Breaking News (Part 1)

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Breaking News from The Rangoon Post
 These news are searched and posted by The Rangoon Post working group. Indeed,
we feel very sorry for all Burmese who are suffered by the regime at home and
abroad. We pray for all that freedom must be accomplished soon.   
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 Copyright 1998 Mainichi Daily News   
                              Mainichi Daily News 
 
                             April  20, 1998, Monday 
 
SECTION: Page 12; DOMESTIC 
 
LENGTH: 395 words 
 
HEADLINE: Gov't skeptical of  Burma's  taxation policies 
 
 BODY: 
   Procedure prevents some of its citizens from returning home 
 
   By Noriko Yamamoto 
 
   Mainichi Shimbun 
 
   Burmese authorities have been taxing their citizens living in Japan and 
preventing some of them from returning home if they haven't paid up, sources 
said. 
    Government officials have summoned Burmese envoys and urged that the 
situation be rectified, as it is a "dubious stance under international law for
one country to exercise its right to collect taxes" in another country. 
    The plight of many Burmese has also attracted the attention of human-
rights 
activists. 
   "It's not like we are refusing to issue the immigration documents (needed
to 
re-enter  Burma)  to people who have not paid their taxes," a Burmese official
said. "If people who need the documents have paid their taxes, it's easier for
us to believe they are our compatriots and check their identities." 
    Sources said that Burmese working in Japan are required to transfer 10 
percent of their income as tax payments to a Burmese Embassy account. However,
few have the money to pay the taxes after they have covered their debts or 
living expenses. 
   The Burmese Embassy has reportedly billed many of those who wish to return
to
 Burma  for amounts ranging from several hundred thousand yen to 1 million
yen. 
The embassy apparently refuses to provide those who fail to pay their taxes
with
the immigration documents they need to return home, leaving them stranded in 
Japan. 
   Immigration Bureau officials say about 9,700 Burmese are in Japan, 3,896 of
whom are registered foreign residents. The remainder are people who entered
the 
country on short-term visas and stay here illegally. 
    Late last month, a 31-year-old Burmese man died of AIDS in a Tokyo
hospital. 
The man, whose name has not been disclosed, said he wanted to return to  Burma
to see his son again before he died. However, as he could not pay a tax bill
of 
approximately 600,000 yen to the Burmese Embassy, it would not issue him with 
the necessary immigration documents. 
    A woman who attended the man's funeral said the man had complained that he
could not go home because he had not paid his taxes to the embassy. She added 
that the restaurant where the man had worked fired him after he became ill. 
Hospitalized for the last four months of his life, he was apparently in too
much
pain to even talk.             
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               The Economist Intelligence Unit Ltd.  
                             All Rights Reserved   
                               EIU Business Asia 
 
                                 April  20, 1998 
 
 
COUNTRY: Myanmar ( Burma)  
 
HEADLINE: Myanmar: Ugly, uglier, ugliest  
 
For ASEAN, the main achievement of the first nine months of Myanmar's  
membership was to hold a successful EU-ASEAN dialogue in London without  
the presence of Myanmar representatives. Being forgotten, the Myanmar  
military generals are able to get on with the job of weeding out their  
more venal colleagues, preparing for an unfree and unfair election,  
holding together a collapsing economy, suppressing a rural sector on the  
verge of a famine induced by crop failure and bureaucratic mismanagement. 

Myanmar's difficulties will no doubt continue to attract world attention,  
but ASEAN has its own plights, and will prefer to put Myanmar on the back  
burner. 
  
For better 
  
* Shake-up in the junta. Junta leaders have realised that some military  
members were more equal than others in access to the spoils of office.  
This is resulting in far-reaching changes, not only in organisation and  
identity of office-holders but also in ethical practices in government.  
The new State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) is the former State Law  
and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) in sheep's clothing. The big  
parasites, such as ousted tourism, trade and agriculture ministers, as  
well as a range of lesser scavengers, have already been ejected. A total  
of 14 ministers (members of SLORC) were ousted in the changeover, followed  
by a revamping of the next level down, the Cabinet of Ministers. Although  
these changes have not yet resulted in major policy shifts, they are  
significant steps to ease out the old guard and promote technocratic and  
better educated leaders. 
  
* Democratisation, Myanmar style. The UN and foreign human rights  
advocates demand implementation of the 1990 election results, which gave a 

landslide victory to Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy. The  
SPDC is hinting that a follow-on event is already overdue, however it will  
be on the SPDC's terms. The National Convention Convening Committee is  
reported to be speeding up its lethargic constitution writing. Myanmar's  
rulers are looking to Cambodia and Indonesia as models, and hoping that a  
less than free and fair electoral process might be acceptable to  
international critics as seems to be the case with these neighbours. While  
Myanmar is likely to be treated less benignly than such countries, any  
moves towards democracy will bring about an easing of tension and an  
eventual opening-up of the country to more genuine reforms. 
  
* Energy-led Eastern Seaboard for Myanmar. While investment and tourism  
slump, the Yadana gas pipeline project -- which forms the core of  
Myanmar's potential future replica of Thailand's Eastern Seaboard  
development zone -- has progressed. Environmental and human rights  
protesters have held up but not prevented completion of the final stages  
on the Thai side of the border. Gas will flow later this year, assuring  
success to Total of France and Unocal of the US in what has been a highly  
politically risky project. 
  
However, the gas pipeline is only the first stage of what may become a  
major development region, linking up Thailand's nascent western seaboard 

area with its mirror image across the Myanmar border. Other plans are for  
road and rail links, a deep-sea port, an industrial zone and other  
facilities. Though likely to be delayed by the South-east Asian economic  
crisis, the concept has high enough potential to succeed in the long term. 
  
* Friends in need. Despite continuing pressures for change mainly from the  
Western international community, Myanmar continues to enjoy steady support  
from Singapore and Malaysia, including some modest investment flows. There  
is also significant, but largely clandestine, Chinese support. Were it not  
for the difficulties at home suffered by ASEAN countries, support for  
Myanmar might have been more vocal. Under current circumstances, however,  
ASEAN members are likely to continue to downgrade Myanmar in international  
diplomacy, while continuing whatever economic support they can still  
afford. 
  
For worse 
  
* Bitter harvest. Adverse weather conditions, including heavy flooding in  
rice-growing areas, and the consequences of ill-conceived government  
control of domestic and international trade, has resulted in severe rice  
shortages locally and the virtual elimination of exports, desperately  
needed to earn foreign exchange. Fearing a repetition of the 1988 crisis, 

which led to civil insurrection and the collapse of the then leader Ne  
Win's regime, reforms of rice-trading and pricing controls have been  
instituted, and export trade has been re-opened to the private sector.  
However, these reforms will be too late to alleviate the 1998 situation,  
although emergency food aid from the UN's Food and Agriculture  
Organisation and elsewhere should ensure basic supplies. However, much of  
this aid risks falling into the hands of the military, police and civil  
servants at subsidised prices, instead of going to the general public as  
intended. 
  
* Sinking the kyat. The kyat, nominally Asia's strongest currency, pegged  
at Kt6:US$1, will continue to gyrate alongside the vagaries of official  
monetary policy, tending closer towards Kt400:US$1 on the free (black)  
market. Foreign exchange will eventually be bolstered by gas export  
earnings. For the time-being, foreign reserves are likely to remain below  
US$200m, depending on external payment obligations, which if met in a  
timely fashion, would wipe out foreign resources altogether. In these  
circumstances, investing or trading in the Myanmar market carries a high  
risk premium. With tensions and intermittent shutdowns on the Thai border,  
even smuggling is becoming more difficult. 
  
* Investment: poor odds even for gamblers. With a US embargo in force, 

restrictions imposed by the EU and Canada, and ASEAN in economic turmoil,  
Myanmar has few sources to which it can readily turn, whether for  
implementation of approved projects or for new investment. Over-optimism  
in the hotel and tourism sector, and in other property-related sectors  
too, has provided Myanmar with excess capacity for several years to come.  
The weak domestic market and restricted export outlets, as well as  
shortages of electricity and other handicaps, limit industrial  
manufacturing investment. One source of opportunity may be privatisation  
of state enterprises, but only after prices are market driven and  
protectionist attitudes change. Furthermore the general investment climate  
is continuing to deteriorate. 
  
  
  
Key economic indicators, Myanmar 
  
  
                                  1995    1996    1997  
Real GDP growth,%a                 6.9     5.8     5.0  
Total consumption, %               6.4     2.6     3.5  
Gross fixed investments, %        28.2    20.5     9.0  
Consumer price inflation, %(b)    25.2    16.3    29.4 

Interest rate, %(a),(b)           16.5    16.5    16.5  
GDP at current prices, Kt bna    603.6   715.4   972.2  
GDP, nominal, US$  bnc            106.5   120.9   156.1  
GDP, nominal, US$  bnd              5.0     4.6     4.2  
GDP per head, US$ (d)               112     101      90  
Trade balance, US$  bn             -1.0    -1.1    -1.4  
Current account balance,          -513    -515    -814  
US$  ma  
Official exchange rate, Kt:US$     5.67    5.92    6.24  
Market exchange rate, Kt:US$        120     155     230 
  
Note: 1995-96 actual, 1997 estimated. (a)Fiscal years beginning April 1st.  
(b)Annual average. (c)At the official exchange rate (most recent:   
Kt6.25:US$1 in Feb 1998). (d)At or using the market exchange rate (most  
recent: approx Kt300:US$1 in Feb 1998). The US Embassy estimates that GDP  
per head is US$200-300 if the extra-legal economy and the contribution of  
uncompensated labour is included. 
  
Source: EIU Country Reports and Country Risk Service
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The New York Times Company   
                               The New York Times 
 
                  April  19, 1998, Sunday, Late Edition - Final 
 
SECTION: Section 1; Page 8; Column 3; Foreign Desk 
 

HEADLINE: Where Opium Reigned, Burmese Claim Inroads 
 
BYLINE:  By CHRISTOPHER S. WREN 
 
DATELINE: LASHIO, Myanmar 
 In the remote valleys and rugged mountains here in northeastern Myanmar, 
opium offers more than a narcotic high. For years, it has provided a
livelihood 
for hill tribes who inhabit the northern expanse of the Golden Triangle, the 
lush, lawless area of Southeast Asia that is the source of much of the world's
heroin. 
 

   Opium finances daily needs, from rice and cooking oil to assault rifles.
The 
rifles are used to wage rebellion and to defend the mule caravans transporting
the sticky, pungent opium to be refined into heroin for American and European 
drug habits. 
 
    Myanmar, formerly  Burma,  produced an estimated 2,600 tons of opium last 
year, enough to make more than 200 tons of heroin -- at least 60 percent of
the 
world total. But the drug trade is changing along Myanmar's porous frontiers 
with Thailand, China and Laos, and one of the most startling shifts may be in 
the attitude of the military junta that seized power in this country in 1988. 
 
   For years the junta tolerated opium trafficking as the price of its 
cease-fires with insurgent ethnic groups. Now it says that it wants to
eradicate
all opium within five years. To show what it has accomplished, it recently 
allowed three American reporters into an opium-growing region usually closed
to 
visitors. 
 
   Some diplomats in Yangon, the capital, view the eradication claim
skeptically
because land devoted to opium cultivation has doubled under the junta's rule
and
the country's mismanaged economy has grown to rely on laundered drug profits. 
 

   The Government says it has eradicated 41,000 acres of poppies, one-tenth of
the land under opium cultivation in Myanmar. "The crop eradication areas are 
only small parts of the areas they do control," a Western diplomat said. 'They
are window dressing." 
 
   Col. Gyaw Thien, the chief of Myanmar's counternarcotics program,
disagreed, 
declaring that the Government was being asked to solve a century-old problem
in 
two weeks without any help. "It's quite unfair," he said. "We are making much 
more effective interdictions and seizures than we have in the past." 
 
   Last year, police and army units reported seizing 1.5 tons of heroin, 
compared with about half a ton in 1996, though their record seizures amount to
less than 1 percent of Myanmar's output. "This drug problem is not only the 
problem of the United States," Colonel Gyaw Thien said. "It's our problem too.
We know that we cannot fight this alone." 
 
   The junta's new policy puts Washington in a quandary because the United 
States cut off counternarcotics aid to  Burma  after the coup in 1988.
Restoring
such aid could undercut other American economic sanctions and lend legitimacy
to
a dictatorship that stands accused of widespread abuse of human rights. 
 

   "We think we can get rid of 60 percent of the heroin going into the U.S. in
12 months' time if the U.S. cooperates with us," said Lieut. Col. Hla Min, the
deputy director of the Office of Strategic Studies, a planning branch of 
military intelligence. 
 
   A Western diplomat who watched the shift concluded: "What this Government 
wants to do is perpetuate itself in power. They know it's got a bad image.
They 
looked at drugs and found this is the one asset they have. They'd like to use 
whatever they've done to improve their image and try to get sanctions lifted."
 
   The State Department acknowledges in its latest drug control report that it
has no evidence that Myanmar's Government is trafficking in drugs on an 
institutional level. 
 
   "However," the report said, "there are persistent and reliable reports that
officials, particularly army personnel posted in outlying areas, are involved
in
the drug business." 
 
   The Government denies this, citing the arrest of 11 army officers last
April 
for colluding with a heroin refining operation in northern Shan state. The 
senior officer, a lieutenant colonel, was sent to prison for 25 years. It also
deported Li Yunchun, a fugitive trafficker indicted in New York, to Thailand, 

which handed him over to the United States. 
 
   But new traffickers, notably the Wa, a fierce hill people whose ancestors 
hunted heads, have wrested control of the lucrative heroin business from 
remnants of renegade Chinese Nationalist soldiers and rebel militias. 
 
   Nearly a million Wa straddle the border between China and Myanmar. Their 
insurgent army has diversified from heroin into methamphetamines, powerful 
synthetic stimulants that have saturated Thailand and since turned up in
Japan, 
Taiwan and Malaysia, Burmese and Western officials say. A Burmese 
counter-narcotics official said the Wa now make more money from
methamphetamines
than from heroin and refine both drugs themselves using chemicals smuggled in 
primarily from China. 
 
   Because of aggressive action by the Thai police, the old trafficking routes
through the Golden Triangle are shifting from Thailand into China, or less
often
Laos and even northeastern India. Some heroin still moves by truck down from
the
Shan highlands market town of Lashio, through lowland Mandalay to the port of 
Yangon, as Rangoon is now called. 
 
   Eradicating opium could help the military Government's strategy of subduing
ethnic insurgents who traffic in opium to finance their wars of independence. 

Government troops cannot enter most Wa-controlled territory without a battle. 
 
   With an army estimated at 15,000 to 20,000 men, the Wa have grown so
strong, 
acquiring surface-to-air missiles and modern communications equipment, that 
Government troops complain about feeling outgunned. Last summer, a 30-man 
Government patrol was wiped out when it ran into a Wa mule caravan smuggling 
methamphetamine to Thailand. 
 
   "The Burmese would like nothing better than to do away with the drug
trade," 
another diplomat in Yangon said, "because it would take guns out of the hands
of
these armies." 
 
   The Government's creation of a handful of opium-free zones has upset local 
farmers. "What we're talking about is really changing their life style," said 
Jorgen Kristensen, an official with the United Nations Drug Control Program, 
which has introduced alternative development projects. "Poppy cultivation is 
ingrained in their culture." 
 
   At Nam Tit, a Wa town about a half-hour's walk from the Chinese border, Zi
Zi
Fa, a farmer in patched shirt and shorts, said his grandfather and father grew
opium poppies. He earned about $650 for his own annual crop of 12 1/2 pounds
of 
opium, which he did not need to take to market. "When I was growing poppies," 

he said, "the buyer came to me." 
 
   Since the Government told him to grow soybeans instead, Mr. Zi said, he
earns
one-tenth of what opium paid, not enough to feed 10 family members. 
 
   "The family is barely surviving," he said, echoing a complaint expressed by
opium farmers in Afghanistan and coca farmers in Colombia and Peru. 
 
   "If we did not grow poppies, our income would not last more than one or two
months," he said. 'In the high mountains, rice doesn't grow, and it's too
cold. 
The corn is fit only for the pigs." 
 
   In the nearby border town of Chin Shwe Haw, Kyan Ti Jy, a farmer from the 
ethnic Chinese Kokang minority, said, "We earned more money growing poppies,
but
our leader said to stop growing opium." Mr. Kyan obediently planted lichee
trees
and sugar cane. Now, he complained, "nobody's buying sugar because there's no 
mill." Construction on a sugar refinery is not expected before September. 
 
   With their incomes slashed by more than half, "the farmers are not very 
happy," said a local official, Kyan Tin Wan. 
 

   "But the Government is giving out rubber plants and lichee trees almost
free 
of charge, and free fertilizer," he said. 
 
   It will take at least three years for the lichee trees to bear fruit. In
the 
meantime, Kyan Tin Wan said, "large families who cannot stand it are going out
of designated opium-free areas to where the Government cannot touch them." 
 
   The official conceded that even farmers who gave up opium as a crop "still 
might be growing a little bit here and there for medicinal purposes." 
 
   At his base in Lauk Kai, the Kokang political leader, Peng Jiasheng, said
it 
was hard for his people to stop growing opium. 
 
   "We admit there is poppy growing in this area to a certain extent, but not 
the way we've been portrayed," he said. "It's not that the leaders are buying 
opium and taking it down to the Golden Triangle. We're not involved in that." 
 
   Before the Kokang concluded a cease-fire with the Burmese Government in
1989,
Mr. Peng trafficked in opium himself. 
 
   "When we were insurgents, we needed to expand our army and we needed
weapons 
and food," he said. "For that we needed to grow more poppies." 

   His troops did not cultivate opium, Mr. Peng said, but levied a 40 percent 
tax on what local farmers produced. "Seventy percent of the people in this
area 
were supporting us financially for the insurgency," he explained. "But now 
there's no more fighting and our troops are drastically reduced." At the
height 
of the rebellion, he said, the Kokang and Wa could field 60,000 soldiers
between
them. Now, he insisted, his troops have dwindled to 500. 
 
   "Today it's peaceful, so we don't need to grow poppies," the Kokang leader 
said, waving a hand adorned with a heavy gold bracelet and gold rings. "If my 
people can have their stomachs full and something appropriate to wear, they
are 
happy enough. They don't need anything more." 
 
   Taking the profit out of opium may be the toughest challenge because when
the
leader of a drug operation quits, contenders jockey to replace him. For years,
Khun Sa and his narco-army dominated the heroin trade under the guise of 
fighting for Shan self-determination. After some of his troops mutinied, Khun
Sa
negotiated his surrender in January 1996 and lives comfortably, but in poor 
health, under Government observation in Yangon. 
 
   "We were fighting him for years," Colonel Hla Min of the Office of
Strategic 
Studies said, justifying the Government's accommodation with Khun Sa. "We were
not gaining much ground because he was well equipped, well dug-in, and the 

terrain was terrible. We were sacrificing too many casualties." 
 
   "Khun Sa is a walking encyclopedia regarding the drug issue," Colonel Hla
Min
said. "Everything he knows, we know. But this is a multibillion-dollar 
business." 
 
   The vacuum left by Khun Sa was soon filled by Wei Hsueh-kang, a Wa
commander 
who is said to have 7,000 troops protecting his heroin and methamphetamine 
operation. "All information is that he's getting larger by the day," said a 
Western official who follows narcotics matters. 
 
   For all the heroin they export to the United States and Europe, such
leaders 
do not tolerate its use in their own ranks. Khun Sa detoxified errant soldiers
in cages exposed to the blistering sun or in soggy holes in the ground. While 
older Kokang people may use opium as medicine, Mr. Peng said, heroin "is not 
medicine, so there's no excuse." 
 
   "Trading in heroin is a serious offense," he said. "We shoot the person." 
 
GRAPHIC: Photo: A militiaman from the Wa tribe, the major Burmese opium 
traffickers, in a poppy field near the Chinese border. The sale of opium pays 
for the Wa rebellion against the Burmese authorities. (Christopher S. Wren/The

New York Times) 
  
Map: "Cash Crop" shows the density of opium poppy cultivation in Southeast
Asia.
  
Graph tracks Myanmar's opium production, in tons, from 1986 through 1997. 
(Source: U.S. State Department)