**************************BurmaNet*************************** "Appropriate Information Technologies, Practical Strategies" ************************************************************* The BurmaNet News:15 March 1995 Issue #125: ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ NOTED IN PASSING: All in all, we want to tell you please do not help the SLORC and join your hands with theirs by making a pipeline. We are worried about you, because your hands are clean at the moment but if you shake hands with hands that are dirty with blood then your hands will also be dirty. Naw Dorcus Moo, a Karen girl. From her letter to Fred Hartley, Chairman of Unocal Contents: ********************KAREN STATE/KAWTHOOLEI******************** BURMANET: DKBA ATTACKS ON REFUGEES BF: RIGHTS GROUPS DEMAND STATEMENT FROM UNOCAL ON BURMA VIOLENCE BURMANET: NO FRENCH FATALITIES AMONG TOTAL WORKERS BURMANET: LETTERS FROM THE KAREN *************************ARAKAN STATE************************ USCR: "THE ROHINGYA RETURN TO BURMA" ***********************INTERNATIONAL************************* DAGBLADET: EXCERPT FROM INTERVIEW WITH KIM YOUNG SAM LA TIMES: EXITING THE BURMA ROAD WASHINGTON POST: U NU OBITUARY BRC-JAPAN: KAW MOO RAW ************************************************************** The BurmaNet News is an ********************************* electronic newspaper * Iti * covering Burma. 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Burma Issues is a Bangkok-based non-governmental organization that documents human rights conditions in Burma and maintains an archive of Burma-related documents. Views expressed in The BurmaNet News do not necessarily reflect those of either NCGUB or Burma Issues] ************************************************************** *************THE BURMANET NEWS--MARCH 15, 1995*************** ************************************************************** ********************KAREN STATE/KAWTHOOLEI******************** BURMANET: DKBA/SLORC ATTACKS ON REFUGEES 15 March 1995 Since February 10, the Democratic Kayin Buddhist Army, which is made up of Karen defectors and SLORC troops, has been responsible for eight armed incursions into Thailand which resulted in loss of life, kidnapping or destruction of property. The body count so far stands at seven Karen refugees killed, sixteen wounded, two individuals and five families kidnapped as well as some minor vandalism, theft and arson. The first incursion occurred on February 10 at Ka Htee Hta camp: 10 February: Ka Htee Hta camp SLORC/DKBA crossed the Salween, entered the camp and persuaded 15 families to go back with them. 10th-12th Feb: Ka Htee Hta camp, 500 bags of rice stolen and the camp looted by DKBA/SLORC troops. 11th Feb: Armed DKBA enter Mae La camp, abducting Mahn Yin Sein and followers, (MYS is a junior KNU official, advisory member of the Karen Refugee Committee and Buddhist chairman of Paan district). 12th Feb: DKBA enters Ka Htee Hta and forces five families at gunpoint to return to Burma. Two men (Buddhists) who had gone back with DKBA on the 10th are killed. 15th Feb: DKBA kills three more Buddhist returnees from the 10th. 18th Feb: Message sent to Ka Htee Hta refugees that everyone must return to Burma, otherwise they would be killed. 21st Feb: KNU withdraws from Kawmoora (3:00am) 23rd Feb: Attack on Thai truck on a road between Mae Sam Laeb and Huai Heng camp. A Thai driver and two Karen refugees are killed and 11 others wounded. 28th Feb: DKBA enters Mae La camp in an arson attack. One house burned. 1st March: DKBA enters Mae Ta Wa camp, abducting San Tun (a key Buddhist leader) and wounding two Thai/Karen (1:00am) 2nd March: Armed DKBA entere Mae Ta Wa section 2, beating up and then kidnapping Kyaw Lay. Kyaw Lay, aged 65, was the camp commander. DKBA soldiers then loot Section 2. 7th March: DKBA soldiers attack a Thai truck on the main road between Mae Ta Wa and Mae Sariang. Two Thais wounded. At the last count (February), there were 88,907 refugees along the Thai/Burma border in 32 camps. The largest numbers are in the 21 Karen camps, which hold 73,228 refugees. The four Mon camps hold 9,845 refugees while the 6 Karenni camps house 5,174. There is also one Burmese/Tavoyan camp holding 660 people. ********************KAREN STATE/KAWTHOOLEI******************** BF: RIGHTS GROUPS DEMAND STATEMENT FROM UNOCAL ON BURMA VIOLENCE The Burma Forum 2118 Wilshire Blvd., #383 Santa Monica, CA 90403 March 11, 1995 Rights Groups Demand Statement from Unocal on Burma Violence Los Angeles -- The Burma Forum and the Democratic Burmese Students Association, Los Angeles based activist groups working for democracy and human rights in Burma, have asked for a statement from Unocal after five employees of French oil giant Total were reportedly killed in Burma. The five were surveyors on a project to build a natural gas pipeline from southern Burma into Thailand. Los Angeles based Unocal and the military rulers of Burma are also partners in the project. Unocal has come under heavy criticism for its business dealings with the Burmese military, which is accused by the U.S. State Department of "flagrant and systematic abuses of basic human rights" including killings, rape, and forced labor. "Activists know, and Unocal knows, that the normal Burmese Army response to something like this attack is to take their anger out on the innocent civilians in the area. Rape, torture, and murder are the result. We call on Unocal to demand publicly that this not happen. They ought to do everything they can to stop the violence" says Dr. Carol Richards, coordinator for the Burma Forum. In January, Unocal president John Imle warned that there would be violent retaliation against anyone who tried to stop the project. "If you threaten the pipeline there's gonna be more military. If forced labor goes hand and glove with the military, yes, there will be more forced labor. For every threat to the pipeline, there will be a reaction" said Imle, quoted in the February 13 Bangkok Post. "The ethnic groups and pro-democracy activists have been searching for a peaceful path to national reconciliation, but to date the SLORC's response has been to use force to bring the pipeline project to fruition" said Khin Maung Shwe of the DBSA. "We remain committed to the principles of non-violence put forth by Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy, who won the 1990 elections overwhelmingly, but the results were never recognized by the military. Aung San Suu Kyi is in her sixth year of house arrest, while other NLD leaders have been jailed or driven into exile. In related news, Reuter reports the U.S. State Department, in an official statement on March 8, threatened to downgrade relations with Burma due to a lack of progress on democratization, human rights, and narcotics suppression. Contact: Dr. Kyaw Win (714) 831-2000 Dr. Carol Richards (310) 451 - 4493 ********************KAREN STATE/KAWTHOOLEI******************** BURMANET: NATIONALITY OF TOTAL WORKERS STILL IN QUESTION 15 March 1995 According to reliable reports coming from France, no French nationals were among the dead in the KNU attack which killed five Total employees. The KNU troops who carried out the attack believe that at least one Caucasian was among the dead, but it is possible that they are mistaken, or that the Caucasion was from a third country. ********************KAREN STATE/KAWTHOOLEI******************** BURMANET: LETTERS FROM THE KAREN 1 Letter to Total, by Saw Nay Kaw 2 Letter to Unocal, by Naw Dorcus Moo What follows are two letters are from 10th Form school children in a refugee camp in Thailand. The letters are written to the Chairmen of Total's and Unocal's Boards of Directors. ******* *************** 21 February 1995 Mr St Tchunuk Saw Nay Kaw Total Oil Holdings PO Box 85 24 Cours Michelet Mae Sot 92800 Puteaux Tak 63110 France Thailand Dear Mr St Tchunuk May we be allowed to introduce our group. We are English students of Kaw Moo Rah High School, in a Karen refugee camp close to the Thai border. We heard that your company is working together with the Burmese government, the SLORC, to make a pipeline to send gas to Thailand, and therefore the SLORC is getting a lot of money with your help. This is unfortunate for the ethnic groups who live in Burma. Why does your oil company do business with SLORC? Your work will not really develop the country, and if we look around Burma the small ethnic groups will have to face a lot of trouble because of it. Why? As you can see now, many people from Burma have come out to Thailand and are refugees. We don't want to stay in Thailand and be refugees any more, but right now the Burmese Army attack us everywhere along the border. They move us from place to place, burn our villages, make us work doing hard labour, kill us and rape women. Obviously, if we didn't come to Thailand we would be killed by the SLORC. To come to Thailand is not enjoyable, and not a way of making money. If the situation was good in Burma we would go back now, but because of all the problems we cannot. Additionally, to make your pipeline the SLORC will first have to fight hard with the ethnic groups who live in that area. The people in that area are only we Karen, Mon and some other small groups. They are only small groups, with little money and ot enough weapons to fight the bug Burmese Army and they don't have any support or help from other counties, like you give the Burmese. Buty they will fight. We hope that you will know about that and will think about it. Therefore, we can say that it is because of your company and other companies that we have these problems. On February 2, we heard that the Thai and Burmese governments, and yourselves, made the agreement to make the pipeline between Burma and Thailand. This is unfortunate for us, because this money will go to helping the SLORC to destroy all the ethnic groups in Burma. For sure, it is like you are killing us, when you are making your pipeline. So fi you don't want to kill our people in the future, please stop this. Therefore, we humbly request you to stop your work in Burma. By working in Burma it is easy to see that the SLORC use the money and the opportunity they get to kill our people. Definitely, if you don't stop your work, thi sis what will happen, and surely your energy from Burma will become deadly energy for us. We hope you will agree with us, about how your work will cause is trouble in Burma, an we hope you will be ready to do something about it. We look dorward to your reply to our letter, because we want to hear your opinion about our situation. Yours sincerely, Saw Nay Kaw Naw Dorcus Moo Saw Blut Soe Naw Ellen Min Saw Kaw Htoo Naw Lah Lah Htoo Saw Mae Sot Naw Moo Moo Htoo Saw Min Lwin Naw Wah Wah Htoo *************** 21 February 1995 Fred L. Hartley Naw Dorcus Moo Chairman PO Box 5 Unocal Crop. Mae Sot Unocal Centre Tak 63110 PO Box 7600 Thailand 121 West 5th Street Los Angeles California 90051 USA Dear Mr Hartley Please allow us to introduce ourselves. We are students in Kaw Moo Rah High School, that is located in a Karen refugee camp near Mae Sot, Thailand. Now we are writing to you because we have heard that your company is cooperating with the SLORC to build a pipeline in Burma. According to the Bangkok Post newspaper, on February 2 you signed an agreement with the Thais and Burmese to build this pipeline. We want to suggest to you that the way you have followed may be a good way for you, but it causes a lot of trouble for other people. Why do we talk like this? Because, what will happen to our ethnic groups of Burma, if you join hands with SLORC by building a pipeline? You may not believe this, but because of your help they can oppress our ethnic groups by fighting and forcing our people to do hard labour and besides this, the Burma Army soldiers make our women stay with them as if they are their wives. You are staying in America, far away from Burma,so you and your people do not have to bear the oppression of the SLORC, but we do. Apart from this oppression of our people, they have destroyed a lot of places and forests. By destroying forests and things like roads being made, they also get money from when they sell the trees. So our places get destroyed by logging and most of our places have lost their forests and become desteritied. So, it hurts our natural environment, it doe not hurt your natural environment. Are you happy to help the SLORC do like this? We have read your report to stockholders, "Unocal in Myanmar" [given to them by their teacher], and we were very surprised and mixed with sadness. Why is this? Because you said that as a result of your pipeline it will lead to a better standard of living in Burma. But now our ethnic groups in Burma do not even receive their basic rights, and whats more their situation is becoming worse and worse, and your pipeline will not make it better. You say in your report that you have visited Burma and you saw that the situation is fine and there will be no problem with human rights and logging if you build a pipeline. For sure you don't know the situation better than us. You tell things to the poeple in American who don't know the situation here. But we know the real situation and we know what you say is not true. People who are living where you will make your pipeline, and everywhere in Burma, have to do hard labour without getting any money. We are the people who had been living in Burma for all our lives, and because of the SLORC's oppression we had to escape to the Thai border. We did not do it becuase we wanted to come here. It was real that we could not bear the SLORC's oppression any longer. In addition, you said that if you give your western values and culture to the people in Burma then it will be interesting and good from them. But personally, we thing that our ethnic groups in Burma are not interested in your culture. They want to keep and develop their own culture and live in freedom and peace. Your culture is a very but culture, and so we are afraid for our small culture. Our small culture could be lost easily, because of your big culture. So, although you say you think you have found the way to save our people in Burma from oppression it is actually the way to encourage the SLORC to push us down. Although the SLORC's mouths are full of peace talk, their hands are trying to kill the innocent people of Burma. At the moment they are attacking our Karen people everywhere, especially in our old place of Kaw Moo Rah, where our friends and families stay to fight. They use big bombs, which we can hear everyday, and cause lots of trouble for our people. Furthermore, looking at the situation of Aung San Suu Kyi and other Burmese people who are against the SLORC, although they have the smae race and culture they have kept her in house arrest for five years and jailed or killed thousands of their own people. So, if that is what they do to their own people, what do you think they do to the other different races in Burma. You will know that easily if you are thinking clearly. All in all, we want to tell you please do not help the SLORC and join your hands with theirs by making a pipeline. We are worried about you, because your hands are clean at the moment but if you shake hands with hands that are dirty with blood then your hands will also be dirty. Now we are expressing our opinion to you about yoru building of a pipeline in Burma, and we want to hear back from you also. So please allow us to know your opinion about our ideas and reply to our letter once you have received it. We also want you to think about our people in Burma who are bearing the SLORC's oppression, and not only how to improve your own situation. Yours sincerely, Saw Nay Kaw Naw Dorcus Moo Saw Blut Soe Naw Ellen Min Saw Kaw Htoo Naw Lah Lah Htoo Saw Mae Sot Naw Moo Moo Htoo Saw Min Lwin Naw Wah Wah Htoo *************************ARAKAN STATE************************ USCR: "THE ROHINGYA RETURN TO BURMA" 14 March 1995 From: Curtis W Lambrecht The U.S. Committee for Refugees (USCR) has released a report entitled "The Rohingya Return to Burma: Voluntary Repatriation or Refoulement?". Copies may be obtained at: USCR 1717 Massachusetts Ave NW Suite 701 Washington DC 2036 Phone 202 347-3507 Fax 202 797 2363 I am continuing work on the Rohingya, and I would appreciate any information of any sort on the Rohingya or UNHCR's operation in Arakan State. Please reply at Lambrcht@minerva.cis.yale.edu ***********************INTERNATIONAL************************* LA TIMES: EXITING THE BURMA ROAD HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH 14 February 1995 Exiting the Burma Road For five years now the will of the people of Burma, now known as Myanmar, has been thwarted by the country's despotic military. Even before the democratic opposition scored a landslide victory in the 1990 election-- the first multi-party elections in 30 years--its leader, Aung San Sui Kyi, was slapped with house arrest by the junta. But her plight and that of Burma--whose government has driven hundreds of thousands of Burmese, including many minority group members, into neighboring Bangladesh and Thailand--caught the world's eye when she was awarded the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize. Even so, the Burmese military still thrives, prospering thanks to rake-offs from drug trafficking, international sales of natural resources and playing host to many international companies. Included among these companies, alas, are American firms. However, at least three U.S. firms have had enough and have called it quits in Burma. The latest is Eddie Bauer Inc. The well-known Seattle retailer of outdoor clothing said it will stop using Burmese factories to make its clothes because of the political climate--and growing world opinion against trade with Burma. Two years ago, Levi Strauss & Co., commendably, left Burma, disgusted with the repressive atmosphere. So did Liz Clairborne Inc. But other U.S. firms still do, or are currently negotiating to, conduct business there. They should reflect on the example of Eddie Bauer, Levi Strauss and Liz Clairborne. There are better places in which to improve the bottom line. >From the Los Angeles Times, Letter to the Editor column, Friday, 24 February 1995: *Re "Exiting the Burma Road," editorial, Feb. 14: You failed to mention the two American giants, Unocal and Texaco, which, with Total of France, recently signed a $400-million deal with the military thugs in Rangoon to build a pipeline through the Mon tribal homeland to transport natural gas from Burma to Thailand. What is so repulsive is the use of slaves to build roads, railroads and other backbreaking projects to catch up with the 20th Century in haste. The State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), Burma's ruling junta, has defied the U.N. and the international community by going full- steam ahead, violating each and every article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with impunity. Earlier this month, the SLORC spurned a U.N. deputy secretary general's request to see imprisoned Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi when he was sent to Burma by a United Nations resolution. Appearing on the day former Burmese Prime Minister U Nu died in Rangoon, I hope your piece arouses the conscience of freedom-loving Americans. The President and the Congress should take the moral high ground by insisting that the international community deny the benefits of trade with Burma, as was done so successfully in South Africa. U Kyaw Win Laguna Hills [Contributer-Letter Writer's comment: I erred with the $400 million figure. That is the annual output of natural gas to be piped to Thailand. The project's estimated cost is US$1 billion. ukw] ***********************INTERNATIONAL************************* WASHINGTON POST: U NU OBITUARY February 15, 1995 Final Edition, Metro Section P. B5 U Nu, 87, who was prime minister of Burma from 1948, when it gained independence from Britain, until 1962, when Gen. Ne Win took power in a military coup, died Feb. 14 at his home in Rangoon. The cause of death was not reported. Detained by the military from 1962 to 1966, he went into exile in 1969. he returned to Burma in 1980 under a general amnesty and promised to stay out of politics. He wrote plays, poems, novels and political works and translated into Burmese the works of Karl Marx and Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People." When pro democracy demonstrations toppled Ne Win's regime in 1988, Mr.. U Nu declared himself prime minister of a parallel government. but his movement failed to capture much popular support and was violently crushed when a military junta seized power on September 18, 1988. He was under house arrest from December 1989 to April 1992. ***********************INTERNATIONAL************************* DAGBLADET: INTERVIEW WITH KIM YOUNG SAM Translation of excerpt from an interview with Kim Young Sam, President of South Korea by the Foreign Editor of Dagbladet, Oslo, Norway published 14.3.95: --I was imprisoned, stripped of my parliamentary imunity and expelled from the National Assembly. This happened for the first time in South Korea's political history. For three years my home was surrounded by hundred of soldiers and police, and I could not leave. The military regime searched my house at irregular intervals. In many ways, imprisonment would have been preferrable, since a prisoner has, after all, some rights. You can meet your lawyer and your family members. This was denied to me...... --Against this background, you can therefore well appreciate the situation in Burma and the elected leader of the people and Nobel Prize Winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, who is now under house arrest on the sixth year? --I am well aquainted with her situation and the criticism of those countries which support the military regime through active trade relations. Our country's [trade] relations are not as extensive as that of some other countries. We have sent a clear message to the military regime and urged them to reintroduce democracy in the country. We are now set to increase the pressure, both to have Suu Kyi released and to reintroduce democracy. --Can violations of human rights, under any circumstances, be considered as the internal affairs of a country ? --No. Every country may have certain conditions they need to consider, but human rights are universal rights, and one cannot make exceptions by claiming special exceptions based on national or regional circumstances. ***********************INTERNATIONAL************************* BRC-J: KAW MOO RAW Burmese Relief Center--Japan DATE:March 14, 1995 TIME:10:43PMJST by Myint Shwe "Behave like deadly fire upon the enemy. Behave like a sweet flower toward the people" An old Burma Army song In the old days, the Psychological Warfare Unit of the Burma Army composed this song and it was aired frequently by the Burma Broadcasting Service. While it is still is sometimes heard on Radio Myanmar, it is now cruelly ironic, because the forty-five million living, brea thing souls in Burma, except for those of the military, are no more classed as "people" but are treated as enemies or under-cover-agents by the junta that st yles itself the "State Law and Order Restoration Council" (SLORC). One of the most effective ways to maintain law and order inside the country (said by many to be an internal affair of Myanmar) is to poison the very air the enemy breathes if he is so stubborn as to refuse to submit to the army's reign. The SLORC fought to control even a tiny patch of land held by the opposition side as its last visible territory inside Burma and willingly paid the price of more than a thousand of its soldiers' lives. When that didn't suffice, the Burmese Army stands suspected of resorting to its last weapons, nerve gas, in the battle for Kaw Moo Raw. While biological and chemical weapons in Iraq have been destroyed, SLORC again stirs our memories of Nazi gas chambers. As a variation on the neo-Nazis theme at the bend of Moei River on the Thai Burma border, unlike the old Nazis of the Rhine valley, the SLORC Army used gas and germs on the rebels to speed up their so-called national reconciliation process. To the outside world, this "Final Solution" remains the same for all Nazis old and new. In the nearly half century old Burmese civil war even the powerful yet conventional weapons such as G-3 and G-4 Assault Rifles designed by German Fritz Werner Co., and Howitzers seemed useless in subduing the Karens, Rakhines and Burmese student fighters at Kaw Moo Rah. As early as late 1993, reports about the use of bacteria germs parachuted by Burma Air Force planes over the sparsely inhabited areas deep inside Karen State appeared in some NGO newsletters in Thailand, but no proof beyond circumstantial evidence was offered. After the fall of Kaw Moo Rah, however, the Karen Human Rights Committee (KHRC), led by an active Canadian, accused Rangoon of apparent biological warfare. In August last year, in the Donthami-Yunzalin watershed area in the Southeastern part of Burma, SLORC planes dropped dozens of strange devices consisting of two-meter long parachutes with white boxes and balloons attached underneath. Shortly thereafter, inhabitants of the area began suffering severe symptoms of cholera-like diarrhoea and shigella. Most of the people living in these areas are Karen. The Government has ordered these indigenous people to evacuate their villages and move their homes to new locations which are well under its control in order to alienate the Karen National Union (KNU). At the same time SLORC has been pushing the KNU and its allies (the Democratic Alliance of Burma or DAB) forces towards the Thai border. All the while, Burma watchers have been kept off guard by the talk of cease-fire talks and deals. During that time skirmishes and small scale engagements took the place of major fighting and thus escaping outside attention. By September, just a month after the air drop, a mysterious malady spread as far as Bilin in the east on the Sittaung River and Ka Ma Maung in the north on the Salween River. The KNU received reports of an inordinate number of deaths in the area, with 185 local villagers having died from the an unknown disease with symptoms similar to dysentery, including nausea, vomiting, dizziness, and dehydration, ending in death in some cases after only two or three trips to the toilet. The government's apparent intention in using the germs against the local Karens seems to be to intimidate them by a pestilential epidemic after it has failed its forced relocation of them by other means. The epidemic is in the same area where SLORC sent fresh combat troops, particularly the notorious 99th Light Infantry Division, in its attempt to drive all villagers out of the area so that KNU troops cannot operate. Most of the region had been declared by the SLORC Army as a Free Fire Zone (i.e. anybody found there must be shot dead without further questioning) yet the native villagers stayed on there by hiding in the forests or staying in camouflaged villages. SLORC's last resort was to clear out the whole area by decimating the population and driving out the survivors by spreading fears of a genocidal epidemic. All this was well underway before KNU was weakened by its own troubles, a mutiny in the Buddhist ranks. KHRG has even suggested that this could be an experimental operation for the more widespread use of bacteriological agents possibly in the area further south in the Tenneserim Peninsula where KNU still maintains a territory and where the offshore Andaman Pipe Line is planned to carry gas to Thailand. But what has increased the danger and urgency is the possibility of the disease spreading far beyond its initial areas. While it could spread deeper into the Burmese heartland, it has also shown signs of spreading towards Thai Burma border and even into Thailand with the latest influx of Karen refugees. Such a disease will respect neither Thailand's border line nor its border patrol police. KNU has been able to gather some of the devices dropped by SLORC planes. The manufacturer's logo revealed that they originated in Philadelphia, Penn. USA. This shows how adept the SLORC army is at turning anything into military apparatus. In the 1970s the army adapted the helicopters given by the United States which were intended to be used in anti-drug campaigns into helicopter gun ships and used them in Burma's civil war. Now they have also transformed weather balloons into deadly germ carriers. KHRG is offering blood, urine and fabric samples of the Kaw Moo Rah gas victims to any international scientists interested in making their own independent experiments. It accuses the Burmese Army of using four types of chemical weapons, at least one of which violates the Law of Land Warfare as codified by the Geneva Convention. The charges of chemical weapons use date from 1992, even before SLORC's unilateral cease-fire began. In the 1992 offensive against Manerplaw, the Karen H.Q. that fell into Rangoon's hands last December, several Karen soldiers in front line positions were injured from suspected chemical weapons in SLORC air attacks. The same year in Kachin State the Kachin Independence Organization (KIA) claimed that chemical shells were being used against them as well. These statements are supported by events which happened in 1988 in Rangoon. During the 1988 August national uprisings, ordinary civilians were ruthlessly shot and killed on the streets. Dozens of girl students were gang raped in prisons and police lock ups by the paramilitary Lone Htein. Despite the brutal use of force, the uprising grew. Finally the military used its "final solution" It freed convicted criminals from jails, selected and trained them. Injecting these operatives with stimulant drugs, the army set them to their tasks of sabotage. They were to poison the public drinking water tanks in Rangoon, to set fires in proletarian neighborhoods, and to shoot activists with guns equipped with silencers. The army injected poison into boiled eggs and mixed it into other snacks which were then offered freely to demonstrators, causing symptoms of food poisoning and spreading confusion and fear. Some of the criminals were caught red handed and executed by angry mobs. KHRC mentioned the fact that West Germany alone trained at least fifteen Burmese Army officers for chemical and biological warfare from 1978 to 1989 despite the international condemnation of the junta for its gross human rights violations in 1988. The Fritz Werner Co. initially famous for its arms and ammunitions industry has now also built a "fertilizer" and a "bottling" factor for SLORC inside Burma in secret locations. What kind of fertilizer it has been producing and what it has been bottling are unknown. Those matters also remain Burma's internal affair. Once established, dictatorships always use intimidation and terror to cling to power. They use plain old methods such as street massacres, night arrests, torture and long prison terms as well as poisoning the public mind with racial hatred, xenophobia and the lies of false promises ranging from "National Socialism" as in Germany and "Burmese Way to Socialism" as in Burma. But usually, the subjugated masses become disillusioned before long and rise up. When conventional methods prove to be inadequate, the tyrants have to resort to new techniques. The new methods include rape on a large scale of women from the opposing social or ethnic minority groups plus forced relocation or forcing the troublesome population out of the country as refugees. When everything else fails, the dictatorship resorts to the "final solution" to kill with gas or germs. What has been seen in Burma is typical of a fully grown dictatorship. It must be obvious even to those who have embraced the new mind set of underrating it by flimsy excuses, claiming that Burma has changed a lot for the better, that SLORC will never show restraint. The junta will do whatever it deems necessary to retain the power it illegally holds. Moreover it may dare to extend its brutal practices without limit, taking advantage of others' timidity and indecision. It must be admitted that the ethnic opposition has had shortcomings and made mistakes. Nevertheless, they stood for democracy and federalism for a future Burma and they fought for these goals until the last minute at Kaw Moo Rah. They deserve great honor because they were defeated by the far larger and stronger enemy who had no compunction about using any tactic to win. Glory is theirs, not the victors. On the other hand, it is feared that the memory of Kaw Moo Rah may remain a scar forever in the history of the struggle for a real reconciliation in the Burma Union. ************************************************************** NEWS SOURCES REGULARLY COVERED/ABBREVIATIONS USED BY BURMANET: ABSDF: ALL BURMA STUDENT'S DEMOCRATIC FRONT AP: ASSOCIATED PRESS AFP: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE AW: ASIAWEEK Bt.: THAI BAHT; 25 Bt. EQUALS US$1 (APPROX), BBC: BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION BF: BURMA FORUM BKK POST: BANGKOK POST (DAILY NEWSPAPER, BANGKOK) BRC-CM: BURMESE RELIEF CENTER-CHIANG MAI BRC-J: BURMESE RELIEF CENTER-JAPAN CPPSM:C'TEE FOR PUBLICITY OF THE PEOPLE'S STRUGGLE IN MONLAND FEER: FAR EAST ECONOMIC REVIEW GOA: GOVERNMENT OF AUSTRALIA IRRAWADDY: NEWSLETTER PUBLISHED BY BURMA INFORMATION GROUP KHRG: KAREN HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP KNU: KAREN NATIONAL UNION Kt. BURMESE KYAT; UP TO 150 KYAT-US$1 BLACK MARKET 106 KYAT US$1-SEMI-OFFICIAL 6 KYAT-US$1 OFFICIAL MOA: MIRROR OF ARAKAN MNA: MYANMAR NEWS AGENCY (SLORC) THE NATION: A DAILY NEWSPAPER IN BANGKOK NCGUB: NATIONAL COALITION GOVERNMENT OF THE UNION OF BURMA NLM: NEW LIGHT OF MYANMAR (DAILY STATE-RUN NEWSPAPER,RANGOON) NMSP: NEW MON STATE PARTY RTA:REC.TRAVEL.ASIA NEWSGROUP RTG: ROYAL THAI GOVERNMENT SCB:SOC.CULTURE.BURMA NEWSGROUP SCT:SOC.CULTURE.THAI NEWSGROUP SEASIA-L: S.E.ASIA BITNET MAILING LIST SLORC: STATE LAW AND ORDER RESTORATION COUNCIL TAWSJ: THE ASIAN WALL STREET JOURNAL UPI: UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL USG: UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT XNA: XINHUA NEWS AGENCY **************************************************************