------------------------ BurmaNet ------------------------ "Appropriate Information Technologies, Practical Strategies" ---------------------------------------------------------- The BurmaNet News: June 15, 1995 Issue #184 NOTE: THE BURMANEWS-L MAILING LIST IS FINALLY WORKING. BURMANEWS-L SUBSCRIBERS WILL ONLY RECEIVE THE BURMANET NEWS. IF YOU ARE A BURMANET-L SUBSCRIBER AND WANT TO CHANGE OVER, SEND A MESSAGE TO: strider@igc.apc.org ***************************************** BURMANET: NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ARTICLE SLAMS SLORC BKK POST: RANGOON GETS TOP BUSINESS HOTEL BKK POST:CRACKDOWN ON ILLEGAL CROSSING INTO BURMA BKK POST:BEYOND BAN HIN TAKE THE NATION: SURIN TERMS MOEI BRIDGE SNAG AS TECHNICAL NATION: LETTER---IN US HANDS BKK POST: BURMESE TROOPS ARREST 19 THAI VILLAGERS AT BORDER NATION: IRATE VILLAGERS THREATEN PROTEST OVER STOPPAGE OF WORK ON MOEI RIVER BRIDGE ---------------------------------------------------------- o-------------------------------o The BurmaNet News is an | | electronic newspaper | Iti | covering Burma. 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Look under the International Political Economy section, then select Geographic_Archive, then Asia, then Burma. ---------------------------------------------------------- BURMANET SUBJECT-MATTER RESOURCE LIST BurmaNet regularly receives enquiries on a number of different topics related to Burma. The scope of the subjects involved is simplytoo broad for any one person to cover. BurmaNet is therefore organizing a number of volunteer coordinators to field questions on various subjects. If you have questions on any of the following subjects, please direct email to the following coordinators, who will either answer your question or try to put you in contact with someone who can: Arakan/Rohingya/Burma- [volunteer needed] Bangladesh border Art/archaeology/: [volunteer needed] Campus activism: Boycott campaigns: Buddhism: Buddhist Relief Mission, c/o NBH03114@niftyserve.or.jp Fonts: tom@CS.COLGATE.EDU History of Burma: zar1963@violet.berkeley.edu Chin history/culture: Kachin history/culture: 74750.1267@compuserve.com Karen history/culture: 102113.2571@Compuserve.com Karen Historical Society Mon history/culture: [volunteer needed] Naga history/culture: [volunteer needed] [Burma-India border] Pali literature: "Palmleaf" c/o burmanet@igc.apc.org Shan history/culture: [volunteer needed] Tourism campaigns: bagp@gn.apc.org "Attn. S. Sutcliffe" World Wide Web: FreeBurma@POBox.com Volunteering: Dr. Christina Fink c/o burmanet@igc.apc.org [Feel free to suggest more areas of coverage] ---------------------------------------------------------- BURMANET: NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ARTICLE SLAMS SLORC By a special correspondent The Joel Swerdlow article thrashing slorc in National Geographic is just out. The full title is "Burma, The Richest of Poor Countries" It's Vol. 188, No. 1. July 1995 This is the one that the Slorc thought was going to be a travel article for visit myanmar year!! SURPRISE!! There'll be a live discussion group with the author about this article on America-on-line sometime in the future. Details posted on A-0-L. The email for National Geographic is NGSforum@aol.com. Their email is read by all the higher ups. I recommend anyone who feels strongly about the article to please write in to their email, this will be a vote of confidence for this type of article. It was a challenge for the author to get the magazine to include 1) such a controversial article and 2) get to call Burma "Burma" instead of you know what. Their 800 number is 1-800-NGS-LINE for those who want to phone. ===== item ===== RANGOON GETS TOP BUSINESS HOTEL 15 JUNE 1995 The Summit Parkview, Rangoon's first international-class business hotel, officially opened last week. The six-storey, 250-room hotel, built at a cost of US$40 million, has been welcoming guests since its soft opening last December. Stewart Yen, chairman of Summit Parkview, attributed the record construction time of only 13 months to two factors; the use of prefabricated methods and components, and the fact that the decision-making process was tightly controlled. The owner, designer, builder and operator of the hotel are one of the same. "Our people worked closely as a team with a common objective; and that was to complete the project on time and within budget," he said. Summit Parkview is owned by Regional Hotels, a Singapore partner ship including government-linked Singapore Technologies, property investment company Timas, Singapore Technologies is also develop ing the Bintan Beach International Resort in Indonesia. Summit Parkview features a state-of-the-art fitness centre, along with a novel entertainment concept for Burma in the form of Club Hollywood, which features live entertainment, private karaoke rooms and a games room with electronic arcade games. Other facilities include a beauty salon, 24-hour clinic, function rooms and gift shops, in addition to a business centre, banquet and meeting facilities, restaurant and 24-hour room service. Burma's Minister of Hotels and Tourism, Lieutenant-General Kyaw Ba, said the completion of the Summit Parkview was timely since the country is preparing for an expected surge of visitors during Visit Myanmar Year in 1996. "Summit Parkview certainly wants to play its part, no matter how small, in the continued development of the market economy of Burma," Mr Yen said. (BP) CRACKDOWN ON ILLEGAL CROSSING INTO BURMA 15 JUNE 1995 People are still crossing into Burma via checkpoints which the provincial authorities have closed for security reasons, Deputy Interior Minister Pairote Lohsunthorn said yesterday. He said the president of the Chiang Rai Chamber of Commerce has informed him of the illegal crossings and he has asked the au thorities to enforce the closure order more strictly. Mr Pairote was speaking after inspecting the Thai-Burmese border at Mae Sai District, including the temporary checkpoint at Ban Muang Daeng which was closed after the fighting between Burmese government troops and Khun Sa's Mong Tai Army. All border checkpoints in the province have remained closed, despite the fact that the situation in Burma has returned to normal. Mr Pairote acknowledged that the closure of the checkpoint at Mae Sai, across the border from Tachilek, had caused losses of at least two billion baht. (BP) SURIN TERMS MOEI BRIDGE SNAG AS TECHNICAL 15 JUNE 1995 Acting Foreign Minister Surin Pitsuwan yesterday said a halt in the construction of the Thai-Burmese Friendship Bridge over the Moei River was caused by technical, not political, problems. Surin reaffirmed that both Thailand and Burma were willing to complete construction of the bridge and that the halt would be temporary. He said both sides first had to clear up an allegation by Burmese authorities in Myawaddy concerning land reclaimed by Thai villag ers in Tak province's Mae Sot District. The bridge is being funded by the Thai government at a cost of Bt70 million and is 95 per cent finished. "The Bridge is essential to the development of transportation networks between the two countries," Said Surin, who chaired the Thai-Burmese Friendship Bridge Committee. "Thailand wants to see Burma achieve national reconciliation, and Burma wants to use the development of its border region to settle internal problems [with an armed ethnic insurgency]," he said. Surin said Burmese Ambassador to Thailand Tin Maung Win last week agreed to convey Thailand's proposal for a quick settlement of the matter at a committee level. Surin said both Thailand and Burma wanted to clarify boundary matters so as to prevent any further disputes that might disrupt other planned cross-border transportation routes. Both sides are in the process of opening border checkpoints in Mae Sot and Ranong. Burmese authorities last Wednesday asked for the suspension of construction work on the bridge linking Myawaddy with Mae Sot to protest against land reclamation by Thai villagers on the Moei River which the Burmese said had changed the flew of the river and affected the national boundary in those areas. Countering the Burmese protest, Thai villagers accused the Bur mese of investing nothing for the bridge and yet siphoning con struction materials and rocks and soil from Thailand to build their border roads. Informed sources said the Burmese concern was the building of structures on the reclaimed bank by Thai villagers and merchants. The sources said Thai construction companies involved in the bridge had already withdrawn cranes and construction materials from the reclaimed lands. "I am confident that there will be no scrapping of the construc tion work. It is just a temporary halt to allow for the investi gation into the matter until the end results please every side," Surin said. Surin said Thailand had no intention to change the geography of the river bank as claimed. (TN) BEYOND BAN HIN TAKE 15 JUNE 1995 Once a stronghold of drug warlord Khun Sa, Ban Hin Taek today has a new name. But it maintains a frontier identity befitting a place that is about as far away from anywhere as one can get in Thailand. Donald Wilson and David Henley of Crescent Press Agency write. Ban Hin Taek-the "Village of Broken Stone" has not always been an easy, or welcoming, place to get to. Located on the far northern frontier of Thailand, even beyond Doi Mae Salong, in a narrow lobe of Thai territory protruding deeply into Burma's Shan State, its very name is a symbol of remoteness. Just 134 years ago, a visitor to Hin Taek-had he or she been allowed to proceed that far would have found the village an armed camp flying the yellow-green-and-red flag of Khun Sa's Shan United Army (now the Mong Tai Army), rather than the red, white and blue of Thailand. A description of Hin Taek from that time describes the settlement as a vest armed camp, spread over several square kilometres: "A protective perimeter had been constructed from tightly-woven fences of bamboo stakes, rolls of barbed wire and trenches which surrounded each fortified hill." Radio antennae sprouted from the closely-guarded headquarters, and barracks for the well-armed troops competed for space with several sports grounds. Hin Taek was part of Thailand in name only. Under the iron fist of Khun Sa it was a state within a state, a law unto itself. All this changed suddenly at the end of January 1982, when a large force of Thai rangers and Border Patrol Police, acting on the orders of then Prime Minister Prem Tinsulanonda, attacked the SUA fiefdom. After several days of violent fighting Thai forces used planes and tanks the SUA was pushed out of Thai territory. More than a thousand Shan guerrillas withdrew across the frontier into Burma, while Khun Sa was forced to abandon his elegant villa and swimming pool located a few kilometres to the north of the main camp. Thailand had taken back Hin Taek, but the village remained remote and wild, joined tenuously to Chiang Rai province by a narrow and difficult dirt track. Over the intervening years, major steps have been taken to im prove Hin Taek's links with the outside world and to improve the living standards of the people who live there. The track leading to the settlement, though still unsurfaced has been graded and improved, and the village has been given a new, less menacing official name. Today its official designation is Ban Theuat Tai_ "Village to Honour Thailand". To the locals, however, it's still Hin Taek, and likely to remain so. The road to Hin Taek starts at Ban Basang, about two kilometre north of Mae Chan on route 110 between Chiang rai and Mae Sai. A narrow, surfaced road Route1130 leads west into the mountains, destined ultimately for the Yunnanese-Kuomintang village of Doi Mae Salong (another re-named settlement, Mae Salong is officially designated Santikhiri, or "Hill of Peace", though scarcely any body calls it that). Before reaching Mae Salong, the road now transformed into the easily-remembered Route 1234 divides at a point known simply as Sam Yaek (three ways). The surfaced road continues to Mae Salaong, about 13 kilometres distant. because of its proximity to Mae Salong, Sam Yaek is a rather c ommercialised village, populated almost entirely b Akha hill people. The narrow road to Mae Salong is lined with stalls selling a wide variety of hilltribe goods, as well as products orginating in nearby Burma cheroots, colourful sarongs, and sometimes exotica such as "Padaung Whisky". To the north of the surfaced road, unnoticed by most lowland Thai and foreign visitors, a dirt track leads off toward the Burmese frontier. This is the unsealed track to ban Hin Taek. Until recently and even now, during the height of the rainy season it is no route for vehicles lacking four-wheel drive. Hin Taek is remote perhaps the most remote settlement in Thailand and must be approached with a spirit of caution, unless the traveller wishes to spend a night marooned beneath the stars. S.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 **************************************************************