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The Nation(3/9/99)
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<font size=5><b>Drug cash stashed on Thai-Burmese border<br>
</font></b><font face="arial" size=3>THE chief of Police Region 6 Bureau
yesterday expressed the belief that narcotics traffickers have hidden
several hundred million baht along the Thai-Burmese border. <br>
Pol Lt-Gen Sopon Sawakhamin said he had received intelligence reports
that drug traders had resorted to hiding cash on their own instead of
depositing the money in banks. <br>
Region 6 covers the lower northern provinces, including Tak, Phitsanulok
and Phetchabun. <br>
Sopon said the money was hidden on the Burma side so Thai authorities
could not go to check or seize it. <br>
''This is why some Thai money has disappeared from circulation,'' Sopon
said. <br>
Recently, iTV television broadcast a special scoop showing footage of a
minority group digging up Thai money that they buried on the Burma side
of the border. <br>
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Mae Tao border area closed <br>
THE Army ordered the closure of the border area in Mae Tao district
yesterday following the latest blatant incursion by the Democratic Karen
Buddhist Army (DKBA) in which a Thai was injured. <br>
On Aug 28, the DKBA entered Thailand at Tak's Mae Tao district, looting
and shooting at Thais. One person was reported injured and three houses
were riddled with bullets. <br>
Rangoon had earlier promised to pay compensation for the damages. <br>
The Thai government and the Army have been irked by the incident, which
led to the border closure order. Further details on the closure is yet to
be made available. <br>
According to an informed source, the DKBA warned the Thais not to cross
into Burma. Those who do would be shot on sight. <br>
Thai-Burmese relations have been affected by repeated incursions into
Thai territory by the DKBA, especially during the dry season. The DKBA
had broken away from the Karen National Union. <br>
...................... <br>
<font size=5><b>Thailand and Burma to discuss border lines<br>
</font></b><font face="arial" size=3>THAILAND and Burma are to meet
between Sept 12 and 16 over the boundary demarcation between the two
countries, a senior Foreign Ministry official said. <br>
The official said the working group meeting will discuss different
approaches to demarcation. <br>
Burma has proposed using the ''boundary alignment'' method, a technique
it has used with India, China and Bangladesh. Thailand's method is based
on maps, treaties and historic evidence. <br>
Two years ago at a joint commission meeting, both sides agreed to begin
the demarcation by dividing the 2401-kilometre common border into 10
segments. <br>
The official said Thailand is studying the Burmese method and the
upcoming meeting is expected to bring the two sides closer to drafting a
memorandum of understanding on the demarcation. <br>
</font>-------------------------<br>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=7>Burma j ails foreign activist
for 17 years <br>
<br>
</font><font size=3>RANGOON - A British-Australian activist arrested as
he smuggled anti- government literature into Burma has been sentenced to
a total of 17 years in prison, the military regime said yesterday. <br>
James Rupert Russell Mawdsley, 26, was arrested on Tuesday after crossing
into Burma at Tachilek, a trading town on the Thai border. It was his
third arrest in two years for making a personal bid to rally support
against the government. <br>
Anti-government activists are calling for a mass uprising on Sept 9, or
9-9-99, a date seen as auspicious in this numerology-obsessed coun- try.
The government has acknowledged arresting nearly 40 people; opposition
groups say the figure is much higher. Mawdsley is the only foreigner.
<br>
A government spokesman said a five-year sentence imposed against Mawdsley
last year for illegal entry, then suspended when he was freed following
three months in Rangoon's notorious Insein Prison, had been reinstated.
<br>
Mawdsley was convicted of the same offence in a summary trial on
Wednesday in Tachilek and received another five years, plus seven more
for violating a publications act. The sentences will run consecutively.
<br>
"The government of Burma deeply regrets having to take such actions
against Mr James Mawdsley,' the spokesman said in a fax to news agencies
in Thailand. <br>
"But his repeated breach of the same law and conditions agreed upon
makes it difficult for the government to show leniency this time, but to
enforce the laws that are intended to maintain stability and tranquility
in the country," he said. <br>
Both the British and Australian embassies are still seeking consular
access. He was being held in Keng Tung, a remote northeastern city.
<br>
"We are unhappy with the way the case has been handled and we did
not have access to Mr Mawds,ley before the trial took place,' an embassy
spokesperson said. <br>
An Australian diplomat said his embassy does not know, whether he
received legal representation. The junta said it was 'in the process of
giving the respective embassies consular access." <br>
In most cases prisoners have 90 days in which to lodge an appeal, but the
diplomat said it would depend on which court had tried Mawdsley and his
case could have special circumstances. <br>
He was first detained on Sept 16, 1997, for breaching Burma's
Inimigration Emergency Act and mounting a one-man protest outside a
school in Rangoon. <br>
A special tribunal sentenced him to five<b> </b>years in jail before the
junta suspended his sentence in September after appeals for leniency from
diplomats and his parents, the junta said. <br>
Burma's state-controlled media described Mawdsley as a 'mercenary
terrorist' who was "collaborating" with the exiled Burmese
student group and rebels of the Karen National Union. <br>
In London, Mawdsley's father, David, said he extremely worried. "He
has God on his side and a strong mind, but it is the physical side which
is of grave concern." <br>
The pamphlets Mawdsley carried into Burma urged soldiers and civil
servants to disobey orders and work for democracy. It also appealed to
the regime to free all political prisoners and reopen the universities,
closed since protests in 1996. <br>
In April 1998, Mawdsley was captured in the southern town of Moulmein
while distributing pamphlets. After three months in solitary con-
finement in Insein, he was released on condition he never return. <br>
In an interview in Thailand last month, Mawdsley said he was rec- onciled
to going back to prison. After last year's arrest, he said, he faint- ed
twice during 15 hours of torture at the start of an eight-day
interrogation. <br>
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