Burma. All our work is monitored carefully to ensure it reaches those most in need.”

Delivering humanitarian assistance to Burma isn’t an easy job—in fact, it’s a challenge. The xenophobic military rulers who fought against British colonialists have always been highly suspicious of foreign aid.

In recent years, the Burmese authorities have tightened controls on aid workers, UN agencies and civil society groups. However, in spite of the draconian Burmese laws and restrictions, some aid and assistance gets through and is transformed into useful health, education and agriculture projects.

In Rangoon, a United Nations Development Programme’s confidential report in April pointed out that since the demise of military intelligence chief Gen Khin Nyunt in October 2004, the UN has lost its access to the decision-making levels of the military regime.

The report stated that following the move of the capital to Naypyidaw, an even stricter, more centralized, “top-down” decision-making authority had emerged.

Then, in 2005 and 2006, the French medical organization, Médecins Sans Frontières, and the ICRC had their field offices closed. A report by the then head of the UNDP mission in Burma, Charles Petrie, criticized the junta’s “uncompromising attitude.”

In the eyes of many opposition groups in Burma, Petrie then began to dig his own grave. They argued that for the past few years the UNDP office in Rangoon, and Petrie in particular, had tactically nurtured a positive rapport with the regime, knowing full well that any perceived support for opposition groups, especially the National League for Democracy, would undermine their position.

Petrie sent signals to international donors claiming that there were signs of progress in the implementation of humanitarian projects in Burma.

Finally, after witnessing the regime’s brutality in the September crackdowns, Petrie realized that he could no longer paint a rosy picture of the situation and took a stance against the junta.

He publicly spoke out, releasing a statement deploring the “deteriorating humanitarian situation” in military-ruled Burma and suggesting that UN agencies could help the country address “poverty and suffering and their underlying causes.” He soon found himself unwelcome and had to leave the country.

Simultaneously, some 13 international non-government organizations operating in Burma issued a bold statement, saying “the humanitarian space for organizations to operate is frequently at risk.”

Indeed, the question is really two-fold—even when aid reaches Burma, how can it be effectively delivered to those in need?

The implementation of any aid project in Burma faces untold obstacles and restrictions. Staff from foreign NGOs traveling to project sites in the countryside require special permits from the authorities; and that’s a bureaucratic song and dance. So much so that in 2005, the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria cancelled its program in Burma.

Faced with this kind of governmental pressure, some foreign NGOs and UN agencies in Rangoon have decided to cooperate with the junta.

Of course, it is vital to provide assistance to HIV/AIDS patients and the poor.

However, the root cause of problems in Burma should not be overlooked.

The country’s humanitarian crisis is man-made; incompetent military rulers are mainly responsible. Instead of increasing its budget on health and education, the junta buys more jet fighters and military hardware. The cost of building the new capital is estimated by the International Monetary Fund at between $122 million and $244 million.

When it comes to supporting the 400,000 officers and soldiers in his military, the regime’s leader, Snr-Gen Than Shwe frequently draws on a long shopping list. Over the past decade, the military government has purchased warships from China, tanks from the Ukraine, MiG-29 jet fighters and a nuclear reactor from Russia; all at an estimated cost of more than $3 billion. Some 40 percent of the national budget goes on defense.

What if that money were spent instead on health and other areas that might improve people’s lives? At present, just 3 percent of the national budget is allocated to health services.

Recently, the World Food Programme announced it would spend $51.7 million over the next three years in food aid to as many as 1.6 million vulnerable people in Burma.

It’s frustrating to see the country that was once dubbed “the rice bowl of Asia” relying on food aid from international agencies.

It is important to increase aid to people in need, but it must be done without wasting money on inflated foreign salaries, needless consultancy fees and payments into the regime’s pockets. We must be clear. The responsibility for the poverty and the health crisis in Burma lies squarely at the feet of the generals. Unless the country’s political problems and conflicts are resolved, Burma will be constantly seeking funds from the coffers of Britain and other foreign governments. The vicious cycle will go on.

While increasing assistance to Burma’s poor and needy, the international community must simultaneously maintain pressure on the regime to initiate political change.

Finally, aid and humanitarian assistance should be inclusive, also supporting Burmese groups working along the border areas with Thailand and India. Increasing numbers of schools and medical projects have been set up along the borders to serve refugees, migrant workers and their families who have fled Burma in search of greener pastures.

Refugees and migrant workers must not be left behind.

After visiting refugee camps, Douglas Alexander said: “As the leading donor, we want to understand the scale of the challenge and the capacity of aid agencies on the ground in the region that provide support to Burmese who have fled from the military regime.”

Alexander is also aware that political transition is needed. After the uprising in September, he called for dialogue between the regime and opposition groups.

He said: “We will not turn our backs on the Burmese people who have courageously stood up for their rights. The recent protests showed their deep frustration with the lack of political and economic opportunities in Burma. The UK government, alongside the international community, will continue to put pressure on the Burmese government to embrace freedom.”

We hope that Douglas Alexander’s recent visit to the border area represents a major step that will lead to reshaping the donor community’s policies and a more down to earth, effective approach to solving Burma’s humanitarian crisis.

The Need for a Growth Coalition in Burma

By MIN ZIN
The Irrawaddy News
www.irrawaddy.org
February 2, 2008

When Indonesian dictator Suharto died last Sunday, Burmese-language short-wave radio stations and other Burmese media based abroad gave the news extensive coverage and offered comparative analyses. They attempted to draw similarities and contrasts between Suharto and Burma’s late tyrant Ne Win, and between the different directions the two countries have taken in their development.

Many experts noted that although Suharto was a vicious dictator, he raised the Indonesian economy to “Asian Tiger” status in the 1980s. Ne Win and his successors, on the other hand, have turned Burma into a failed state. All lamented Burma’s slide into its current condition of economic deprivation.

In fact, Burma introduced economic reforms after the military staged a coup in 1988. According to reports, cumulative foreign investment in the period from 1988 through early 1997 reached $6.1 billion. Some optimists even said that investors seeking the next “tiger” economy should set their sights on Burma.

However, despite the country’s opening of its economy to foreign investors, overall economic progress remained slow. Economist David Dapice attributed this to the government’s reluctance to undertake comprehensive reforms, choosing instead to implement reforms in a “half-hearted way”.

Then the 1997 Asian financial crisis struck. At first, Rangoon was unconcerned, as the country was not directly impacted by the plummeting value of a number of key Asian currencies. But when investors from other Asian countries began to shift away from high-risk ventures and started reneging on their investment promises in order to limit their losses in the crisis, Burma also got hit hard. The military regime made matters worse by failing to come up with sound economic policies in response to the crisis. The unreal economic boom went bust.

In fact, the junta has neither the capacity nor the political will to carry out far-reaching economic reforms, because they are afraid that any such move would threaten the interests of military elites, forcing them to turn their economic playground into a level playing field. They worry that allowing technocratic participation, much less public involvement, in the policymaking process would weaken their grip on power and deprive them of the prerogatives they currently enjoy.

“Technocrats and experts such as economists and respected bureaucrats need to be viewed as important human resources and [their role should be] enhanced in Myanmar (Burma),” said Khin Maung Nyo, a well-known economist and writer in Burma. “They serve to help formulate economic policies, and the availability of policy choices makes it easy for government to implement reforms to build a modern, developed nation,” the economist added.

However, military involvement in political and economic affairs has from the outset been much deeper in Burma than in Indonesia and other countries in the region, where technocrats have long played a key role in formulating economic policies and guiding subsequent growth.

Broadly speaking, the junta has failed to form a growth coalition involving the military, opposition elites, ethnic ceasefire groups, technocrats, business groups, and the bureaucracy—all of whom need to work together to shape meaningful economic reforms.

In fact, several Burmese economists abroad and inside Burma have attempted to persuade the generals to secure such broad domestic support for economic reforms. In early 2007, a well-known economist inside Burma approached late Prime Minister Gen Soe Win to set up a consultative forum. Although Soe Win was said to have supported the idea, the junta’s supremo, Snr-Gen Than Shwe, shot it down.

Business sources note that other reform plans have stalled or been aborted because of Than Shwe’s preoccupation with ensuring his own survival.

“Than Shwe calls the shots on everything,” said Sein Htay, an economist in exile. “No one dares to initiate major reforms unless Than Shwe gives the final order.”

Since 2005, dozens of business people and economists have reportedly been consulted for their input into the drafting of a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Law, which will designate six main commercial cities as free-trade zones, with the aim of bringing more foreign investment into the country to revitalize its crippled economy. The much-anticipated and hyped SEZ Law, which was supposed to be enacted in 2007, has yet to come into effect, as Than Shwe continues to drag his heels.

“Than Shwe is afraid of the emergence of the Thilawa SEZ in Rangoon,” said a businessman in Rangoon. “He does not even want to bring limited liberalization to a limited zone. He is too concerned with security issues, especially after the September protests.”

Several economists suggest that the state urgently needs to readjust its role in economic policy formulation and implementation.

They say that if the state reduced its over-dominant role and allowed the private sector to play a greater part in the economy, the authoritarian regime would be able to undertake economic reforms.

“Centralization must be relaxed,” said Maw Than, a former vice chancellor of Institute of Economics in Rangoon. “A pro-business attitude should be nurtured and broader consultation should be sought after. Advice must be given serious consideration for the benefit of society.”

However, the strongman who leads the ruling junta with an iron fist cares little about what the experts have to say. The military mindset of the regime means that its decision-making process is strictly top-down. Under the leadership of Than Shwe, the Burmese economy will continue going to dogs.

Stallone challenges Myanmar junta, eyes 'Rambo 5'

Reuters/Nielsen
February 3, 2008

LONDON(Reuters) - Not satisfied with slugging it out with Myanmar's military government on celluloid in his latest "Rambo" film, Sylvester Stallone wants to go there and confront the junta face to face over human rights.

Stallone, who said he was gearing up to make a fifth and final installment in the blood-and-guts series, told Reuters that media reports of his film becoming a bootleg hit in the country formerly known as Burma, and an inspiration to dissidents, was a pinnacle in his movie career.

"These incredibly brave people have found, kind of a voice, in a very odd way, in American cinema ... They've actually used some of the film's quotes as rallying points," Stallone, 61, said in a telephone interview.

"That, to me, is the one of the proudest moments I've ever had in film."

Residents in Yangon told Reuters this week that police had given strict orders to DVD hawkers to not stock the movie -- named simply "Rambo." Locals said fans had "gone crazy" over lines in the hero's brusque dialogue such as: "Live for nothing. Die for something."

In the film, Vietnam War veteran John Rambo -- best known for mowing down enemies with an M60 machine gun in the 1980's -- comes out of retirement in Thailand to save a group of Christian missionaries from a sadistic Myanmar army major.

Stallone said that, rather than make a film about Iraq or Darfur, he focused on a lesser-known crisis before Myanmar suddenly grabbed the spotlight in September when the military junta crushed a pro-democracy campaign led by Buddhist monks.

Officials put the death toll from the crackdown at 15, but diplomats and aid groups say it is much higher and some media have reported hundreds -- or thousands -- were killed.

"People finally got the idea of how brutal these people are," said Stallone.

INVITE ME, PLEASE

Stallone's movie specifically focuses on the Karen tribe of eastern Myanmar. UK-based Christian Aid says the Karen and other groups have suffered half a million cases of forced relocation and thousands more have been imprisoned, tortured or killed.

Many ethnic rebel groups have fought Burmese governments for more autonomy since independence from Britain in 1948. Stallone said he was in communication with some, and several former freedom fighters acted in the movie.

And he hopes the film can provoke a confrontation.

"I'm only hoping that the Burmese military, because they take such incredible offence to this, would call it lies and scurrilous propaganda. Why don't you invite me over?" he said.

"Let me take a tour of your country without someone pointing a gun at my head and we'll show you where all the bodies are buried... Or let's go debate in Washington in front of a congressional hearing... But I doubt that's going to happen."

"Rambo" opened last month second in north American box office returns to the ancient Greek warrior spoof "Meet the Spartans," making $18.2 million in its first week.

Stallone said he was happy with what he described as "the bloodiest, R film (for) a generation" and hoped to make another.

"It will depend on the success of this one, but right now I think I'm gearing one up. It will be quite different," he said.

"We'll do something a little darker and a little more unexpected."