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The BurmaNet News: November 10, 199



Subject: The BurmaNet News: November 10, 1999

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 Catch the latest news about Burma at www.burmanet.org
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The BurmaNet News: November 10, 1999
Issue #1398

Noted in Passing: "This is the first time I have known anyone to be put
behind bars for singing a song." - Mick Jagger (see THE PEOPLE: MICK HELPS
FREE JAILED GIRL)

HEADLINES:
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
ASIAWEEK: A TALE OF TWO COUNTRIES
ASIAWEEK: PLAYING MYANMAR'S NAME GAME
NATION: BURMA'S POLICY OF DENIAL HITS HOME
NATION: THAILAND TOO KIND TO BURMESE REFUGEES?
REUTERS: EU SEES NO IMPROVEMENT IN RIGHTS RECORD
AFP: BRITISH ACTIVIST'S REFUSAL TO CONDEMN JUNTA
THE PEOPLE (LONDON): MICK HELPS FREE JAILED GIRL
BKK POST: RETHINKING THE DRUGS BATTLE
ANNOUNCEMENT: BOOK ON MON POLITICAL HISTORY
***************************************************

ASIAWEEK: A TALE OF TWO COUNTRIES
12 November, 1999 by Roger Mitton

[BurmaNet Editor's note: Because this article is lengthy, it is being
posted in the BurmaNet news in two segments.  Part 1 appeared in
yesterday's issue.]

Part 2

NE WIN'S GUN-PACKING GRANDSON=20

One evening in Yangon, I unwittingly refute the assertion that the military
police check residences for unauthorized guests staying overnight. I have
been invited to the home of a Muslim family for dinner, and I walk across
Yangon unchallenged. The family members are not fans of the regime and
spend much of the evening castigating the generals. When I mention that the
rule forbidding late-staying guests will now oblige me to leave, they burst
out laughing. That hasn't been in effect for years, they say. So I stay and
watch cricket on satellite television.=20

Eventually it is time to leave and they assure me that it will be safe to
walk back through the dark streets. "That is one thing we have," says
family patriarch Mahmud. "It has always been that way, even for women."
When I ask mayor Ko Lay about this, he laughs: "You can walk the streets at
night, no problem. Nobody gets harmed, no rape. This is not like Patpong or
Hollywood." An American lawyer who has lived in Yangon for five years
echoes this. "I think it is due to the strong ethic of the people," says
John Pierce. "They will walk in and out of a bank carrying a transparent
plastic bag full of money and not worry at all." But others tell me
break-ins, pickpocketing and drug use are rising in urban centers,
especially among the youth.=20

Next day, over breakfast, I hear a rumor that former dictator Ne Win's
grandkids have been involved in a notorious shooting incident on Maykha
Road, where the despot lives out his dotage. Later, a government official
relates a similar tale. A visiting Malaysian businessman had arranged to
have lunch with him at the Nawarat Concorde Hotel (run by Ne Win's favorite
daughter, Sanda, and her husband Aye Zaw Win). Gossiping in the car, they
absently drove past the entrance and turned in the next driveway. It was
the exit, so they stopped and began to reverse. Suddenly, another car,
preparing to leave, drove straight at them before abruptly braking. The
driver, a young man of about 20, jumped out and - assuming they were
foreign guests - berated them. "Can't you see this is the way out! You
people think you can come here and do what you like! Well, **** you!" He
gestured with his middle finger, then pulled out a revolver and thrust it
in the Malaysian's face, telling him to be more careful in future.
Horrified, they apologized and decided to lunch elsewhere.=20

They headed to the Inya Lake Hotel - and were disturbed to see the
gun-toting youth following and using his mobile phone. When they arrived,
he parked alongside. Seconds later, a policeman on a motorbike roared up.
The youth told the cop about the incident at the Nawarat. The cop chastised
the Malaysian and took his license, telling him to collect it later at the
police station on Pyay Road. Days later, when the businessman sent an
assistant to get the license, the cop called the youth - who turned out to
be none other than Kyaw Ne Win, one of the ex-dictator's grandsons. The cop
asked if it was okay to return the license. Kyaw Ne Win said no, not unless
the businessman collected it in person. So the cop refused to hand it over.
"This is how it is in Myanmar," the official tells me. "You are a relative
of Ne Win or some other general, you can do anything, even buy guns and
threaten visitors."=20

It seems to me that this is an exception, yet such incidents help fuel
perceptions about Myanmar. No one is immune; certainly not foreign
reporters. Those who parachute in are predisposed to seeing spies under
every bed. The Washington Post recently reported: "At the monthly happy
hour at the Australian Embassy [in Yangon], a Burmese military intelligence
officer sits at the end of the bar, watching and listening for hours on end
without speaking to anyone." Having attended these functions and not seen
this spy, I decide to try and spot him (although it is a given the world
over that intelligence operatives attend embassy functions). I station
myself at the bar of the Australian Club in Golden Valley, nibbling p=E2t=E9
and pizza and quaffing red wine. As usual, the place is full of business
folk, diplomats, travelers and assorted expats. We chat about the regime,
Suu Kyi, the Irrawaddy delta reclamation project, the difficulty of getting
good beef, former drug baron Law Sitt Han. All the while, I look for the
silent spook. When I mention him to regulars they laugh derisively and say:
"Who cares?"=20

Not that the international media has a monopoly on distortion. One evening,
up in Mandalay, I watch the news. It is almost entirely about outdoor
rallies held around the country at which community leaders laud the regime
and berate the NLD. I lose track of how many times the newsreader, in her
droning monotone, relates how so-and-so praised this or that new
achievement and castigated the foreign axe-handles, lackeys and stooges -
a.k.a. Suu Kyi and the NLD.=20

Even amiable, level-headed foreign minister Win Aung joins the assault on
Suu Kyi. He tells me: "She opposes whatever the government tries to do. She
is always attacking, adopting a confrontational approach. This is really
wrong." Yet his side does exactly the same. Myanmar's state-controlled
media oppose whatever the NLD tries to do, relentlessly attack Suu Kyi and
adopt a confrontational style of reportage about her party. The daily
cartoon in the New Light of Myanmar shows Suu Kyi as a gap-toothed witch
followed by a sour-looking maven of NLD cohorts. Until the generals stop
such pettiness, they cannot expect balanced observers to give any credence
to their contention that Suu Kyi does nothing but criticize.=20

Besides, she has a point. Even the generals admit their rule is not
blemish-free. Crumbling power generation, paltry foreign-exchange reserves,
near empty hotels, closed universities, a bankrupt national airline, lousy
relations with the West (and, now, after the recent Bangkok embassy siege,
with neighbor Thailand, too), insurgent skirmishes threatening to flare up
again - and these are only at the top of the list. Bizarrely, all the
military leaders I meet say they are making progress and contend that
criticism from the outside hinders their attempt to bring stability and
development. Col. Hla Min, one of junta strategist Gen. Khin Nyunt's most
articulate officers, tells me: "There is too much barking from outside. We
can easily get derailed."=20

The barking, however, can damage both sides. At the time of my visit,
almost every Myanmar watcher is pondering reports that Suu Kyi not only
opposes humanitarian aid, but is critical of Red Cross assessment visits to
nine detention centers (including Yangon's Insein Jail and the central
prison in Mandalay), and has condemned Australian moves to set up a
human-rights commission in Myanmar. It is a controversial and brave stand
that draws flak from even her hearty supporters in the West; and it is one
that the regime exploits. "She is the only politician I know," says Hla
Min, "who lobbies against help for her own people, even humanitarian help."=
=20

This is one of the questions I plan to ask Suu Kyi when I meet her. But I
have been warned that she is not an easy person to interview; diplomats and
fellow journalists tell me to be careful posing "critical" questions. There
is a sense with Suu Kyi (and with the regime, for that matter) that either
you are with us or you are against us. Before going to see her, I visit
three so-called NLD rebels. All party veterans elected in 1990, they wax
indignant about how Suu Kyi runs the NLD in a dictatorial manner. When I
ask one of them, Tin Tun Maung, about policy debate and decision-making, an
acetylene anger flares in his eyes. "She told us our heads are not for
nodding, they are for thinking. That we are supposed to question things.
But when we question her decisions, she shouts at us and calls us
traitors." I leave unsure whether they are sincere, or have been
compromised by the regime.=20

SUU KYI IN THE DARK=20

I finally interview Suu Kyi for the first time in Tin Oo's house during yet
another Yangon blackout (this one caused by a storm that has brought down a
tree across the power lines outside the house). We sit for 90 minutes in a
corner of the big, darkened room, the candles flickering in the gloom and
dogs howling in the lane outside (perhaps disturbed by the intelligence
officers who have followed Suu Kyi and on this occasion are waiting to take
my picture as I leave). I ask about her stand against humanitarian aid. She
bristles. "What stand against humanitarian aid?" Even the candles seem to
tremble.=20

I refer Suu Kyi to reports in staunchly pro-NLD foreign publications saying
that the party under her leadership has opposed international NGO
involvement in Myanmar. "No, we haven't," she retorts, angrily. "We have
never said that all NGOs should leave Burma or not come in or anything like
that. And we've never said that we are against humanitarian aid per se."
She explains that her stance is that such aid should only come in "provided
you make sure it is given to everybody in an even-handed way." Later, I
bounce this off a Yangon-based NGO representative. "That is ridiculous," he
splutters. "There is no developing country in the world where you can
guarantee that some aid will not be misused by the government for its own
purposes. If that was a rule, then no one would get any aid."=20

But if the pro-democracy advocates are to be believed there is ample
evidence that the regime has exploited such assistance in the past.
Whatever, the end result, as always, is that the people get screwed. Little
aid reaches them because few Western governments dare go against Suu Kyi.
Being culpable in the continuing impoverishment of the Myanmar people is a
secondary factor in their considerations.=20

One of the most common comments you hear in Yangon concerns the futility of
Western economic sanctions against Myanmar. I raise the topic with Suu Kyi
to get her reaction to the increasing number of people - many of them
scathing critics of the regime - who say sanctions are ineffective and hurt
only the ordinary people of Myanmar. I blink in surprise when her reply
comes out of the half-darkness. "Sanctions are not causing hardship to the
people," she says. "That we can say. So to people like that, I would just
say: Prove it, prove that sanctions are hurting the people of the country.
And they can't really prove it. The U.S. sanctions are not such that they
in any way affect the Burmese economy to a great extent."=20

The bottom line is that few people, even the most rabid anti-regimers,
believe economic sanctions will precipitate change. For most Myanmar
people, the economy is as it was 40 years ago, with some marginal
improvements over the past decade. Even outside Yangon, where the power
supply is woeful to put it mildly, there is not the slightest sign of
discontent. Rather people demonstrate a fatalistic acceptance that this is
how it is, how it always was, and how it looks like it will be for the
foreseeable future.=20

At the end of the interview, I mention to Suu Kyi that I had been warned
about her prickliness. She appears taken aback and affects surprise, saying
that as a politician she has been interviewed by many journalists asking
much the same questions as mine and never takes offense. I appreciate that
and thank her again for meeting me, especially since Tin Oo has said she
was ill earlier in the week. She looks well now, surprising given the
stress under which she constantly lives. Frankly, I don't know how she
endures it. I leave the house after her, smile for the intelligence
officers' cameras, clamber through the branches of the fallen tree and head
off down the quiet lane to catch a taxi back to the Traders Hotel.
Tomorrow, I return to Bangkok. And already I am thinking about when I will
come back to Myanmar. Where nothing is ever quite as it seems.

***************************************************

ASIAWEEK: PLAYING MYANMAR'S NAME GAME
12 November, 1999

We weren't that far off. In our Intelligence column two issues back we
predicted a cabinet shuffle in Myanmar.

We were wrong on some of the names when the announcement came on Oct 29,
but spotted the changes coming at the commerce and electric power
ministries. In the key commerce portfolio, English speaking Brig-Gen. Pyi
Sone is a man to watch.=20

He is a member of the inner coterie of the junta's key strategist Lt.Gen.
Khin Nyunt, which includes Col. Tin Hlaing at home affairs, Maj.Gen. Nyunt
Tin at agriculture, Win Aung at foreign affairs, and Col. Thein Nyunt at
border areas. Interesting: two of the three new ministerial appointments
are not military men. That brings to 13 the number of civilian ministers in
the 42 member cabinet.

***************************************************

THE NATION: BURMA'S POLICY OF DENIAL HITS HOME
8 November, 1999 by David Arnott

[BurmaNet Editor's Note: This article has been slightly modified from what
was published originally in the Nation to reflect the correction of a
mistake that was clarified the following day.]

Without a substantial political shift in Burma, the country will continue
to be an impediment to regional economic and social development, writes
David Arnott.=20

In October, Lt Gen Khin Nyunt told a meeting of Asian health ministers that
claims of an Aids epidemic in Burma were totally false. Nyunt, Burma's
chief of military intelligence, seen by many as the most powerful figure in
the junta, dismissed a Unaids estimate that there may be 440,000 HIV
infections in Burma, saying that only 25,000 people had tested positive,
and that Burmese ''cultural values and traditions prohibited sexual
promiscuity''.=20

The general either fails to understand that a figure of 25,000 people
testing positive is compatible with an estimate of 440,000 or more HIV
infections countrywide, and that the principal vector of HIV spread in
Burma is needles shared by intravenous drug users rather than sexual
promiscuity, or he understands perfectly well, but goes ahead and issues
the denial anyway.=20

In either case, we are reminded that in Burma, the military leaders make
all policy, whether they understand the specific issues or not. (We also
find generals lecturing farmers about rice cultivation, and ruling on a
whole range of other areas -- the economy, for instance -- which are
outside their field of competence.) This is completely logical, in spite of
the economic and humanitarian consequences, once we understand that the
main function of the policy is to keep the military in power rather than to
serve the people.=20

Technically, the way forward on the HIV/Aids front is clear; follow
Thailand's lead in overcoming denial and adopting pro-active, open and
rights-oriented policies. The problems are political: the measures required
-- free flow of information, wide consultation and public education, needle
exchange, anonymous testing and treatment, free distribution of condoms,=
 etc.=20

Not denying would threaten the opaque, top-down regime in Rangoon. So, in
the interest of regime survival, the policy is denial (of HIV/Aids, and
similarly of economic failure, military complicity in the drug economy,
human rights violations, the right of the National League for Democracy to
govern and so on).=20

But Burma has neighbours. In 1997, Prof John Dwyer, founding president of
the Aids Society for Asia and the Pacific, described Burma as ''the
epicentre of the epidemic in Asia''. Since then, the Burmese HIV/Aids
epidemic has spread, along with the growing drug traffic, ever deeper into
India and China. Both are now in the grip of escalating drug and HIV
epidemics originating in Burma, and Thailand is flooded with Burmese
amphetamines. China has more than 600,000 registered drug addicts, with the
real figures estimated at several times that, and for several years the
country has been experiencing a crime wave related, in great part, to drug
trafficking from Burma.=20

Not that the neighbours are entirely innocent. Thailand's current problems
with her Western neighbour stem to a large extent from Gen Chavalit
Yongchaiyudh's early business deals with Slorc and the abandonment of the
policy of ethnic buffer zones in the early 90s. And China froze the regime
in place around the same time with a US$2 billion injection of arms that
allowed the military to expand and modernise and block social, economic or
political development in the cities and the ethnic minority areas.=20

In the civil war, the military expansion permitted by the Chinese arms
deals facilitated the shift from a strategy of seasonal combat to one of
occupation, leading to the military advances and human rights violations by
the occupying troops, especially when cash-strapped Rangoon cut the army's
food supplies, requiring it to live ''off the land'' (ie, off the backs of
the people). This in turn helped maintain Burma's exclusion from
international assistance which, added to the junta's inept dirigisme,
continued the country's economic decline. Legal exports being at half the
value of imports, the country depends on laundered drug money to stay more
or less afloat. The drug economy is therefore allowed to flourish and carry
addiction and the HIV virus across the borders. The Thai and Chinese
chickens are home to roost with a vengeance.=20

The economy will not recover without investment and infrastructure
development. This will only return with a process moving towards an
economically-competent and publicly-accepted administration able to carry
out the hard but necessary tasks like currency devaluation and tax reform.
The same applies to the ethnic insurgencies, which can only be settled by
political means, which are beyond the capacity of the military.=20

Without a substantial political shift in Burma, the country will continue
to be the epicentre of the HIV and drug epidemics and, on account of inept
economic policies and exclusion from international assistance, an
impediment to regional economic and social development.=20

What may help to break the logjam and open up political space in Burma is a
coordinated regional and international approach, in particular by Thailand
(acting for Asean), China and India. So far, however, apart from a smidgen
of Asean diplomacy, these countries have tended to act bilaterally. China
is a key player, and apparently scolds the junta behind closed doors, but
is still stuck in the view that only a strong military in Rangoon can
provide the stability needed to further China's economic, political and
(say some, particularly the members of the Expansionist China school)
strategic interests. But it's not happening. Chinese traders suffer the
erratic swings of the Burmese economy and the idiosyncratic fiscal policies
of the generals; the modern transport routes through Burma to South Asian
markets and beyond which Yunnan needs have not been built; and the economic
impact of the HIV/Aids and drug epidemics is only just starting to be felt.

These problems, which cross international borders and threaten the
comprehensive national security of the neighbours, cannot be regarded as
purely the ''internal affair'' of one country. Thailand is in a
particularly good position to take a lead, at least behind closed doors, to
bring China and India into a regional effort to ''encourage'' the Burmese
military to take the first steps beyond denial towards a political process.=
=20

David Arnott is a specialist on Burma and contributed this article to The
Nation. The views expressed here are his own.

***************************************************

THE NATION: IS THAILAND TOO KIND TO BURMESE REFUGEES?
9 November, 1999 by Don Pathan

ACADEMICIANS, activists and officials were at loggerheads at yesterday's
seminar on Burmese refugees as they were unable to find common ground on
how the government should deal with the plight of hundreds of thousands of
Burmese refugees, exiles and dissidents living in the country.=20

Human rights and aid workers said the government needs to rethink its
policies towards the Burmese refugees and dissident students living in the
country, while officials said tighter enforcement is needed.=20

The Interior Ministry's Director of Information and Foreign Affairs,
Wannida Boonpracong, and Senator Charan Kullavanijaya said Thailand has
been too lax with dissident groups in the past and accused some dissidents
of exploiting the ''flexibility'' of Thai authority.=20

''What we called 'displaced' people are in fact 'illegal immigrants',
according to our law. But because of our humanitarian principles, we have
to treat them as 'displaced people','' Charan said.=20

But human rights activists Somchai Homlaor and aid worker Jack Dunford,
director of the Burmese Border Consortium, said the government needs to
rethink its policies towards the Burmese refugees and come up with a
comprehensive assessment of the situation.=20

''Putting them in a crowded camp like Maneeloy is not the answer,'' said
Somchai, suggesting that the asylum seekers should be given greater access
to education and the freedom to carry out their activities like normal
citizens as they wait to be relocated to a third country.=20

Wannida, on the other hand, suggested that Thailand should not become a
breeding ground for Burmese political activists and so-called ''freedom
fighters'', saying that many exiles do not understand their limitation in
being refugees.=20

Moreover, said Charan, Thailand does not have a legal commitment to any
international forum such as the United Nations Refugee Convention and,
therefore, the government is not obligated to use anybody's framework or
method in dealing with the refugees.=20

''Our policy in dealing with the refugees is based on humanitarian
principles. Repatriation has always been on a voluntarily basis,'' he=
 stated.=20

A Burmese dissident attending the seminar accused the authorities of
''painting a wonderful picture''. In reality, the situation on the ground
is quite different, he said.=20

A Burmese student was granted refugee status, but his parents were forced
back to Burma where their fate is uncertain, he said, speaking on condition
of anonymity.=20

Bangkok-based UN High Commissioner for Refugee's regional representative
Jahansha Assadi said the agency's work has been limited to asylum and
protection as UN officials are denied access to the Burmese side to monitor
the returnees.=20
Since last Thursday, a wish list has been passed around to Burmese asylum
seekers eligible for relocation to a third country, asking them where they
would like to go.=20

Assadi said about 16 countries have expressed interest in taking some of
the refugees, but so far only the United States has said publicly that it's
willing to admit about 1,000 out of nearly the 3,000 which come under the
UN's  ''people of concern'', or POCs.=20

About 100,000 displaced people, most of whom are ethnic Karen who had fled
the fighting between government troops and rebel armies, are living in
camps along the Thai border. Almost 3,000 have been granted  ''refugee''
status, thus enabling them to request to be relocated to a third country.=20

The UN and the Thai government have been tight-lipped over the fate of
about 10,000 ethnic Shan from Burma living along the northern border.=20

Like many other refugees from Burma, the Shan had crossed over to the Thai
side, refusing to be relocated. Human rights groups accused Burma's
military junta of systematically relocating hundreds of villages to keep at
bay the support coming in for the rebel armies.=20

The issue of refugees has become a hot topic amid growing tension between
Bangkok and Rangoon after five Burmese armed dissidents stormed the Burmese
Embassy in Bangkok.=20

Rangoon accused Bangkok of using ''kid gloves'' in solving the 25-hour
standoff with the dissidents and responded by closing the border and
cancelling all concessions to Thai fishermen.=20

Rangoon also refused to cooperate with the Thai authorities and threatened
to shoot its own nationals being  pushed back from Thailand.=20

About one million Burmese are working in the country. Most have taken up
jobs in factories along the border, working for below minimum wages.=20

Charan called the current repatriation of Burmese workers ''a joke'', as
many are able to return to Thailand at will. He said the authorities should
go after the factory owners who have long ignored the country's immigration
law.=20

He also warned that Thailand risks being condemned by the international
community especially after Burmese troops have threatened to shoot those
sent back.=20

''They will accuse us of pushing these people to their deaths,'' he said.

***************************************************

REUTERS: EU SEES NO IMPROVEMENT IN MYANMAR RIGHTS RECORD
9 November, 1999

BANGKOK, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Military-ruled Myanmar has made no significant
improvement in its human rights record or on moves towards democracy,
conditions the European Union has set for lifting sanctions, a European
diplomat said on Tuesday.

``The government of Myanmar has said many times their aim is to become a
democratic country and reach international levels in the human rights
field, but the movement is not there, it cannot be seen,'' Finland's
ambassador to Thailand and Myanmar, Tauno Kaaria, told a news conference.

``From all the information available, there is not much change there, not
much movement, no major steps towards opening up the country, moving into
the democratic path, or marked improvement in the human rights field,'' he
said.

Kaaria was speaking for the European Union as Finland holds the bloc's
revolving presidency.

Last month, the European Union extended sanctions against Myanmar for six
more months.

The EU imposed the sanctions, which include a ban on entry visas for
Myanmar's leaders and the suspension of high-level visits, because of the
generals' treatment of the opposition led by Nobel peace laureate Aung San
Suu Kyi.

Her party won an election in 1990 by a landslide but the military ignored
the result and detained many of its members.

The ban on visits by senior Myanmar officials forced the cancellation of a
meeting of foreign ministers of the EU and the Association of South East
Asian Nations (ASEAN) set for Berlin earlier this year.

The 10-member ASEAN, which Myanmar joined in 1997, had insisted all its
ministers attend the meeting -- which is supposed to be held every two
years -- or none at all.

``There was no agreement on that and so far there is no agreement,'' Kaaria
said.

***************************************************

AFP: FURORE OVER FREED BRITISH ACTIVIST'S REFUSAL TO CONDEMN MYANMAR JUNTA
9 November, 1999

British democracy activist, Rachel Goldwyn, freed early from a seven-year
jail term in Myanmar, was embroiled in a row Tuesday over her refusal to
condemn the ruling junta.

Goldwyn, 28, returned home to London Monday after serving just two months
of her sentence handed down for singing pro-democracy songs in a crowded
Yangon market on September 7.

But democracy activists were dismayed when Goldwyn refused to condemn
authorities there and said she would return to research a thesis.

"We are glad Rachel is free ... but we do look askance upon her as she
seems to have made a very quick U-turn," said Debbie Stothard from the
Bangkok-based Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma (ALTSEAN).

"We understand she was under great mental and emotional pressure but all
the people who campaigned for her freedom must feel they have been slapped
in the face because she has refused to speak out against the regime," she
added.

Democracy activists in London went further, branding Goldwyn's silence as a
"selfish betrayal" of the Myanmar people.

"Rachel ... shocked human rights activists by refusing to speak out against
Burma's brutal regime or the appalling human rights abuses the regime is
best known for," said Yvette Mahon from the Burma Campaign UK.

Mahon said in a statement received by AFP here that activists in Myanmar
had advised Goldwyn against staging her lone protest and warned it could
backfire.

"Having sought and gained media attention she has since failed to use the
privilege of her position to tell the story of Burma's suffering," said=
 Mahon.

Rachel asked reporters at London's Heathrow airport to understand that one
of her conditions of bail was "not to interfere in the internal affairs of
Myanmar."

"I am still committed to democracy, but am now going to take on a dialogue
role rather than a confrontational role," she said.

Another activist, James Mawdsley, 26, is still serving a 17-year jail term
imposed by Myanmar authorities in September for illegally crossing the
border from Thailand carrying anti-government pamphlets.

Yangon has stressed that Goldwyn's early release does not imply it will be
lenient with Mawdsley.

Myanmar is condemned by many western nations for alleged gross human rights
abuses and its refusal to hand over power to the democratically elected
National League for Democracy, led by Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

Goldwyn and Mawdsley were arrested in the weeks leading up to September 9,
when exiled Myanmar democracy activists had called for a nationwide
uprising to end 37 years of military rule. That day passed without major
incident.

***************************************************

THE PEOPLE (LONDON): MICK HELPS FREE FAILED BURMA GIRL
7 November, 1999 by Sean Hoare

MICK JAGGER waged a secret campaign to help secure the release of Brit
student Rachel Goldwyn from a Burmese prison, the Sunday People can reveal.

The rock star fired off a passionate letter to Foreign Secretary Robin Cook
urging the Government to put pressure on Burma to free Rachel, 28.

He also wrote to the Burmese authorities pleading for her release.

Human rights campaigner Rachel had been given seven years in the notorious
Insein jail for singing a protest song against the military regime in
Burma. She was freed last week after serving two months.

Jagger, 55, was drawn to Rachel's case because she was a student at his old
college - the London School of Economics.

In his letter to Robin Cook, he said: "This is the first time I have known
anyone to be put behind bars for singing a song."

A source involved in the campaign to free Rachel said: "He thought the fact
she had been jailed was an absolute outrage."

***************************************************

THE BANGKOK POST: RETHINKING THE DRUGS BATTLE
8 November, 1999

EDITORIAL

As they gathered for the first high-level drug meeting of the Americas last
week, the delegates were met with a bombastic challenge. Thirteen prominent
leaders, including three former Latin American presidents, stated flatly in
a letter that the US-led war on drugs has failed. They pictured an
escalating war, led by Latin American armed forces, that was placing
inordinate power in the hands of the generals. Not only is this
counter-productive to the continued development of democracy, argued the
leaders, but it is useless against the drug barons.

There is certain to be wide debate over such flamboyant rhetoric. Drug
officials and government leaders leapt upon the letter as sometimes false,
exaggerated and unhelpful. Their side of the story is that a generation of
drug efforts have taken tonnes of narcotics off the streets. Developing
legal systems have eliminated hundreds of corrupt narco-officials from
public office, up to presidents such as Noriega of Panama. Police and army
repression has broken up dozens of major drug operations.

This is all true. In Thailand and numerous other countries, people owe a
certain gratitude to their drug agents. Khun Sa and the Shan gangs have
been run out of our country. Northern peasants are no longer the slaves of
drug traffickers thanks to crop substitution programmes. No longer are
there nasty, image-busting rumours about Thai prime ministers and army
commanders. Indeed, our drug officers are among the most respected in the
world, asked to provide advice to less knowledgable counterparts abroad.

But there is also the unmistakable whiff of truth about the letter from
Latin America. The drug traffickers are winning, decent people are losing.
Never have our youth been so threatened by a drugs invasion. Our society is
marshalling forces, attempting to defend itself from an onslaught of drugs,
money and influence. Suspected drug dealers are high in our government, and
police officers admit the force is riddled with traffickers, including
high-ranking officers.

This is also a dangerous time. It is highly questionable whether the war on
drugs has been lost, as the Latin American leaders claim. Wars always have
their low and high moments before they are settled. What is clear at the
moment is that we are losing. We must decide what can be done.

There are certain things we must not do. We must not, for example,
capitulate to the drug dealers and their fellow travellers and legalise the
narcotics traffic. There are such people, highly organised, often supported
by money from tax-free foundations, secure in their belief hat making drugs
legal would save a lot of money and make the streets safe. They are
horribly misguided. In a real war they would be charged with aiding the=
 enemy.

But the letter from the Americas is useful and thought-provoking. The
battle certainly is going badly. So it is an excellent time to consider our
strategy. It is past time, as the US drug czar Barry McCaffrey says, to
stop spreading blame over all countries, and to focus on the drug dealers.
The Thai cabinet is not dealing drugs, but some ministers are suspects.
Burma is not a drug-dealing country, although it harbours several major
traffickers and its government has been corrupted.

Education is a must for our children, who are more at risk today than at
any time in Thai history. Medical programmes can be widened to help addicts
who genuinely want to quit. The government must release more information on
drug traffickers so society can identify them.

The policy must be able to pursue the big shots of drug trafficking, not
fill the prisons with addicts and small-time dealers. It is a poor idea to
declare we have lost the war, and to give up. It is an excellent idea to
constantly, and imaginatively, revise the strategy to make it more likely
we will win.

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