The BurmaNet News: April 20, 1999

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 "Appropriate Information Technologies, Practical Strategies"
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The BurmaNet News: April 20, 1999
Issue #1254

HEADLINES:
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WASHINGTON POST: LETTER FROM BURMA 
ASIAWEEK: MYANMAR MOVEMENT MOOT 
REUTERS: MYANMAR FACES MORE HIGH INFLATION 
BKK POST: BORDER CLASH LEAVES SEVEN REBELS DEAD 
THE NATION: THAILAND TO PRESS ON VILLAGE KILLING 
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WASHINGTON POST: LETTER FROM BURMA
19 April, 1999 By Kevin Sullivan

Vipers on the Fairway; Snakes Can Be Anywhere in Rangoon. Even in Golf Shoes.

RANGOON-The hookers look like bridesmaids.

They line the steps of nightclub after nightclub in Chinatown here, pretty
tarts all in a row, color-coded pros in matching puffy satin dresses.

In the neon glare of one club, they're in identical bubble-gum pink. At the
club next door, the steep stairs are flanked by baby-blue dresses on the left
and dinner-mint green on the right -- bouncy bundles of swooshy satin
cascading
like a Slinky down to the dirt sidewalk.

There don't seem to be many customers. Lots of bored-looking men hang about,
smoking fat cigarettes made from wood pulp, watching the giggling spectacle on
a sweltering night.

Touts hail cars passing along streets that are otherwise dark. There are
almost
no working streetlights in this desperately poor capital, which has been run
into the ground by a military junta that has commanded Burma (which it calls
Myanmar) at gunpoint since 1988. Buildings that date to the British colonial
period, which ended with Burmese independence in 1948, are crumbling and
unpainted, leaving only the fading memory of what once was.

There are lovely sights as well: Buddhist monks in plum-colored robes and
Ray-Ban knockoffs; laughing children in crisp white school uniforms and
backpacks; the ancient Shwedagon Pagoda, which rises above Rangoon like a
mountain of gold and jewels.

About the only other interruptions in the decay are a few beautifully
preserved
government buildings, billboards for Japanese electronics companies and
several
fancy tourist hotels, including the Strand, a regal colonial outpost that has
undergone a multimillion-dollar restoration by a Hong Kong-based resort
developer.

Rooms there cost $500 or more a night, and the Strand Bar serves perfectly
chilled (British) gin-and-tonics while a three-piece band plays ragtime. But
just outside, barefoot beggars scrounge for handouts and drivers of
trishaws --
bicycles with a sidecar -- will cart you across town for a quarter.

The generals who run Burma have no discernible ideology. They seem to stand
for
nothing more than the promise that tomorrow will be much like today. They like
to play golf in porkpie hats and saddle-shoe spikes. They put lots of
people in
prison for embracing democracy. But beyond that, their aspirations are
unclear,
and a four-day tour of this once-grand city offers conflicting clues about
exactly what they have in mind for their country.

Take prostitution. The generals are said to oppose it, and they seem to
spend a
lot of time thinking about it. In one of the government's more inventive
anti-prostitution decrees, the generals two months ago ordered that women
could
no longer work as staff in bars and restaurants.

Yet the nightclubs in Chinatown are practically offering gift-wrapping with
your purchase, and nobody seems to mind. Like many things in Burma, that may
well be due more to economics than to moral standards. China, the country's
massive northern neighbor, is Burma's largest military and economic patron,
and
impoverished Burma can't afford to insult Beijing by mistreating Chinese
ex-pats who own and patronize the glitzy discos.

The government does tightly control information moving in and out of the
country -- even monitoring the e-mail of foreign diplomats. Journalists
generally are banned, and those who visit as tourists must be careful about
talking to ordinary Burmese, who face harsh punishment for discussing politics
with foreigners.

One woman in her early twenties, who works in the service industry for a tiny
wage, can't say her name, where she works or anything else about herself
because she could be jailed for talking to a foreign reporter. But she does
quietly say that her dream is to be a schoolteacher. Trouble is, the generals
have closed the university again, as they have for more than half the time
since they took over 11 years ago. Asian universities are often breeding
grounds for political uprising, and the junta is taking no chances.

So the young woman waits on customers, wasting her youth, bored, bored, bored.
"It's so stupid," she said.

At a tourist attraction elsewhere in the city is a 69-year-old man who was a
schoolteacher for years until 1988, when he participated in a big
pro-democracy
demonstration. The military crackdown on that protest killed 3,000 people in
six weeks and led to the government-by-gun that still stands today. Civil
servants who marched then were fired and blacklisted. So now the aging scholar
laments what he lost and what his students will never have.

The government makes sure people know who's in charge. Soldiers conduct random
bed checks to see that people are sleeping in homes where they are registered
with the government. Sleeping in the wrong place can result in 10 days in
jail.

Security services listen to the telephone calls of almost every diplomat and
foreigner in town. At the monthly happy hour at the Australian Embassy, a
Burmese military intelligence officer sits at the end of the bar, watching and
listening for hours on end without speaking to anyone. "After being here for a
couple of years," said one European diplomat, "I have lost a terrible
amount of
illusions and I have become terribly sad."

In most of the country, people survive mainly on subsistence farming, but
recent floods and droughts have made growing rice, potatoes and other crops
more difficult. The fields also have living danger: huge numbers of poisonous
snakes. Burma is said to have one of the world's highest rates of death by
snakebite. Golfers tell tales of having their shots land a few feet from a
poisonous snake, which is then dispatched by a caddie wielding a five-iron.

But the poverty growing within and the international repudiation haven't made
the generals change much.

On Armed Forces Day recently, thousands of soldiers marched to a park in
downtown Rangoon to hear inspirational speeches by their generals. It was
March
27, the army's day to show off the spit-shine and polish of a 350,000-strong
military machine. But most Burmese never had a chance to see: It began before
dawn and was held before an invitation-only crowd of family and friends, who
tossed flowers.

For a month beforehand, soldiers blocked off the main streets of the parade
route. Troops with rifles and long bayonets took up round-the-clock sentry
positions, frequently sweeping for land mines or bombs.

It's not just paranoia: The military knows it is, as one foreign resident of
Rangoon called it, a "fundamentally hated regime."

So the soldiers march by, kept clear of the people by barbed-wire blockades.

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ASIAWEEK: MYANMAR MOVEMENT MOOT
16 April, 1999

The plan for the United Nations and the World Bank to rustle up some $1
billion
of aid in exchange for substantive political reform in Myanmar is dying a slow
death. UN special envoy Alvaro de Soto was scheduled to return to Yangon in
March, but the trip was canceled due to a lack of progress in pre-meeting
negotiations.

The UN then suggested the second week of April, but that is Songkran, a
three-day national holiday in Myanmar. And there are other problems. The U.S.
Congress vetoed a plan that de Soto be accompanied by a senior World Bank
official, while the suggestion that a retired Bank personality attend was
dismissed as giving the mission too little authority.

As it now stands, a junior-level functionary will go, along with some UNDP and
other UN officials. But, so what? Are Yangon's generals ready to free all
political prisoners and allow political parties to operate? Asian officials
who
have met their Myanmar counterparts in recent months (Brig.-Gen. Kyaw Win was
in Japan; Senior Gen. Than Shwe and Lt.Gen. Khin Nyunt were in Thailand, and
Foreign Minister Win Aung has visited almost all the ASEAN capitals) report
that the Myanmar leaders express no sense of urgency to change their present
course.

Time for a new idea.

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REUTERS: ADB-MYANMAR FACES MORE SLOW GROWTH, HIGH INFLATION
19 April, 1999

BANGKOK, April 19 (Reuters) - Myanmar's economic outlook is gloomy with slow
growth likely to continue and inflation not expected to fall dramatically from
its current rate of around 50 percent, the Asian Development Bank said.

Having shown impressive gross domestic product growth of nearly eight percent
from 1992 to 1996, rates slowed to about five percent in 1997 and then to
three
to four percent last year, the bank said in its Asian Development Outlook for
1999.

``The outlook for Myanmar is not promising,'' it said, ``Growth is expected to
remain at about three to four percent in 1999 and inflation is not expected to
fall dramatically.''

It said inflation had soared to 50 percent in 1998 due to monetisation of a
budget deficit of about four percent of GDP.

Slow growth in 1998 was largely due to adverse factors affecting the
agriculture sector, growth in which had halved in 1998, including lack of
inputs and continued government intervention in production decisions.

The report said the Asian economic crisis would continue to dampen foreign
investment inflows from other Asian countries, which accounted for 50 percent
of the total.

The agriculture sector, which accounts for 45 percent of GDP, had suffered
from
an acute shortage of foreign exchange, which had prevented imports of
fertiliser and diesel.

The bank said that to put the economy on track, the government needed to speed
the privatisation of inefficient state enterprises, strengthen
market-orientated reforms and establish a definite timeframe for banking
reform.

It said the adoption of a market-orientated policy had had ``some positive
effect'' on the economy in recent years.

``However, most observers agree that economic reforms have either been
incomplete or shortlived -- failing to achieve a fundamental transformation of
the economic system.

``The economy is still beset with serious macro-economic and structural
problems. Thus there is a critical need to restore macro-economic stability
and
strengthen economic reforms.''

It said urgent reform was needed in trade regulation, tax collection,
industrial policy, exchange rate regulation, the management of fiscal deficits
and privatisation.

It said losses made by state enterprises meant the costs of not privatising
them worked out at more than 40 percent of the country's overall budget
deficit.

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BANGKOK POST: BORDER CLASH LEAVES SEVEN REBELS DEAD
19 April, 1999

Kanchanaburi-Seven Karen rebels were killed during a clash with Burmese
soldiers along the Thai-Burmese border on Friday night.

The fighting took place in Ban Tong Sun, a Burmese village opposite this
province, said a border source, adding seven members of the anti-Rangoon Karen
National Union were killed during the brief gun battle.

Burmese soldiers seized six AK-47 assault rifles, three pistols, one RPG
rocket
launcher and four RPG rockets from the dead rebels. Sources said Rangoon has
reinforced its troops along its border with Thailand last month as part of its
offensive against ethnic minority groups hiding along the border.

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THE NATION: THAILAND TO PRESS ON VILLAGE KILLING
19 April, 1999 by Piyanart Srivalo

Thailand will bring up the recent killing of nine Thai villagers, whose bodies
were found scattered along the Thai-Burmese border, at the upcoming i
ministerial-level meeting aimed at countering drug trafficking between
Thailand, Laos and Burma, a senior anti-drugs officer said yesterday.

The nine victims from Chiang Mai's Fang district were believed to have been
killed by soldiers from the United Wa State Army, allegedly over a drug
dispute, officials investigating the incident-said.

Local villagers, however, disputed the claim and called on Prime Minister
Chuan
Leekpai to help them clear their names.

Chuan was visiting the victims' family yesterday in a merit-making
ceremony. He
was greeted by about 3,000 villagers.

Chuan urged the villagers to provide the authorities with any information
pertaining to the death of the nine villagers.

"This was a very unfortunate and violent incident. Therefore, both sides,
Thailand and Burma, must cooperate to find the killers as soon as possible,"
Chuan said.

Authorities investigating the killing, however, insisted the killing was
carried out by UWSA troops, saying it's a well known fact that the Wa army are
the only ones operating out of that area along the border.

The group is considered by the Thai and United States governments to be one of
the world's largest armed narcotics trafficking organizations. The group
operates out of the infamous Golden Triangle, an area where the three
countries
meet and is headquartered in Panghsang on the Chinese-Burmese border.

A faction within the 20,000-strong UWSA has crept up right on the Thai-Burmese
border, establishing a presence just across from Chiang Mai's Ta Thon, a small
town popular among foreign and local tourists, Sorasit said.

The faction, known as "southern Wa", consisted of three battalions under the
command of ethnic Chinese heroin dealer Wei Hsueh-kang, has been of great
concern for the Thai government, Sorasit said.

However, since the death of the nine villagers who were beaten to death with
their hands tied behind their back, differences of opinion have emerged among
various government agencies with regard to the opening of any temporary border
checkpoints.

Sorasit said the three-country meeting may shed some light on how these
agencies could assess the situation before granting permission for the opening
of any border crossing. The meeting will be chaired by Interior Minister Sanan
Kachornprasart from April 26-27, Sorasit said.

Thailand and Burma have opened a drug co-ordinating center in Tachilek and
Chiang Rai's Mae Sai district. Bangkok will ask that another center be opened
at another major crossing point at Myawadi and Mae Sot in Tak province,
Sorasit
said.

Thai security agencies are debating whether to amend the policy on granting
permission for opening any border crossing, Sorasit said.

The opening of the temporary border checkpoint leading through the Wa
controlled area was approved last August by the National Security Council at
the request of Chiang Mai's merchants.

Currently, thousands of Thai nationals are working as hired hands in Mong Yawn
and Mong Hsat, building everything from schools to a medium-sized dam to road
projects and a hospital in the eastern part of Burma's Shan State.

The projects are funded by the Wa's heroin money.

The military government of Burma has consistently been accused of turning a
blind eye to the Wa's illegal activities, but Sorasit said the junta has
cooperated with Thai officials and has contributed significantly to the fight
against drug trafficking.

Millions of methamphetamines, locally known as yaa baa, have flooded Thailand
and authorities are hardpressed to do something about the development.

Cooperation from Thai villagers along the border has also helped, said
Sorasit,
claiming over one million tablets of methamphetamines and 1,500 kilogrammes of
heroin have been confiscated in the past four months.

This constitutes about 30 per cent of the amount smuggled into the Kingdom in
the past four months, he said.
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