news on Burma (r)

[sayagyi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Don't Coddle Rangoon
International Herald Tribune
19 March 1998
 
According to a State Department report this year, Burma's opium and heroin
production doubled after the current dictators took power in 1988 coup,
and it has remained stable ever since. Burma is now the major global
supplier of opium and heroin, accounting for more than half of all world
supplies, and it produces enough "to satisfy the U.S. heroin market many
times over," the report states. "Overall, the Burmese drug control
situation remained bleak during 1997.
 
The report does not confine its remarks to officials in outlying areas.
"The government officially encouraged leading drug traffickers to invest
in infrastructure and other domestic projects," it says.
 
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was even more direct last summer.
"Burma is also the only member of ASEAN where the government protects and
profits from the drug trade," she said. "In fact, Burma's top traffickers
have become leading investors in its economy and leading lights in its new
political order."
 
Even setting moral issues aside, an important question is whether
"encouragement" with such a regime and attempts to burnish its image
constitute an effective anti-drug strategy. It is true that sanctions and
diplomatic isolation are blunt diplomatic tools that work only sometimes.
 
Burma represents an unusual case, in part because it run by a dictatorship
but- unlike Indonesia, say, or China- already has a legitimate democratic
leader. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of Burma's postcolonial
independence hero, heads a party that won in a landslide in a 1990
election. Burma's dictators have kept her under house arrest ever since,
refusing to honor the election result.
 
She has the support of ethnically non-Burmese tribes, which have battled
the central government for decades but say they accept her vision of
democratic federalism. The current regime, by contrast, has bought peace
with many of these insurgencies only by allowing them to grow and sell
heroin unhindered.
 
Burma's ruling regime, corrupt by birth and dependent on drug money for
survival, cannot satisfy U.S. hope for meaning efforts against heroin. The
best counter-narcotics strategy is to support those forces inside Burma
that truly believe in the rule of law. (Editorial)
-Washington Post-
 
Suu Kyi Not In Favor of Investments in Burma.
The Asian Age
21 March 1998
 
Washington, March 20: Myanmar Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in an
interview on Thursday said that invest in Burma is giving its military
leaders a "Psychological boost."
 
"We do not think investment at this time really helps the people of
Burma," she said in an interview with Business Week at her home in Yangon,
using the old name she prefers for the Southeast Asian country.
 
"It provides the military regime with a psychological boost," she added.
 
"If companies from Western democracies are prepared to invest under these
circumstances, then it gives the military regime reason to think that they
can continue violating human rights because even Western companies don't
mind."
 
Ms Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the Opposition National League for
Democracy and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, also said Myanmar's
economic situation was "very bad," with prices rising and investors
pulling out.
 
I know there had been a lot of speculation as to whether the situation is
bad enough for a general uprising," The NLD leader said. (AFP)
 
Burma Info (CCN)
New Delhi.