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Wired News: Burma punishes Thai tr



Subject: Wired News:  Burma punishes Thai traders (Reuter)

    BANGKOK, July 20 (Reuter) - Scores of small traders in northeastern Burma have been
punished for ignoring a call to boycott products from neighbouring Thailand, their Thai
counterparts said on Thursday.
     Thai traders in the northern Thai town of Mae Sai, opposite northeastern Burma's Shan
state, said as many as 100 traders from Burma have been punished after returning from
Thailand with Thai products.
     "On one day last week 60 people were arrested but they were given only light punishment.
They were forced to work for the soldiers in their camp for one day," one Thai trader told
Reuters by telephone.
     Several days later about 40 traders were arrested as they crossed back into Burma from
Thailand. They were given similar punishment and threatened with fines of 2,000 baht ($80) if
they repeated the offence, the trader said.
     Burma closed the main border crossing between Mae Sai and the northeastern Burmese
town of Tachilek after Shan guerrillas raided the town in March. Burma's military governnment
accused Thailand of assisting the rebels, which Thailand denied.
     The Burmese traders arrested last week slipped across a small border river to make their
purchases in Thailand.
     Meanwhile, a Thai diplomat based in Rangoon told traders in another Thai border town
affected by the Burmese boycott call that he believed the campaign was initiated at the local
level and was not affecting trade between the two nations.
     Commercial attache Sriwat Suwan told a trade seminar in the Thai border town of Mae Sot
on Wednesday that he believed the boycott campaign was not Burmese government policy.
     "Only a few leaflets (calling for a boycott) were found and I believe they have nothing to do
with the central government," Sriwat told the meeting.
     Last month posters began appearing in southeastern Burmese towns urging people not to
buy Thai products, but to purchase goods from other countries such as China, Singapore
and Malaysia instead.
  REUTER