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ARCO in Burma
Deputy Minister appointed
Rohingya article from Christian Science Monitor  

                     Copyright 1994 Xinhua News
Agency

                           OCTOBER 6, 1994,
THURSDAY
LENGTH: 97 words
HEADLINE: u.s. firm to cooperate with myanmar in
oil business
DATELINE: yangon, october 6; ITEM NO: 1006055
BODY:    atlantic richfield company (arco) of the
united states wants to cooperate with myanmar in
developing oil and gas resources in the country's
offshore and inland areas, an official report said
today.  during a meeting with minister for energy
u khin maung thein here wednesday, arco manager
mark w. sawyer and his party briefed the minister
on the u.s. oil company and its plan.  the
minister urged the u.s. businessmen to conduct
feasibility study as soon as possible.  up to now,
u.s. companies have invested over 200 million u.s.
dollars in the country's oil and gas business.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE-MDC: October 6, 1994 

                   PAGE    3                   4TH
STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.

                     Copyright 1994 Agence France
Presse                                  Agence
France Presse

                      October 05, 1994  13:41
Eastern Time
SECTION: International news
LENGTH: 120 words
HEADLINE: Burma's junta reshuffles deputy minister
DATELINE: BANGKOK, Oct 5
BODY:    Burma's military junta Wednesday replaced
a deputy minister, state-run Radio Rangoon said in
a dispatch monitored here.  

   According to the radio, the State Law and Order
Restoration Council (SLORC) -- the official name
of the Burmese regime -- appointed Kyaw Tin as new
deputy minister for the border areas' development.

   Kyaw Tin was previously a deputy minister of
agriculture, the radio said. The report did not
give any reason for the switch.

   smo/kp

   AFP
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE-MDC: October 05, 1994 

                   PAGE    4                  31ST
STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.

           Copyright 1994 The Christian Science
Publishing Society                             The
Christian Science Monitor

                           October 5, 1994, Wednesday
SECTION: FEATURE; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 1405 words
HEADLINE: Burma's Muslims Are Reluctant to Go Home
BYLINE: Christopher Coughlin, Special to The
Christian Science Monitor
DATELINE: COX'S BAZAR, BANGLADESH
HIGHLIGHT: While world community squabbles,
refugees in Bangladesh seek safety before
returning
BODY:    AFTER languishing for nearly three years
in a string of squalid camps along the
Bangladeshi-Burmese border, tens of thousands of
refugees are under increasing international
pressure to begin an uncertain march homeward
across the border and into northwestern Burma.
Most will depart carrying nothing more than a few
weeks' rations and dimming hopes of reclaiming
their lands.

   But Nabir Hossain has already resigned himself
to a life of exile. Mr. Hossain is a former
schoolteacher from the Maungdaw area of Burma's
Arakan State. Two years ago, he fled his home in
terror, carrying his month-old daughter. Today
they live among the 16,000 inhabitants of
Dechuapalong, one of the largest refugee camps in
the Cox's Bazar district of southeastern
Bangladesh.

   ''We had a good life in Arakan,'' he says. ''We
were poor, but we had our own land and we could
always grow enough rice to feed ourselves. Then,
just after my daughter was born, Burmese soldiers
came and kidnapped my wife.... I know I may never
see her again, but we can't go back there - not
now.'' 

   Hossain and his kinsmen are members of a Muslim
minority known as Rohingya who began fleeing
mainly Buddhist Burma in late 1990, telling
stories of rape, pillage, and murder committed by
the nation's military. Many spoke of being driven
off lands that their families had occupied for
generations. Officials in Rangoon, Burma's
capital, rejected these claims, asserting that the
vast majority of the more than 250,000 that
crossed the border to Bangladesh were illegal
Bengali immigrants with no history of Burmese
citizenship.

   Now the Rohingya are the focus of a massive
repatriation effort coordinated by the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). So
far, the process has been anything but smooth. The
operation has been delayed by months of
contentious negotiations between Burma,
Bangladesh, and the UN.

                   PAGE    5                  The
Christian Science Monitor, October 5, 1994

   The controversy stemmed from the fact that most
of the refugees were unwilling to return home
unless their departure from Bangladesh and their
arrival and rehabilitation in Arakan were
supervised by UNHCR monitors. Initially, both
Bangladesh and Burma balked at this demand,
insisting that an existing bilateral agreement was
sufficient to guarantee the welfare of the
returnees. When the US and others accused Dhaka of
forcing the refugees back across the border,
Bangladesh, which receives more than $ 2 billion
in aid from Western donors each year, was
compelled to sign another agreement - this time
with the UNHCR.

   The April 1992 accord fulfilled some of the
refugees' demands, giving UNHCR officials
independent access to the camps to determine
whether the Rohingyas were returning voluntarily.
But in the more than two years since that
agreement was signed, only 60,000 refugees have
returned to Burma, leaving about 190,000 people in
18 settlements. On Nov. 5, 1993, after a year and
a half of international pressure, representatives
of Burma's ruling State Law and Order Restoration
Council signed a Memorandum of Understanding with
UNHCR acceding to the demand for inde- pendent
monitoring in Arakan over a period of two dry
seasons.

   Some relief workers and human-rights advocates
criticize the memorandum for its failure to
address the ethnic and religious strife that
provoked the exodus. In the wake of the Muslim
flight, many mosques were razed. Local government
officials have encouraged Buddhist Arakanese,
known as Rakhine, to settle on much of the land
that the Rohingyas abandoned, a move which may
fuel communal tensions as the Muslims begin
returning in larger numbers.    The terms of the
memorandum require that Rangoon provide two months
rations to each returnee, which may be adequate if
there is a crop ready to be harvested upon
arrival. If not, many families will be left
without their traditional means of survival.

   Rangoon's policy appears partly driven by a
desire to shore up support among the nation's more
militant Buddhists, analysts say. Traditionally,
this has been accomplished at the expense of
Burma's Muslim and Christian minorities. The
tactic dates back to World War II when Muslims and
Christians sided with Britain against
Japanese-backed nationalists. During the war,
nationalists portrayed the minorities as traitors
to the cause of Burmese independence, and the
Christian Karen people suffered retaliatory
massacres.

   Martin Smith, a British analyst of Burma,
points out that in the postwar period, when the
Karen began to revolt, Burma's first prime
minister, U Nu, often denounced Karen leaders for
instigating the insurrection. ''More recently,''
he says, ''when Karen rebels launched an offensive
into the Irrawaddy Delta in 1991, there were
reprisals against some Christian Karen civilians
by Buddhist Burmese villagers. The Muslims,
however, seem to be singled out on a larger
scale.''

                   PAGE    6                  The
Christian Science Monitor, October 5, 1994

   The tens of thousands of Muslim peasants
populating the camps today are only the latest
victims of a series of purges that began in the
late 1930s. A Burmese military operation in 1978
resulted in the expulsion of 300,000 Muslims,
analysts say.

   These campaigns have included the issuance of
Foreign Registration Cards to most Muslims in
Arakan, even in instances where the individuals in
question could show proof of Burmese citizenship.
Burmese officials have maintained that Islam has
never been indigenous to Burma and that the
Rohingyas, therefore, have no legal claim to
residency. (In fact, Islam in Arakan dates back to
the 8th century.) Moreover, since their alien
status precludes the freedom to travel, Muslim
shop owners and farmers are routinely forced to
take on Rakhine partners to safely transport goods
between villages.

   THE elevated status of Burma's Rakhine
Buddhists - who have also been terrorized by the
military - is especially apparent to relief
workers in Bangladesh. Zafrullah Chowdhury is
program coordinator for Gonoshasthaya Kendra, a
Bangladesh-based aid organization active in the
camps.  ''Today,'' he says, ''there is a very
prosperous Rakhine refugee population in Cox's
Bazar, whereas the Burmese Muslims, I would say,
are 99 percent illiterate here.''

   Apart from the cultural antagonism that has
long characterized relations between the Muslims
and their Buddhist rulers, the Burmese
government's campaign may have its origins in a
broader effort to expel civilians from the coastal
villages of Arakan, where Burma is believed to be
providing port and basing facilities for China -
its largest arms supplier. Some refugee families
have attempted to make the return of their old
lands a condition upon which they would cooperate
with the repatriation, but UNHCR personnel contend
that the reinstatement of land is a question of
national sovereignty over which they have no
authority.

   The atmosphere in the camps has grown anxious.
The day after the accord was announced, more than
500 refugees from six camps escaped into Cox's
Bazar district, to live with sympathetic
villagers. Stefano Severe, director of the UNHCR
office in Cox's Bazar, admits that ''reports of
forced labor in Arakan are still fairly
commonplace,'' but also maintains that rumor in
the camps is driving much of the panic.

   Advocates of a swift repatriation claim that
the presence of aid organizations in the camps has
only encouraged the refugees to linger.
Bangladesh's foreign minister, Mustafizur Rahman,
has downplayed the peril of a return to Burma, and
added that while ''Burma's military government
cannot be called democratic,'' most of the
refugees are staying on for economic reasons.
''Today they are getting free food and health
care,'' he said, ''They are quite comfortable, and
they don't have to work.''

   In a statement delivered to the UN last
December, Burma's permanent representative to the
body declared, ''I categorically reject [US]
allegations that the Tatmadaw [People's Army] is

                   PAGE    7                  The
Christian Science Monitor, October 5, 1994
perpetuating human rights violations against the
Myanmar [Burmese] people.'' Despite such
pronouncements, camp inhabitants continue to
nervously await news of the fate of the returnees.

   ''Every day in the camps, somebody comes to me
and asks, 'Can you tell me about the situation in
my village - is it safe to go back?' '' says
Shabir, a Bangladeshi UNHCR field assistant at the
Rangikhali transit camp. ''What can I tell them?
Nobody here really knows.''
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: A TEMPORARY HOME: An orphaned
brother and sister from Burma at the Nayapara II
refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Nayapara
II is a transit camp, the last stop before
refugees are sent back to Arakan State.,